I've finished a fantastic book that Robin lent me, *Where Is Everybody*? The author explores the paradox that (a) It seems like the galaxy should be full of intelligent life but (b) There is little evidence of its existence.
One idea he did not explore: Maybe there is no inter-stellar travel
because the benefits almost never exceed the costs. It takes years to
get anywhere, and at best you find some unused natural resources. If
Julian Simon's observation about declining resource scarcity holds, then
as inter-stellar travel gets cheaper with technological progress, it
also gets less beneficial because resources are getting cheaper at a
faster rate.
--
Prof. Bryan Caplan
Department of Economics George Mason University
http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that
one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults
who prattle and play to it."--Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
