by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’ve struggled with the practical aspects of colonizing a habitable planet the size of earth using only existing technology for about a decade now. And I think the key to doing so is to approach it as an economic problem. If you’re trying to unite the planet and avoid the dangers of nationalism, then you create six (or so) holding companies that would serve as modern day versions of the British East India Company.
Whenever trying to settle a planet, you have a number of pretty big issue to contend with. If you look an economic-political-ethnic map of the globe, the earth is not one, but several planets. You have the United States, which is big enough to be its own thing. Then you have “The West” which is rest of the First World. Then, you have China and India as their own things. Then Latin America. This is where things get murky.
Africa doesn’t really fit any specific designation other than “The Third World” because it’s so split up, poor and culturally influenced by its former colonial powers.
Anyway, the point is — with all those different types of human civilizations on earth, how do you get everyone to see themselves as “just human” on a new planet?
I propose you use the United States as the foundation of your global civilization via your global spanning holding companies. Then, later, once everyone is on the same page, you let individual nation-states begin to be established. But, even then, the economics of this new world would be very different than what we assume about earth.
There would be a lot more wealth for everyone to tap in as you built out the new settlement’s economy, which would change the idea of “First World” greatly. The conflict — and potential plot for a novel exploring this scenario — would be how much everyone who wasn’t American would absolutely hate this method of settling a planet.
But, anyway, I keep thinking about this scenario when I want to switch gears from working on four novels.
