New Governance, New Space Agency
The human race has set its sights on becoming a spacefaring civilization. This goal necessitates that we consider how to create self-sustaining communities from the raw materials on other planets, in addition to setting up habitable environments on the moon or space stations. This poses a very important question: How will governing structures be implemented in space communities? Knowing everything we know about flaws in today’s political structures across the world, what should be avoided? This is where the quest begins. Even widely palatable structures such as democracy have very serious shortcomings. Former US President Obama summarized it powerfully in his farewell speech in January — “Democracy is an experiment, a test of collective will that requires vigilance and buy-in to give a dead document like the Constitution life.”
We take an optimistic approach by believing (and hoping!) that a more ideal governance solution exists. When everyone is an owner and has equal voting and controlling rights, how will communities govern themselves and handle competition? The answer to this questions is most likely found through the creation of a structure that receives input from as many intelligent and talented people as possible. We have been extensively researching general cooperative structures and collectives specifically because these frameworks of collective governance align strongly with the spacefaring community that we are building.
This concept will be explored in greater depth by letting the community conceive, design, fund and build large scale projects while utilizing the experience to draw conclusions about what a highly evolved governance could look like. Part of this process, of course, involves all members engineering the projects. The ultimate goal of our efforts is to create a global “space agency” which will facilitate a pathway to allowing people to harmoniously live in space together. Also, a necessary piece of information to remember: Earth is in space, we aren’t jetting away completely; we never will.
