I think taking our ethos with us, wherever we go, not just into space but into the supermarket, the doctor and most of all before we go to that ballotbox again ( voting for masters, I didn't ) would not only clean up the mess down here, it would automatically remove those that would lay claim to space and planets, all that overreaching, greed and insane claims that go with it.
There is a saying: wherever you go, there you are.
So cleaning up our own act before we take the insanity with us, no matter where we go or what we do is imperative.
May the right force ( not the greedy one ) be with you so to speak!! With all of us!!
There is a saying used frequently by a guy named Oscar Wilde "art for its own sake." Metro Goldwyn Mayer made it over into Latin and it appears at both ends of their films as "ars gratia artis" surrounding the roaring lion. My version is a little variation on the theme.
I'm very familiar with Maxwell's equations. I'm not confident that gravity is what you think it is. Then again, neither is time.
There are a great many reasons why the "transporter" beam of Star Trek was extremely useful to the show's producers and budget. There are also many reasons why the development of such things is wildly improbable and contrary to many aspects of quantum physics involving the calculation of speeds and positions for a vast array of particles all at once. At the same time, there is an even more classic book, the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, which mentions that God can move someone from one place to another in the twinkling of an eye, as it were. Worth a closer look imo
I was into fantasy (was reading the 19th century fairy tales, written for adults (no, not THAT "adults") from the age of 5) until the 7th grade when I read The Secret of the Martian Moons by Donald A. Wollheim. I was in the SF tribe deeply! Never looked back at fantasy. So I am unsurprised that You who share a great deal of what I see are into it too.
Yes, space is real, and whenever I encounter a pancake planeter (as I call Them), I offer this:
Sci-fi has always been my favorite genre of fiction and for the same reasons Christopher mentions here. I share his love of the libertarian side demonstrated by some of the best writers in this form. It has inspired me and given me visions of what could be at some point, given enough courage and determination, enough who share that vision. It is what has excited me about this movement. I also have to admit that I have come to have serious doubts as to the nature of our environment and the bodies that inhabit it. I am quite sure that things are not as they seem to be, that this world is not what we always thought it was. I think now that it is a construction of conscienceness and not the other way around as we are being programmed to believe by those pushing the "grit" theory of reality as Clif High puts it. The materialists who deny the spiritual side of reality, which I believe is the true reality. There may be a real solar system out there and not just a projection, but the work of Jason Breshears for example, provides real and credible evidence of some kind of artificiality to our world, and I have come to accept that it may actually be an artificially generated illusion. Although that does not mean that there aren't real solar systems and space faring in real galaxies, but I accept that this place in which we are experiencing life may not be one of them. There are glaring anomalies that contradict the "science" that we are taught and I have no doubt that NASA is a disgusting lie that hides a huge money laundering racket, and I no longer believe a thing they tell us. When or if we ever become a space faring people I think it will be vital that we do make our transition to an ethical social system based on spiritual values and that at some point the forecasts of our sci-fi visionaries like Heinlein will come to be, there will be attempts, hopefully successful, to cast off external controls and independence be established with choices that do not presently exist for a different kind of social organization that supports individual rights and sovereignty.
It takes a Musk amount of money to rocket to the moon, however anyone with a little water and a DC current source could balloon to the stratosphere. Distributed nation? Instead of seasteads, stratosheds.
I did a little back of the enveloping, chatboting a shot over at my substack; what would it take to put a Gerard O'Neill habitat or whatever 18 miles up, well above the weather where each and every day is a sunny day?
Proof of concepting I just theoretically lifted 4 tons sky high but the concept is quite upscalable with present day materials and equipment, no exotics needed. 18 miles high is well within the reach of many individual's bankrolls.
No I'm not selling shares or anything, just saying space is there, so's subspace. It'll take a Musk to get to mars but many a sightly above average Joe could move up 18 miles towards the stars.
Just thinking outside the box, thinking above the troposphere
But of course! Hence the modified and minimalized Gerard O'Neill habitat. His design is for outer space, in the stratosphere we don't need to spin to fake gravity, we're still well within the gravity well. We don't need to make air, it there but yes it's thin.
Hence we simply pump in, just as they do in aircraft to a comfortable concentration and pressure, then as a Brit would say, Bob's your uncle!
What about buoyancy? I am assuming some sort of lighter-than-air gas, in bags, is what keeps it aloft? But can it still be lighter than air, up there where the air is lighter?
& yes it's still lighter than air. That was the calculation (How big a hydrogen filled balloon do I need to float X tons 18 miles up?) I had the ChatGPT (less than 5 minutes chatbot calculating {Actually less than a minute calculating, the rest of the 5 minutes was me reading and querying.}, hours walking back and forth to my book shelves to reference constants and formulas I haven't used in well over twenty years if I'd done the calculations.) do over on my substack; https://jiminalaska.substack.com/p/getting-away-from-it-all & yes hydrogen's flammable but 18 miles is above all the thunder and lightening and anyway a tether separates the habitat from the balloon and if the balloon blows break the tether and the only way to go is down and if you'd like to assure slowing the down you have a drogue chute slow down followed by a parachute to gently down the last 3,000 feet and why yes I sometimes, not usually but sometimes, talk in run-on sentences as well as write them. ;-)
You have a lovely imagination, and of course, to be opposed to a leaf would seem rather anti-existence. Maybe a leaf surrounded by Geese. I like geese because they work together, and support each other through heavy headwinds, taking turns. And, well, I love pines ~ their presence is phenomenal. The idea that one's property extends into space is a useful tenet should things get out of hand. For example a group of people could join together and simply be qualified to ask, "Is this safe for the planet? Is this healthy for our ionosphere?" Holding title would allow the question, en masse. Just a thought. We all like to travel and fly and have electricity ~ but when rights are trampled, or power is unbalanced, those rights can be actualized, and might exist for those cases. If you have no rights, there are no questions one can ask while standing in one's community or individual power. This idea extends to all resources and power dynamics, ideally. Just some thoughts.
We have lots of geese around here. I like how they all gather in the fall, like they're all waiting at an airport for a flight. And then they all just bail at once!
I love pines too. I have been thinking about the bristlecone pine as a possibility. (I think maybe we talked about that once before??)
I get what you are saying about ad coelum. But I fear it would not just defend our rights against the evil power-monsters; it would also have the effect of limiting normal people's rights (to fly, dig, etc.).
I love the sound of geese, too. The way they 'honk' and soar in a pattern of knowing organization; it makes me want to join them once in awhile, at least in spirit. I love the idea of the bristlecone pine, for bristle is the least we do when we feel an affront to our dignity and simple common courtesy and all. Ad coelum is there as a right for the reasons we mention, and may even be threatened for those very reasons, every aspect of space now can be 'colonized,' but should it? Isn't there an authentic author that may have made the outer limits, limited for us? The literalists often take things too far, imho. So yes, the right is there, and maybe it should remain there, for reasons we cannot yet predict. One can always give up a right, or not exercise it ~ but once it's gone, it's much harder, as you know. Here's to the geese, and the leaves, and the pines ~ maybe they are onto something we have yet to know about limits, and freedom to exercise certain rights ~ within reason, of course, should we need to, and sometimes, beyond it. Thank you.
Technically and metaphorically, we do carry our ethos into space. Land titles extend up into infinity ~ just the perimeter is already encroached upon. I am not a flat Earther, either. I sailed on a ship around the globe, and it appeared round, to me. Just some thoughts. I know you will comprehend the logic pattern here, and still thinking of the flag, a Pine, with Geese above it.
Re: flag—some sort of tree is definitely on the short list! Cascadia already uses the Douglas fir, though, so I am not sure about a conifer.
What about a leaf?
Regarding land titles, it is a very interesting question. I am not sure that most libertarians do, or that we would want, to adopt the ad coelum doctrine in toto. I only recently started thinking about this, though, so there may be something I am missing. But let's look at it…
If property rights extend infinitely up into space, then not only could no one fly through the air, but we would also own some chunk of the entire universe above us (a chunk that is itself moving as the Milky Way both rotates on its axis and flies through space [for its eventual collision with Andromeda!]). That strikes me as a bit much. No space travel without permission. "Hey aliens, get out of my 20 acre column of space!"
If they extend downward in a cone to the center of the Earth, then no one gets to mine or spelunk.
Even if we take a "whose oxen are getting gored" outlook, we can see that ad coelum would also gore our oxen. For example, Jim in Alaska was just proposing that instead of seasteading, people could skystead—build floating platforms up in the sky (using dirigible-type technology, presumably). I don't know about the feasibility there, but it would be impossible with ad coelum. So would any underground habitats we might choose to build.
The sky, the earth's interior, and space are all potential frontiers, and frontiers are in short supply. I am not sure we want to limit those with ad coelum. Especially given all the land that governments claim!
But, of course, there may be something I am kissing. Like I said, I have not been thinking about this issue for very long…
Let me see if I can remember… 2 or 3 was CBS. 4 was NBC. 5 was an indy station, which had that show Wonderama. 7 was ABC. 9 was indy/WOR. 11 was PIX! And 13 was public television. Sound right?
I lived in Bridgeport, Conn., for 16 months (1998-99) while working as the sports editor for a small, weekly newspaper in Westport/Weston. I remember getting both New York City and Hartford (???) network affiliates on cable, which sometimes meant extra NFL games if the Hartford station showed a Patriots game while the NYC station showed the Jets.
Can we be free in space? Don't know and don't care. I have to believe that we can be free here and now. Else it's all science fiction. They can shoot me, poison me, hang me, electrocute me, or kill me in some not yet invented way. But they can't enslave me. I am not Ape II. And they are not Ape I or Ape II. I an just a human just as they are just human.
Most of us will not be around for the future of which I speak. My point is that we need to add a vision of that future to our vision. Pass it on to our kids, and they to theirs.
Our enemies are short sighted and venal. Let us be the ones with vision and patience!
More than a dozen authors have written libertarian sci-fi mostly in the 60s and 70s, but starting in 1957 (assuming Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged counts as sci-fi) up to about 2023. Two better-known works are Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966) and L. Neil Smith's The Probability Broach (1979).
Your blog post brought to mind a sci-fi-related thought, similar to Elon Musk's plan to go to Mars and terraform the planet so humans can live there before some disaster destroys terrestrial life. My thought started with the question “What is the greatest feat that's logically possible (even if practically impossible) for one human to accomplish in a lifetime?” I answered “Save the World!” as in a superhero movie. I'll assume “the world” is confined to life on Earth, since life can be destroyed but the material composition of the planet cannot, and we can't seem to have much effect on the rest of the universe.
No human could literally save the world. Even if the world isn't virtually destroyed by some man-made disaster, such as global thermonuclear war, it will eventually be destroyed by some unavoidable natural disaster—e.g., the Sun is due to explode in about 5 billion years and become a red giant destroying all terrestrial life in the process.
So what can one actually do that will come as close as possible to saving the world? I think the answer is to effectively promote liberty. Here's why: Promoting worldwide liberty can result in world peace, thus avoiding global thermonuclear war. Besides, liberty results in prosperity and the advancement of science and technology, which can enable us to avoid some natural disasters, such as a pandemic or an asteroid strike.
It's common knowledge that science and technology can be misused to create things capable of killing many people, such as engineered viruses and nuclear weapons. However, in my scenario, advances in science and technology would be preceded by advances in liberty. I maintain that justice is consistent with liberty but not with tyranny. (I can defend that claim in another post if you wish, but I'll just assume it for now.) I regard creating a virus capable of killing millions of people and exposing them to extraordinary risk as an injustice. Similarly, indiscriminately killing perhaps 100,000 people with a nuclear weapon is unjust. Such injustices are the works of governments. That is, they are associated with the absence of liberty. If COVID was engineered as some suggest, it was done in an authoritarian country with the aid of American tax dollars. I doubt that many people would voluntarily pay to create a virus capable of killing millions including themselves. Nuclear weapons can't be uninvented. But in the absence of governments, they would probably not have been invented in the first place. And free people would be disinclined to pay for the invention of even more terrible weapons.
That the benefits of science and technology exceed their costs is indicated by the fact that humans live longer, more prosperous lives than they did in the past. It's estimated that the human population was about 3 million just before the Agricultural Revolution, which raised the population to as much as 10 million. The population increased to about 1 billion until the start of the Industrial Revolution in about 1800. Now it's said there are over 7 billion humans. Without advances in science and technology, most of us would not exist because the world would support only a much smaller population.
Here's an example of how science and technology could be used to prevent the extinction of all terrestrial life. I doubt that it's physically possible to move the Earth farther from the future expanding Sun, but it should be possible to create a fleet of “ark” spacecraft to move terrestrial life forms to a safe place, perhaps ultimately to a planet in another star system. The more science and technology advances, the more life can be saved. Without that advancement, all terrestrial life is doomed.
Of the various ways to promote liberty, the one I judge to be the most effective is to influence public opinion either directly, as Ayn Rand did, or indirectly by influencing other influential people. I try to do the latter. I suspect you are doing both.
It wouldnt be aa far stretch to say if we are heading that way, we could ultimately repeat one of the oldest stories of mankind, as interpretation of the Sumerian Genesis story of Zecharia Sitchin. We are always driven by needs and wants. For theory sake, say we discover a mineral needed to harnest zero point energy. Would we create an a.i. subspecies to mine it for us? Would the resource drive wars between different Galatic Federations? Just a far out thought, but as they say, history has a funny way of repeating itself.
Yes. To borrow from Buckaroo Banzai, "No matter where we go, there we are." We have to make some changes in ourselves as we make changes in time and tech, or we're just going to have the same old problems.
With regard to your footnote, I believe it was in fact Kathleen Kennedy and not George Lucas "at the helm" for the greater ruination of the franchise of Star Wars films, books, merchandise, television shows, and other media. ymmv in part depending on your view of the three prequels which were certainly George Lucas's responsibility. I have a complex reaction to the character of Step-n-Fetchit as repurposed in Jar Jar Binks.
If you look at “princess Amygdala” and look into what functions the amygdala serves in the brain, and if you look at the things George Lucas wrote about his love of the 1930s to 1950s “serial” films of Buck Rogers in interviews he gave just after the release of that “episode one” prequel, you will find that Step-n-Fetchit isn’t that far back from the source material for, let’s say, “the trade federation” characters of the film. Ming the merciless, anyone? Anyone?
Very inspiring Christopher, as were many of the comments!
I'm a little older than you though my focus as a kid was historical not science fiction. I had no interest in Star Trek or Star Wars though I tried to based on how much many friends enjoyed them. Decades later I had 2 Big UFO experiences which changed my whole perspective!
The Moon is the origin of the Chinese and some other Asiatic people from a long time ago and why they use the Lunar Calendar and we are in the year of the Snake.
Thank you Christopher!
I think taking our ethos with us, wherever we go, not just into space but into the supermarket, the doctor and most of all before we go to that ballotbox again ( voting for masters, I didn't ) would not only clean up the mess down here, it would automatically remove those that would lay claim to space and planets, all that overreaching, greed and insane claims that go with it.
There is a saying: wherever you go, there you are.
So cleaning up our own act before we take the insanity with us, no matter where we go or what we do is imperative.
May the right force ( not the greedy one ) be with you so to speak!! With all of us!!
Long and prosper!!! 🙌😉
Check out reply to Warren just a few moments ago… 😉
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/carry-ethos-freedom-space-colonize-space/comment/87888943
LOL!! 👍 the old wisdoms never really get old.
:)
If you got an Enterprise Starship parked in your garage, I want a ticket off this planet.
To get off this silly planet I would pay a million bucks
There's no such thing as gravitational force
The planet Earth sucks.
It's part of the electromagnetic field function. Really, the electro-gravito-magnetic fields.
poetry is its own reward
Not certain I follow that comment... I mean, yeah, it is, but what has that to do with the EGM fields?
There is a saying used frequently by a guy named Oscar Wilde "art for its own sake." Metro Goldwyn Mayer made it over into Latin and it appears at both ends of their films as "ars gratia artis" surrounding the roaring lion. My version is a little variation on the theme.
I'm very familiar with Maxwell's equations. I'm not confident that gravity is what you think it is. Then again, neither is time.
Have You looked into Subquantum Kinetics (SQK)?
SQK: https://starburstfound.org/category/research/subquantum-kinetics/
Me too!!!
Deal.
I still do have the remnants of an old Enterprise bridge toy from back in the 70s. Like this, but in appallingly worse shape: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/03/7a/98037afdc5bf165d43a802ea098aa189.jpg
There are a great many reasons why the "transporter" beam of Star Trek was extremely useful to the show's producers and budget. There are also many reasons why the development of such things is wildly improbable and contrary to many aspects of quantum physics involving the calculation of speeds and positions for a vast array of particles all at once. At the same time, there is an even more classic book, the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, which mentions that God can move someone from one place to another in the twinkling of an eye, as it were. Worth a closer look imo
I have certainly thought about how improbable transporter tech seems. But then again, ya never know!
I was into fantasy (was reading the 19th century fairy tales, written for adults (no, not THAT "adults") from the age of 5) until the 7th grade when I read The Secret of the Martian Moons by Donald A. Wollheim. I was in the SF tribe deeply! Never looked back at fantasy. So I am unsurprised that You who share a great deal of what I see are into it too.
Yes, space is real, and whenever I encounter a pancake planeter (as I call Them), I offer this:
Flat Earth Reasoning (article): https://amaterasusolar.substack.com/p/flat-earth-reasoning
My only dispute here is that We could, if done right, set Humanity free in a decade... I illustrate here:
On the Same Page (article): https://amaterasusolar.substack.com/p/on-the-same-page
Good piece!!! Keep them coming!
I like fantasy too, very much. I guess I prefer stories that transcend our normal reality, in one direction or another :-)
Agreed! Fantasy is fine, but... I like things that might actually happen. Haha!
Anything can happen!
Well, I doubt flying unicorns will naturally appear in the wild... LOL!
we shall see.
🤗 💜 🤗
Sci-fi has always been my favorite genre of fiction and for the same reasons Christopher mentions here. I share his love of the libertarian side demonstrated by some of the best writers in this form. It has inspired me and given me visions of what could be at some point, given enough courage and determination, enough who share that vision. It is what has excited me about this movement. I also have to admit that I have come to have serious doubts as to the nature of our environment and the bodies that inhabit it. I am quite sure that things are not as they seem to be, that this world is not what we always thought it was. I think now that it is a construction of conscienceness and not the other way around as we are being programmed to believe by those pushing the "grit" theory of reality as Clif High puts it. The materialists who deny the spiritual side of reality, which I believe is the true reality. There may be a real solar system out there and not just a projection, but the work of Jason Breshears for example, provides real and credible evidence of some kind of artificiality to our world, and I have come to accept that it may actually be an artificially generated illusion. Although that does not mean that there aren't real solar systems and space faring in real galaxies, but I accept that this place in which we are experiencing life may not be one of them. There are glaring anomalies that contradict the "science" that we are taught and I have no doubt that NASA is a disgusting lie that hides a huge money laundering racket, and I no longer believe a thing they tell us. When or if we ever become a space faring people I think it will be vital that we do make our transition to an ethical social system based on spiritual values and that at some point the forecasts of our sci-fi visionaries like Heinlein will come to be, there will be attempts, hopefully successful, to cast off external controls and independence be established with choices that do not presently exist for a different kind of social organization that supports individual rights and sovereignty.
It takes a Musk amount of money to rocket to the moon, however anyone with a little water and a DC current source could balloon to the stratosphere. Distributed nation? Instead of seasteads, stratosheds.
I did a little back of the enveloping, chatboting a shot over at my substack; what would it take to put a Gerard O'Neill habitat or whatever 18 miles up, well above the weather where each and every day is a sunny day?
Proof of concepting I just theoretically lifted 4 tons sky high but the concept is quite upscalable with present day materials and equipment, no exotics needed. 18 miles high is well within the reach of many individual's bankrolls.
No I'm not selling shares or anything, just saying space is there, so's subspace. It'll take a Musk to get to mars but many a sightly above average Joe could move up 18 miles towards the stars.
Just thinking outside the box, thinking above the troposphere
I was thinking about this and a question popped into my head: Isn't the air awfully thin above the troposphere?
But of course! Hence the modified and minimalized Gerard O'Neill habitat. His design is for outer space, in the stratosphere we don't need to spin to fake gravity, we're still well within the gravity well. We don't need to make air, it there but yes it's thin.
Hence we simply pump in, just as they do in aircraft to a comfortable concentration and pressure, then as a Brit would say, Bob's your uncle!
Excellent!
What about buoyancy? I am assuming some sort of lighter-than-air gas, in bags, is what keeps it aloft? But can it still be lighter than air, up there where the air is lighter?
Hydrogen.
& yes it's still lighter than air. That was the calculation (How big a hydrogen filled balloon do I need to float X tons 18 miles up?) I had the ChatGPT (less than 5 minutes chatbot calculating {Actually less than a minute calculating, the rest of the 5 minutes was me reading and querying.}, hours walking back and forth to my book shelves to reference constants and formulas I haven't used in well over twenty years if I'd done the calculations.) do over on my substack; https://jiminalaska.substack.com/p/getting-away-from-it-all & yes hydrogen's flammable but 18 miles is above all the thunder and lightening and anyway a tether separates the habitat from the balloon and if the balloon blows break the tether and the only way to go is down and if you'd like to assure slowing the down you have a drogue chute slow down followed by a parachute to gently down the last 3,000 feet and why yes I sometimes, not usually but sometimes, talk in run-on sentences as well as write them. ;-)
Commented and shared.
I love this! I have heard such projects posited for Venus, but not for Earth. Great idea!
I suspect that the same issue we've been talking about might apply…
"You're in our airspace." "You're a national security risk." "You still owe us taxes."
Not saying it's not worth it to do. Just imagining what the @$$hats in government will say.
I am going to go do a search for "skysteading." ……
Okay, so there isn't much. Looks like someone else has at least thought of the term, and wants to put up a website… https://www.skysteading.org/lander
And someone here wants to build one: https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/164813/skysteading-how-to-build-a-flying-city
Maybe you can connect with others…
You have a lovely imagination, and of course, to be opposed to a leaf would seem rather anti-existence. Maybe a leaf surrounded by Geese. I like geese because they work together, and support each other through heavy headwinds, taking turns. And, well, I love pines ~ their presence is phenomenal. The idea that one's property extends into space is a useful tenet should things get out of hand. For example a group of people could join together and simply be qualified to ask, "Is this safe for the planet? Is this healthy for our ionosphere?" Holding title would allow the question, en masse. Just a thought. We all like to travel and fly and have electricity ~ but when rights are trampled, or power is unbalanced, those rights can be actualized, and might exist for those cases. If you have no rights, there are no questions one can ask while standing in one's community or individual power. This idea extends to all resources and power dynamics, ideally. Just some thoughts.
We have lots of geese around here. I like how they all gather in the fall, like they're all waiting at an airport for a flight. And then they all just bail at once!
I love pines too. I have been thinking about the bristlecone pine as a possibility. (I think maybe we talked about that once before??)
I get what you are saying about ad coelum. But I fear it would not just defend our rights against the evil power-monsters; it would also have the effect of limiting normal people's rights (to fly, dig, etc.).
I love the sound of geese, too. The way they 'honk' and soar in a pattern of knowing organization; it makes me want to join them once in awhile, at least in spirit. I love the idea of the bristlecone pine, for bristle is the least we do when we feel an affront to our dignity and simple common courtesy and all. Ad coelum is there as a right for the reasons we mention, and may even be threatened for those very reasons, every aspect of space now can be 'colonized,' but should it? Isn't there an authentic author that may have made the outer limits, limited for us? The literalists often take things too far, imho. So yes, the right is there, and maybe it should remain there, for reasons we cannot yet predict. One can always give up a right, or not exercise it ~ but once it's gone, it's much harder, as you know. Here's to the geese, and the leaves, and the pines ~ maybe they are onto something we have yet to know about limits, and freedom to exercise certain rights ~ within reason, of course, should we need to, and sometimes, beyond it. Thank you.
"The way they 'honk' and soar in a pattern of knowing organization; it makes me want to join them once in awhile, at least in spirit."
—One time I walked out front and heard them honk overhead, and reflexively said, "Hello." I am not sure why I assumed they were talking to me.
Love this! They may have been talking to you. We live in a communicative universe. I think you were just being polite. :)
I do like to be polite when possible!
And yes, we had been chatting about the design aspect, and Pines. Thank you.
Technically and metaphorically, we do carry our ethos into space. Land titles extend up into infinity ~ just the perimeter is already encroached upon. I am not a flat Earther, either. I sailed on a ship around the globe, and it appeared round, to me. Just some thoughts. I know you will comprehend the logic pattern here, and still thinking of the flag, a Pine, with Geese above it.
Re: flag—some sort of tree is definitely on the short list! Cascadia already uses the Douglas fir, though, so I am not sure about a conifer.
What about a leaf?
Regarding land titles, it is a very interesting question. I am not sure that most libertarians do, or that we would want, to adopt the ad coelum doctrine in toto. I only recently started thinking about this, though, so there may be something I am missing. But let's look at it…
If property rights extend infinitely up into space, then not only could no one fly through the air, but we would also own some chunk of the entire universe above us (a chunk that is itself moving as the Milky Way both rotates on its axis and flies through space [for its eventual collision with Andromeda!]). That strikes me as a bit much. No space travel without permission. "Hey aliens, get out of my 20 acre column of space!"
If they extend downward in a cone to the center of the Earth, then no one gets to mine or spelunk.
Even if we take a "whose oxen are getting gored" outlook, we can see that ad coelum would also gore our oxen. For example, Jim in Alaska was just proposing that instead of seasteading, people could skystead—build floating platforms up in the sky (using dirigible-type technology, presumably). I don't know about the feasibility there, but it would be impossible with ad coelum. So would any underground habitats we might choose to build.
The sky, the earth's interior, and space are all potential frontiers, and frontiers are in short supply. I am not sure we want to limit those with ad coelum. Especially given all the land that governments claim!
But, of course, there may be something I am kissing. Like I said, I have not been thinking about this issue for very long…
WPIX in New York City! I lived in Westchester Co. and watched way too much TV as a kid. Channel 11 had the Yankees; Channel 9 had the Mets.
Yankees all the way!
Let me see if I can remember… 2 or 3 was CBS. 4 was NBC. 5 was an indy station, which had that show Wonderama. 7 was ABC. 9 was indy/WOR. 11 was PIX! And 13 was public television. Sound right?
That's how I remember it, too! Channel 5 was a Fox affiliate eventually; not sure when it became official.
I was probably gone by the time the Fox thing happened. Moved to CT. And we got cable AND a color TV!
I lived in Bridgeport, Conn., for 16 months (1998-99) while working as the sports editor for a small, weekly newspaper in Westport/Weston. I remember getting both New York City and Hartford (???) network affiliates on cable, which sometimes meant extra NFL games if the Hartford station showed a Patriots game while the NYC station showed the Jets.
My TV was also color! Good times! 🤣
Heh—my dad was a sports editor for a while too, though in the 70s and for the NYT/Sports Monday. And then later, he worked in Bridgeport :-)
Can we be free in space? Don't know and don't care. I have to believe that we can be free here and now. Else it's all science fiction. They can shoot me, poison me, hang me, electrocute me, or kill me in some not yet invented way. But they can't enslave me. I am not Ape II. And they are not Ape I or Ape II. I an just a human just as they are just human.
Most of us will not be around for the future of which I speak. My point is that we need to add a vision of that future to our vision. Pass it on to our kids, and they to theirs.
Our enemies are short sighted and venal. Let us be the ones with vision and patience!
More than a dozen authors have written libertarian sci-fi mostly in the 60s and 70s, but starting in 1957 (assuming Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged counts as sci-fi) up to about 2023. Two better-known works are Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966) and L. Neil Smith's The Probability Broach (1979).
Your blog post brought to mind a sci-fi-related thought, similar to Elon Musk's plan to go to Mars and terraform the planet so humans can live there before some disaster destroys terrestrial life. My thought started with the question “What is the greatest feat that's logically possible (even if practically impossible) for one human to accomplish in a lifetime?” I answered “Save the World!” as in a superhero movie. I'll assume “the world” is confined to life on Earth, since life can be destroyed but the material composition of the planet cannot, and we can't seem to have much effect on the rest of the universe.
No human could literally save the world. Even if the world isn't virtually destroyed by some man-made disaster, such as global thermonuclear war, it will eventually be destroyed by some unavoidable natural disaster—e.g., the Sun is due to explode in about 5 billion years and become a red giant destroying all terrestrial life in the process.
So what can one actually do that will come as close as possible to saving the world? I think the answer is to effectively promote liberty. Here's why: Promoting worldwide liberty can result in world peace, thus avoiding global thermonuclear war. Besides, liberty results in prosperity and the advancement of science and technology, which can enable us to avoid some natural disasters, such as a pandemic or an asteroid strike.
It's common knowledge that science and technology can be misused to create things capable of killing many people, such as engineered viruses and nuclear weapons. However, in my scenario, advances in science and technology would be preceded by advances in liberty. I maintain that justice is consistent with liberty but not with tyranny. (I can defend that claim in another post if you wish, but I'll just assume it for now.) I regard creating a virus capable of killing millions of people and exposing them to extraordinary risk as an injustice. Similarly, indiscriminately killing perhaps 100,000 people with a nuclear weapon is unjust. Such injustices are the works of governments. That is, they are associated with the absence of liberty. If COVID was engineered as some suggest, it was done in an authoritarian country with the aid of American tax dollars. I doubt that many people would voluntarily pay to create a virus capable of killing millions including themselves. Nuclear weapons can't be uninvented. But in the absence of governments, they would probably not have been invented in the first place. And free people would be disinclined to pay for the invention of even more terrible weapons.
That the benefits of science and technology exceed their costs is indicated by the fact that humans live longer, more prosperous lives than they did in the past. It's estimated that the human population was about 3 million just before the Agricultural Revolution, which raised the population to as much as 10 million. The population increased to about 1 billion until the start of the Industrial Revolution in about 1800. Now it's said there are over 7 billion humans. Without advances in science and technology, most of us would not exist because the world would support only a much smaller population.
Here's an example of how science and technology could be used to prevent the extinction of all terrestrial life. I doubt that it's physically possible to move the Earth farther from the future expanding Sun, but it should be possible to create a fleet of “ark” spacecraft to move terrestrial life forms to a safe place, perhaps ultimately to a planet in another star system. The more science and technology advances, the more life can be saved. Without that advancement, all terrestrial life is doomed.
Of the various ways to promote liberty, the one I judge to be the most effective is to influence public opinion either directly, as Ayn Rand did, or indirectly by influencing other influential people. I try to do the latter. I suspect you are doing both.
I am right there with you on all of that, John.
Liberty first. That must be our focus and purpose. And we should spread it as far as we can!
It wouldnt be aa far stretch to say if we are heading that way, we could ultimately repeat one of the oldest stories of mankind, as interpretation of the Sumerian Genesis story of Zecharia Sitchin. We are always driven by needs and wants. For theory sake, say we discover a mineral needed to harnest zero point energy. Would we create an a.i. subspecies to mine it for us? Would the resource drive wars between different Galatic Federations? Just a far out thought, but as they say, history has a funny way of repeating itself.
Yes. To borrow from Buckaroo Banzai, "No matter where we go, there we are." We have to make some changes in ourselves as we make changes in time and tech, or we're just going to have the same old problems.
Couldn't agree with you more. I feel your attention and elaborate system you have been writting about is a great help in this endeavor.
I hope so. Please keep helping me with it!
With regard to your footnote, I believe it was in fact Kathleen Kennedy and not George Lucas "at the helm" for the greater ruination of the franchise of Star Wars films, books, merchandise, television shows, and other media. ymmv in part depending on your view of the three prequels which were certainly George Lucas's responsibility. I have a complex reaction to the character of Step-n-Fetchit as repurposed in Jar Jar Binks.
Step-n-Fetchit! Goodness, that's going back aways.
If you look at “princess Amygdala” and look into what functions the amygdala serves in the brain, and if you look at the things George Lucas wrote about his love of the 1930s to 1950s “serial” films of Buck Rogers in interviews he gave just after the release of that “episode one” prequel, you will find that Step-n-Fetchit isn’t that far back from the source material for, let’s say, “the trade federation” characters of the film. Ming the merciless, anyone? Anyone?
Bueller?
Oh man, now I want to rewatch the movie. “First wave…..diiiiiive.”
To me, Episode I (the 4th movie) was a big step down.
Very inspiring Christopher, as were many of the comments!
I'm a little older than you though my focus as a kid was historical not science fiction. I had no interest in Star Trek or Star Wars though I tried to based on how much many friends enjoyed them. Decades later I had 2 Big UFO experiences which changed my whole perspective!
The Moon is the origin of the Chinese and some other Asiatic people from a long time ago and why they use the Lunar Calendar and we are in the year of the Snake.
What were your UFO experiences?
I can discuss privately.
Understood.