Yeah, we’ll throw off the yoke

Tuesday, January 2nd, 2018

Tyler Cowen interviews Andy Weir (The Martian, Artemis) on the economics of space travel, and it veers off into some less technical topics:

Cowen: Now let me ask you some questions about governance in space. I’ve read some of your favorite works are by Robert Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress; Red Mars of course by Kim Stanley Robinson; Asimov’s Caves of Steel. And it’s a consistent theme in these stories. In fact, the stories you love, they involve an element of rebellion.

Weir: They do.

Cowen: If we had a colony on the Moon, how long do you think it would be before that colony would seek independence from Earth rule?

Weir: Well, first off, it wouldn’t be Earth rule. It would be ruled by some specific country. Right?

Cowen: Sure, or company.

Weir: Or… Country. You can’t really seek independence from a company.

Cowen: Well, it could be like the East India Company, right? The Kenya Space Corporation, they have some features of East India.

Weir: Right. They’re much nicer than the East India Company was.

Weir: Yeah, well, the Kenya Space Corporation in my book is just… They have a very simple business model. They build Artemis and then rent out lots. They don’t try to control its economy or its people or anything. They’re literally just landlords, and absentee landlords at that. But you can’t declare independence from a company because, by definition, the company owns all the assets. If you say, “I’m independent from the company,” what you’re doing is resigning. Right?

Cowen: Well, you’re stealing, in a way. But it happens, right?

Weir: Yeah. But if you’re talking about some sort of revolution or something like that, well I guess the first step is you’d have to be pretty sure that you are self-sufficient and independent. You have to be, like, Earth-independent. Which, in the case of Artemis, it’s not.

Cowen: But you have some allies. So what’s now the United States declares independence from what was then Britain, and the French help us. Other people who are upset at Britain help the American colonies to become independent.

So as long as you have some outside allies, wouldn’t you expect, within say 50 years’ time, a lunar colony, a Mars colony would try to seek independence so those rents could be captured by domestic interests?

Weir: Possibly. Ultimately, I believe that all major events in history are economic. And, I mean, independence was really about who gets to collect taxes, right? So if the people who live in a city are content with the economic status that they have, they’re not going to rebel. People don’t… People, despite what you see, I would challenge you to show me any situation where people revolted over purely ideology without any economic reason.

Cowen: But think about the American colonies. So the British were taxing us maybe 5 percent of GDP —

Weir: And the American colonies preferred that those taxes went to the American colonial governments.

Cowen: Yes, absolutely. But it wasn’t that much money, in a sense. That to me is what’s surprising.

Weir: Well, at that time, taxes globally were not that much money.

Cowen: Yeah.

When you read these books by Heinlein, Asimov, Kim Stanley Robinson . . .

Weir: Yeah, they always end up being political thrillers and that’s not what I’m going for. I’m showing the frontier town and the kind of cooperative aspects of human nature. I’m not…

For some reason, every book about colonizing space ultimately seems to lead to a revolution. Because that’s exciting, right? It’s Star Wars.

You know, you’ve got a rebellion, so “yeah, we’ll throw off the yoke,” and it has historical parallels and it’s all awesome like that. But I don’t necessarily think that’s going to be the case. Partially because as long as we keep following the rules of the Outer Space Treaty, which I believe we will, there’s no such thing as sovereign territory outside of Earth. So Artemis is, functionally speaking, an offshore platform.

Cowen: On Earth, do you think we should experiment more with seasteading? Set up sea colonies?

Weir: Yeah.

Cowen: Underground colonies?

Weir: Absolutely.

Cowen: Have them be politically autonomous, if they want?

Weir: You would have to change maritime law to be able to do that. Right now, under maritime law, you can seastead. I mean, you can do it right now. You can go out into the international waters and build something. You have to flag to some country, though.

Cowen: Right. A cruise ship, yeah.

Weir: Yeah. Well, yeah, you could flag to like Suriname or something like that. You could fly a flag of convenience. But, one way or another, you are subject to the laws of the country that you’re flying the flag of, just as Artemis is subject to the laws of Kenya.

Comments

  1. Slovenian Guest says:

    I just bought the Martian paperback a few days ago. I found at the checkout line for a mere 5 EUR (6.0309 USD). You know something’s really popular when you can get it here in Elbonia. I even faked my own Andy Weir signature!

  2. I would challenge you to show me any situation where people revolted over purely ideology without any economic reason.

    I would counter-challenge Mr. Weir to show any situation where any people acted “purely” out of any reason he would wish to tackle.

  3. Sam J. says:

    I was already thinking about this before reading Kentucky Headhunter’s comment. I wonder if a large part of the American Revolution was not over coinage. The colonies had a severe shortage of coinage. Benjamin Franklin detailed a system they had for paper money in, I think, Pennsylvania based on land and bills printed to reflect that value. He told someone in England about it where he was an ambassador and immediately they wrote laws against all such issue of paper currency in the colonies. I bet it brought the whole economy to a screaming halt. If I remember correctly England required taxes be paid in hard money like gold and in turn England sent copper coins back when any money was sent to the colonies. This left them in a constant deflationary spiral and desperate for coin.

  4. HCM says:

    I am somehow incredibly amused by this guy’s thought that rebellion from a government makes perfect sense but rebellion from a sovereign corporation is nonsensical because that would be “stealing”…

Leave a Reply