Opinion | Elon Musk, Mars and the Modern Economy
What space fantasies can tell us about terrestrial trade.
www.nytimes.com
Stross’s answer was that given the complexity of modern society, you’d need a lot of people. In fact, writing back in 2010 — when Musk’s Tesla was still a struggling company that had only survived the Great Recession thanks to an Obama administration bailout — he explained how Musk’s current plan is thinking far too small: “Colonizing Mars might well be practical, but only if we can start out by plonking a hundred million people down there.” I agree — if anything, that’s on the low side. To understand why, you need to think about why nations engage in international trade.
As I said, I see Musk on Mars as a teachable moment, an unintended thought experiment that helps remind us of the positive aspects of international trade. Yes, there are downsides to globalization, especially to rapid change that can disrupt whole communities. But you really wouldn’t want to live in a world without extensive international trade. And you really, really wouldn’t want to live on another planet, cut off from the globalization we’ve created on this one.