by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
So, here we are, again, with me mulling my favorite scenario. The scenario is — a Galactic Empire comes to humanity and says, “We’ll zap a few billion of you to three lush, habitable planets in a new solar system, but there’s a catch — you have to bootstrap yourself. No help from us.”
One day, President of Hollywood, one day.
Ok. After nearly 20 years of thinking, here’s what I’ve come up with. There is only one solution to this particular problem that makes any sense — you seed the three planets with Americans, selected by a diverse, large group of global “stakeholders.”
I keep vacillating between thinking you would need just a few people in each various settlements on each planet — maybe 100? — to thinking you could get away with maybe 60,000 each planet divided to settlements of 10,000. It only works if you use Americans, though.
This would ENRAGE everyone else in the world, but it’s the only solution because America is a nation of laws, immigrants and a huge, well educated population. But I think if you had a large group of global stakeholders actually PICK the Americans who would be the first inhabitants of each of these three planets, then it works.
Now, the fun part — the gist of any novel or screenplay — would be all the fucking drama about the specifics of how all of this was done. That’s why this scenario is soooooo addictive. I think I keep discovering different elements of game theory over and over again as I try to think of different ways the different groups would fight over exactly who would do what.
Anyway. Maybe I can write this novel or screenplay when I finally sell my novel.
