Reply To: Space Fountain

[Duke Leto]

To answer the easy question I’m keeping my eye on the developed world and making sure that they get their standard of living jacked up because the last time there was a deflationary depression that lasted a while in the developed world there were some VERY unsavory political complications that arose from it in parts of the developed world. Good things happened in the US thanks to the emergence of FDR and the Democrats, but the same could not be said of much of Europe. There are already anti-immigrant demonstrations going on in Greece for example.

Second I want a fast and brutal rollout to the developed world to jack down carbon emissions as fast as possible. I’m including China in “the Developed World” in this formulation. That really is no longer much of a stretch.

Phase 8) would be to take all the cash from the previous 7) steps and pour it into the developing countries to bring their standard of living up to par.

As to “giving the ring to Galadriel”, I think that reflects a fundamental disagreement on the nature of power. I don’t think power corrupts in and of itself, I think it attracts the corruptible. That would be Frank Herbert’s formulation and probably Socrates’. (Socrates of course was a pro-Spartan sack of crap though, naturally.) “The Ring” can’t be destroyed as such, just harnessed by good people. And good people who stay good do exist. The Rockerfellers for example have been fairly progressive all the way back to John D., and most of them, despite being Exxon shareholders are now politically active liberals. (See for example Jay Rockerfeller of West Virginia.) Brian H. has pointed out that unions can be corrupted by power, although the corruption worldwide is nowhere close to what he asserts, but we don’t want to get rid of unions because they’re socially useful.

I could also point out that Tolkien was an out and out recidivist politically, he may not have been a racist per se in the strong sense, but his ideal polity was a monarchy and the chapter on Saruman in the Shire was a none to thinly veiled allegory about the rise of Clement Attlee’s Labour party in Britain.

So I’m a power optimist in both senses of the term. 🙂