Hi John — please note that in responding to Shannon’s article, you wrote your response on a computer, which was made with minerals that were “plundered”.

Mining is not necessarily plundering. And nature does not exist for a purpose beyond us. If it has a purpose, we are part of it. The role and intention of all forms of life is to expand. Nature is not in a steady state. We did not come along and disrupt it: nature is continuously disrupting itself. All species are at one point invasive. Species come and go. This is our time.

But I agree with you that we should not “plunder” — we should utilize. I don’t want to see the Moon converted into a graveyard of abandoned mines, nor do I want to see Earth-facing advertisements on it. I want it to be mined responsibly. But mining it will be part of settlement: it must be. Settlement never occurs without resource utilization — aka “exploitation”.

I also don’t want to wait for government to get us to the Moon. As Elon Musk said just the other day, “It may literally be easier to just land Starship on the moon than try to convince NASA that we can.”

Democratic government has no inspiration — it is appeals to the lowest common denominator — and is terrible at staying the course for long duration challenges. For that, one needs other systems. Besides our government, capitalist corporations are what we have (although I would prefer a better economic system).

I — and many others — want us to expand to the Moon and the planets and their moons. Planetary settlement is an important goal and value for me and for many others. But to realize that, we need economic incentives.