🚀 go-pugleaf

Just as the argument on _Mote_ got interesting, our news software went flaky,
and I was unable to post anything.  My arguments were of course scintillating
and irrefutable, but in lieu of reposting them I will just make two general
comments.

First, I want to point out that the Moties are crazy if they think they can 
solve their population problems through colonization.  (And therefore that
humans who think their race is in danger of extinction are overexcitable.)

a. The project would involve inevitable war with the humans.  And from the 
Moties' point of view, humans are quite scary.  They're more numerous, control 
more planets, and have more experience with the Alderson drive, with the 
Langston field, and with interstellar war.  They're violent, tricky, and not
well understood.  And though they have Cycles of their own, they are
not as devastating.  This war would be a huge and foolish risk to take.

b. The Mote system is *metal-poor*.  Is it really practical for the 
Moties to build enough colony vessels to ship out their entire population
surplus?  On Earth right now we add about 90 million people a year.  How
many spaceships is that?  How much metal, how much fuel, how many
trained pilots, how much protective armament?  How much of all these
resources is left for defense of the home system?

c. If the Moties did have several systems, each frantically exporting surplus
population, they're immediately going to destroy each other in interstellar
war.  It isn't in any Motie system's interests to allow competition for
galactic lebensraum from other Motie planets.  (And no, you can't count on
Motie species solidarity.  At Cycle time, they have none.)

Second, I raised the question of racism because I question whether the debate
would have gone the same way if the Moties were considered "human".  
Consider the Sauron Supermen: these were apparently all destroyed, but the
ordinary humans of Sauron were not all killed; there's a crewman from there
on Blaine's ship.

The same kind of racism is seen in the WWII decision to intern US residents
of Japanese but not of German descent; also, I believe, in the indignation 
expressed when Japanese investors (but not British or Canadian ones) buy 
something like a baseball team, a movie studio, or Rockefeller Center.  

In human conflicts we generally follow the rule, "Do what is necessary to
eliminate the threat, but no more," as Stanley Friesen put it.  Our aim in
war is generally to destroy the enemy's war-making capacity, and perhaps to 
change the enemy's leadership or governmental system, if these were what led 
to the war.  Why shouldn't these principles apply to the Moties?  It should be
easier to destroy the Motie industrial, governmental, and military apparatus, 
than to destroy every Motie.  Then go in and reorganize what's left.

--markrose@spss.com