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Lessons for the Red Planet from Experiments in Governing the Blue Planet
from Part III - Deferred Dreams: Reflections on Politics and Society
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2020
I originally penned this essay in the summer of 2018, stimulated by a Twitter exchange I had with Elon Musk, itself triggered by the SpaceX CEO’s previously announced decision to colonize Mars. This led me to wonder if this visionary had given any thought to what sort of government he would set up on the Red Planet and if he already had a team of social scientists working on the problem or whether he was just going to wing it when they got there. Surely not, but what source for research would a team of social engineers (let’s call them) working at SpaceX (or NASA, since it too plans to send people to Mars in the coming decades) access? There are no working models. Or are there? There are. Since it is Earthlings going to Mars, experiments in governance on the Blue Planet are a useful resource for lessons on how to govern the Red Planet. This essay, originally published in Quillette, is my modest contribution to future Martians on what they should take with them when they slip the surly bonds of earth.
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