# Opening frontiers requires self-sufficiency Opening frontiers requires self-sufficiency. Polynesian explorers carried the seeds of a new settlement with them: breeding livestock, plant seeds, families and robust tools. Early American colonists could only count on resupply voyages (and even communication) every few months or even years. It could mean death if you couldn’t repair your own axle on the Oregon trail. Many early humans who set out from Africa never saw those they left behind again. The self-sufficiency requirement isn’t just an incidental characteristic of historical frontiers, but a core piece of what makes a true frontier. It’s also a piece that is missing from today’s pseudo-frontiers. Truly opening a frontier requires that individuals and small groups can rough it fairly independent from support from back home. This is arguably why the Apollo program has ultimately been so disappointing: it was an exquisite technological tower (both literally and figuratively) that ultimately put people in space who were intimately lashed to the entire military-industrial complex. Astronauts couldn’t poop without clearing it with mission control first. [[Opening frontiers requires self-sufficiency]] both in space and here on earth. Opening frontiers requires self sufficiency because [[Frontiers only work when they are permissionless]]. If it was a consensus view that opening a frontier was possible, valuable, and a good idea, it would already have been opened! As a result, the people who open frontiers are, by definition, deviants. An awkward truth is that the people who open frontiers are often not the most tasteful of people. Leif Erickson was an outlaw. Ernest Shackleton was a crackpot. Brigham Young was a heretic. The puritans were assholes. The people who first left Africa or set out onto the Pacific in catamarans probably weren’t well-liked either. (And this isn’t even touching how bad many intellectual frontier openers were and often still are). These aren’t the people who win spots on heavily publicized space flights, make it through a rigorous astronaut selection program, or convince people with power to give them a shot. If they needed permission, their frontiers would have remained closed. If going past a current frontier was clearly a good idea, someone would have done it. Therefore, going into/past/opening a frontier is by definition a ‘bad idea’ at the time. Bad ideas have lots of reasons why they shouldn’t work, so if you need permission to pursue them you will not be allowed to most of the time. Even if there are some foresighted permission-granters there are some ideas that even *they* think are bad so the argument is fractal. If you need a support network or massive infrastructure at your back to strive at the frontier, you implicitly or explicitly need someone’s permission. Because [[Frontiers only work when they are permissionless]], frontier openers often will not get very much support. Therefore, they need to be self sufficient. The importance of self-sufficiency stands in contrast to the way we’re poking many frontiers today. Most researchers are bound at the hip to their funding sources. Regulation has arguably strangled everything from nuclear power to supersonic aircraft. The only way to push the limits of physics is through massive international collaborations rate-limited by politics. Astronauts can’t poop without clearing it with mission control first. [[Opening frontiers requires self-sufficiency]] both in space and here on earth. ### Related * [[Frontiers lead to absolute games instead of relative games]] [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Opening+frontiers+requires+self-sufficiency) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Opening+frontiers+requires+self-sufficiency)