Check it out. This is exactly what I'm talking about. Shut down manufacturing capacity rotting away. Shut down because some guys wanted a few more dollars, and were willing to move away to another country and pay poor wages to do it. I think this can be salvaged in a couple ways.
Like Bernie Sanders advocates, bring those jobs back home for our people. Another way is to repurpose the idle facilities, but in a proper manner.
In WWII our nation retrofitted a lot of factories that produced refrigerators and autos into factories that produced warplanes and tanks. Factories that were producing sewing machines started producing guns. They didn't f*** around about getting the retrofitting done either. The big money guy's empire was threatened by both the Nazi threat and the Japanese Empire. If they didn't do something, they would lose it all.
We've got something similar in nature going on right now. Our civilization has problems that are becoming a threat to the Human species survival. Human activity has had a serious negative impact on our environment. Over population has stretched the capacity of the planet to maintain the numbers. Poverty and hunger has reached epic proportions. Greed and inequality has had a free hand with civilization and humanity.
So just like the threat the great industrialists faced with the Axis powers in WWII, another threat has arisen that is every bit as deadly as the other defeated one, if not more so.
That new threat is massive human migrations caused by environmental disasters, wars, famine and other things. Wars caused by the ever increasing use of an ever increasing population, of limited energy and food resources on a finite planet. Cities in ruin from war and insurrection. Human death on a massive scale as the competition becomes ever more desperate. Our species had better get their act together now, or it's curtains for us.
Just like in WWII, we need to take all of these abandoned factories and repurpose them, and fast. Repurpose them and retrofit them to make and to build the 21st Century infrastructure. Take all the closed schools and open them back up again too. Then teach our people the skills they will need to make this conversion of our society a reality. A conversion that would cause Humans to become a multi-planet species. Really there is no other option that will solve the eminent threats our advanced civilization faces. To solve these threats, we have no other choice but to use advanced methods.
Our nation bailed out banks that people said were too big to fail. Our people loaned trillions of dollars to Wall Street because of their criminal actions. They say it all came to $16 trillion to keep our economy from completely imploding and falling into ruin. Taking us all with it, I might add.
Well, how do you feel now? It's been 8 years since the bubble burst and the big fix was applied. Are things better for you? Do you feel more secure? Do you think things are better for our nation and the world now than they were 8 years ago, when our people invested $16 trillion in the salvation of our economy? I sure as hell don't. I don't feel like things have gotten any better for the average Jane and John Doe in Anytown USA! I think they have got worse, and will get worse unless action is taken.
If our nation can muster the will to give our $16 trillion to banks and Wall Street CEO's, and if those same banks and CEO's have the guts to gamble on a real big payday, we can do the things that will boost our civilization to the next level, and carry all of our people to prosperity beyond our wildest dreams. The things of which I speak is the colonization of Mars, and the moon. The industrialization of space by the building of orbital solar arrays around the Earth, the moon and Mars. The building of orbital industrial assets around Earth, Mars and the moon to harvest and process asteroidal metals, water and other materials into products used by the people on Earth and the new Mars and moon colonies. The construction of orbital human habitat suitable for apartments and recreation for the off-world workers, and tourists, and even people who wanted to live there just because.
Our civilization would have to institute a massive drive to get people educated to the level they would become proficient at these new tasks and objectives. All across the board, and in every profession, skills would have to be honed within our people to a razor edge. In science, math and engineering and all other pertinent support fields, our people would have to excel. That means putting the proper resources into educating all of them.
We would have to use the unused factories and turn them over to the production of the equipment needed to get this new expansionist push going and to keep it going. Just like in WWII, when our people caused auto factories to start producing warplanes, now our abandoned factories would be turned over to producing spaceship parts, and the other things needed for an expanding civilization.
All the banks and CEO's who cooperated would be richly rewarded too. All the many millions of people newly educated, and employed by this new off-world expansion will be needing checking and saving accounts. They will be buying cars, houses and many other products their properly paid jobs allow them to enjoy.
Really, and I'm speaking directly to Mr. CEO, right now you're fighting over peanuts. Wouldn't you like to be standing (or floating) in your very own Corporate office on a giant orbital platform, that you are the top dog of, which is responsible for the supply of some cool product used by people on Earth, and Mars. Maybe it is even manufactured in zero-G because that's the only way to do it. Go ahead and play it safe. Stay in your puny Earth bound office. Stay the leader of last century ideas, and get left behind.
They haven't the guts to take on a real challenge! It's either that or they like things the way they are because at least they have things good right now. Playing it safe is good for now, short sighted fools. Spain didn't become the richest nation on the planet back in the old times by playing it safe. They had the guts to take a chance, and it paid off big.
That $16 trillion used to give the banks and Wall Street another chance is enough money to fund 91 Apollo programs from start to finish, and at the same time. For the money we spent on the Apollo program, and this excludes the equipment from the Mercury and Gemini program, we got all this.
15 Saturn V rockets,
16 Command/Service Modules,
12 Lunar Modules
Program Support
Management Costs;
Construction Expenses for Facilities and their upgrading
Costs for Flight Operations.
Okay now, if you take all that equipment and multiply it by 91 ($16 trillion worth of Apollos), what do you get? It seems to be a thing of reason to assume that for that kind of money, we could harvest one of them trillion dollar platinum asteroids. In fact, I would wager that is enough money to get Human expansion really going full steam. So what's holding us back?
I have an idea the thing holding us back is a bunch of greedy, play it safe individuals. They like it that our economy is based on scarcity instead of the unlimited abundance our planetary neighborhood can provide. It benefits them (and few others) that platinum and other precious metals are very expensive and rare when they don't have to be because there is an unlimited supply just beyond our planet. It is easier to maintain archaic systems that are working now, but are getting ever more dangerous to use, than to take a chance and invest on something that is sustainable. All of this allows for the existence of class divisions based on wealth. That causes the persons who have the most wealth to believe they are in some way intrinsically better than a person with less wealth. That kind of an idea is an invention of the Human mind, and is a dangerous idea.
We have the technology to start all this off-world expansion in a big way. It is as if our technology has reached a plateau that allows it. As we go, our technology will further increase because of the everyday experiences of many millions of people who will work in and migrate to our new off-world territories. Our economy would expand, and so to would the equality that education, opportunity, hope and the lessening of competition for scarce resources helps to foster.
Back when our nation started the push to put Human footprints on the moon we didn't know how to do it. We didn't have the technology to do it. We did have the drive, the guts and the determination to beat a perceived foe, which was the USSR at the time. Now it is all the things I've mentioned here, and a lot of other things too. Things are quite different now.
We have all this cool high technology now. We can use it to enslave Humanity, or to set Humanity free. I know we can do this. I know we must make a massive effort to expand Humanity's presence beyond Earth, or we may as well accept our doom confined to the cradle a failed Civilization. One of the ones that didn't make it.
