What will we protest?

>> Imagine you're living up in Island 1, 2 or 3. What the heck will
>> people protest about. It seems that protests and democratic action
>> are necessary to get people invested in the political system.

> "Just say no to ice-mining in the rings of Saturn"? "Cetaceans in
> space, NOW"?
>
> We might be surprised to find some old political controversies here
> on Earth still alive and well out in space, such as Socialism vs.
> Capitalism. Though I suspect, as you seem to indicate, under better
> circumstances.
>
> Last week I saw a spokesperson for the American Socialist Party on
> CSPAN. She was explaining away Socialism's unblemished record of
> failure as being a consequence of the socialist society always being
> surrounded by capitalist society and of socialism being enforced
> from above, rather than flowing from below. I've always thought
> that orbital space habitats would make ideal social experimentation
> laboratories.
> Let any group go off and isolate themselves and try any system for
> living that they think they can make work. The beauty is not only
> that they would have the opportunity (an opportunity rare-to-
> nonexistent in a society without frontiers), but that their system
> would either stand or fall on its own merits. If the society
> collapsed, they'd have to acknowledge the shortcomings of the
> system, rather than blaming it all on neighbors they didn't choose,
> an energy crisis, population pressures, resource depletion, crop
> failures, etc.

I think you underestimate people's ability to make excuses.

Xenophile (who only posted this because of his GF, his sister's cat,
and Hollywood making an abomination of _I, Robot_)