Abundant Mars - Episode 1 - Script.md

Intro

Good Morning, Good Afternoon, Good Evening, Good Night or Good flight potential Martians.

• I'm Michael Kubler
• Host of this Podcast
• It's Friday the 27th Jan 2023
• I'll be discussing how we could create an Abundant Centered Society on Mars
• use the technology and culture change here on Earth.

I call it an Abundant Centered Society or ACeS for short

• You might know it as a Post-Scarcity Society
• or an RBE - Resource Based Economy.

For those that don't know it.

Imagine that we have access to at least the necessities of life, for free, to everyone on the planet.

I'll go into more detail later but an Abundance Centered Society is mostly based around:

• Access Abundance,
• Closed Loop Material Flows
• Automation
• and a Systems Perspective.

• What I'm talking about isn't a slightly different form of Capitalism
• nor a different name for Communism
• It's a lot newer and likely different to what you've heard of before

What is Mars like?

Mars is a very hostile environment.

It's further from the Sun, so is much colder with an average temperature of -60°C (-80° Fahrenheit)

• It can get as cold as -128°C.
• It has been detected as warm as 21°C
• being frozen to the bone seems to be the norm.

The Atmosphere is Unbreathable for humans, being 1% (1/100th) as dense as Earth's

• Equivalent to flying at 35 km or over 100,000ft above Earth
• *95% CO2
• O2 is only 0.174%

The gravity is 3.721 m/s² which is only 38% that of Earth's

There's no magnetosphere

• despite getting only 40% as much sunlight as Earth

• It's bombarded with a lot of high energy particles

• it'll give you Cancer 50x faster than on Earth.

• we can use a layer of water or frozen CO2 to protect us from the radiation

• There's also meteorites to worry about

• Means we'll be living underground, in caves or basically inside a bunker

• most people shouldn't spend more than a couple of years on Mars until we can get some really good anti-cancer medical tech.

The dust is toxic and dangerous

The regolith / soil

• 45% silicon dioxide = silicon (Si) and oxygen (O2)

• 16% iron oxide (FeO2)

• Plus Sulphur and plenty of other elements

• Closest approximation on Earth is based on Basalt from Volcanoes

• Also has Perchlorates, from chlorine.

• making it toxic to humans and corrosive, esp when wet

• We'll want lots of good HEPA filters in the habitats, Martian space suits and rovers

It's a fair distance away.

• The shortest distance between Earth and Mars is 56 million km,
• at the furthest we are 401 million km apart.

Means there's a signal delay of between 3mins and 22 mins.

• So no Zoom calls
• You might sending YouTube Shorts or Tik Tok's instead

There's an alignment that happens every 26 months

• 2.1 years
• for best orbital approach.
• Takes 7 months to get there

This means groups sent to Mars can stay there for just a few weeks or are likely stuck there for 2 years

• Have to be self-sufficient for the whole time,
• including the trip there and back.

It'll cost a whole lot of money and resources to get to Mars.

• Space X is doing a great job of developing the Starship.
• We might be able to send a ship to Mars in as little as 3 to 5 years.
• Although sending people will likely take longer. Possibly start of the 2030's
• Even with the reusability aspect of the Starships it's likely the initial costs could be in the order of $1/million a ton.
• although that will hopefully drop way down as it becomes routine
• Elon Musk is talking about a family going for the price of a house

Sending stuff is expensive

• you can't easily get replacements.
• You certainly can't order Uber Eats if you forgot to pack enough sandwiches.

The humans who go there will need to be kept inside:

• radiation shielded,
• insulated, pressurised buildings
• with very minimal trips outside because of the cancerous solar radiation.

This means they'll need to get robots to do most of the work.

• Thankfully there's a fair bit of frozen water in the poles

• you can extract some water from the atmosphere

• possibly even some from Opal in the ground

• We'll need to use a whole lot of heat to melt the ice into water

• even more energy to electrolyse it into Hydrogen and Oxygen.

• The CO2 in the atmosphere is another source of Oxygen and also Carbon.

• Together you can use those elements to make the rocket fuel for sending people back home

• There's already a Moxie working on Mars with the latest rover, proving we can make Oxygen for breathing simply using power and the CO2 in the atmosphere.

There's also plenty of Iron in the regolith... Martian rocks. This makes it relatively easy to make steel as long as you've got enough power and Carbon.

The sun isn't as strong as we'd want, there's no flowing water and the wind isn't strong enough.

• Nuclear power plants will be important.
• Solar PV is still a good backup.
• Solar panels are vulnerable to dust
• need some mechanisms for wiping away the dust.
• But even a windscreen wiper or robot cleaner would work fine.

In summary:

It's a hostile environment on Mars.

• You can't breathe the air
• Freezing cold
• The solar rays are incredibly cancerous
• 38% the gravity of Earth
• Not many viable power source options

There's a lot of challenges about getting to and living on Mars. I'll go into some of them in more detail in other episodes. It's something I'm interested in.

The main point of difference with this Podcast is around the society and economy we would use on Mars.

Here's a scenario for you

We send rockets with robots and equipment to Mars.

Very few have an unscheduled rapid disassembly. Or as you might say... very few "explode".

There's some robots which setup some Solar panels and fuel processing facilities. After 2 years the rockets return.

The OK is given and people get sent. The trip takes 7 months but they make it.
A colony is setup.

We, humanity, start to live on Mars.
The aim is then to setup a self sustaining civilization on Mars. One able to survive without any more space ships coming from Earth, for whatever reasons that might be.

What is the minimum setup required for that to happen?
Not just how many people, but how many closed loop systems?

Maybe it's 10k people, maybe it's 100k people maybe 1 million, I've got no idea at the moment.

• We are going to need to recreate an ecosystem and full technical nutrient cycles.
• Not just processing water.
• Not just processing poop back into plant food back into human food
• But the Carbon cycle, nitrogen cycle, Steel, glass and just about everything.

To be self-sustaining we'll have to make our own detergent and toothpaste. Even cooking oil is going to be hard to grow.

Eventually much further down the line creating our own electronics and rockets.

We won't have access to Petrol, there's no oil in the ground.

So making pharmaceuticals and other things will be hard.

We are going to have to invent new construction and manufacturing, new chemistry and new social customs.

Yet, when I think about people living on Mars I think more like Star Trek than Star Wars.
I think about how people want to be using good quality equipment which they can fix. I think about how people might have to deal with all manner of disasters and problems with trying to live on a hostile planet.

I think about how I'd want to give those people the best chance possible to survive.

Which is why I think about them living in an Abundance Centered Society. One where resources are shared by default and available to everyone. One where the robots are automated instead of people having to manually control them all the time.

Because when I try to imagine us using Capitalism as the primary economic system on Mars, I think about how it'll be fucked up. Great to watch as a dystopian movie, horrible to live in.

When we send stuff to Mars I'm sure different governments and corporations will likely be sending different parts. Maybe one country sends the Nuclear reactors, a company sends the solar panels and a different country sends the habitat modules, hydroponics system and 3D printers.

But once you get there, under Capitalism you'll have to pay for the Oxygen you breath, the food you eat, water you drink, where you live. All the necessities of life and everything else.

But Capitalism doesn't focus on sustainability.

This is highlighted by the way corporations aim to maximise shareholder value and often do it at a cost to the society and environment. As those are usually considered externalities.

The best examples of this are planned and perceived obsolescence.

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Planned and perceived obsolescence

Planned obsolescence is where things are designed to break down. Imagine having to bring multiple kettles and vacuum cleaners per person because over a 2 year stint they are likely to stop working.

Apply that to nearly everything people need and suddenly you need to bring hundreds of tons of equipment more per person.

Instead you should be able to have a kettle that directly heats water into a thermos and so doesn't lose heat.

It should also be both robust and easy to repair The hot water can be shared amongst a group of people.

Now it's from 2 items per person to 1 in 3 people or even less.

Currently the ability to repair things is often not allowed.

It's designed to break down just after the warranty period and be illegal to fix and there's laws in place to make it so.

Checkout most of Cory Doctorow's work for examples of this. Like the article titled "If dishwashers were iPhones"

We aren't going to be able to schedule a technician from Earth to come out and fix the dishwashers because it detected an incompatible dish because we had to make some locally

Perceived obsolescence is where new models are released which make the old one not worth buying or simply no longer supported.

It usually starts with the new shiny model.

But soon enough if you do upgrade you can't get parts for it anymore or maybe it's no longer compatible with newer software.

We'll want to be able to have any hardware and software as open source or at least source available and editable so we can understand and fix any bugs.

Even a bug in a washing machine which makes it use 20% more water than it should could be disastrous on Mars where : extracting, melting, using and treating the water is very energy intensive.

But such an issue would be barely detectable on Earth.

Employment:

• You have to buy things, in order for money to flow through the system.
• Monetary systems require enough people to work
• But that requirement is competing against automation
• That tension and conflict means people fight against things which could automate them out of a job

Yet we are going to need to automate most of the work on Mars because humans won't be able to physically do it.

---

• **Q. How much do you believe that Capitalism is the best economic system we've got?
• Maybe you are only a 2 out of 10, or you are a 6 out of 10?

I'll give a brief history of economic systems:

• Thousands of years ago - Credit (not barter) system.

  • As per David Greber's book Debt: The first 5,000 years
  • Living in a village
  • You knew everyone
  • You did things for and thus had credit with others

• Money invented to deal with armies

  • Had been looting gold from houses
  • Then came taxes

• Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations helped defined what was becoming Capitalism

• As per Yuval Noah Harari's book Homo Deus,

• Capitalism won over Communism because of data and decision making.

  • Communism had central planning.

  • It was hard for some humans in Moscow to work out how many loaves of bread a bakery should bake a week from now, in their own city let alone another city

  • They'd define the amount of flour, salt and everything else to be delivered

  • Slow, low quality info and just not efficient

  • Some other bad ideas, like planting seeds too close together

  • Capitalism had decision making at the nodes. Each Bakery is in charge of working out how much they need.

  • Thus Capitalism seems to have won out

  • Both Capitalism and Communism have lots of downsides

  • Those old systems are starting to systematically fail us

Alternative economic systems

• There's a bunch of alternative economic systems.

• True Cost Economics

• Steady State Economics

• Parecon

• ACeS

• Capitalism doesn't do a good job at dealing with the environment, nor human wellbeing.

True Cost Economics

• puts a Price on nature.
• Understand what the economic impact the ecosystem is.
• Be it a swamp, forest, animal or human happiness

Steady State Economics

• Tries to remove the infinite growth paradigm
• Helps us live within the carrying capacity of the Earth.

Participatory Economics (Parecon)

• There’s an issue with voting for people to represent you, if those politicians are meant to work in their own self interests.
• Instead of representative democracy
• Those most affected by a decision are the ones with the most influence in the decision.
• e.g:
• Poster on your wall
• loud death metal Music
• Should have an abortion?

Some other anarcho-capitalist variations: e.g Copiosis focuses on Net Benefit Rewards (NBR)

ACeS - Access Abundance, Closed loop material flows, Automation, Systems perspective.

---

To reiterate: Sending things to Mars is going to be expensive.

• We have to do things differently.
• We should use the best practices
• We don't have an existing ecosystem on Mars
  • Thus most alternative economic systems aren't suitable

Access Abundance

• Changing the paradigm from private property to access as you need it.
• Instead of having to buy and maintain a vacuum cleaner, drill and everything else you.
  • instead get access to what you need to ensure your house is clean or you can put a hole in the wall
• Access to whatever you need to have a thriving life
• When you aren't actively using those tools others can be using them.
• There's still personal property. I don't want your smelly underwear.
• You also own your own data, Verida style.
  • A crypto solution being worked on for you to own and control your personal data.

Closed Loop Material flows

• Also known as Cradle to Cradle or the Circular Economy
• Tracking the technical and biological nutrients and keeping them in a never ending cycle.

Instead of the current system where we :

1. extract resources from the planet,
2. process them,
3. manufacture a product at the cheapest possible price
4. and use it for a short while
5. throwing it away, usually into a garbage dump.

• Instead we don't throw things into the garbage
• but disassemble them into their component parts and base elements,
• becoming feedstock for the next product.

We also need to create products which are designed to last to reduce the cycle time.

This means you don't have to keep extracting more and more resources, instead you keep reusing the ones you've already got.

An example would be nylon clothes that can be melted down and re-spun or unthreaded and remade into new materials a nearly infinite number of times.

We might also have packaging that's either designed to last or is bio-nutritional and good for the environment.

So we might have signs saying please litter here because it's good for the gardens.

There's a difference with biological and technical nutrients.

Biological nutrients shouldn't be mixed with technical materials. For example we shouldn't be washing paints and solvents down the sink. We shouldn't make disposable diapers out of plastics but instead of things which will turn into compost. Or simply have reusable ones that we wash.

Automation is about using robots and computer systems to do the laborious work. So we humans can focus on what matters. You don't want to wash those diapers by hand do you?

A Systems Perspective is about how you design everything to work together as a whole. Especially working with our ecosystems, social systems and technical systems.

An example is automating checkouts at the supermarket.

• Instead of replacing paid checkout chicks with consumers doing the scanning
• You would instead look at the main aim.
• To get stuff in your fridge and cupboards
• So you'd have a transport system that goes directly into your fridge and cupboards.
• Order something from your phone and it can arrive minutes later
• Now you've completely removed the need for supermarkets, and large sections of the supply chain. Allowing more space for things that matter.

I'll go into a lot more detail later,

• the key thing is that together the application of these concepts means you can
  • easily produce at least the necessities of life, for free, to everyone on the planet.

Now for the bigger cognitive leap.

We can even go a step further and produce such abundant access to resources that humans no longer have a need for money anymore.

For those that don't know what I'm talking about and just had their eyes glaze over, hang on and over the course of the next few podcast episodes

I'll explain some of your most common questions. Like motivation * how Intrinsic motivation, * using autonomy, mastery and purpose, * means we will be more creative * * Automation is a creative endeavour * Thus less need for the extrinsic motivation of money

That said, you might not be the right sort of audience member who's ready to hear about alternative economic systems You might want to be 100% focused on Earth You might not think that building on Mars is worth it and that's fine. The Internet is a vast place and there's plenty of entertainment and distractions for you.

I'm just trying to inspire the 100 or so people who'll design the buildings and systems on Mars

But for those who want to continue listening I've got so many questions and some answers.

What technology and systems are needed for us to thrive on Mars? What major breakthroughs will we need?
What major cultural changes are needed?
Will the people on Mars work better in an Abundance Centred Society, or using Capitalism?

For those who already know of the Zeitgeist Movement, Venus Project or similar organisations which are promoting an RBE or Post-Scarcity Society one question you'll have is

Why haven't we transitioned to an Abundance Centered Society already?

Whilst the movie Zeitgeist Moving Forward has over 25 million views, and the movement started 14 years ago.

We don't even have a working prototype village yet.

I know there's a lot of different reasons why we haven't transitioned. A big one being inertia, another being fear of change. But it's also just really hard to build new things.

I've been partly involved in two decent attempts at a small scale transition. Earth Communities in South Australia and Koto Coop in Finland. The most we've got is a small piece of land and with an old building which had asbestos in it.

Which is why the core theme of this Podcast is this question:

What if the best way of developing the technology and culture we want for an Abundant Centered Society is by developing it for Mars?

I believe that if we try developing some off-grid, ACeS inspired communities here on Earth, we just aren't going to be reimagining everything from first principles. We'll be lazy, partly because we can be.

We'll use old construction techniques, throw stuff in the trash, buy off the shelf parts from the mall and might end up with a car culture dominated city, simply because that's what people are used to.

But on Mars we can't do that.

On Mars we have to track and deal with everything. The Heat The Oxygen The Water The Food The Steel

All the materials used. Ensure that where possible it can all be reused.

The digital tracking and resource engine needed will be far more sophisticated than anything we'd try building on Earth.

We'll be in a completely new and somewhat hostile place but also open to new concepts. Like the Tao of ACeS which are some suggested cultural norms. Such as being responsibility based, aiming to reduce needless violence, waste and stratification towards zero and other ideas which I'll explain in detail in the another Podcast episode.

---

I want to tell you:

• Two stories of someone living on Mars
• But first, technological levels on airlocks and pressurised doors

Airlocks and Pressurised Doors

• We need warm, oxygenated air inside

• Need to keep the freezing cold, thin Mars atmosphere out.

• We'll need to use airlocks to get in/out

• Also, different areas will need to be sealed up in case of an emergency depressurisation.

• e.g meteorite causes a hull breach..

• Or some stupid person shooting a gun. Although ideally we won't have guns on Mars

• Areas could be the hydroponics system, each apartment, etc.. Lots of different sections which can be sealed up.

Here's a few ways we can build such doors and air locks. For simplicity I'll focus on the doors between sections. But you'll get the idea.

1. Air tight but fully manual doors - Think Submarine doors with the big wheel you turn. Completely dumb. Too hard to use, so most likely these will be used improperly and left open 90% of the time, meaning if there's a breech then people will die. Oiling and maintenance needs to be checked and applied manually by humans

2. Mechanical doors which can automatically close in the event of an air pressure venting If they need oiling then there's an oil reservoir which humans can occasionally refill as needed.

3. Electronic doors which can be opened by pressing a switch nearby. Can also have a basic sensor to indicate the oil reservoir is low Can also indicate what the atmosphere on the other side is like, nice coloured lights and digital display

4. Electronic doors which can open automatically when you want to enter/exit (like at a store)

5. Network connected doors which can be remotely closed or opened. e.g via your phone, suit, or remotely if there's an emergency. Can track who uses them Can track how often they are used Can allow robots to use them Alert about any pressure leaks

6. Doors with IoT sensors. Can detect any stresses and fractures in the material. Don't need to be opened to know if they need maintenance

7. Doors that are automatically maintained by robots, no human maintenance required

The idea is to let you understand that we can build things in various ways and with various human upkeep requirements.

To make this feel more real, I want to tell you two stories.

Jeff's - Capitalism Story

His wrist watch beeped and vibrated him awake.

It was 3am on Mars and Jeff had to get up and take another round of Chemo drugs. He groggily opened his eyes, stumbled out of bed and found the next syringe in the set.
The drugs made him vomit, so he sat on the side of the bed with the trash can between his legs and chundered.

He'd been doing this for a week now, every 6 hours.

His throat was bleeding from all the stomach acid. The only thing that seemed to help that he could afford was drinking from a juice box. He drank it to ease the pain and give his stomach something back in return.

He eventually went back to sleep.

8am and his wrist watch awoke him again. This time he had to get ready for work.

He was the primary maintenance tech for the pressure doors to the Mars colony.

There was 50,000 of us living on Mars now.

Like many kids, he'd dreamed of being an astronaut, he'd look up at the stars at night and wonder what it was like out there. Of course that was a very brief phase of his life, but it subtly steered him from being interested in just doors to large doors and eventually pressurised doors and air locks.

After brushing his teeth and going down the hallway to shower at the communal bath house he comes back,

double bags his trash with all the vomit in it and goes through the main hallway airlock by his apartment, having gotten into in his Martian space suit.

Cycling the airlock is both an art and science with trying to interpret the pressure gauges and making sure you weren't venting much atmosphere outside. The big circular wheels you had to spin to open or close the doors were based on submarine doors, but are hard to use in the bulky space suits.

Of course Jeff had perfected the art, using the airlock in a record setting time. Not that anyone knew that, not even Jeff.

The atmosphere outside is effectively non-existent from a breathing perspective, but it was still enough to pickup lots of dust.

The sign for the dumpsite is barely visible and except for the new trash most of the garbage pile has a thick layer of dust.

He wonders if he'll still be alive when they haul the trash off in a space ship back to Earth on an otherwise empty return voyage.

He notices a dust devil whirling off in the distance as he returns. The stormy season is starting. Maybe that'll clear things up a bit.

His suit's internal heater was faltering in the cold morning air. He was getting dangerously cold.

He didn't know it but those trips outside and an undetected crack in the radiation shielding on his habitat module is why he had developed what the doctors colloquially call cosmic cancer.

His unit, was just a cramped room with a bed, toilet and closet for clothes.

As he returned he got a ding. His Oxygen bill arrived.

He's burned through his savings, the chemo drugs cost a month of his wages for every day he takes them, he's behind on his electricity and housing payments.

He won't be able to afford another 2 weeks of treatment which the Doc said was needed. Hopefully just another day or two will be enough.

When he was first blasted into space it was exhilarating.

There was 12 days in complete Zero G as his ship had refuelling payloads and a mass of other Starships collected in a group and waited for the transfer window. A few days every 2.1 years where it's the fastest trip from Earth to Mars.

His ship took off then carefully manoeuvred with 5 others and then tethered together and they all started rotating together, providing an artificial Gravity 15% that of Earths.

It wasn't much, but it helped the toilet flush and other things work. He felt so much energy and power then, everything was so light and there was so many possibilities.

Sure the ship he was on was crammed with 99 other people.

But of course after a 7 month trip, even with the basic steroid meds they gave and use of the gym equipment he'd lost some muscle mass, those first steps on the Red planet were a little wobbly, at 38% Earth's gravity it was still higher gravity than what he'd gotten used to. But after a month he could bound across the open plains with pretty decent 1m leaps. Now, after 18 months on Mars he was so weak he was having issues just walking. His body was riddled with cancer and he had no idea how he'd be able to walk on Earth again.

He realises he's zoned out for a while whilst waiting for 9am to take his meds again. He looks at his standard issue smart watch to see that the battery has died again. It used to last a week and now it doesn't even last a day without needing to be recharged. He can't just install a new battery, the company which built them legally doesn't allow that, and didn't build it for the battery to be replaceable.

They've got a new model out but of course Jeff can't buy one on his wage.

Jeff takes his meds, is sick, drinks a juice box, grabs his oiling gun and tool belt and heads out for another days work.
He's got to inspect 50 doors and airlocks today. Check them for wear and tear, lubricate them and make sure the gauges are correct. Sometimes the mechanisms need oil, sometimes graphite powder. The heavily trafficked doors often need new rubber.

He's got to pull apart a lot of the locking mechanisms no matter just to see if there's wear and tear or not.

He's been doing this for the last 1.5 years he's been on Mars and he's got it down to 5 minutes per door and another 10 minutes for checking the full airlock cycle.

Of course, you can guess what happens to Jeff.

He can't afford the cancer treatment, stops it and dies. He's taken back in the same space ship that takes back the trash.

Whilst there was another person who was trained in doing airlock and door maintenance as a backup task, they were so busy with their primary role that they didn't get enough time to do more than repair things which had already broken.

The company in charge figures they'll just send a replacement person on the next flight.

But before then not just one door, but two break their seals. Some people who were about to start suiting up by the airlock are killed. Most were in ore processing, but there was a higher up official who was also killed in the tragedy.

The company is sued back on Earth and ends up bankrupt.

Jeff's Abundant Centered Society Story

Jeff wakes up naturally at 8:22am and checks his phone.

There's 30,000 people on Mars. Whilst there's only 500 important airlocks to the outside nearly every room has an networked, electronic door which can hold back atmospheric pressure in case of a breach.

With a quick check of his phone Jeff can see the 3 doors which have wear and tear enough worth investigating. There's also 4 doors where the oil wells are needing a top up. Today's rounds will be quick.

The rest of the doors are all in the green. Their internal mechanisms are working as expected and there's no pressure leaks.

Jeff heads over to his fridge where a glass of freshly squeezed Orange juice has just arrived.

The oranges were automatically picked from the Hydroponics system within the last hour As per his programmed instructions, when it was detected that Jeff was awake they were squeezed, put into a glass cup with a silicon lid and sent via a robot through the integrated transport tunnels and to the fridge in his room.

Jeff takes the silicone lid off and puts it on the table, in the area marked for the robot system, which takes it and will have it washed and reused probably millions of times before being eventually being reformed into a new object.

He selects what he wants for breakfast. He chooses to have it in the cafeteria where he can meet up with his fellow Martian engineers and scientists. He wants to talk to them about the coordinated doorway, fire suppression system that he's working on. Allowing fires to be vented out to the Martian atmosphere if needed or to use airlocks to remove the atmosphere. The tricky bit is making sure you don't vent so much you suffocate humans, but do suffocate the fire.

But mostly he wants to talk with Heather. She's nice and the two have been enjoying their time together.

Jeff doesn't have cancer because there's multiple forms of radiation shielding over his apartment. A thick layer of frozen CO2 which has thermal insulation and the ability to be actively cooled to prevent it turning to a gas on the couple of days a year it gets above freezing outside. There's also radiation monitors and the potential to enable active EM systems built into the hull on really heavy radiation days.

His watch lets him know that the battery is low. It only takes him a couple of moments to drain and refill the liquid capsule battery with a fresh charge, allowing the watch will last another 3 weeks or so. The discharged RedFlow battery liquid goes back into the system to be recharged and reused.

He heads over the the cafeteria and pulls out a Martian forged knife and fork from the drawer. Indicating that he's ready to eat.

His meal has already been prepared by the cooking robots and is delivered within a few moments of him sitting down.

His fellow engineers will join him shortly.

Big differences

The juice boxes are gone. Those aren't reusable and were instead thrown away and sent "Away".

Instead Abundant Jeff gets fresh orange juice that squeezed within the last hour and even the glass it's in is washed and reused. His pee and poop are cycled through. Everything is tracked as biological or technical nutrients and reused nearly infinite times.

By default there's access abundance. Abundant Jeff has what he needs, when he needs it. But in a way that everyone else can benefit and use things when he isn't. For example his fridge acts as a storage for various items that he might not use by someone else might need.

Capitalism Jeff has to pay for everything. Capitalism Jeff got to go because his company was selected as the lowest cost option for building and maintaining the system. But they cut corners. They used the most basic doors and got to charge people a maintenance fee. But they gambled with people's lives.

Did you notice I said there was 50k people in the Capitalism version and 30k people in the Abundant version?

I'm assuming pretty much the same about of resources sent, however yes, there will be more robots and better systems sent, so initially less people for the abundant version, but they'll be more effective because the vast majority of tasks will be automated or using systems design, simply not needed. The Capitalism version NEEDS people and for them to work.

That said, I'm sorry if I made your eyes glaze over when talking about an alternative economic system. Or what might sound utopian in some way.

It took me months to fully grok the idea of an Abundance Centered Society, It also took me over a decade of research to get to this point So I don't expect many people to change quickly or fully understand this for a while.

I highly recommend the movie Zeitgeist Moving Forward. Peter Joseph does a great job explaining the issues and the late Jacque Fresco does a great job explaining the RBE, a somewhat modified version of which is what I'm calling ACeS.

I'll leave a link in the show notes.

Recap:

• Getting to Mars is hard
• Living on Mars will be hard
• We need a whole new economic system in order to be able to cope with the unique demands
• An Abundant Centred Society is based on:
  • Access Abundance
  • Closed loop material flows
  • Automation
  • Systems Perspective

------------- Outro -----------

Next episode I'll go into more detail about an Abundance Centered Societies core aspects.

My aim is to be releasing an episode a month until I've covered most of the Abundant Mars proposal I'm currently working on.

I'll then release the Abundant Mars proposal at the end of what I'm considering season 1.

If there's a season 2 of this podcast it'll probably be covering certain aspects in more detail, the latest in news on Mars and other related science developments.

But hopefully also interviews with people . Hopefully you'll want to be a part of the community of people who want to see an Abundance Centered Society in our Solar system, be that on Mars or Earth or preferably both.

If you like the episode then it helps if you can leave an honest review on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify or whatever you are using to listen to this podcast, assuming it has rating or review capabilities.

You can share or download the podcast via abundantmars.com where I've also posted the script I'm reading from and some imagery created using Midjourney AI. You can also ask me any questions. Good ones I'll reply in the next episodes.

Some general facts about me: I am a web developer by day. Working on a SaaS startup. - I have been a part of the Zeitgeist Movement since the first Zday, when I created the South Australian Chapter of The Zeitgeist Movement. - I would have gotten my Private Pilots Licence on my 18th birthday, however it was too windy to fly, so I got it a week or so later. I didn't get my drivers licence for another few months. Which means that for a while I could fly anywhere in Australia, but couldn't drive myself to the airport.

Currently it's just me doing everything and I've got a full time job. Hence it won't be coming out regularly. Instead of adding lots of sponsors I have some recommendations.

If you are interested in increasing the access abundance with others then checkout Sharebay which is run by Colin Turner.

That's sharebay.org and it's a site where you can offer up items and services to be shared. It's free to share and such Free Collaboration Networks can be a good. I offer my stock footage to anyone who's creating content for helping transition to an Abundance Centered Society.

Another Site that Colin Turner runs is the Free World Charter. You can go to freeworldcharter.org or search online and sign the 10 point charter. There's been 60 thousand signatures last I checked.

The Moneyless Society Podcast is doing gangbusters and they are currently working on a doco/movie which includes Richard Wolff and even Noam Chomsky. I recommend you subscribe to them.

The intro music was The Seed by Aurora and outro music was Follow the Sun by Xavier Rudd.

I've used some AI voice overs via fakeyou.com

That's all I've got time for now. But don't forget to subscribe to the Podcast and get notifications for next month's episode!