By John M Clarkson BA(Hons) MSc
Space based Solar Power is closer than we currently think. The time line is shortening as payload costs tumble with the development of privately owned rocket companies. The Chinese have set up a city to develop Space based Solar Power in order to solve their coal shortage, especially important after the Philippines decided no longer to sell them coal. Who will win the race? The West or the East? Finances are at the heart of this problem as much as cheaper rocket payload costs.
Energy from Outer Space – A Course about Space Solar Power – available now on Udemy at a reduced price
I’ve created a course on the subject of SSP which I hope people will take and enjoy. It’s available at by clicking here: SPACE SOLAR POWER COURSE
We’ve looked already at Space based solar Power in my Blogs here on the LUF, however, by writing a course on it, and working on my film (still in production) called ‘Valery Danko Discovers Energy from Space’ we inadvertently stumbled across another interesting subject: financing.
It’s not covered much in our course, though we do look at some interesting versions of it. However, what we found was even more interesting. It’s scandalous and goes to the very heart of the future of planet earth.
The Domesticated Human Economy
The world you see is not as we are told it is. We are told that we should run businesses and pay our tax. That the tax is collected and used by the representative (NB.) governments ‘we the people’ elect. This applies to any nation that actually has liberal-democracy in a sense of free and fair elections. That the system is that government shouldn’t interfere with the economy too much. That all will be well as long as we allow the ‘hidden hand’ to take action.
We are also made aware of, but never get any sense that anyone ever listened to him, Adam Smith, who in 1776 criticised ‘rent economies’. That is where unproductive assets that don’t employ people or generate products that help the masses, but simply suck money from them become a dominant means to make wealth. This would include land owned by the Duke of Westminster (by right of birth or inheritance) or buildings bought by the Reuben brothers to rent to the H M Inland Revenue (the tax collecting authority in the United Kingdom).
These warnings are ignored because our current economy rewards and supports asset owners, rent economies, and dissuades invention and investment in manufacturing. Space X, Virgin Space and Blue Origin are exceptions not the rule. Most banks merely shunt money around in a circle, printing money automatically as they loan it to businesses and people. Many people are buying assets such as homes. They do invest in companies, but not nearly enough to stimulate economic growth. Instead they are asset based rent economy supporters and that means land and property is valued above creating space technology companies every time!
When economies fail, those who are unable to pay back are left homeless, or lose their business properties, and soon the banks own all the assets. This is exactly what we ought not to be allowing, because it is a ‘rent economy’.
The banks always win even if they go bust. In 2008/9 RBS was bought out by 50% or more by the UK government using a 19th century law. Some banks seem to have gone out of their way to suck up defenceless asset owners businesses, those not rich enough to fight back. This involved forgery of documents, fraud and re-writing telephone transcript records!
What has this all to do with the Living Universe Foundation? It’s vital to understand the kind of economic system we live in order to know if anything will ever happen over the development of space technology.
What is the solution to a mature rent economy? Well that’s called Georgism, and is the idea that all taxes should be replaced by a land tax. With some extra rules such as rent caps and mortgage caps, and using the single land tax to pay everyone a Universal Basic Income, we can build a better future. With the growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robots Elon Musk even said that this will be a necessity. Well, the only way to fund it will be via Georgism. The richest people will resist this as it hits them the hardest, especially the entrenched elites e.g. Prince Charles.
In bringing such a system into place one would immediately stop the millions that never flow into the tax system because they are sent abroad to tax havens. This tax which is currently lost is vital to the future. We don’t know exact numbers but it could be billions of pounds sterling per year (we’ll never know) to provide things like free health care for all (as in the UK) without privatisation of healthcare (which sadly has been introduced into the UK from the USA at huge costs – namely 150,000 dead from poor covid management – the blame can be firmly placed at Jeremy Hunt MP and his Conservative Party’s door). The sad fact is the major thing you’ll pay in your life is tax, because the asset owning classes have made sure they never will. Why is that?
The Wild Banker Warlord Economy
Why won’t we ‘ever know?’ And why will the asset class holding elite make sure you’ll always pay your taxes and they never will? Surely everything is recorded? Incorrect. The City of London is a Secrecy Jurisdiction. This means nothing can be reported. Occasionally though the secrecy is lost e.g. Pandora Papers, the Panama Papers etc. This reveals a spiders web of disgusting malevolence by the elites – who by the way hardly ever pay tax – and the intrigue that occurs in the City of London.
The City of London is the hub of the problem, which is also behind the destruction of our planet, using its many former tax havens to disguise flows of money around the world merely to invest in illegal land clearances, deforestation, child slave labour mining (e.g. cobalt, lithium etc used to make batteries) and oil, gas and coal extraction. There are crime syndicates and mafia involved, along with drug cartels spanning the world! There’s a whole host of Eastern European and poorer nations prostitution and vice rackets attached. Every nasty thing you can think of from arms sales to paedophiles (remember Jeffry Epstein) is involved in this scurrilous tale of immorality, condoned by the law makers in the UK for centuries!
In my film: ‘The World Stripped Bare’ we’ll take an saucy and entertaining look at this phenomena.
The World Stripped Bare Trailer (2021)
How should we classify what is legal in the financial world and how this affects the growth of humans into space? These are fundamental questions to explore. Here I’ll provide a few ideas.
Laws do not make things moral or right. Everyone has heard the ‘law is an ass’. The US broke away from Britain’s laws not because of the Tea tax that involved the East India Company in Boston Harbour. Actually the reason was far better than that! It was because the founding fathers wanted an empire. The Act of Proclamation 1762 prohibited expansion west to prevent another war with France or further wars with Spain, and to some extent a feeling that the native tribes would be too difficult to deal with! The British government were simply not prepared to risk lives and resources in western expansion having fought a nasty war with France to protect its citizens in the 13 colonies of America. That’s why they needed a tax contribution, which was by the way, very small compared with the taxes that the Founding Fathers applied to pay for the cruel war against the British (where unlike in the film Patriot starring Mel Gibson most of the major atrocities were carried out by the US forces e.g. the long march into Canada where women and children died in the snow. This led to the formation of Canada and an anti- US sentiment by Canadians which came to a head in the War of 1812, when the US tried to invade Canada and got a bloody nose followed by 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue being burned down by British Admirals. The US President had to leave in a hurry, and the British commanders ate the President’s dinner and set the slaves free – the British having already outlawed slavery to some extent.)
In our film we examine how tradition and laws or lack of them have allowed the City of London – the Square Mile – to become a centre of a vast financial empire that is largely behind much of the environmental problems we are suffering now. This leads me onto the fact that is even more concerning.
Will the Warlord’s invest in SSP?
Will the City of London and the banks in the USA they are connected to have what it takes to invest in a long-term space technologies that appear to have no value right now? That’s where most people will say that is where government must step in. However, each time a disaster happens we know that governments essentially lose the ability to keep borrowing money from the future.
One chink of light is that bankers know all about commodities. They make good business from them. Think about the recent pandemic and the inflation it has caused as governments pumped money in and closed down oil, gas and coal production, only to find out that commodity traders have obtained (been paid by the production companies) to hold these vital energy stocks. Now they are required they release them to make a profit on the fact they rented out storage facilities and ships to hold them over the pandemic period. How much better would it be to have Space based Solar Power on tap than rely on dodgy commodity traders? It’s looking like a feasible investment with a 4:1 EROIE.
There is however, a flaw in this argument. Increasingly commodity traders are diversifying into buying up land, mainly rainforests to obtain Rare Earth Elements. These REEs are not rare, but spread out. Vast amounts of land have to be accessed. That means major deforestation in places rich in them e.g. D R Congo. Here they get cheap slave labour. Why then invest in somewhere expensive to make energy, when one can wreck the planet Earth with lithium and cobalt pollution to make a Renewable Electric Energy Economy? (see my course on the Future of Energy.) What will dissuade them when they are short-term greedy thinkers who want their money back as soon as possible?
[On a side note it is interesting to know that the assassination of JFK may have been connected to the death of the UN ambassador and his role in the Katanga War. This was a place south of the DR Congo rich in minerals, particularly REEs and the British financial sector and Belgian government were highly placed to take advantage of them if they could make sure that their men in power won that war. It appears that this and the fact that JFK tried to tax the Eurodollar trade (nothing to do with modern Euro currency) in July 1963 may have caused the CIA to consider eliminating him purely for self-interested reasons due to their connections to the ruling elites in London and New York. By November JFK had been shot dead allegedly by a lone gunman, who had connections to the CIA. It was well-known that the CIA had an agenda the opposed JFK but was supported by Johnson. This is not a conspiracy theory but is founded in facts established after the Warren Commission.]
Tentative Conclusion
If commodity traders and banks are into asset buying then where is the money to invest in the space industry? Can they magic it out of thin air as prices rises, taxes reduce, the wealthy send their money offshore to invest in land, property, assets and commodities, and less into home grown production industry or design? What happens when the AI revolution hits? Meanwhile the Chinese giant is now awake and running a capitalist system that forces them to hold onto power using a forever growth model? Will the West fall behind? If the West does fall behind what will happen next? Or will the City of London with its 320 to 800 year history, and US banking system with its 246 year history, be able to pluck victory from the edge of climate change chaos and energy crisis disaster? We can however hope that visionaries will emerge. Hopefully we here at the LUF can be those visionaries.
BIBLIOGRAPHY & REFERENCES