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Mars Colonies and Class Warfare (examiner.com)
MarkWhittington writes: An argument about class warfare has broken out over the notion of a commercial Mars colony. It started when Elon Musk, who is said to be planning to retire on the Red Planet, mused that World War III could ruin his plans to settle Mars by destroying the Earth or at least damaging civilization sufficiently that space exploration has to be put off indefinitely, Newsweek, taking up the theme of another sort of planetary disaster, accused Musk and other space-minded billionaires of plotting to abandon the planet to the ravages of global warming while they go to Mars to live the good life.
Might as well talk about colonizing the center of the Sun and getting your drinking water from Saturn's rings. This may be some kind of bizarre nerdy entertainment, but it will never happen. Ever.
Robert Heinlein would be proud.
If you're rich enough to go to Mars, you're rich enough to have a bloody brilliant life on earth, whether it's ravaged or not!
Newsweek... accused Musk and other space-minded billionaires of plotting to abandon the planet to the ravages of global warming while they go to Mars to live the good life.
You can jack up global warming until every single molecule of polar ice melts, and on top of that you can detonate every single nuclear warhead in existence, and Earth will still be an infinitely more habitable place than Mars. So the accusation of abandoning Earth to become a hellhole while billionaires live it up on Mars is stupid beyond belief.
Mind you I'm totally in favor of Elon or somebody sending people to Mars, but that would be as an exploration and human achievement rather than some bullshit class warfare thing.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Some people are locked into seeing everything as a function of class, leaving out about 95% of human existence.
And... Newsweek is still around?
If those morons think that a small increase in temperature is worse than living on a barren empty planet with no air, water, or infrastructure... maybe we should send them there first so they can see what it's like. I hope they enjoy the many months traveling there eating rehydrated space food in a tiny room.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
accused Musk and other space-minded billionaires of plotting to abandon the planet to the ravages of global warming while they go to Mars to live the good life.
Seems more likely to me that Musk is going to Mars to get as far as possible from the idiot who wrote this piece and the likes of him.
I don't think we're CAPABLE as a species of making Earth less hospitable to life than Mars.
No matter how bad things get here, it'll still be way easier to survive here (much less "live the good life") than on Mars.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Upward mobility is no myth. Some of us have experienced it firsthand.
Although it tends to be much more common with the newcomers. They tend to have less emotional baggage dragging them down and haven't been indoctrinated into the usual liberal excuses for not trying to fend for yourself.
THAT right there is why we should never shut out immigrants. They make up for the fat entitled slobs that blame everyone else for their own shortcomings.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Last I checked, we've increased the atmospheric thickness of Earth by 0%. Call me when we can make it 100x thicker.
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No, in fact, it's the exact opposite: incomes go up as people get older. It should also be obvious why: as people get older, they gain more experience and advance in their careers, so they get salary raises. You have to be utterly disconnected from economic life not to understand such a basic fact. http://tinyurl.com/pebklkm
True. But the argument progressives and people like Sanders make is that "the 1%" actually constitute "the ruling class", that the problem is money, and that the problem can be fixed by redistribution and taxation. That argument is obviously bullshit given the intragenerational income mobility we see.
The US may or may not have some other form of "ruling class" that isn't rooted in money. You're welcome to make an argument for that. There certainly are such ruling classes in Europe, in countries with much more economic equality and higher relative upward mobility.
I did better: I immigrated to the US and experienced upward mobility that people in other countries can only dream of. People like you strike me as whiny, greedy, and ignorant because you simply lack any appreciation of how well the US works.
The statistics that people cite on intergenerational mobility and comparing it between countries are bullshit; they are based on relative mobility, and that's high in countries with government-imposed equality, for all the wrong reasons.
You can live in my basement and have all those things except the gravity. Add some more concrete and you can do it even if there is WWIII. Space radiation will the picking holes in Musk's DNA while you'll be safe and sound living out your dream... in my basement.