Elon Musk's plan for Martian indentured servitude for those who can't afford to travel there is typical of the profound failings of capitalism in terms of planning and a great example of why I hate "free market space colonization" in science fiction media. #WiP #TTRPG

You see, he doesn't imagine or question "what comes next", or if he does, he doesn't talk about it because he knows that people would immediately crucify him.

Mars, or any planet that isn't terraformed, is completely or nearly completely reliant on imports to survive.
Food, water, medical supplies, replacement parts, construction materials, the lot. So what happens when an indentured labourer pays off their indenture? Where do they go? What can they do? They're trapped on a world where they have no power and their access to resources is...
...dictated to them by the powers who have the wealth to import those resources. They aren't going to get a slice of land. They can't homestead. And do you honestly think that Lord of Mars, Elon Musk is going to hand out those resources? Hell no! No capitalist would.
Why? Because there's no profit in it. At best, they might extend a huge loan to let them set up in a fashion that keeps the now "free" labourer beholden to them. And it's not like the labourer can leave either. Trips home aren't going to be free, and that's a feature, not a bug.
At it's best, it might look like a "company town", but in reality, it's two tiered caste society where the workers are absolutely reliant, in every way, shape, and form, on the largesse of the wealthy elites who have paid for them to come there.
It's not some "wild west" fantasy where free peopel go to start a new life, it's a deliberate recreation of the worst aspects of colonial states with potential to exceed the cruelties of Belgium in the Congo. And it is INEVITABLE. Why? Because the corporate bottom line is it.
Corporations don't care about people any more than they absolutely have to maintain social licence to do what they do. There are corporations who are literally arguing, today, that water is not a right and that child slavery for cocoa production is good actually.
Suddenly letting them into the colonization game (again, as if they ever really left) in a big way is not going to cause a sudden bloom of enlightenment and love of their fellow humans. They're there to make money, and as we've seen with Elon Musk, they aren't keen on...
...maintaining "human rights", or "labour laws", or anything that might in the slightest way impede their ability to make money.

So yeah, he's either not looking past "get indentured servants and labour to Mars where they can be brutally exploited", or he is, and knows what...
...the result will be, and his Afrikaner blood is just bubbling at the opportunity to recreate "the good old days".

So, yeah. Corporate colonization was bad historically, is badly handled in fiction, and will in all probability result in disasters if done in the future on Mars.

More from Trading

Many of you have seen the famous Westrum Organizational Typology model, so prominently featured in State of DevOps Research, Accelerate, DevOps Handbook, etc.

This model was created Dr. Ron Westrum, a widely-cited sociologist who studied the impact of culture on safety


Thanks to Dr. @nicolefv, I was able to interview him for an upcoming episode of the Idealcast! 🤯

It was a very heady experience, and while preparing to interview him, I was startled to discover how much work he's done in healthcare, aviation, spaceflight, but also innovation.

I've read 4+ of his papers, so I thought I was familiar with his work. (Here's one paper:
https://t.co/7X00O67VgS)

I was startled to learn he has also studied in depth what enables innovation. He wrote a wonderful book "Sidewinder: Creative Missile Development at China Lake"


Dr. Westrum writes about China Lake Research Labs: "its design and structure had one purpose: to foster technical creativity. It did; China Lake operated far outside the normal envelope... Sidewinder & others were "impossible" accomplishments,

I love this book because it describes traits of organizations that routinely create and maintain greatness: US space program (Mercury, Gemini, Apollo), US Naval Reactors, Toyota, Team of Teams, Tesla, the tech giants (Amazon, Google, Netflix, Google)

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