I am running for President of the United States in 2040. Whatever planks I may use to compose my platform (who can say what issues will arise from the muddied abyss that is American politics?), my main goal in this is simple: I need access to a trillion dollars of US tax money. Why? Because I know the best possible use for it.
What is the best thing a person can do with a trillion dollars? Solve world hunger? Rebuild aging infrastructure and thus spur economic recovery? Bribe China not to take over the world? Better: Move to another planet. Specifically, a small, cold, reddish one.
"But, Sir!" you will undoubtedly protest, "You will only be able to take perhaps a thousand people to Mars! A trillion dollars for a thousand people? Ridiculous! There's not even anything on Mars that we want! Don't go to Mars, end world hunger instead! Mars is a waste of money!"
To you, I have a variety of responses. First, World Hunger is also on my to do list, and will cost ever so much less money to solve. Basically, it is a matter of increasing the US beef price with taxes so that demand drops, and having the government buy surplus feed grain and sell it at a loss in impoverished nations (funded by the money from the taxes on beef). We eat less meat, and are healthier, and the poor in the third world get to eat, and are healthier, and the beef manufacturers are angry, but they can suck it up. Done. Now on to real business.
Second, the idea that there's nothing we want on Mars is, if I may put it bluntly, an utterly stupid, small minded idea. Or else, perhaps entirely correct. We don't want anything ON Mars. What we want is MARS ITSELF. I'm not saying go there, mine, bring back minerals, trade, etc. I'm saying go to Mars, and live. Just live. What do we get out of that? A planet. A whole planet. Real estate. That's why we go to Mars: it is another place for us to live, and the land area is roughly equal to the combined land area of all the continents of Earth.
Thinking in terms of dollar and cents economics with regard to Mars is ridiculous. How valuable is Mars? How valuable is the Earth? Mars is about a third the size, so, given a thousand years of growth to build cities and ecosystems, we can expect Mars to be worth about a third of the price. How much to buy a third of the Earth? Much more than a trillion dollars. More, even, than a trillion dollars with a thousand years of interest on top. In short, the investment is good in its own right.
But, even without real estate, we can expect a very high return on investment when it comes to going to Mars. How do I know? Well, consider this: NASA has produced more patents than any other government office, and the proceeds from those inventions go right back into government coffers. Currently, the USA makes five times NASA's annual budget from these patents. If NASA itself actually received the proceeds of its own work, we would probably be living on Mars already. Now, I do not claim that a trillion dollar mission to Mars will produce 5 trillion dollars per anum of revenue, and I do not claim that the revenue will be recovered instantly. However, I do claim that with great problems come great inventions, and I don't think it unreasonable to expect this trip to pay for itself over the following few years, and then start generating big profits for the USA, which will translate to increased revenue for the government, which then will become either more benefits or less taxes for the American public.
So, we will make money, we will own another planet, but neither of these are the main reason to go to Mars. The main reason is that going to Mars will save mankind from cataclysm and possible extinction. Yes. Cataclysm and possible extinction. To many those sound like doom and gloom fear-mongering words, but let me explain. No, the Earth is not currently on the brink of disaster. The greatest danger at the moment to the survival of humanity itself is humanity itself, via the threat of nuclear war, which we can all agree is dwindling nicely. But I am talking about asteroids. A collision with a large asteroid could disrupt plate tectonics, unleash earthquakes and tsunamis the likes of which have never been recorded, and, most importantly, block the sun with dust. The last is most important, because a blocked sun will mean winter weather for possibly years. It will mean that plants have little or no light to grow by. It will mean crops die. It will mean that after the earthquakes, and tsunamis are over, when the remnants of humanity are pulling together to bring civilization back from the ashes, they won't succeed, because they will starve to death.
When will this happen? Well, it happens roughly every two million years in a cataclysmic way, and we are due in the next few hundred thousand. In a "human extinction" way? Perhaps once every two hundred million years. So, we probably have a while to wait. Probably. If we don't nuke ourselves to death first, which we probably won't. Probably.
I don't like probably. Not at all. Especially not when the statement is "The human race will probably be alive a thousand years from now." I would much prefer "The human race will DEFINITELY be alive a billion years from now." And that is exactly the promise that Mars holds for us. Because, while Mars too will occasionally be hit by giant asteroids that will destroy all life, those asteroids will never hit both Mars and Earth simultaneously. That means that when it happens, we can repopulate. If we can establish permanent, self sustaining settlements on Mars, the human race will live until the Sun burns out (unless we kill ourselves, and even that becomes more difficult). Instead of a few hundred thousand years, we buy ourselves a few billion.
So, yes. When I am president, I will end world hunger, operate a bipartisan cabinet, oppose high priced pharmaceuticals, broker peace in the Middle East even at the expense of Israeli power, support tax breaks for environmentally friendly citizens, create a simple and fair tax system with no loopholes for the rich and a living wage deduction for the poor, and end world hunger. But none of these are the point. These decisions will be important for a decade, maybe even a century if I am lucky. But I like to think long term. Like, where will we be in a hundred million years? And, if we don't branch off this rock, the answer to that question is simple: nowhere.
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