Thread by @nick_w_estes

Fully automated luxury communism is easier to imagine for some than the complete decolonization of North America and the restoration of stolen Native lands and lives. Yet, the latter future is more possible and humane than the former. Do we really need more settlers in space?

As a lifelong sci-fi fan, I’m sympathetic to fully automated luxury communism. But as an Indigenous person I’m suspicious of where exactly the materials to build such a world will come from. And that we need to redefine what development means for the poorest.

It’s 2019, as a child, I thought by now there’d be robots flying my flying car. Nope. Instead my people are still fighting poisonous oil pipelines so we can still drive our cars because that’s the only future this “technologically advanced” society has on offer.

And the cynical, racist, hyper bro Silicon Valley types gentrifying our neighborhoods and colonizing our lands (and now space!) hardly share our vision of the future. If stealing half of humanity’s social wealth is how you get to that technotopia, no thanks.

I once said, “There’s a reason why we’re blockading oil pipelines and not wind turbines on our land.”

Mark Tilsen @DarkMark corrected me, “Yet.”

The point is that development for the colonized is typically maldevelopment or extractive—usually for the benefit of someone else.

Until that colonial relationship ends can we imagine and build that future we don’t just desire but *need*.

PS: There’s a horrific irony Jeff Bezos purchased my favorite sci-fi show “The Expanse” (the books are just as good!) because this guy wants to build the very space dystopia and future of humanity that this show is critiquing. The Belters will win!