WPenner's Blog

Michael Lind explains pre-modern citizenship as being reserved for adult males who, having
fought to defend their territory,
received citizenship and exclusive rights
by dint of putting their lives on the line.
As a result, we could describe citizenship as a kind local, limited, self-help club for active members.¹

Post-modern states, in Lind's thinking, are run mostly as elaborate philanthropies with citizenship dramatically re-shaped.
Almost all states have completely dropped the idea of conscription and broadened participation in citizenship to embrace many classes of people previously disenfranchised.

You Are Now Leaving Pax Americana…

As we move past the Pax Americana initiated by the Brenton Woods agreement, we're returning to a war footing, with Ukraine just the first war in the coming age of violence.
Peter Zaihan notes the American withdrawal from the role as "world police" started with the fall of the Berlin Wall and picks up steam with each new administration.
All of Biden's bluster before his election about how terribly isolationist and racist Trump's policies were, has not stopped him from continuing and expanding on those same policies, especially towards China.

So, Shi Zhan's 2022 observation that the Ukrainian military has created gamified apps that crowdsource military intelligence in real time is an important return to pre-modern ideas of citizenship.² Not only do these kinds of apps distribute Russia's enemies, making them simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, citizens are now expected (and rewarded?) by laying down their lives for their state.

The Need to be Informed

Canadian citizens do not currently face such stark choices, but should stay informed about the issues of the day, and conversant enough to form opinions from the disagreements of
experts,
ideologues,
politicians, and
others with a vested interest.
This is what the Outsider's Guide to Canadian space aims to foster.

Without a broad understanding of the Canadian space sector, the public sees either
a forest without enough detail for any real understanding, or
a small sub-set of trees (worst-case scenario, the set contains a single item) which, again, forbids real understanding.
Canadians deserve to understand the
geopolitical, strategic, economic, and social impacts of the space sector turning commercial.

As a result, Canadians don't know
Canada's space sector is the 3rd largest in terms of sector size (number of companies) or
the Canadian Space Agency's budget is 1.3% of NASA's.
Today, the sector is hard to understand, with companies and institutions run by those who sometimes seem to have a vested interest in a lack of transparency.

Not Choosing Also Creates Consequences

Without at least a cursory understanding of the methods, strategies, goals, and benefits of the sector, citizens fail to uphold their fiduciary responsibility towards the pooled assets of our society.
Of course, our "pooled assets" include the property, income, sales and other taxes collected.
They also include the property, programs, initiatives and other expenses large and small, good and bad on which government spends those taxes.

While expert knowledge and opinion must certainly be brought to bear on the topics of our times, if we wish to live in a democracy, instead of an oligarchy, citizens must take the responsibility to make decisions.
We live or die by other people's choices when we surrender determinations to others.

Worse, abdicating responsibility to experts or elected representatives shields no one from the consequences of mistakes made in their name.
Or, as someone else cleverly put it: If you don't have your own strategy, you're part of someone else's.

During the entire era of big government, citizens have passively allowed experts and officials to make their decisions.
We're just beginning to realize how wrong some of those decisions turned out.
The negative economic and social consequences will take decades to play out.

Why Space, in particular?

Space provides the ultimate high ground.
It is an import geopolitical signal of strength to other states which can
And finally, space is contains the future of our
resources,
manufacturing,
exploration, and
science.
All modern states, even small and poor ones, are making moves to get into space meaningfully.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash