Is the Space Elevator a Public Good?

[Fife]

StA and Bjorn had a short skirmish yesterday that got me to thinking.

viewtopic.php?f=63&t=1229&p=42563#p42516

A lot of people don't want to hear this, but the only viable way to get the fuck off warworld and develop space is via a fascistic alignment of corporations under the aegis of the American government. You have to use the resources and technologies available from all our high-tech corporations. They have to be organized and unified under one direction. You have to combine the capital of these corporations with the American treasury to bootstrap the economic development of space. From there, it should be able to fund itself to the detriment of the rest of the nations of the world as we slowly trickle in vast quantities of valuable resources, flooding markets, and almost overnight rendering entire national treasuries worthless as we flood gold and other precious metal markets to pay off our national debt.

Fascism in the past sucked. But I don't see how to solve this as Americans without doing something like that. China is going to do it similarly with their state-controlled quasi-capitalism organized under the aegis of the communist party.

He who mines that shit first wins.

And the US would "need" a "Benign Fascistic" government to do that? That's how you got to the Moon, is it? And you really want to take your lessons on how to organize your society from... China?

If US companies currently see no profit motive in going into the asteroid mining business, does your ideal Super-Government simply direct them to do so?

It wouldn't need to be a fascist government. But the idea of coordinating private corporations under government control to accomplish some good is a fascist one.

We didn't need to become communists to create the Social Security Administration either. Stop your virtue signaling.

I don't see the issue as one between fascist or communist governments, as I see both of those options, and a whole passel of others, as illegitimate and immoral.

IMNSHO, a state functioning only within its naturally moral and legal power is limited to providing public goods for its citizens, upon the consent and direction of the citizens.

For anyone interested, "public good" is a term of art, with a defined meaning. https://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Public_goods

Question: Is the Space Elevator a public good?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator

"Space elevator" is itself a term of art in the way I mean this question. As to non-rivalry and non-exclusibility, it seems to fail the test. But so does the interstate highway system, strictly speaking.

What technical changes are possible, whether likely or unlikely, to move us beyond the limitations of the elevator in moving products from the surface to a zero-G platform? Is anti-gravity real? Is short-range teleportation real? Technological advances we can't imagine yet could move us to actual non-rivalrous and non-exclusive consumption.

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/180 ... overboards

At the wikimises link above, there is some discussion of the free rider problem, and some distinctions between highways/roads and levees/dams.

One typical and popular example of public goods is the case of dikes or levees. If a dike is built for one person, additional consumers can benefit from its services, i.e., protection from flooding. But once a dike has been built, no one living behind the dike can be excluded from its service, whether he participated in financing it or not. Hence, people would wait for others to build a dike hoping to enjoy it without having to pay for it. But when everyone waits, the dike that everyone needs is not built. This line of thinking ignores individual actions and motivations, and social pressures that may also come into play. People can decide to take the higher subjective risk or come to an agreement of sharing the burden.

I'm not sold on the idea of the state building a space elevator just yet; but if we could advance from that concept to provide non-rivalrous / non-exclusive transport to and from zero-G, I think I'm all in.

What do you all think about public funding of zero-G transport? What regulations would be proper and moral? (weight limitations, customs inspections, environmental safety regs, &c)

Is the space elevator a means to the end of zero-G? Of course, no one knows, I just picked that example arbitrarily. Zero-G transport might be developed by some kid messing around with number theory and topology in the middle of Iowa in his mom's basement for all we know. Which leads to the big question: Should the state attempt to mandate the development of certain technologies to the exclusion of others? Who says the state has a crystal ball to know in which direction research efforts should go?

[TheReal_ND]

I wouldn't trust the existing state with a pet gerbil let alone a space elevator.

[Martin Hash]

StA and Bjorn had a short skirmish yesterday that got me to thinking.

Of course, I'm all in "space elevator is a public good." It may be because I'm a child of the moon landings, the defining point in my life, and I suspect many other engineers my age. Millennials don't seem as interested, and I think lack of big imaginative goals is the problem.

[TheReal_ND]

How far do you really think you're going to get on Russian rockets?

[Okeefenokee]

I knew a guy in the army who lived in a building with a sort of HOA for all the renters in the building. The renters voted to install an elevator. He was a fitness junkie, and had no desire for an elevator, plus he lived on the ground floor, but he had to shell out several thousand to cover his share of the cost for an elevator that he didn't want, because he was bound by a contract that said the other renters could essentially shake down all the tenants for anything they voted on.

So no, not a public good. Any more of this talk and I'm gonna need to get one of you attorneys so we can take another look at this social contract everyone keeps invoking when they want other people to pay for their shit. Just off the top of my head, it's gonna involve voter restrictions.

[Fife]

I knew a guy in the army who lived in a building with a sort of HOA for all the renters in the building. The renters voted to install an elevator. He was a fitness junkie, and had no desire for an elevator, plus he lived on the ground floor, but he had to shell out several thousand to cover his share of the cost for an elevator that he didn't want, because he was bound by a contract that said the other renters could essentially shake down all the tenants for anything they voted on.

So no, not a public good. Any more of this talk and I'm gonna need to get one of you attorneys so we can take another look at this social contract everyone keeps invoking when they want other people to pay for their shit. Just off the top of my head, it's gonna involve voter restrictions.

1. How does a private tenants' agreement have anything to do with how the state legislates?

2. Is the definition of "public good" subject to whether or not everyone wants to avail themselves of the product? If a commune of Shariaists in NY don't want the federal government to provide a defense against invasion by other Shariaists, does that have anything to do with whether or not defense against invasion is a public good or not?

[TheReal_ND]

3. Implying the federal government doesn't actively foster invasions at home and abroad.

[Martin Hash]

Everybody puts a different value on things. The only thing we should agree on is that we'll use democracy to decide what a "public good" is. (If you don't agree to that then you need to move somewhere else because that's part of the implied contract of staying in the U.S.) Right now, not enough people give a shit about exploring Space to really do anything exciting, but I'll try & change minds to get to 51%. I'd rather employ engineers than soldiers any day.

p.s. Really, I wish I was king & could do what I want, but that fucking, pesky democracy keeps getting in the way.

[Speaker to Animals]

Such a thing would not represent a public good since each use of the elevator would cost money, and therefore each use could conceivably deny another of use.

A national forest is a public good because one man's hike through the park does not deprive others of the same ability.

But a space elevator comes with a limited number of lifts before you need to repair the tether. It costs money to coordinate crawlers and deal with safety.

A space elevator is somewhat more comparible to a space telescope. Only so many projects can access the telescope, and each approval means some other project applications were denied. There are only so many uses before the telescope no longer functions.

[Martin Hash]

Your definition of "public good" is way too narrow. If society advances the quality of life, that's a public good. Boiling down the moon landings into dollars & cents, they certainly weren't a financial success, and no one benefited much from them, other than quality of life. (Inspired lots of boys to become engineers.)