Arjen said:
GTX said:
Surely in such a situation money becomes irrelevant. You are talking about species survival. Anyone who wanted money in return to do this instantly forfeits their chance to live.
Nailed it. Any other adults left in the room?
Uh-huh. OK, let's try to work this out.
1: Moon explodes. Doom is apparent in two years.
2: Experts convene and determine that in order to save the species, we need Program X.
3: In order to pull off Program X, we need a bragillion experts in a bagrillion fields, down to and including truck drivers and plumbers.
Let me repeat that: we NEED these people. The species NEEDS them to do their job.
Let's say that *I* am one such expert. Say, I am the world's top and pretty much only expert in McGuffin Engineering. But I see the end coming and my view is that we're doomed, it's hopeless, I don't want to spend another day living through this nightmare. I want to eat a bullet and be done with it. Or let's say I just want to spend the next two years in an opium den. Or hunting down all my personal enemies. Or playing Call of Duty. What are *you* as Mr. Omnipotent Government Guy going to do, especially if you know that I could be bought off... by, say, opium or revenge or a truly kick-ass gaming system?
Now keep in mind that an Ark Project is going to require a *vast* number of people to do their jobs, and essentially all of them will be working knowing that they are *not* going to get to go. They all know they and their children are *going* to die. The trouble you have getting *me* to do my job, multiply it by a million.
Are you going to conclude that since people react to doom differently, and that many people can only be prodded into labor via payment of some kind, the whole species - and bunnies, and oak trees, and fruit bats, and stoats, and howler monkeys, and dolphins, etc. - they all deserve to go extinct because you are morally repulsed by filthy lucre?
Altruism and heroic self-sacrifice are fine. But it is criminally stupid to put all your faith in them, especially when you know just how effective bribery can be.
Or look at it this way: I'm Hugo Drax. My Mars base is up and running. It's just now at the self-sustaining point when the moon explodes. "Screw this noise, I'm outta here," I say, loading up the next colonization ship with me, my family and my trusted lieutenants. All we gotta do is *go,* and we'll be safe. Of course when we go the organization back on Earth will fall apart, but we're good. So what are you, Mr. Omnipotent Government Guy, going to offer me to stick around and keep things going, knowing that every day I delay in getting outta Dodge my chances of getting safely away decrease?