[Knightsofswing]

Hey let's find out if it is a liveable place. Let's send all of the liberals there to set up their utiopa!

[RightWhale]

let's find out if it is a liveable place.

There's a large number of people all over earth today who are thinking something along those lines. The distance is so large compared to what we can handle with our technology, the detail we can see is so small compared to what we need to see, that we have a lot of development work to do if we want to be effective in the interstellar world. This should impact everything if a planet even close to earthlike is found there in the next few years.

[Nowhere Man]

Hey let's find out if it is a liveable place. Let's send all of the liberals there to set up their utiopa!

Heh, good idea. I'm always reminded of the Star Trek episode of "Who Morns for Adonis" where the Enterprise comes across the Greek god Apollo. Apollo wanted to create a utopia where the Enterprise crew would worship him and he'd care for them but Kirk basically told him that "we grew up and out of that." Well, of course, they had to destroy Apollo's source of power and he went where the other Greek gods went.

Well, I was thinking with the liberals and able-bodied welfare cases where they don't want to do anything. I think I'd cut a deal with Apollo instead of fighting him. What I would do is leave some of my people there who wanted shore leave with Apollo since I'm sure he'd want something to hold to keep me to my word plus too they can explain to him what these new settlers would want in a utopia while I'm away. I then would transfer the liberals and able-bodied welfare bums to Apollo to care for.

The deal works for everybody, the Enterprise goes free and I get my people back, the tax base is saved a lot of money and can funnel it back to the taxpayers, and Apollo would get his people to care for. Captain Kirk does pretty well in the diplomacy department, but I think he failed here because he didn't think of the new potential he found by not thinking outside of the box.