Who's Against Zero Growth and Me First?

> From: joe@...
> Surely a society able to build space colonies can have a more nuanced
> philosophy than that, and see that while closed-loop systems are
> necessary within a colony, growth is possible (and quite healthy) by
> building more colonies.

Resources are never infinite. Yes, you can expand by building new colonies,
but if you keep doing that you will get to a point where demand outstrips
supply, and then you will run into problems. Unlike planets, these colonies
will occasionally need maintenance. You run into problems when maintenance
requirements outstrip manufacturing capacity. A sane society will never let
the first happen, but an insane one will fall foul of the latter.

It's one of the earliest lesons we learn as children. You can't just take
forever.

> It's also not true. The resources of even our own solar system are
> millions of times greater than that of the Earth;

And there are billions of tons of gold in the world ocean. But it's
worthless if people can't get at it. You cannot assume that *all* of that
material is accessible or easily accessible. And if we're talking about
aliens then we are talking about the long term.

> Your statement is based on a limited-resources world, and
> once we're able to live in space, there essentially aren't any limits
> to the available resources.

No, the statement is based upon a limited-resources STAR SYSTEM, and the
assumption that all the little kiddie-colonies have already flown the nest,
and there simply isn't anywhere for new colonies to go, and nothing to build
them from, and there are refugee ships constantly inbound from other star
systems that are also completely full and who cannot go any further. And
every star system is like that for 5000LY in all directions. Where any
single system you can see and might go to will be as full as yours is by the
time your fastest ship can get there.

There are always limits to the resources any given colony will be able to
access. The same kind of life based compulsions you use to justify ever
expanding civilisation MUST be used to explain how the individuals will act
too. And nature shows us they will act by conserving and hording their
resources. They will stake out territories much larger than they need and
they will defend them.

People are not bacteria. They can worry about the future. And on many
occasions, their planning to avoid the bad futures (like the above example)
will severely mess up simplistic 'there's always more oil' predictions.

Mars is a dumb idea. Space colonies are better. We agree on that. My point
is simply that there is a big difference between 'better' and 'never ending
paradise'.

John