Space Capitalism and Other Planets

Has the thought ever crossed your mind whether the current economic system is the best human beings can do? Many people, while reflective with regards to their personal life, are very unhighly so when it comes to evaluating the society they live in. There is never any question as to whether capitalism should continue, only the role the government should play, which is less with conservatives, and more with liberals. However, the future points to a situation where capitalism will no longer be applicable. With the planet becoming more polluted, and the human population ever increasing, it is wise that reflection should occur before it's too late. And a good way to induce reflection is a thought experiment. I will imagine what the future would be like if the planet is no longer livable, if humans have to colonize other planets, and if capitalism is applied on a universal scale. The application of capitalism on a universal scale is where it becomes utterly unworkable.

Background

This story begins with Mitt Romney winning the Presidency in 2012. Many people followed the GOP primary and thought Romney's rhetoric was just to appease a right-wing base devoid of reality. The general election against Obama was much more reasonable, with Romney defending his support of same-sex marriage and abortion rights in another complete flip flop in order to appeal to a general election audience. Romney and Obama did not appear to be much different aside from name or party, and voters hoped that electing Romney would bring a new face to a stagnant economic "recovery." They also gave Republicans control of the Senate, which meant Romney would have a Congress with similar majority numbers to when Obama was first elected. The American people had sent a resounding message. "We no longer trust the Democrats qualifications and nuance. We want certainty and we want this recovery to occur quickly."

Obama and the Democrats knew the country was in dire straits. They had to act fast. They attempted to work out a deal with the Republicans, proposing the immediate elimination of Medicare, Social Security, and pell grants in order to induce the Republicans to support a cap and trade plan to curb greenhouse gases. Oil exploration would also be open to any part of the United States, regardless of preservation or proximity to drinking water. The Democrats were devastated the country had to come to such a place, but without a curb on greenhouse gases, and a seemingly Republican stronghold for years to come, they felt they had no choice.

Republicans, predictably, immediately accused Obama of attempting to repair his failed legacy, since his administration had "not created any jobs, or provided any support to American businesses." Instead, they argued, he had "attempted to institute his liberal, activist agenda at the expense of all else." They rejected the deal, saying Obama was not going to get credit for making such moves, and that Republicans would take care of American's problems once Romney came into office in January.

The two months after Mitt Romney was officially elected were relatively slow. There was no major action in Congress, and all the Democrats simply attempted to re-asses their strategy. They believed that running on an idea of fair taxation, strong education, and a clean environment would be popular among the American populace, but due to the lack of jobs, their irritability was at an all time high, and any politician that mentioned anything Americans did not perceive as related to jobs would be severely punished at the polls.

The Republicans Take Control

Romney and the Republicans took office on January 20th, 2013, and the onslaught immediately began. One week later, a bill was already introduced to repeal Obama's health care reform. It passed without Democratic support. The bill also repealed all regulations on insurance companies, and ended Medicare and Medicaid, with Republicans arguing the market would do a better job than the government ever could. When asked about seniors and the poor not being able to afford care, Republicans simply responded that transitions were sometimes painful, but the market needed to adjust to an out of control government finally being scaled back.

Next came the abolition of the EPA. Ron Paul and Michelle Bachmann had floated this idea, but Romney had not jumped onto it until he had won the Presidency. The EPA was thought by many on the right to be an impediment to business profits, and with Americans reeling from a bad economy for so long, they were much more susceptible to arguments that wanted to reduce costs on American businesses. Desperation often brings out the worst in human nature. On February 14th, 2012, the EPA was eliminated. Oil companies and coal plants rejoiced, for they could now pollute with impunity, because tucked into the law was also a provision that increased the difficulty of suing a company that had polluted water or air. It would take at least 5,000 signatures for a court to even have a hearing on a case. This lead to a dramatic increase in company profits, for they were no longer required to take responsibility for their actions.

The Republicans then turned to social issues. Abortion was completely banned, and homosexuality was criminalized. With abortions banned in all circumstances, some mothers did lose their life, but the overall population exploded.. And with homosexuality criminalized, America was slowly turning much more into a police state. Banning of pornography, and all religions aside from conservative Christianity (and Mormonism) were deemed heretical, and any speech, whether written or verbal, that did not support the specific official Christian dogma carried a minimum sentence of one year in prison, plus mandatory attendance at church services.

With the destruction of the social safety net, and the massive reduction in environmental regulations, businesses had more money to spend, and they did on low paying jobs. With the passage of the Employment Assurance Act, which eliminated minimum wage, American corporations decided they could get away with paying Americans very low wages, just enough to subsist, with charities (one of the only small groups of people still with a conscience) having to step in to provide basic necessities such as shelter and health care. For the rich, life was good. Their taxes had been reduced, and the money was flowing. For the dwindling middle class, there was not much major change, except a slight increase in each paycheck due to Social Security and Medicare taxes no longer being witheld. But for the poor, which was ever increasing in number, life had become much more difficult under Republican control. With birth control illegal and abortions illegal, their numbers had grown drastically, even was their quality of life diminished. There were still hospitals and charities that aided them.

The Turning Point

Everything changed when Mitt Romney hired former GOP Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich to head NASA. They had waged a fierce primary war, and to outsiders it looked as though the two did not like each other. However, it was all political theater, designed to make people think they had an actual choice in the primary (aside from Ron Paul, who was the only "Republican" different from the rest). Gingrich had put forth an idea during the GOP primary that Americans should colonize the moon, but at the time everyone thought it was just a silly campaign talking point. Gingrich was deadly serious, and Romney was interested in his ideas.

As the years passed, the earth became much more polluted, since without the U.S. playing a leadership role, many other countries decided they would not put themselves at a "competitive disadvantage" with American businesses, and also rolled back many of their own environmental regulations. This would prove to be much too difficult for the earth to handle, and the effects soon became much harder to deal with. Storms were becoming increasingly violent, many animals were dying, and air was becoming much more difficult to breathe by the day.

Newt Gingrich walked into Mitt Romney's office and demanded that America begin real plans to leave the earth. He suggested Mars or the moon as potential locations. Romney told him to draw up plans, because within the next two years, the globe would be nearly uninhabitable. This was in the middle of Romney's second term, and would provide to be more prophetic than initially realized. By 2020, 90% of Americans would either have cancer or a respiratory disease due to the massive amount of pollution that was being spewed into the atmosphere, and with many countries following the United States lead, the situation was becoming increasingly dire all over the world. The race of who would be able to go green first had died. With advances in medicine, and many hospitals and charities noticing the upward trend in disease, it was discovered that it is possible to treat symptoms and keep people alive, on average, to around 65. it was a much lower life expectancy than previously had been, but the population was still exploding due to the restrictions on abortions and contraception.

The Beginning of War

Word leaked out that the United States was planning to colonize Mars, and other countries began to think about doing the same. All populations all over the world had become drastically ill, and the planet was becoming increasingly turbulent due to the lack of action on curbing greenhouse gas emissions. It was as if, collectively, all people in the world at the same time realized that human beings would not be able to live on earth much longer. However, because it was collective, there would be fighting over who had rights to Mars, and whose people would be given priority when transportation occurred. Americans argued that since they had gone to the moon first, they should be given priority. Unfortunately, many other countries did not see the issue this way.

There would soon be a war. With earth becoming more and more uninhabitable, there was no way any human beings could continue to live there. All of humanity would eventually have to leave the planet, and the ones who left sooner had the best chance of surviving. But Americans claimed private property rights over Mars. They insisted, along with the moon, that they had invested the most money, and made the most discoveries on mars, so they deserved to go first. The leaders of other nations could not even begin to imagine how their populations would react if they returned from the Conference to Ensure Humanity's Survival without ensuring their safety. There would be no acceptable resolution to this problem, for no one was budging.

People believed capitalism had worked well on earth, despite the state of human health and the planet, and they therefore thought that it should apply on a universal scale. But there were obvious problems with this. Could entire planets be claimed? What would happen if technology only had a limited reach, and one planet could be inhabited, as was the current case? As many people do in times of war, nationalist sentiment soared. People began to proclaim their own countries as more deserving of being the first to go to Mars, and thus any countries that wanted to follow would have to pay a regular fee in order to use the planet. Otherwise, they would be doomed to die on earth. As the situation unfolded, nukes were ready for fire. Americans continued to insist they were more deserving than all others.

The first to launch a nuke was Israel, and it was on Iran. They had worried about Iran for awhile, and they saw this as an opportunity to obliterate them. It was not simply one nuke, but a barrage that destroyed the entire nation of Iran, including women and children. Other nations saw this, and began to formulate a plan to wipe out the rest of the world. Since this fighting could not be resolved, the only way to avoid it would be to destroy everyone else.

The United States quickly took out Canada and Mexico. Russia, China, and North Korea had been secretly negotiating with each other to work together, but the Russians saw the Chinese and North Koreans as untrustworthy, so they launched a surprise attack before there was any chance to respond. There was nothing left but remnants of old buildings and human skeletons. The Russians also used clandestine submarine warfare to obliterate the Australians. The world landscape was changing fast. Word reached the United States that Russia had already taken out the Chinese and Australians, and panic ensued. The U.S. quickly used the same type of submarine strategy that the Russians had used, and took out South America.

The Final Showdown

Russia and the the United States both knew they were the only major players left, with Japan simply taking a stand of pacifism due to their memories of World War II with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They would simply pay the winner of the U.S. Russian conflict to use Mars, and hopefully find a few spots that were still livable on earth.

The United States and Russia did not make any moves for two weeks, both unsure of what to do because of the power of the other's nuclear arsenal. Then suddenly, the United States realized the Russians may have a faulty radar system. The U.S. had been moving submarines near Russian waters, waiting to see how they would react. The Russians showed no response, so they believed that the Russians had not noticed them. The U.S. attempted to launch a stealth attack with hundreds of submarines. However, the Russians had baited the U.S. into a mistake, and all the submarines used in the battle were destroyed. There was now an urgency in the U.S., and a clearer understanding of what failure would mean.

The United States decided on a blitzkrieg strategy. They would simply launch so many nukes that the Russians would not be able to fight back. The strategy worked. Even with the Russians sending nukes back in self-defense, there was no hope of ever stopping the attack. No Russians remained. At this point the U.S. had to decide whether to charge the remaining countries, who had not participated in the conflict, a fee for entry in the U.S. American companies saw a massive opportunity for profit they could not resist.

After Disaster

The American companies decided the most humane thing to do would be charge the poorest countries the least amount, and the richest the most. A country like Albania would be charged a lump sum of 10 million dollars, whereas Japan would be charged more along the lines of 500,000 a person. If a country did not have the money, they could earn it by working at an American corporation until the loan was off. This means the corporation would decide how much to pay the workers, and what jobs would be done. With a new planet to colonize, much hard, manual labor had to be done, so the Americans knew they had the rest of the world in their grasp. Japan had predicted the future, when it surrendered in World War II. The Emperor Hirohito said at the time,

"Moreover, the enemy now possesses a new and terrible weapon with the power to destroy many innocent lives and do incalculable damage. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization. Such being the case, how are We to save the millions of Our subjects, or to atone Ourselves before the hallowed spirits of Our Imperial Ancestors? This is the reason why We have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the Joint Declaration of the Powers."

Conclusion

Even though this story is completely hypothetical, the thought experiment shows what an unregulated capitalism could do, and also what could happen if the profit motive were to take over when colonizing other planets. The human imagination is finite, but the possibilities for human exploitation are not. If capitalism is applied on a universal scale, the situation could become dire very quickly, especially if the habitability of the earth is in question. Unless human beings decide to work together, which cannot even happen now when we are still in a position to stop the destruction of our planet and there isn't massive panic, the future will be bleak. I have doubts human beings are even capable of such a paradigm shift.