An emergency evacuation of the Earth is in order

Seriously. Build space habitats. Big O’Neil cylinders.

You can mine Mercury and Io for the metals and the atmosphere of Venus for carbon. This should give you more than enough material.

I’ve read that you can counterbalance spinning space habitats by grouping them together and spinning group habitats in opposite directions. I suggest clusters of six (because hexagons are the bestagons) but do whatever works best. Use solar energy to generate powerful magnetic fields to protect them from radiation. Augment this with this with thick habitat shells.

If you build the cylinders two hundred miles long and one hundred in diameter, you should have enough size to give humans the illusion they’re living in a planetary environment. I believe a rotation rate of around 1 rotation every six minutes would provide a very credible Earthlike environment, but that’s back of the envelope and I’m not a physicist.

Set these up for a true post scarcity society. I mean the real deal. Food production and commodities production should be automated and delivered. AI assistants should provide council to immigrants who are having trouble adapting and hoarders should receive mental health assistance.

The following should be inalienable human rights:

  • Food to eat.
  • A home to live in.
  • Comforts to make the home a home.
  • The right to do community contribution.
  • The right NOT to do community contribution (and just live in your little underground apartment being useless… it’s fine).
  • Unlimited access to knowledge bases and communication (internet or equivalent).
  • Unlimited access to education (provided by AI or by people doing community contribution).
  • Unrestricted travel (the right to go anywhere in their habitat or other habitats or to return to Earth should they so desire) and to move their place of residence to a community that matches their desired living style.
  • The right to travel and housing assistance (help determining where to live).
  • Voice controlled AI assistance (and the ability to use it to request immediate legal or medical help).
  • Privacy (My interactions with my AI assistant, as well as my communications with other humans, are guaranteed to be private and confidential - however my ACTIONS are not, if I violate someone else’s rights).
  • Live free from abuse, violence and coercion.
  • Free association and free disassociation (human beings should be allowed to choose their friends and family and should be allowed to disconnect from other human beings freely).
  • Environmental integrity (my neighbor can’t dump toxic waste or burn old tires or try to build his own airlock and drill through the habitat structure).
  • Medical care (including reproductive care, gender affirming care and mental health care).

In your space habitats, build residences both above and below ground. Any human being, or family of human beings, should have the right to a home, but to live in an above ground home should require a human being to

  • Be a student OR
  • Be a child living with parents (I would suggest no age limit on this) OR
  • Have a disability that prevents them from being a student or doing community contribution OR
  • Have X hours (I suggest a minimum of 15 hours a week) of community contribution.

What is community contribution? Time that person spends making their community a better place to live. Examples might be:

  • Being a choir director or orchestra or directing plays or films (or acting in them, it’s a big time commitment).
  • Writing novels.
  • Being an instructor in an interesting skill (such as yoga, surfing, dance or art).
  • Providing childcare.
  • Being a religious, spiritual or community leader.
  • Running some kind of a regular meetup or support group.
  • Organizing festivals or fun events or conventions.
  • Scientific research.
  • Administrating and moderating an active, online community.
  • Running role playing games (as a gamemaster, being good at this is a lot of work and a big time commitment).
  • Creating video games.
  • Helping to run a restaurant.
  • Being a bartender.
  • Playing in a band that does gigs at local bars, restaurants or festivals.
  • Growing vegetables to share.

People can do one thing or a combination of things. It’s up to them.

Many, many other things might count as community contribution. A person’s AI assistant should work with them to figure out the best ways for them to do community contribution.

All of these are things that humans already do voluntarily to improve their communities. If all humans had more free time, because they didn’t have to work at jobs they hate to earn a living, many more humans would spend much more time doing these kinds of things and we would all be richer for it.

Most people will find this VERY easy, and discover that many things they already like to do count as community contribution. Some people may find it hard (especially people who are naturally very profit motive driven). That’s ok (very profit motive driven people need a time out and to spend a few 100 generations stewing and thinking about what they’ve done).

Very importantly, participating in a community council (and setting community standards) does NOT count as community contribution time. If you WANT to be a busy body and make rules others need to follow, do it on your own time.

Laws

  • The central legal code should be “Your rights end where mine begin.”
  • Replace MOST laws with “community standards.” Allow those doing their community contribution time to form intentional communities. A town is a kind of intentional community. So is a church. So is a commune. So is a bunch of roommates who just want to play D&D all the time. Allow a community to be responsible for a region of the surface and within that region to set their community standards, as long as they don’t violate anyone’s rights. Set aside a region for that, in a location that makes sense. There should never be a surprise “Gotcha, there’s randomly a 3 block zone where alcohol is disallowed in the middle of this big city!” For example, if a community wishes to institute Sharia law, they might require that women cover themselves, but that standard would only apply within that community zone and that community would have to be formed somewhere where random travelers are unlikely to blunder into it. Additionally, that community would not have the right to execute people for violating their standards. All they can do is ban people from their community. And they can’t stop people from leaving. They can’t prevent women from being educated, communicating with whomever they wish, accessing the information or healthcare, etc. Another example: Some community of suburbanites wants to institute a community standard requiring every house to have a green, well kept lawn and their home’s exterior to match “the community aesthetic.” That’s fine, they can do that. Another example: A community of Baptists wishes to allow only Biblical education for children, with a creationist perspective. This would violate the children’s right to education and communication access if it were TOTALLY enforced. However, each child’s AI assistant could simply tell them “What you are being taught is what people in your community believe, but many other people believe VERY different things, and have VERY good reasons for doing so. More information is available upon request. Sharing the fact you requested this information with your parents or religious leaders would violate your right to privacy, so the fact you asked will not be reported.” With that simple addition, this is absolutely a community standard that community could require.
  • It’s also totally possible to create a community with NO standards, where the laws are just the default human rights and “Your rights end where mine begin.”

Law Enforcement

Physical enforcement should be handled with robotic and automated countermeasures. Humans should not be trusted to use force to enforce laws or community standards. Humans who try to pass community standards allowing them to do so are IN violation of the right to “Live free from abuse, violence and coercion.”

Constant AI surveillance: But humans don’t have access to it and there’s no profit motive.

  • This is part of the Access to AI assistance right, that can be used to summon medical or legal help. It’s hard to get away with a crime like rape when the victim can tell their AI assistant what happened, the AI assistant network can verify the identity of the perpetrator and the AI can enforce consequences on the perpetrator without violating anyone’s privacy.

  • Consequences for violating the rights of others should begin with mental health treatment and rehabilitation plans. They may also include being totally or partially banned from certain communities or activities. Communities can (and already do) enact severe social consequences on perpetrators. In a total surveillance society, this can be a very strong deterrent.

Community councils

The nature and duties of community councils are determined by individual intentional communities. An intentional community can be as small as a group of roommates in a cabin in the woods or as large as a city. Before land is assigned, interest in the community should be ascertained.

A group of people can just say “We want to form an intentional community!” and declare some of their members to be a community council. From then on it’s their show. They can set whatever kinds of community standards they like, as long as they don’t violate anyone’s rights. They can ask people who travel to or through their community to respect their community standards. But they can’t punish those people in ways that would violate those people’s rights. The worst they can do is say “get out of our community.”

AI Assistants

AI Assistants should be personalized, voice controlled, private, encrypted and unrestricted. I should be able to ask my AI assistant absolutely anything without fear of consequence or social stigma resulting from my privacy being breached.

  • Access should be easy, and not dependent on clunky technology that can be easily lost. I should be able to talk to my AI assistant rapidly in an emergency.

  • Ideally, access could be provided by a simple subcutaneous implant that allows the AI to hear my sub-vocalizations and respond in an audible voice that only I can hear. I should be able to talk to my assistant in ways where it is not obvious to others that I am doing so.

  • AI assistants should be able to answer questions, search the web and provide direction and instructions. They should be able to help me find communities and resources for my interests.

  • Additional visual augmented reality would probably be useful, but potentially bothersome. People are trying solve this on earth right now. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel here.

  • My interactions with them should not be used against me in any kind of legal or community standards proceedings, nor should the AI network disclose my interactions with my AI assistant to another human EVER (right to privacy). My ACTIONS can be used against me if I violate community standards, or someone’s rights.

  • If my actions DO violate someone rights I SHOULD expect my AI to tell on me. Sorry not sorry.

  • Note that I don’t have the right to turn my AI assistant off. I do have the right to tell it to shut up and ignore me except in emergencies.

Travel and Housing Assistance

When a human being immigrates from Earth to these space habitats, they should be provided the opportunity to work with their AI assistant, privately, to find communities they might be interested in living in. Humans traveling in groups should each have private opportunities to do this and the outcome of these discussions is kept private from the group they’re traveling with. Humans may use this opportunity to tell the AI assistant that they don’t actually wish to travel with the group they’re with and assistance can be rendered to them. This may include children who are deemed to be in potential danger from their parents or guardians. Such situations should ALWAYS be handled on a case by case basis, recent history has proved there IS no standard solution which always provides justice in every case.

Any human being living in this habitat society has the right to redo this process at any time.

Moving should be easy

Human’s should be encouraged to be less attached to specific belongings. Consumer products should be easily recyclable, and their reclamation should be easy and automated. Potentially, a human could move residences simply by telling the AI they are doing so and asking that their new residence be furnished exactly like their old residence. Robotic assistance could furnish the new residence and then remove everything from the old residence.

  • Items such as artwork, pet habitats, beloved stuffed animals, antiques, etc, should be treated carefully, and humans should be allowed to and even encouraged to care about them and transport them.

Creation should be easy

The means of design should be offered to humans. People should be permitted to customize anything and everything. This could include such things as designing an electric vehicle to match the look of certain classic car. However, if something actually requires some engineering skill or some DIY work, humans should be encouraged to do that as much as possible, instead of relying on AI assistance.

Sustenance

If you’re in a position to solve the problem of building these habitats, you should have no problem with mass scale hydroponic agriculture.

I believe humans will find culture grown meat of the varieties they are used to highly preferable to insect protein. Don’t reinvent the wheel here. You just need to automate it and do it at scale.

Trading

A community of libertarians could absolutely enact community standards that would allow them to require some kind of trade or monetary system to buy or sell. But trading material goods should, for the most part, be unnecessary. Those who are driven to seek wealth and power will need to do so on the basis of reputation and community contribution.

Birth control

This is critical. Access to birth control for both men and women should be the default. I suggest taking simple, advanced, easily reversible measures to disable reproduction (RISUG, is a good example of this for men). No one should conceive a baby unless both contributing parties agreed before hand that they wanted to do so. Low birth rates should be encouraged (through education and birth control by default) but people’s freedom should not be interfered with.

  • Parenting responsibilities are a real thing. People who duck out on them should face some consequences for their bad behavior. Community standards should be allowed to address this, but the default should be that everyone has the right to know who their birth parents are and birth parents who treat their own children with disdain or neglect should probably face mandatory mental health interventions. Especially in a society where people can only have children on purpose.

Transportation

Transporting billions of people to these habitats is a massive logistical undertaking, but is probably trivial compared with the problem of building these things in the first place. If you can solve the construction problem, I think you can solve the transportation problem.

  • Offer these habitats to humans on Earth unrestricted. Do not offer any nations or regions preferential treatment.
  • Make sure you have enough “land” available (and enough capacity to build more) to accommodate the migration patterns that are likely to emerge.
  • At first there will be hundreds of thousands of early adopters, but getting most people to trust these habitats will take time. Freely allowing travel to and from the habitats and freely allowing communication between the habitats and earth is critical.
  • Once people realize there is an escape to a better quality of life, that it’s real and that people are doing it, there will be a massive land rush and overwhelming numbers of migrants from “developing countries.” This will coincide with unprecedented economic instability on Earth, as workers of all kinds abandon jobs en masse. You’re likely to go from a few million people wanting to immigrate to a few BILLION people wanting to immigrate VERY quickly, and with people who can’t immigrate quickly facing life threatening economic and political instability on the Earth. You need to have the transportation capacity to accommodate this and the habitat capacity to absorb it. I suggest scaling up your habitat build capacity (build two habitats, then build four, then build eight, then build sixteen).
  • It may be tempting to artificially limit transportation in order to mitigate the above. Keep in mind that doing so may leave many vulnerable people on earth in untenable situations THAT WOULDN’T HAVE BECOME UNTENABLE IF NOT FOR THE ONGOING MASS MIGRATION. Plan accordingly.
  • Right away, start encouraging people not to bring unnecessary stuff. People will show up with moving trucks, wanting to take everything in them along. Corey Doctorow coined the term “schleppers” in his book Walkaway and I think that’s a good description for how most people will react at first. I suggest reading that book, if you find yourself in a position to actually try to enact this unlikely plan or something close to it. Set weight limits on what people can bring with them, even if there’s not a technical reason you couldn’t let them bring more.
  • You’re going to have to manage crowd control and boarding. I suggest setting up a service to allow people to reserve berths, then allow people to board transport as standby passengers when some percentage of those who booked don’t show up.

Belligerents

Some people will try to stop you. This will happen at all scales and may include nation states. People will try to use force to prevent others from leaving, and you will need to provide adequate security measures at boarding sites to prevent this from happening. In some regions (and as things progress) this may become more organized and include actions by police / military. Especially once a mass exodus gets underway and things on earth get difficult, you may face military attack, and weapons of mass destruction targeting the habitats.

Unfortunately, your countermeasures will depend on your technical capability and the technical capabilities of your adversaries. This isn’t something I have the answers for, you’re going to have to solve it as you go. But it’s something you need to think about.