We have covered the issue of cash being phased out in other countries, such as India and the socialist Scandinavian countries, but now the monster has come to our door. The IMF is telling the PM what to do. How high do you want me to jump, he squeaks:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=770M2s6ZD8Y&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR2vEHSudRzJHl7ppoGhm5I8Y3zwR2eqjkD3u5vYyqe13ZyDPkYVzfGMGMg
  https://cairnsnews.org/2019/07/31/morrison-moves-to-eliminate-cash-on-instructions-from-imf/

“THE Morrison government is attempting to sneak legislation through Parliament to virtually criminalise cash as part of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) drive to bring in negative interest rates, allegedly to “fight recession”. Negative interest rates mean you pay the bank to hold your money, but cash in hand incurs no such charge. It means governments will exercise even tighter control over money than they and the central banking system already have. Draft legislation about to be pushed through Parliament by the Morrison Liberals will outlaw cash payments above $10k under the guise of tax efficiency and combating “the black economy”.

     To get a bit of relief over lunch, to take a break from digging out material for the boys, I like to Google tourist spots that I will never visit. The urge to check out Mongolia came over me, and I was sure that this would be an isolated place with none of the woes of globalism. How wrong was I! The very first article which caught my eye argued in shocking detail that Mongolia is being treated as a sex spot for Korean money, and to a lesser degree Western low lives, who ruthlessly exploit the local girls. Here are some excerpts, but Christian ladies, don’t read on if you are easily shocked. I am afraid that I did, because, that is what we do, in the pursuit of truth:
  https://www.cqmi.ca/en/eastern-women/mongolian-women

“In Mongolia, there was a pimping network, oriented towards Koreans. There are also specialized hotels that only serve them. Let's start with that. - People who come to Mongolia are not so interested in its natural beauty as in its daughters, with whom they want to have fun. Many young Mongols act as pimps for these tourists. The problem of prostitution in Mongolia is very present. However, yes, there are girls who, among all these foreigners, only serve Koreans. In general, it can be said that there are Koreans who, under the guise of tourism, only come to Mongolia to have fun with Mongolian girls. As a rule, they come for a week. During the period of stay each day is spent with a new girl. Are located in hotels, which are called "Mongololdo gayggy" ("it's not bad in Mongolia"). - On average, how many Koreans come to Mongolia for this sex tourism business? - Extremely numerous. Think about it, here's someone who has travelled from Korea to here, so he calls with him ten others.

     Having worked in IT, at the basic plebe level of programming, I was interested to see an article about my fellow low-level workers,
  http://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/i-was-a-computer-programmer-i-know-computer-programming-the-indians-programmers-the-treason-lobby-wants-to-import-are-no-alan-turings-theyre-just-cheap/

“The House of Representatives recently passed H.R.1044, the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act. It’s now in the Senate’s Judiciary committee and could be voted on by the full Senate by September. Javanka is said to favor it, so the chances that President Trump will veto it (as he should) are probably low. The adjective “high-skilled” is misleading—intentionally so, of course. The immigrants being favored by this act are lower-middle-class drudge workers, mainly computer programmers, most from India and China. They know languages like JavaScript, which anyone with above-room-temperature IQ can learn in 24 hours, or PHP and C++, which I’ll allow are harder but which a few months in trade school will get you capable at. I know whereof I speak. I spent much of my working life doing the kind of work—commercial computer programming—that these immigrants are being brought in to do. It is, indeed, not rocket science.

     Civilisations collapse when the elites become self-destructive in their greed and evil. This is a theme common to much of the reporting at this blog. Is it true? A scholarly book explores the same theme:  Anne Glyn-Jones, Holding Up a Mirror: How Civilizations Decline, (Imprint Academic, Thorverton, 1996). There is also a very good video about this which can serve as Collapseology 101, an introduction to this topic by Paul Joseph Watson, who argues that almost every factor that led to the collapse of past civilisations, can be found in the West, and there are more as well, generating a situation of over-determination:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELoFwPwIQm0

     First, on the Glyn-Jones book, there are informative remarks given in an interview, saving us time in reading the book:

     Big Tech is trying to depict Donald Trump as an evil paedophile in the Epstein saga, completely false, while they cover up the involvement of Demo-rats like old  Billy Goat Clinton:
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-07-23-big-tech-trying-to-cover-ties-between-epstein-and-democrats.html

“As the “pedo island” scandal continues to unfold, tech giants like Google are frantically trying to purge all posts and search results that threaten to expose ties between Jeffrey Epstein and Democrats like Bill Clinton, and instead implicate President Trump as somehow being one of the perpetrators. Paul Sperry from Investor’s Business Dailybroke the news in a recent tweet, explaining that photos of Clinton with Epstein are being actively scrubbed from Google’s image search results, and replaced with images of Trump – the suggestion being that Trump is the one who flew in Epstein’s private jet at least 26 times, when it was actually Clinton who did this. In truth, Trump was actually the one who blew the whistle on Epstein, having back in the day banned the sexual predator from his Mar-a-Lago resort “because Epstein sexually assaulted an underage girl at the club,” official court documents reveal. But instead of standing up for these sexual assault victims, Google is instead trying to cover for the real perpetrators, which include Clinton and a host of other leftist Democrats. According to Bradley Edwards, an attorney for Epstein’s alleged victims, Trump was actually the only person who willingly came forward when being probed about these allegations, Trump’s full and transparent cooperation with attorneys further reinforcing his innocence. “The only thing that I can say about President Trump is that he is the only person who in 2009, when I served a lot of subpoenas on a lot of people, or at least gave notice to some pretty connected people that I wanted to talk to them – he is the only person who picked up the phone,” Edwards is quoted as saying.”

     Oh boy, socialists have really got a thing or billion ready for us when it comes time to cook us. Here is a good revision summary article of some of the genocide that they have got up to. The socialist has an end justifies the means “morality,” or lack of it, and is quite prepared to do what it takes to impose their perverse, unnatural worldview upon us all.
  https://metallicman.com/laoban4site/what-the-progressive-liberals-have-in-store-for-conservatives/

“One of the keys in socialist and Marxist control of a region is to get the citizenry to comply to their rules. They lie. They tell falsehoods. They set up false senses of security. They use children. They use the media. Do not believe any of it. Historically speaking, the lies will result in people dying. The outcome is absolute. Historically, with the exception of China (with the SJW uprisings), most progressive socialist movements eventually take over the reigns of government and mold it to their will. Those whom follow the traditional and often “old Style” of political discourse are eventually overwhelmed. Once they gain power, they take over the government and mold it to their will. Suddenly the traditional symbols of government are co-opted and remolded into other purposes. This leads many traditionalists confused. This confusion sets up a perfect environment for the FULL implementation of their agenda. When the new progressive socialist government takes control, one of the first things that they do is hunt down and slaughter their opposition. Historically, that has been the conservative and traditional elements of the society. I am sorry to say this, but this is the historical truth.”

     We here, to relieve the high tensions of journalism, deadlines and all that exciting stuff at the bullpen, to get the freshest, juiciest articles to you, sometimes need to cool our brains down. So, we send each other logical and mathematical puzzles, to rattle the old neurons, and shake off the mental rust:
  https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/careers/the-threequestion-iq-test-fewer-than-one-in-five-people-can-answer-correctly/news-story/68086e096a7650356a3f87bebd134c2c
  https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/089533005775196732

(1) A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? _____ cents?

(2) If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets? _____ minutes?

(3) In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake? _____ days?

     Refugees, a generation of super-brained workers, who are mostly rocket scientists, and who would have paid for boomer pensions, want to leave the northern socialist country of Denmark. Why? Is it racism? It is always racism. No, it is welfare cuts:
  http://www.thepolitics.online/2019/07/were-leaving-refugees-are-outraged.html?m=1&fbclid=IwAR31jnXNM7vzSLKO138hwbQtGuGVZ1lQ5Z4smUoUThlRKvNnWzAbbM8Gt_c
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmqbtyfQ3f8

     Never mind, the rocket scientists will be flying their rockets to Sweden which welcomes the world. Good for you, Sweden.

     The world suffers from commodity fetishism, where everything has been converted to a money value, and where the money power controls everything. Some may feel that some things escape this net, such as air, but the global warming nonsense shows that even air will be reduced to a monetary value, and we will pay for air:
  https://washingtonsblog.com/2019/07/predatory-green-capitalism-is-monetizing-the-air-and-its-going-to-cost-you.html
  http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2019/07/predatory-green-capitalism-is.html

“You asked, "What's left to monetize? It appears the answer is 'very little.'" I respectfully disagree. The Biggest Enchilada of all is left. Air. Specifically carbon dioxide, CO2. We just have to figure how to get the yokels to agree to pay for that which was formerly free. Got it! First we browbeat them into believing its evil and that we have to tax it to save all life on Earth. Then, following in the finest traditions of the degenerate late medieval Catholic Church, we'll commission sellers of "Indulgences" to allow sinning at ever rising prices. a/k/a "Carbon Credit trading". This doesn't require any value added and the profits on "buy zero sell high" are limitless. This is the specific outline and the very same agencies that so love financialization of all kinds, $2 trillion dollar student debt to sustain obscenely paid college administrators and academics, endless academic credentialism and huge Hipster Cities sitting on container ports and mediating the China Trade, are all promoting this financialization of CO2 as hard as possible. This is why a nullity like the Paris Climate Accords continues to be pushed even after its proven every way possible that a) the biggest emitters like China and India won't adhere to them and b) even if they did the prescribed regimes will do nothing anyway. And its why I "don't believe" in it. Or rather, its why I believe its just the next and biggest financial scam.

     If the average white British person got into legal trouble, one would be foolish to think that the state would help out, or that there would be any pro bono lawyers lending their services. But add some colour, and oh boy, it is a different story:
  https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1155103/rotherham-grooming-gang-scandal-brothers-legal-aid-victims-sammy-woodhouse-child-sex-abuse

“THREE "pure evil" brothers have received up to £500,000 in legal aid after raping children in Rotherham - while dozens of their victims have yet to receive any compensation. Arshid, Basharat and Bannaras Hussain - known as Mad Ash, Bash and Bono - formed a violent, gun-toting, drug-dealing gang. They pleaded poverty despite running a petrol station, takeaways and an egg farm that supplies supermarkets, alongside owning a number of properties. A Freedom of Information request has revealed they were awarded £370,000 in legal aid for their costs in the 2016 crown court trial. This does not include other magistrates hearings and family court battles which experts say could tot up to £100,000 more. Survivors last night called the payout "outrageous" and "immoral". One top solicitor revealed that of the 86 victims he represents, 70 have not yet received any compensation payout. Dozens of others have received sums as low as £2,000. The Hussain brothers, who poured petrol over their victims, are said to have "owned" the South Yorkshire town for more than 10 years. Some girls were just 11 years old when they were raped, tied up and tortured and passed between abusers. Ringleader Arshid, 42, was jailed for 35 years, Bannaras 19 years, and Basharat was given 25 years. Sammy Woodhouse, 34, one of their 50 victims, said: "This is completely outrageous and immoral. "They have probably received 25 per cent more money than what the survivors of their abuse have had in total as compensation. "Something needs to be put in place to stop these people just laughing at the system and milking the taxpayer dry." Former youth worker Jayne Senior MBE, who helped expose the scandal, said: "I'm totally shocked and horrified.This is terrible. "These rapists and abusers are pure evil but they've had almost half a million pounds spent on them, yet these poor girls get nothing. "It feels like the judicial system is not set up to protect victims of some of the most horrendous crimes of abuse, torture and trafficking this country has ever seen."

     When I speak about conservativism, I think of John Howard as the modern example. This is not classical conservativism, which was a position, as in Burke, that saw the limits of all adventurous and radical social programs, and went instead to support tradition. The modern conservatives are not about conserving anything other than money for the elites. That is why they are big on the Great Replacement, which they see as a winner for the masters of the Universe.
  https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/amy-waxs-critics-unfairly-smeared-her-but-shes-wrong/

“Last week at the National Conservatism Conference, University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax stirred up controversy with a comment about immigration that, yanked out of context, seemed clearly racist. In context, it’s not racist. It’s just wrong. And the reason it’s wrong should help us understand a vital truth: American civilization is now quite clearly distinct from European civilization, and that’s a good thing indeed. First, here’s what Wax said about immigration and race (via Vox’s Zack Beauchamp, with the most controversial elements highlighted): Here’s the argument in a nutshell. Immigration policy should take culture into account, and the culture that most closely matches our own comes from Europe and the “First World.” Depending on how you define the “First World” (lots and lots of people live in China and Japan), that region is mostly white. So, proper immigration policy will result in more white immigrants even if the intentisn’t to bring in more whites. She derides contrary arguments, including the idea that immigrant populations from all regions assimilate well into American culture, as the “happy fantasy” of “magic dirt” — the idea that mere presence in America transforms immigrants into productive members of the American civilization.”

     I like crystal balls and all of that hocus pocus. It takes one back to youth, to days at the carnival, with weird people doing fantastic things, like predicting economic collapse, my obsession:
  https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/futurist-who-predicted-911-and-the-gfc-says-there-will-be-a-global-crash-by-the-end-of-next-year/news-story/1cbfb302a172303db20ab62fe6251ac6

“Chillingly, within the next three years, a popular world leader will be assassinated using autonomous drone technology, sparking an international outcry. Those are just some of the predictions of futurist Dr Richard Hames — who correctly foresaw 9/11 and the GFC, two of the biggest world events of the past two decades — but they’re not his “craziest”. “My craziest prediction is that within the decade we’re going to see almost a revolutionary change in how we think about politics, social enterprise and the economy,” Dr Hames said, citing climate change and the widening gap between rich and poor as key catalysts. “Governments will seriously consider how they can put a cap on personal wealth, thus challenging the capitalist framework. We will shift our thinking away from growth at all costs to how humanity thrives without growth and even negative growth. Economists will say that’s impossible, but it isn’t if you look at more things than just the economy.” To promote his tour of the country, Dr Hames has come out with a number of headline-grabbing pronouncements — including that a second financial crisis is just around the corner. “Since the global financial crisis none of the structural dynamics have changed, in fact I think they’re getting worse,” Dr Hames said. “There is going to be a global crash by the end of next year.” On President Trump’s 2020 prospects, he argues that “a lot of his base is actually falling away but in a number of ways the economy is going better in the US than anyone expected”. “The Democrats are in disarray, that’s a big part of it,” he said. “They’re fighting each other. I’m saying with almost 100 per cent certainty that he’s going to get back in.”

     America’s latest scandal may be its biggest ever, which in a truly insane land, is saying something. The short of the long is that 1 percenter Jeffrey Epstein, who was convicted of sex offences, but previously got off rather lightly looks like going down big time now. He previously had a sex island in the ironic Virgin Islands, and he had leading world elites go there to allegedly have sex with under-age girls, no doubt filming everything. The conspiracy theories are flourishing about who would gain from this. 
  https://www.theorganicprepper.com/unbiased-epstein-scandal/
  https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article221897990.html
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7220951/Jeffrey-Epstein-charged-sex-trafficking-just-days-records-transported-minors.html

“Jeffrey Epstein is facing two criminal charges in the sex trafficking case filed by federal prosecutors on Saturday, according to an individual who is familiar with the proceedings. Those charges were filed by attorneys for the Southern District of New York after they spoke dozens of victims, who had also been interviewed by both the FBI and NYPD. Almost all of these women claim they were underage when they were asked to give Epstein massages at his Palm Beach or New York City homes, according to a law enforcement official. Those women - some of whom were just 14 at the time of these alleged incidents -  claim that these massages would then lead to Epstein asking that they perform a rape act on him in exchange for money. That same official said that the incidents for which Epstein is now being charged all occurred between 1999 and 2005. This is the same time period during which Epstein first made headlines after flying former president Bill Clinton to Africa on his private jet, which was later nicknamed the Lolita Express. Epstein, 66, will make his first court appearance on Monday in New York, less than 48 hours after he was taken into custody by federal agents at Teterboro Airport. It all happened just before 5pm on Saturday, when Epstein reentered the country for the first time since June 16, when he took off from the same airport bound for Paris. Prior to that trip, Epstein had been crisscrossing the US as he moved between his properties in New York City, Palm Beach, New Mexico and the US Virgin Islands. Epstein's arrest was first reported by The Daily Beast, and comes in the wake of a three-part expose in the Miami Herald detailing his settlements with victims and sweetheart plea deal.”

     This international bestseller caused a few ripples when it was learned that, for this English language version, some references to the power wielded by the Rothschild family which appeared in the original 2017 Spanish first edition, have been omitted. A storm in a teacup: the author appears genuinely to have avoided negative bias against any political, ethnic or religious group. He is a colonel in the Spanish army and was formerly chief of counter-intelligence and security for the European Army Corps. He is said to be one of Europe’s top specialists in geopolitics, terrorism and intelligence.

     It is a sobering account, drawing from worldwide evidence taken from the near and far past, as well as present time. It is an antidote to much of the half-baked idealism common in Australia among political commentators and agitators. In his introduction Banos remarks: ‘The powerful have always tried to seize control wherever their tendencies can reach…..It’s important that we are aware of these strategies that allow the powerful to rule the world. We like to think of ourselves as free individuals who make autonomous choices about our lives….. However, we are in fact continually being induced to make certain choices, and the same thing is happening at the geopolitical level – countries are manipulated into making particular decisions and alliances, and their populations have no say in the matter.’

     I assume that the US did make it to the moon as stated in the official narrative, since the conspiracy theories on this one has been met with solid replies. Sure, we conspiratorial types can argue amongst ourselves on that one in the pub, but the important question is whether the US could do it today, with all its AI, and IT and other two-lettered pieces of tech magic. The answer is “no”;
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/07/20/ret-general-robert-spalding-moon-landing-couldnt-happen-todays-deindustrialized-america-weve-lost-all-china/

“Lessons learned from the Apollo 11 moon landing — particularly the need for nationalized industrial policy involving investments in research and development and protective policies for vital industries — are being lost, said retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Robert Spalding, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, in a Friday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with host Rebecca Mansour and special guest host Rick Manning. Spalding began by noting China’s usurpation of America’s prior dominance in the realm of telecommunication technology manufacturing and development since the space race era. “Let’s just look at the state of our telecommunications,” Spalding said. “There was such a large industrial effort for the space race. Back then, we were spending two percent of GDP on research and development. We had the industrial base that was the envy of the world. AT&T, at the time, was a monopoly, and with Bell Labs, was the standard for telecommunications.” Spalding continued, “When you look at America today, we have no telecommunication equipment manufacturers left that are American companies. When China entered the WTO in 2001, from that time period to 2017, we lost 78,000 factories. We unemployed 3.4 million manufacturing jobs. In the same time, we spent trillions in the Middle East.”

     I am not really interested in the moon landing conspiracy stuff, since I am impressed by the fact that lasers can be shot at the moon to hit some object there that reflects them back, presumably, unless the moon object was put there by extra-terrestrials. Anyway, who cares? Man is not going to the moon on a daily basis, so technology seems to have fizzled out:
  https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-07-17/why-so-many-believe-moon-landing-was-hoax

“If progress is inevitable, why don’t we have hotels on the moon? For some, it is easier to believe that the moon landing was fake than to accept that technological innovation has just stopped. The Hiatus in Progress
But wait, don’t we have smartphones now, the internet, and all sorts of cool gadgets and apps that didn’t exist 50 years ago? True, the fields of electronics and telecommunications have seen enormous advances, but these few hotspots of innovation cloak the fact that, in almost all other areas, technological development has ceased. Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel documented this decline in his book Zero to One, in which he describes several surprising facts:

     I have been arguing that because the Epstein paedophilia sex island scandal involves many 1 percenters and political leaders, something will happen to shut it all down. But like speculating and dreaming about what one would do if one won the X Lotto, it is nice to dream about justice happening for once in the history of the human race:
  https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-07-17/its-going-be-staggering-epstein-associates-prepare-worst-massive-document-dump

“As Vanity Fair's Gabriel Sherman notes, "The questions about Epstein are metastasizing much faster than they can be answered: Who knewwhat about Epstein’s alleged abuse? How, and from whom, did Epstein get his supposed $500 million fortune? Why did Acosta grant Epstein an outrageously lenient non-prosecution agreement? (And what does it mean that Acosta was reportedly told Epstein “belonged to intelligence”?)" Also illuminating is a statement by attorney Brad Edwards, who said during a Wednesday press conference seated next to Epstein accuser Courtney Wild that "There were other business associates of Mr. Epstein’s who engaged in improper sexual misconduct at one or more of his homes. We do know that," adding "In due time the names are going to start coming out." What's more, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will release of approximately 2,000 pages of documents, likely over the next several days, which may reveal sex crimes committed by "numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known prime minister, and other world leaders," according to the court's three-judge panel. The documents were filed during a civil defamation lawsuit brought by Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre, a former Mar-a-Lago locker-room attendant, against Epstein’s former girlfriend and alleged madam, Ghislaine Maxwell. “Nobody who was around Epstein a lot is going to have an easy time now. It’s all going to come out,” said Giuffre’s lawyer David Boies. Another person involved with litigation against Epstein told me: “It’s going to be staggering, the amount of names. It’s going to be contagion numbers.” -Vanity Fair

     One core reason for eliminating the universities as they now stand is that they are the breeding rounds for socialism, primarily from the Arts/Farts, Humanities and so-called Social Sciences. The socialist turn for US campuses, and Australia, in these black magic disciplines of unutterable evil, is likely to be the same or even worse, has been confirmed by a recent survey:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-07-19/how-leftist-echo-chamber-became-new-norm-campus

“A new study of student attitudes about socialism and capitalism provides strong confirmation of the echo chamber effect taking hold of these same disciplines. College students as a whole have a roughly even divide in their political beliefs, with a clear plurality classifying themselves as moderates and smaller groups identifying on both the left and right of center. In the humanities, however, the political left overwhelmingly dominates the student landscape as well as the faculty. According to a recent survey by College Pulse, 78 percent of philosophy majors, 64 percent of anthropology majors, and 58 percent of English majors state that they hold the economic and political system of socialism in a favorable light. Unfavorable, opinions of socialism account for only 21 percent of philosophy, 20 percent of anthropology, and 24 percent of English majors, with the remainder undecided.

     Northern European Whites (Nordics), simply do not breed well in cities. I think it was Madison Grant in The Passing of the Great Race (1916) who saw that mass urban life spelt the demographic doom for this once great sub-race. South East Asians have no problem having large families in cities, and nor do Africans, but Whites get totally caught up in consumerism and playing with things, so that having children becomes too hard. And, a system has been created with feminism, and tyrannical schools, that are also expensive, so that few want to breed anymore. Best to eat, drink and drug out, and let it all wither on the vine, the decayed fruit of the West.
  https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/where-have-all-the-children-gone/594133/

“New York is the poster child of this urban renaissance. But as the city has attracted more wealth, housing prices have soared alongside the skyscrapers, and young families have found staying put with school-age children more difficult. Since 2011, the number of babies born in New York has declined 9 percent in the five boroughs and 15 percent in Manhattan. (At this rate, Manhattan’s infant population will halve in 30 years.) In that same period, the net number of New York residents leaving the city has more than doubled. There are many reasons New York might be shrinking, but most of them come down to the same unavoidable fact: Raising a family in the city is just too hard. And the same could be said of pretty much every other dense and expensive urban area in the country.

     Why the interest by the global elite in outer space? Is it that they were Star Trek fans in their larva stage of their metamorphosis, or is there something more?
  https://www.truthdig.com/articles/why-are-billionaires-like-jeff-bezos-so-obsessed-with-space/

“Billionaires like Elon Musk, Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, among others, are displaying profound enthusiasm in regard to the notion of exploiting space. Their interest appears to go well beyond space tourism for the thrill-seeking one-percenters, even though that’s what gets most of the media attention. As Cathal O’Connell reports for Cosmos Magazine, “Already companies are sending up 3D printers to produce replacement tools in space. Next we could see orbiting factories making products for sale on Earth or automated robots constructing satellites the size of a football field.” If this all seems as exotic as those old 1930s “Flash Gordon” films did to the audiences of the day, recall that the experience of the Apollo 11 moon landing showed that reality has a way of catching up quickly to Hollywood fantasy (it also shows that when sufficient government resources are harnessed to a higher common purpose, good results can happen surprisingly quickly and efficiently). Once the likes of Bezos, Branson, Musk, and others find a way to economically hoist heavy machinery into space (and it is becoming more economic), permanent “off-Earth” manufacturing could become a reality. But this raises an interesting issue: who chooses the technological alternatives that set out our future?