[ExI] Roads in Africa (was Re: People are the same?)

[David Lubkin]

I wrote:

 > At the end of The West Wing, CJ Craig is offered ten billion dollars
 > for one important project of her choose. She chooses roads in
 > Africa. Ten billion dollars would not take us to what you describe.
 > I think that, wisely spent, it would take us space-based industrialization
 > and settlement.

Kelly replied:

>Has any serious economist/scientist proposed this? What are the
>arguments? It sounds interesting and plausible, but I'd like to hear
>more.

Which? Roads in Africa or space-based industrialization?

Roads in Africa is apparently argued in depth by Bjørn Lomborg.
I brought the subject of how to spend $10G to change the world
up on my Google+ page, where Perry Metzger and another friend
have been arguing about it. (Other friend cited Lomborg; Perry
wants to spend the $ on MNT. I might split the money 70/30 between
space and MNT.)

If you meant space, Keith might be the best to point you to a current
analysis. What I posted was my SWAG from ongoing reading about
the topic since well before G. Harry Stine's 1975 The Third Industrial
Revolution and Brian O'Leary's more rigorous 1982 two-volume
Space Industrialization.

Stine, or the popular treatments by Bova (The High Road) or
to a lesser extent Pournelle (A Step Farther Out) are the best starting
points I know of before delving into something more current, detailed,
and rigorous.

Fellow paleos -- while we're talking about space, who was the
extropian back when at Boeing who'd been asked to come up with
all the ways he could think of to go to space cheaper than the shuttle
and told us he'd thought of over a hundred?


-- David.