Bootstrapping Hawaii

>>
>> My point is not so much about small steps along the path to a
>> particular goal, but that each project should be a small step more
>> ambitious than the last. This can be either a project starting
> from
>> scratch and going a little further than anyone else, or an
> incremental
>> improvement on an existing project.
>
> I guess that my argument isn't convincing anyone when I say that an
> economy consists of interlinkages. If each project is a self-
> sustained entity, I just can't see how project scope and complexity
> will increase.

Project scope and complexity increase because each success makes the
next successful project more likely. But the individual project has to
be able to succeed on its own or it won't be able to raise funding. If
the requirement for positive ROI (return on investment) is that a huge
complex plan be executed without error and with no surprises, then
nobody but fools will invest. If the criterion is just that a small
incremental advance over current state of the art be successful, then
there are people willing to take the chance.

The problem is not to find a single comprehensive plan that makes SPS
possible, for example. The issue is to find a single plan that is
sufficiently low risk to attract investors and which lowers barriers to
other types of business in space. We don't need to have a path plotted
out in advance that brings SPS into being. In fact, it may turn out
that SPS never makes economic sense. What is needed is simply to reduce
barriers to other kinds of ET resource exploitation, harnessing the
creativity of thousands of people who will try to make a buck in their
own way. If any one of them succeeds, it makes it more likely that
someone else will figure out how to take the next step. That's the
natural way for complexity to grow in an economy. Trying to design it
in from the ground up has failed every single time it's been tried.

......Andrew