Libertarians have not come to promise human beings a technocratic utopia; we have come to bring everyone freedom, the freedom of each individual to pursue whatever his or her dreams of the future may be. Or even to have no vision of the future. FULL ARTICLE by Murray Rothbard
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/14214/the-menace-of-the-space-cult/
The Menace of the Space Cult
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Shameless plug for my article “Freedom Above or Tyranny Below” at:
http://mars.superlink.net/~neptune/SpaceFreedom.html
The state has been hampering space travel since Goddard. The red tape you need to comply with in order to do any kind of private launch boggles the mind. Then there are patents, the ban on nuclear fuels, the increased investment risk from arbitrary injunctions, passenger liability, and competition from government programs with diplomatic immunity.
Pigs arse! The evil NASA has accomplished far more than what Richard Branson and co. have done. The primary problem is that there is no known method of propulsion required for true space travel.
Considering NASA has effectively lied about the invention of most of the things it used (most of the NASA “inventions” were created during the 1920s or 30s), I call BS on your calling BS.
Who puts men on the Moon and probes throughout the solar system: NASA or Richard Branson?
Gil is the intellectual equivalent of a Cleveland steamer.
What, Beef? Richard Branson & co. are wetting themselves that they can get a craft into a temporary low Earth orbit and that supposed outweigh the acommplishments of NASA? Or that some guy in New Zealand has been trying to build a hydrogen rocket as if that’s something new. Or the guy who sent a camera way up with a balloon to take basic space photos and that’s supposed to be more interesting than the Hubble Space Telescope.
See the movie Destination Moon (1950)
Heinlein was the main technical advisor and maybe co-writer of Destination, Moon. I saw it at about age 6 – obviously a major influence. He was thinking of Howard Hughes, I’m pretty sure.
A wonderful, fascinating story. My respect for Rothbard – always considerable – has again spiked upwards.
My college room-mate at UCLA, Phil Salin, was one of the leaders of this “space cult.” And he believed just as Rothbard described – he was well-known in the Sci-Fi “fan” community from about the age of 8. He was involved in at least two “space privatization” ventures later on. If you google him, you can find out a lot more.
I’m sure Phil was a sincere libertarian, but after he got an MBA from Stanford and worked in Silicon Valley for a few years, I lost touch with him. He died of stomach cancer in 1991, but may be cryogenically preserved. Ever the optimist.
In retrospect, Rothbard is correct. The ultimate expression of the military-industrial complex is “space development.” Heinlein predicted the future much better than most in this respect. Also check out the HG Wells film, “Things to Come” from the 1930′s. Same story.
“The shape of things to come”? Please, NO!!!! It’s socialist dribble! AND it has people colonising space by being fired out of a gigantic cannon, pointed straight up! So it’s physics dribble as well!!! (the two colonists would have been turned into pizza by the speed of the blast) The book is an interesting one, tainted by the socialist slant that he put on things. Please, read better books, and see better movies!
The Libertarian Party… a bastion of freedom?
I know this was written over 30 years ago, but… BAHAHAHA!
Be fair, every despot was innocent when they were a baby.
Everything I’ve read about Rothbard indicates he was an eternal optimist — of conviction and of persuasion. Yet I must marvel that there was once a time when the LP was a bastion of hope.
More to the point of the article: yes, I have met these types. “Space cultists” might be too much of a pigeonhole. “Utopians” seems more apt. They strive for liberty only so long as their vision of society is enacted; when it is not — as it surely will not be — they fall by the wayside. It is disheartening. That is, until the next time I read Rothbard….
Yet I must marvel that there was once a time when the LP was a bastion of hope.
I’m sure that you aware that Rothbard considered any, even a small, step towards liberty as worth taking. That is, if the only thing LP would ever achieve is to cut taxes by 1%, it’s worth doing it. That is to say, unless other better opportunity opens up that may take us towards liberty more effectively.
Yes, I am aware of that — and I generally agree with his position. It was merely the degree of his vociferousness in this article that surprised me.
This post points out a real truth that has bugged me for years. There are many people today that equate “technological progress” with freedom, and it is hard convincing them that the two are seperate.
I love debating this sort of thing. I grew up in a house that worshiped technology, I had pictures of the latest military jets on my wall and put together models of the space shuttle. I loved the idea of space travel, I felt that it was a chance for humanity to overcome our weaknesses and become more peaceful. Later when I became familiar with the idea of liberty, I came out against the whole thing. I realized how tyranical the whole trekian idea really was.
I also know quite a bit about space travel and I love letting people know just how dangerous it really is. Did you know that humans cannot conceive in zero gravity? I remind people that the odds are pretty good that the people who go to mars for the first time will probably die there and thus should be prepared. If the people have there liberty, it is possible that humans may colonize space without being forced and solutions will be found, but for now it is not possible. Also going into space will not change man into a more nobile creature.
As a technology-worshipper myself, I think it needs to be stressed that spacefaring cultures are perfectly compatible with ancap social structure. In fact I’d argue they’re only compatible this way. The only way the state will become interstellar is if it rides there on the back of free enterprise, and an interstellar civilization with a state cannot stay that way for long. The kind of division of labor that would be required to maintain interstellar living is far too vast and delicate to support it.
Not every problem has a technological solution. The state’s existence is an ideological problem. Ideology must be defeated with ideology. Emortality, perpetual motion, and touchable holograms may give the statists something better to do with their time but they alone cannot destroy the state’s justification in their minds.
It’s good to see a fellow technology-worshipper
Lighten up, people. Any libertarian technology enthusiast worthy of that name woud gladly accept the rights of the Amish to go on with their lifestyles, as long as they are free to pursue their own dreams. The link between high-tech and libertarianism is that new, disrupting technology is often opposed by the establishment. That’s why the industrial revolution had to begin in rural areas, rather than in the cities. It seems Rothbard was frustrated that some libertarians cared more about the techno-utopian ends than about the political means.
Hmm…
Day One: Every person on Earth is given access to touchable holograms.
Day Two: Governments everywhere take them away in a very visible manner obvious to everyone.
Day Three: Every state official, active soldier, and police officer on earth is dead. Everyone else goes back to their touchable holograms.
I take that back. There IS a technological solution after all.
I was not saying that technology is bad, it is just a mistake to worship it, in other words placing it morally above right and wrong, sacrificing liberty to it. Technology is a good created in the marketplace like any other. If liberty is respected, then technological progress would be at the mercy of social demand, proceeding no faster than people want and would be peaceful. Someone simply could not come into a society and demand that technology is not proceeding fast enough or producing the right kind of inventions. This is the bad, that I was refering to.
I’m not sure why this article was posted. How is it relevant? OK, so there were/are nuts in the Libertarian party…there are nuts in every political party. At face value, the whole political process attracts a bizarre group of people. Not only that, but those who partake in political strategy end up abandoning their core values (i.e. Rockwell, Tucker, Rothbard to name a few from this corner of the world.)
For Libertarians, the true path of success is not a political party but ideas. The Environmental movement is successful not because of an “Environmental Party” but because over the last hundred years they have been able to focus on single issues and slowly but very effectively their ideas have become part of the vernacular in politics. The Libertarian movement has failed in this respect.
So, what is promoting our ideas today…technology and more specifically the Internet. Without it, you wouldn’t see the word Austrian in the WSJ or Libertarian in the New York Times.
So maybe those space nuts were so nutty after all…just way ahead of their time.
“Abandoning their core values”? (in reference to those you listed).
Matthew,
Perhaps “core value” was the wrong term.
Since coming to mises.org, I’ve become a big fan of Rothbard. But I recently started questioning why I didn’t follow this man when he was alive. Why didn’t I go to UNLV and study under him. Then I remembered why…
During the late 80’s through the 90’s Reason magazine was my sole source of libertarian ideas. Whenever they interviewed Rothbard during election time, he would often voice support for a non-libertarian candidate. Not only were they not libertarian but their chance of winning was as remote as the libertarian candidate. For example, in 1992 he suggested we support Pat Buchanan who was an economic isolationist among other things. As a young libertarian, I couldn’t accept the inconsistency in thought. In my mind, it made Rothbard not only inconsistent but a contradiction. So, unfortunately, I never took him that seriously.
Rothbard’s Paleo-Libertarian concepts appear to have led (well intended) people like Rockwell, Paul, and Tucker etc. down a strange road. This has created a stain on the libertarian movement (actually on mises.org) though time has rubbed much of it away.
Bottomline-Rothbard is a great libertarian historian and philosopher. His writings are an easy read compared to others in the field. But like most of us, he is flawed. Political strategy was his pathology. This article reminded me of that.
Well, now I know how L. Neil Smith and Rothbard had their falling out.
It’s the fact that these people acted in a manner that damaged the movement that was the problem. When people actively undermine progress to maintain their illusions and fantasies then they deserve all the scorn they can get.
Sure major movements towards freedom have often been assisted by technological advancements, but true progress is brought by hard work, personal sacrific, and having the intellegence and clarity of thought to make real changes in the real world.
Actually technological development has helped government growth (or at least personal freedom is independent of technology). It has been said a man prior to 1910 would have scarcely noticed the government in his life – there were few laws, regulation, taxes, etc. Whereas nowaday government involvement is obvious. It could be argued technology stymies freedom as it kills hard work and self-reliance. For example, nowadays certain medical technology can saves lives it is expected that the technology should be made available for all regardless of the costs. Since costs get in the way of medical technology being avaliable for all then government is empowered because people thnk they ought to have the duty to redistribute the technology for all. Alternatively, if a traditional government wanted to spy on people en masse it would have a huge unfeasible army of spies whereas nowadays government has access to cameras, computers, internet, etc.
A man were?
It really depends on what place your talking about here. Maybe a white guy in a frontier area USA, but certainly not somebody living in London or whatever.
A few obvious examples:
* Firearms
* Printing Press
* Steam engine
* Internet
The 1800s was mostly a laissez-faire century especially compared with the 1900s. Though I would prefer to argue that technology doens’t especially help nor hinder. In other words, free people can be free without technology and unfree people can be surrounded by technology.
I fear that colonies on other planets will not be utopian enclaves, but military camps. The environments will be so extreme that co-operative working under governors will become the norm. Even if humans did terraform Mars, as one example, it might take centuries to get right, and then dictatorial governments would have become the norm. homesteading might be practical in some circumstances- if you find something worth mining, so you can afford to import any items that are nonexistent, or in short supply. (then you run the risk of the homestead becoming a town, with the owner becoming the local lord!)
It’s much better to promote liberty on Earth, so there’s one libertarian stronghold amongst all those authoritarian moons and planets!
what’s wrong with private cities? Would you call the owners of Disneyland dictators?
If it wasn’t so easy to move out of those cities, they would be, or their successors would be. The isolation of space is what would make individualism a much chancier affair.
You have the right to set the rules of your own property. Dictators claim the right to set the rules for everyone in a given area which is not their property.
You mean that they may behave just like petty dictators. Well, not very likely. That’s what contracts and covenants are for. The owners want people to move in, so they have to make it easy for them to move out if they want. No matter how difficult it is to move in, people know it when they do, so they will demand a good exit clause.
For instance, the owner may have an obligation to buy your land back at a given price if you want to go, or maybe you have the right to join some of your neighbors, buy the corresponding common areas at a given price and secede. The market will pick the safest terms and conditions.
Unlike in the state-owned cities and countries of today, where terms and conditions can change almost overnight because there’s no contract to begin with, also in (supposedly) “free” countries, where democracy encourages the dumb and lazy majority to oppress and leech from the brilliant, hard-working minority, and, if the polls look bad, governments can even elect a new people through immigration policy.
Since there’s no square inch left of unclaimed land, space colonies (or, perhaps more realistically, seasteading) may be exactly what is needed.
the example I have in mind is company-run mining towns, where the company is the town. They would be established by a company, according to a company contract. even if the settlers had set themselves up as a company to pool the costs of reaching an asteroid, there would be a collective, not an individual, impetus.
Of course, by space, we might find a planet around another star that is ideal for terrans. (In which case, there might be inhabitants already. If not, why not?) Or we might seastead.
Actually, an ideal industry for a space station might be to manufacture hydrogen for selling to spaceships. Plasma is just electrons and protons, so that should be collectable by solar electricity, and it could be cooled and condensed until the plasma becomes hydrogen atoms- to be used by spaceships in ion drives! An effectively endless resource. And big spaceships could do this between planets, when coasting, and recoup their fuel expences.
You touch several topics here, huh
The exit clause reasoning applies both to individual and collective ownership cities. I don’t see any reason to worry.
Regarding alien civilizations on other planets, it may well be that life (intelligent life at that) is extremely unlikely, even under the best conditions, so for every Earth-like planet with an alien civilization there are thousands without it. Even so, the fact that we do exist should come as no surprise, since the barren Earths don’t count (anthropic principle).
On the economics of space stations, I think their main use would be as servers, communications nodes, recreational and maybe others related to the lack of gravity and atmosphere, such as telescopes and assembly of of huge spaceships. There’s plenty of hydrogen, pure or combined with other elements to form water or hydrocarbons, in the atmosphere of several planets and moons. But time will tell.
Don’t worry, the space cultists in the Libertarian movement are balanced by the “crunchy conservatives” who expect everyone to live on tiny farms where they live on home-grown brussels sprouts and organic pumpkins.
I believe that H. H. Hoppe’s prescription which I gather is for a world of small, independent city-states as exemplified by Singapore and Luxembourg (I apologize if I this is a misstatement of his ideas) is much more realistic, attractive and well, sane. Of course this model doesn’t rule out or prevent anyone from building floating cloud cities or living in rural hippie communes, if they wish. Chances are however that the cloud cities will never get off the ground and the hippies will decide that wealthy, free cities are a quite livable place from which to peruse organic seed catalogs.
“So there we have it: two irreconcilable groups within the Libertarian Party: the Realists and the Necromancers, the “Earthlings” and the Space Cadets.”
What an absurd and false dichotomy. Some of us Space Cultist are also involved in ‘down earth’ politics. Space colonies are the only realistic hope of having a libertarian country.
A wonderful, fascinating story. My respect for Rothbard – always considerable – has again spiked upwards.
My college room-mate at UCLA, Phil Salin, was one of the leaders of this “space cult.” And he believed just as Rothbard described – he was well-known in the Sci-Fi “fan” community from about the age of 8. He was involved in at least two “space privatization” ventures later on. If you google him, you can find out a lot more.
I’m sure Phil was a sincere libertarian, but after he got an MBA from Stanford and working in Silicon Valley for a few years, I lost touch with him. He died of stomach cancer in 1991, but may be cryogenically preserved. Ever the optimist.
In retrospect, Rothbard is correct. The ultimate expression of the military-industrial complex is “space development.” Heinlein predicted the future much better than most in this respect. Also check out the HG Wells film, “Things to Come” from the 1930′s. Same story.
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