(It may lead to increased levels of backstabbing, but that's hardly innovative.)
Humans are a social species, so also have an innate nature to cooperate.
Also, the concept of 'country' is a rather recent invention. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state#History_and_origi... for some context. It's certainly possible that kohanz's "hope [that] we someday get to the point where no one really cares what "country" achieved the next space exploration milestone" can be true yet still have competitiveness.
Perhaps space exploration of 100 years from now will be lead by volunteer teams based on, their WoW clan membership. While preposterous, the teams could still be competitive even if they are not organized by nations.
That's a very narrow and technical view of what constitutes a state, to the point of excluding ancient empires and nations like Greece, Rome, Egypt, Israel, China and others. They wouldn't meet the standards of modern statehood insofar as they lacked rigidly-defined borders or fully-developed civic institutions, but I think it's a mistake to imagine that they lacked any sense of national identity.
I certainly agree that competition can be wasteful, but proxy conflict can be healthy, eg the space race as proxy competition for the Cold War which almost nobody wanted to see played out as an actual military conflict. Private competition will undoubtedly exist the future (and is already coming into being today) but the capital and infrastructural requirements of space exploration are such that only nation states can command the resources for large-scale projects at present. You might be interested in this comparison of how Apple, the world's most valuabel company, stacks up against actual countries, which suggests it could be considered in the same league as Azerbaijan, Belarus, or perhaps Norway, depending on what metric you use - impressive, but still small potatoes in the overall scheme of things: http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/01/28/2103622/if-apple-were-...
I think of this like local vs. global maxima. Competition is one local maxima, but personally I believe cooperative systems are the global maxima. However, cooperation is more complex, more difficult, and perhaps contrary to human nature. Difficult, but not impossible.
dalke|10 years ago
Sears is an example of how the introduction of internal competition does not lead to useful innovation - http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/07/16/do-inter...
(It may lead to increased levels of backstabbing, but that's hardly innovative.)
Humans are a social species, so also have an innate nature to cooperate.
Also, the concept of 'country' is a rather recent invention. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state#History_and_origi... for some context. It's certainly possible that kohanz's "hope [that] we someday get to the point where no one really cares what "country" achieved the next space exploration milestone" can be true yet still have competitiveness.
Perhaps space exploration of 100 years from now will be lead by volunteer teams based on, their WoW clan membership. While preposterous, the teams could still be competitive even if they are not organized by nations.
anigbrowl|10 years ago
I certainly agree that competition can be wasteful, but proxy conflict can be healthy, eg the space race as proxy competition for the Cold War which almost nobody wanted to see played out as an actual military conflict. Private competition will undoubtedly exist the future (and is already coming into being today) but the capital and infrastructural requirements of space exploration are such that only nation states can command the resources for large-scale projects at present. You might be interested in this comparison of how Apple, the world's most valuabel company, stacks up against actual countries, which suggests it could be considered in the same league as Azerbaijan, Belarus, or perhaps Norway, depending on what metric you use - impressive, but still small potatoes in the overall scheme of things: http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/01/28/2103622/if-apple-were-...
calinet6|10 years ago
stox|10 years ago
istvan__|10 years ago
Just want to point out the fallacy in your logic.
oldmanjay|10 years ago