No. When France quit Vietnam after Dien Ben Phu the US decided it would suck up the remnants of the French Empire as it had done for the Spanish and British Empires. Oh, and Communism.

  3) reagan tried to stop massacre in Libya, but showed yellow belly when we were attacked.

What massacre? Gadaffy was a murderous nutter (though no more so than many 'friends' of the US) but more importantly he had oil.

Not really. It was to regain control of the canal which had been given to Panama by Carter.

That is complete bullshit. There were 700 Cuban soldier/workers. There are a few more than that only 90 miles from the US at all times. Not sure if you are referring to the original Bishop coup or the US inspired counter coup.

If you look a bit deeper you will find that in most cases the 'others' were provoked (often covertly) by the US into giving them an excuse.

All the chemical elements are available in space. Imagine a Drexler-style nanofab that can build anything atom by atom, given the right atoms. There's no compelling need to develop such a thing on Earth, but if we had it (because we needed it for space) the economic impact would be profound.

The enormity of the advances in technology that would be required to colonise space would inevitably transform life on Earth. And the amount of resources required need not be that great. There is no deadline, no hurry. We have plenty of spare capacity, 25% unemployment in some countries. The aim would be to bootstrap an autonomous colony building machine that lived off the land, not keep flinging megatons of stuff off the planet.

The main reason to choose Mars is PR. The Moon is old hat. The stars are a thousand years away. Mars is a clear step forward that people might get to see in their lifetime. Any large public project needs to have public support. Would a reality TV company contemplate funding a robotic mission to sniff a pebble near Uranus? How many people would tune in to watch the birth of the first Martian?

True, but there would be less impetus (hah!).

Yup.

I meant 'and everything else' not 'that would be everything'.

Self-sufficiency is something we'll have to learn how to do. As for bankruptcy, no. Provided things are arranged to give value for money on Earth there is no end to money. Tricky, I grant. Running out of resources could happen.

Yup, but we'll not get there in one bounding leap. It may take generation ships, and if you can do that why do you need a planet?

We need waypoints. Mars may not be optimal or necessary but it is on the way and people can see it in the sky and get excited about it.

Sure, there are more urgent local concerns. The ones you list are good. But if we have the resources there is no need to be constrained by money, we can do a bit of everything. In fact a space colonisation program could yield technological benefits for Earth in all the areas you mention.

Just strapping a few Saturn 5s together and dumping a half-dead astronaut on the surface of Mars, never to return, would be completely pointless I agree. But if by trying we learnt how to travel more quickly through space, how to survive the radiation, how to maintain a habitat with nothing but sunlight and regolith, everything required to colonise the Solar System then we will have secured both enormous wealth and long term survival of the species. We have to get out there eventually whether the immediate goal is Mars or not.

Wealth, I would suggest, is anything you feel better off having than not having. It doesn't have to be useful or be capable of creating more wealth. Most of the things we spend our money on aren't.

I don't have a strong view on the whether a Mars mission will be worth it or not. It depends on how much we learn and how much reusable infrastructure is built in the process. Basic science overall has had a massive effect on our ability to create wealth. In fact the knowledge it brings is itself a form of wealth.

Well, now you're talking economics. Creating money has effects of course, as does its destruction. Those effects are the real constraints on government spending/taxing decisions, not hand-wringing like 'money is scarce' or 'how will we pay for it?'.

If a government creates a trillion dollars, and the private sector creates a trillion dollars worth of wealth in exchange for it, then the world is a trillion dollars wealthier. Prices will be unaffected and so will the credibility of the dollar. So the question boils down to "will a man on mars program be worth what it costs?".

Right. That is why most of the money we use has been created by credible organisations like governments and banks.

The map is not the territory. Money is a transferable promise to deliver up wealth. Anyone can make a promise, it costs nothing. And as long as people keep transferring it amongst themselves you never have to deliver.

No, that is how wealth is created. Money is not wealth.

Where does money come from then--God?

Money is artificial and requires virtually no resources to create. It's scarcity is also, therefore, artificial.

To my British mind Jefferson and most of his chums would count as upper class. They may not have had the titles but they had the land (and the slaves). Washington died with a net worth of half a billion dollars (2015 equivalent) and 300 slaves.

Already been done: Majestic (or has it?)

In practice it is increasingly difficult to get a successful prosecution for (non-kiddy) porn in the UK, especially if there is a jury involved. Even possessors of 'extreme' gay porn will be acquitted if they plead not-guilty.

Graham Nash in1967, but since Midas lived about 3000 years ago I doubt this was the first time the notion occurred to anyone.

Furthermore...
To be dispassionate is not necessarily to be objective.
And to be ethical is not necessarily to be emotional.