His ‘cool’ obsession isn’t ICE or icy Greenland. I bet it’s 'getting chilled.'

The whole Greenland thing has nothing to do with Donald Trump’s claimed ‘national security needs,’ since a healthy NATO is exactly what thwarts Russia. And wrecking NATO is Putin’s dream. It also has nothing to do with ‘rare earths’. (Norway has more and far more easily accessed.) Just like Venezuela had almost nothing to do with ‘oil,’ there are other explanations.

 

Is “Greenland!!” possibly a ploy to divert attention? Sure, from Epstein… but also aiming attention to the far-north, when the next manic strike by imperial confederatism will actually be southward? And much closer to Trump’s Florida estate. 

 

Indeed, what the neo-confederate GOP masters may have in mind is something almost identical to a slave-state ambition way back in the 1850s! And an obsession for mafiosi since 1959. 

 

Keep your eye on Cuba.


     == But let’s get back to Greenland! ==

 

One root reason for Trump’s obsession is much simpler - a narcissistic wish to be remembered forever! In this case, for adding to the USA a territory that looks larger (in a Mercator Map illusion) than Africa! And thus out-doing Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase. Whereupon maybe Don replaces Tom on Mt. Rushmore!  

 Hm, maybe. But it’s my job to speculate outside normal narratives. So, Iet’s ask… does the Greenland Thing go deeper than just wrecking NATO for Vlad? And Trump wanting to be remembered for some grandiose, map-grabby-grabby? 

 

After all, why should a solipsist care how others remember him, after he is gone? 

 

Or else… will he be ‘gone?’ 

 

Remember that his White House is infested with tech-weirdos, from his VP (Peter Thiel’s hand puppet) to jibbering, would-be Machiavellis like Mencius Moldbug and Stephen Miller, to whoever Elon planted in the staff. And one thing that’s guaranteed to have been broached to the Don is… cryonics. 

 

 

   == The ultimate self-pardon and escape plan! ==

 

Cryonics? We’re talking about body-freezing after death (or nowadays just the head, unless you pay way-extra), with the aim of being revived – or upload-downloaded into a fresh young body – in some future era. 

 

Can you honestly tell me that you doubt Trump would leap at signing a contract, once they tell him about it?

But… how to ensure that revival? Why will future-folks, in that 23^rd Century, scientifically-advanced era, go to the effort of repairing all your cells and giving you a great young bod, even if they have the tools and means? 

 

One thing is certain. They won’t do it in fondly-recollected gratitude for goodness or beneficence; not in this case!  Those aren’t Trump’s calls to fame.

 

Most current cryonics customers are at least somewhat rich. I know some who have assured me (perhaps a little frantically) that their investment accounts – funds carefully not bequested to living heirs – will more than pay for revival, someday! A way for rich guys to “take it with me!”  Maybe this explains why Trump needs to ‘acquire’ more and more and more wealth by any means, no matter how filthy… in order to make that mountainous bribe convincing enough to cross centuries!  

 

As if future folk could not simply shrug and say “that’s not how we roll here, great-grampa! We’re adjusting the ledgers, now, and applying that capital to something useful.” 

 

Trying to prevent that -- and force a stable, money-based standard of revival -- may be among the top reasons why Trump… along with some of the other New Lords and Olde Families… are engaging in their current worldwide putsch! A full-court press to end the Enlightenment Experiment and re-establish dismal feudalism. Because a feudal society can ensure the continuity and power of inherited or self-bequeathed wealth. In fact, that’s why feudalism dominated for 6000 years, on five continents!

 

But then, instead of mere lucre, let’s go back to fame! Trump’s passion - for all his life - would naturally extend into purported afterlife! 

 

“They’re sure to revive someone who was as interesting as me!  Or who had such great ratings!” 

 

Fame has always been called a version of immortality, right? And can anyone doubt that the same theme pounds through every fiber of Trump’s being? 

 

And what better way to ensure epic fame than doubling (Tripling? Mercator sextupling?) the size of the United States?

 

    == A modest proposal ==

Which brings us to a weird suggestion. (Weird? From me? Never!) And mind you, I am not actually doing this thing that I’m about to discuss, only speculating about it, as if in a sci fi story. Indeed, I might write it, with all the names changed! 

 

Still, it’s a transactional offer that seems straight off the pages of The Art of the Deal. One that might compel something that we want… without violating any current law, whatsoever. And if I’m right about this motive – consistent with the techie-incel brats who now infest the White House – then it goes straight to the core of Donald Trump’s greatest wish and goal.

“Dear Mister T, have we got a deal for you.

 

“First, if the core supposition of this missive is wrong, then all of what follows is just moot speculation, worthy of a sci-fi flick. 

 

“But given the nature of the men who have been planted around you, it’s a pretty good guess that you have by now been persuaded to make arrangements. For your cadaver – after death – to be cryonically stored, which is by law merely a process for disposing of human remains, like burial or cremation. 

 

“To be perfectly clear – none of us intend in any way to hasten that demise! Indeed, we vow to prevent or delay it, if ever any of us find ourselves in a position to influence such matters.

 

“But let’s assume that an end to this life/incarnation does come (it happens to us all) and that – clutching both a death certificate and a cryonics contract – your body commences a voyage of chilled storage and delayed delivery to some future time. 

 

“In that case, it is inevitable that we or others will discover the facts about that body-disposal arrangement. And hence, we now propose a deal! A non-disclosure agreement or NDA (your favorite kind of agreement), under which we’ll refrain from openly revealing the location of your remains, or in any way acting on that knowledge, providing only that the following terms have been fulfilled –

 

“-- that you have resigned from the office of U.S. president by May 2026… and that you take JD Vance with you. And that whatever foundation or trust you set up, to pay for eventual revival, shall preserve capital for that purpose (what remains after lawsuit settlements), but use the interest in service of what future generations will assess to be good causes.

 

“Again, this is not, in any way, shape or form, a threat to you, as a living human being. Indeed, each of us vows to protect your life and health from harm, if ever any such power presents itself. We are assuming that neither foul play nor self-harm - nor some crazy 'early freezing' - were involved. We expect that you intend to eke out every minute of this life that your health and modern medicine can provide, as do nearly all of us. The topic here is only what happens after 'natural causes.' And whether you intend - as thousands do - for your remains to be entrusted to specialists who have made promises.

 

“Furthermore, we are assured that revealing the location and condition of a corpse is routinely done in a vast majority of burials and/or cremations today. There is no rational reason that yours – perhaps in a secure and guarded refrigeration crypt – should not be a matter of public record and/or historical/archaeological or even medical interest. Some folks may even visit yours as a shrine! Whatever others decide to do with the information is not something we care to even imagine. But if your intention is to keep the actual location secret – even (or especially) from your still-living heirs - then our offer stands. With plenty of time and incentives and out of sheer curiosity, we’ll find it. At which point, the NDA will kick in!

 

“That’s it. A mutually beneficial deal, taken from your book and your business dealings and personal practices. And we who are involved in offering you this deal will feel honor-bound to keep it. And you know that many people do believe in honor. Even if you never did. And we promise to urge others to keep the same deal. Assuming that you keep your side of the bargain.

 

“And now we’re done… except to remind you that crushing the dreams of a vast majority of human beings on this planet may not be the best way to ensure a safe and successful arrival at your desired, promised land of personal immortality.”

 

                == Take the deal, Don ==

Is this entire scenario likely? 

 

I could not possibly venture what the betting odds might be. Only that it is entirely consistent with the openly-stated thinking of the worm-tongues who now surround an impressionable old dementian. And we’re doing him a favor by getting him to reconsider and reexamine the ice-cold-voyage scenario that those Trump-whisperers have been offering him. 

 

There are implications that Moldbug (Yarvin) or Miller or Vance won’t have mentioned. And maybe Donald Trump ought to ponder them.* And consider perhaps sacrificing a little near-term power in exchange for future immortality. And then – through his early absence – allowing us to resume scientific  and social progress that are prerequisites for the kind of future on which his plans depend.

=======

*Or the South Park guys.

  

Marvels of Space - My "Tank Farm" story may be coming true in several ways!

It's been a while since my last science update. For obvious reasons - as the very notion of a science-propelled Enlightenment civilization is under attack - I've focused on offering the good-guys badly need fresh ideas.  

But okay, let's turn away from all that and focus on SPA-A-A-ACE!

== It's noteworthy when reality imitates scifi... especially mine! ==

Gosh, can you believe there are two ways that an older story of mine now seems predictive and may be coming true?

First, I have a lot of respect for Gwynn Shotwell's SpaceX team. So, perhaps they'll solve the problems preventing their 2nd stage 'starship' from achieving its ambitious goals of recovery and re-use (R&R) and then orbital refueling. Still, I've seen no talk of a backup plan, in case those milestones take a long time. 

But look. We already know that the massive Ship can reach orbit and deliver payload. So, even without R&R, is there an intermediate plateau of utility from there?
 
Backtrack to 1984. I was one of the 'space cadet' post-docs working for UCSD's California Space Institute, where we studied proposed techs beyond NASA's then-current purview. (A habit I continued later as advisor to NIAC: NASA Innovative & Advanced Concepts program.) One of the things we explored at CalSpace was how to utilize in-orbit the Space Shuttle's External Tank. 

Saving and using the shuttle tanks would have cost nothing - zero added propellant - to take it the final bit into LEO orbit! That's 1500 cubic meters of sealed aluminum tanks plus tons of leftover hydrogen, oxygen and water, all of which could have been of great use in future years! Just two ETs could have provided more useful volume than all of today's current ISS station. Or any of the somewhat feeble proposed replacements.
 

I explored this possibility - plus some amazing uses of Joe Carroll's space-tether concepts (both gravity-stabilized and electrodynamic) - in those reports... 

...and via a sci fi story that ran in Analog called "Tank Farm Dynamo"! Also found in my anthology The River of Time.

And yes, storing ETs in a parking orbit would have left us - even now, decades later - with absolute gobs of useful things out there. Alas, for years, our reports mouldered. And then Shuttl;e was canceled. A sad might-have-been.

Already some of you see where I am going with this. As it happens, the SPACEX "starship" bears remarkable similarities to the situation with shuttle External Tanks! 

      

Suppose Starship's problematic R&R utility gets delayed a while, but you still want to use its now-proved ability to haul many tons into orbit? And even more tons, still, if you don't apply expensive/heavy shielding and fuel for re-entry & landing? 

      

What if you STORE those single-use ships in a parking/collection orbit for later recycling into habitats or building material, or even just for the oxygen and water? That orbital stash becomes a piggybank for later. An investment in future wealth. One that costs almost nothing.

Might one of the new commercial station projects hanker for one? Heck, maybe the Chinese?
 
Sure, starship uses methane+oxygen, not hydrogen+oxygen. So add a step or two and you get oxygen + water plus... carbon fiber? Anyway, the volumes of useful tankage are very similar to the old ET. So... so our old CalSpace reports are sitting right here, next to me. And would seem worth at least a look.

 == But we're not done with the Tank Farm tale! ==

Well zowee. At first when folks saw that this New Zealand startup was proposing to use no-fuel propulsion to\hat leverages against Earth’s magnetic field, and thus nudge valuable satellites in orbit, a couple of them wrote to me: “Is this your Tank Farm Dynamo story brought to life?”  

Well, the concept does overlap!  On closer inspection, it seems they use superconducting coils, rather than the super-long linear tethers that I envisioned in my story, based on early tether work by Robert Forward and Joseph Carroll. And I thought… okay, not that much overlap... 

 

...till I thought again. And yeah. It’s the same idea… maybe done better. Like comparing Oersted's line-wire, whose current twitched a compass needle, to Faraday's later coil that led to electromagnets and... dynamos! 

 Jeepers why didn't I think of that? Is it possible maybe I helped them think of it?

 

== Something else I am engaged in ==

 

But then, is there a place in space for amateurs? Here’s another thing I’m involved in.

Drive a miniature lunar rover on the moon using your smartphone! Up to 24,000 people globally will be able to participate. It's our turn!   (I’m an advisor to this startup.)  See: www.LimitlessTelepresence.com Get in on the ground floor! (So to speak.)

== More down to Earth space stuff ==

One of the biggest space-related news items is the endeavor announced by Wendy and Eric Schmidt, to privately fund four new, very ambitious telescope systems, reviving the old-time funding source for instrumental astronomy. One of them would be a deep-orbiting space telescope much bigger than Hubble. Plus array-style optical and radio telescopes in the southwest USA.  Amazing and terrific stuff and vastly more important than the silly “Artemis” rush to plant symbolic footprints on a useless plain of poison dust.

But sure, while I have long frowned at the utter-waste of the USA's frippery "Artemis" mission, I do hope that everything goes safely and well and that they will find the 'rich resources' that carnival barkers are now selling. For which there's no evidence at all, except a little ice. (Helium Three? Titanium? Jeepers have I got a bridge to sell you.)

Still...

The region where NASA is planning to land the first astronauts on the Moon in over half a century, supposedly a mere two years from now is the Moon’s largest crater, the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin, formed roughly 4.3 billion years ago. It could hold clues about the Moon’s evolution and its interior structure.    

       

“Missions will be landing on the down-range rim of the basin — the best place to study the largest and oldest impact basin on the Moon, where most of the ejecta, material from deep within the Moon’s interior, should be piled up,” 

       

It is also where satellites have detected possible signs of water ice.  Though to be clear, a couple of asteroids could offer more water – and vastly more of every other resource – than can be accessed from the Moon in any near time frame, with known technology.

Over the years, astronomers have spotted holes and large pits dotting Venus’ surface, suggesting the existence of lava tubes. Venusian lava tubes, may be especially large and arrayed along volcano rims. 

And yes, we should robotically explore some  and establish some fair-use precedents for the lava tubes on the Moon, since they may be some of the most extensive subsurface cavities in the solar system. 

...though nowhere near as valuable as asteroids.

== Space Misc! ===

Our closest exoplanet system gets more interesting with the possible discovery of a gas giant within Alpha Centauri A's habitable zone. Also, it's a fairly stable system, not at all like the scary fictional Trisolaran system.

See NIAC's 2025 Phase I and Phase II selections.

And fight for an enlightenment civilization that respects rights and honesty and decency... and facts and science.

Minor proposals - even crackpot! - for a Newer Deal

 My ten part series on a Newer Deal for Americans and the world offered 35+ proposals for the Democrats to include in their electioneering agenda, at least a dozen of which could be enacted even while Trump remains in the Oval Office, and others he might veto at tremendous political cost to himself and to his party.

Some of you might deem these proposals -- listed all together in Part 3 and broken down in detail, in parts 4-10 -- as giving short-shrift to many of the top items wished-for by the U.S. liberal-and-moderate majority, and that's true! Relegating things like monopoly-breakup and housing to the end, along with protecting women's sovereignty over their own bodies...

...not because these are unimportant! But because it will take a lot of political process and negotiation capital to get them. And - as we learned from the failures of Clinton and Obama to legislate... and the successes of Biden/Pelosi/Sanders - you gain that kind of political capital by passing the more-easily passable things first!

Anyway, negotiating with the undead zombie that is today's Republican Party, whose top levels are utterly foreign suborned and likely blackmailed, is - by their own choice under the Dennis Hastert Rule - completely forbidden. 

We'll have to fix Democracy's structure first! Shatter that subornation and lure decent, honorable, grownup conservatives back to the bargaining table, before anything lke 'negotiation' can ever return to American public life.

See a pathway to accomplish all of that here.

       == I've tried this before ==

The IGUS concept and the Subpoena Gambit are among the most potentially transformative of my earlier “political suggestions.” [1]   In fact, way back in 2006, as it was beginning to seem possible, even hopeful, that the benighted Bush Era might draw to a close, I offered a list of proposals, shorter and less comprehensive than the Newer Deal, though several would have helped to prevent our present situation! If passed when Democrats had - (and squandered on failed Hail Mary passes) - brief power in 2009.

Then, in 2019, I did it again! This time in a whole nonfiction book!  POLEMICAL JUDO: Memes for Our Political Knife-fight: A Brazen Guide for Sane Americans To Bypass Trench Warfare And Win Our Life or Death Struggle  for Civilization.   

Much more extensive, Polemical Judo included detailed methods for getting around John Roberts's rationalizations to support gerrymandering, for example. And why folks should overcome their reflexive rejection of blackmail's likely role in the DC quagmire, when it's been the core method used by Russian security services, since the era of the czars.

I was pleased to see that in 2021, the Democratic Party leadership under Biden-Pelosi-Schumer-Sanders-Warren chose not to repeat the Clinton/Obama mistakes and pressed hard to pass a series of excellent bills in that miracle year... though they addressed not a single one of the structural flaws that I had discussed in my book... nor any of the weaknesses that Donald Trump later exploited, in his current all-out attack upon the American Experiment.

Okay, I've now tried again, in 2025-2026, with the Newer Deal list.  And I expect the same response. Crickets from Democrats, many of whom are smart, decent, honest, modernist grownups who want the American Experiment to thrive and move forward, continuing its mostly (not entirely) beneficent leadership of the world. Alas, they all share the same mania. 

"If it's not invented here, then don't bother."

Still, I'm a completist. So let let me indulge my wish fantasies one more time!  What follows - cribbed from Polemical Judo - is a wish-list of minor or lesser items that never made it into the Newer Deal list. And yet, they are still pertinent! 

Indeed, if you'll just pass a couple of them, you will build your political capital, instead of frittering it away.

              == My Newer Deal Crackpot Addenda! ==

 Let's start with...

Minor but significant stuff.

First a few items that’d be worthwhile, even if not huge or sexy.

– At some point when gas prices are low, take an advantage of an opportunity to switch from a cents-per-gallon tax to a percentage tax.

– Every other major country has replaced its currency by now, with important positive effects for honest taxpayers. The rationalizations offered by opponents – who claim the greenback is forever special, different, and sacred – are getting ridiculous and awfully long in the tooth. Just think of all the drug lords and Mafiosi who would be discomfited. And the American greenback is now way too easily counterfeited and filthy.[2]

– Tell all Americans to update their computer security packages, because a bill is about to refine data tort law, making responsibility similar to public health codes. If you neglect hygiene and your device becomes a hijacked ‘botnet” source of harm to others, then you’ll share in paying the civil damages that result. Oh, yeah. That actually is one of the Newer Deal items, already.

-- Folks occasionally talk about invoking the Constitution’s 25th Amendment, which sets up procedures to neutralize an incapacitated president. But most dismiss the notion, because no matter how off the rails Donald Trump tumbles, he stocked his cabinet  this round with utter 'loyalists' who give whole new meaning to that word. (I believe he ensures that loyalty in a special, mobster way; but no one seems to want to ponder that.) Alas those who shrug off the 25th, thinking that only the cabinet may invoke it, are too lazy to actually read the amendment, which allows a route to entirely bypass the cabinet.

I know that at least one prominent Democrat did read the 25th, way back in 2019 during Trump's first term. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) - among the smartest House members - proposed a bill to create the Oversight Commission on Presidential Capacity to fill a role that is actually outlined (or at least sketched-in) by the 25th. Raskin wanted to provide a specific ‘body’ comprised of 10 physicians, psychiatrists and retired former leaders – like presidents and vice presidents – chosen by House and Senate leaders of both parties. 

Note that I alluded to this in the Newer Deal's proposal for a neutral Executive Branch Manager. Too soon?  Seriously?

Some more-crackpot suggestions.

All right, we’re about to tip into notions that are more than just “unusual” or “judo.” These crackpot ideas may yet have their day, though. [3]  And I want to be on record proposing them.

– Provide basic firearms safety training in all high schools, along with Driver's Ed and comprehensive sex education. Think about it! Isn’t this one of those positive-sum, win-win scenarios? It lets us judo past the NRA’s trenches by offering one thing they claim that they want - the one item on their agenda that might actually help reduce gun violence![4]  While forcing them into a deal that would also help reduce teen pregnancy, STD and abortion rates by empowering girls and women with knowledge.5] 

Think it through. Better yet, ponder how MAGAs will react when they think it through! Every kid from a liberal family, every feminist girl, every minority kid in every city getting the gun safety (and use) training that the NRA claims it wants all kids to have! And every son or daughter of the NRA exposed to concepts of liability, insurance and every other parallel with owning and using motor vehicles.

A head scratcher? You don't yet see how it's a win-win? Well, just let it sit there, among less busy neurons at a corner of the mind. It'll comce to you how it could be a win-win-win, outmaneuvering the nuts.

– As of mid 2019, Bernie Sanders came aboard supporting this proposal that long predates even my own interest[6]… a small tax on financial transactions. As low as 0.01%, it would not even be noticed by average human investors! But it could stymie the AI programs at major Wall Street firms that make tens of billions of trades a day. Advantages include a way to limit volatility, plus helping to control a “churn-hungry” financial caste. But I have a bigger reason: it could diminish the likelihood of those cryptic, unscrupulous Wall-Street firms unleashing artificial intelligences that are by design voracious, parasitical, predatory, amoral and utterly insatiable potential “skynets.”[7]  

And yes, I wrote that in 2019.

– Ban interlocking corporate directorates among a narrow CEO caste of golf buddies voting each other vast compensation packages. The Greatest Generation wisely forbade this conniving incest. They also banned massive stock buybacks. They were smarter than we are. And yes, they also adored Jonas Salk.

– Give capital gains tax breaks only to long held and voted stock. Or else... (more radical, but justifiable) ... only to new issues that actually raise new money for companies. Since older equity does nothing to raise investment capital for the company. (Ponder that! Older equities base their value on the existing capital and dividends of the company and have absolutely no basis for tax preference, while NEW issuances might merit encouragement by taxpayers.)

– Revise "corporate democracy" to reward involved, long-term actual human stockholders and purchasers of new issues, while limiting the power of passive proxies and shell companies, especially those shells who don’t devolve within one layer to real human owners.

– Nukes. More mind-blowing still, even though techno-liberals like Stewart Brand have pushed it for years, and it might help reduce carbon emissions significantly… consider making new allies and crucial support for environmental action in exchange for accelerated development of two or three of the truly impressive new types of ultra fail-safe nuclear power plants?

– Establish an Institute for Verification and Re-test. One problem with modern science – it emphasizes new discoveries over the verification process upon which the whole thing relies. Postdocs and professors don’t find it sexy to merely check out or replicate a recent finding, nor does that lead to prizes and fame. Necessary for the peer review process to work, we need some way to encourage tests to reproduce results. A possible role – if properly set up – for burgeoning networks of amateur scientists?

== Even more crackpotty! ==

Okay, you were warned… have nearby several grains of salt…

– Revive air travel the simplest way. 

   One sign of our spiral toward levels of class war last seen in 1789 France is how the rich are abandoning us to our fates in deteriorating airports and airlines, fleeing from First Class into charters and corporate and private jets, thus avoiding all the frisking and hassles. History is clear. When elites abandon a mode of transportation (e.g., railroads and ocean liners in the 1950s) that utility starts to die! Moreover, the gulf between the mighty and little people widens to unsupportable levels. (See David Rothkopf’s book Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making.) 

This can be solved with some decent agitation, followed by the right taxes and fees so that private and corporate air at least pay their own way, and ideally subsidize the airways.

 Metaphorically speaking – and so far I am still talking only in metaphors! – we must lift torches and pitchforks, picket the private, no-TSA airports and chase those elites and moguls "Back into First Class, where you belong! Sit there with your tablecloths and mimosas and champagne. But fly with us!  Just you watch how quickly air travel (including TSA) improves for everyone.

                     == The crack-pottiest! ==

– Ban the undergraduate business major. Let them go for an MBA after four years spent creating or delivering goods and services. You think I’m joking? Ten years later, you’ll think we entered a Golden Age. (The Chinese leadership consists almost entirely of managers who were promoted from their start as engineers. Consider what happened to Boeing, when they stopped doing that.)

– Stop letting taxpayer-subsidized companies "shout" into space. All right, this one sounds super-crackpot. But as we speak, private companies using dishes that were paid for by the U.S. taxpayer are beaming commercial stunt messages – for everything from snack food companies to Craig’s List – into outer space – supposedly to sell music videos and garage sale items to aliens! 

Sure, it sounds harmless, and it might be. But that’s the problem, we just don’t know. And at minimum it violates laws against amateur interference in diplomacy with foreign powers.[8]

And while we're at it... will at least some of you finally grow up about UFOs?

...and finally...

– Revive rural ghost towns as slightly-subsidized havens of all kinds. Seriously, does anyone look for win-win solutions, anymore? There are rural villages dying all across America. Luring giant vulture companies to come and snap up vast tracts in a crushing steamroller of restored peonage that calls to mind the 1932 Dust Bowl, leaving Karl Marx rubbing his hands, in expectant glee for what comes next.

Sure some of those small towns are showing leadership and verve, adapting, experimenting and thriving with new models… and we must help those, generously! Yay that. Incentives might encourage folks in - say - four small, dying towns to ingather and consolidate with the one that has real prospects.

Only then what to do with those abandoned other three? Where local farmers workers and merchants just couldn’t quite make a profit? Once we’ve helped those folks get profitable on their own feet in a newly-consolidated, vibrant town -- perhaps slightly-subsidizing mom n' pop stores that aren't Walmart? What to do with the other three? 

Are there modern problems that might be helped by offering the bought-out or abandoned ones to certain groups across America? Offering those groups a completely voluntary, subsidized life in fresh air, gardening or farming, or running businesses that (with modest subsidies) need merely to break even, not make a profit?

You can guess I am talking about groups who are already receiving aid (or expensive care-taking or else restricted movement) far more expensively in cities or shelters or minimum security facilities. In a village, taxpayers need only underwrite a marginal bit, for the garden-farm or restaurant or fix-it shop to crest at viability. 

If you can’t imagine half a dozen potential uses and constituencies in just a minute or two – from purely voluntary homeless redoubts to safe places for refugees to do their paperwork, to… well… just try again. There are dozens.

Okay, there are lots of these items that may seem marginal or crackpot today… like votes for women, back 120 years ago. Meanwhile,  I hope one thing above all. That sane American voters – and in other nations allied for the future – will give us the power to wrangle over these things, and enact a lot of them.

---

[1] Political suggestions from 2006 and earlier. http://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/suggestions4congress.html

 

[2] The 2019 “Ig Nobel” Economics Prize was awarded for testing which country’s paper money was "best at transmitting dangerous bacteria" (the Romanian Leu won, but the US Dollar was a finalist).

 

[3] A blog on crackpot notions! http://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/crackpotsuggestions.html

 

[4] Envision every elementary school kid encouraged to tattle on Uncle Bob’s unsafe and unsecure shed fulla bazookas, while praising dad for the responsible rifle safe. Oh, the NRA would split over this! Then imagine red skulls imploding as liberal and minority kids learn weapon basics.

 

[5] Abortion rates decline more in blue than in restrictive red states, why? All studies attribute it to sex education. https://www.npr.org/2019/09/18/761753866/u-s-abortion-rate-continues-long-term-decline

 

[6] Transaction taxes might save us all. http://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/transactionfee.html

 

[7] The amount of money in the top three investment funds alone is now equal to the GDP of China.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-asset-management-in-decline/

http://statisticstimes.com/economy/projected-world-gdp-ranking.php

https://www.pionline.com/article/20190221/ONLINE/190229952/fidelity-sees-record-revenue-operating-income-despite-dip-in-aum

 

[8] See my evaluation of the cult phenomenon called METI or "Message to Extraterrestrial Intelligence." http://www.davidbrin.com/meti.html