我三人行，必得我师焉。

"我三人行，必得我师焉" - 可是我得仔细挑我的两名同伴！For a long time we in the West have been told that the United States is the sole and best repository of knowledge of how to organize a society that can successfully make its way through the world.  But lately I've come to deeply question such an assertion. (Especially now that I've had to live in a country ruled by a chump like Trump and a political party like the Rethuglicans!)  It seems to me that we in the West are receiving a distorted view of the world, and especially of China.  For a long time therefore I have wanted to get out of the country for a bit in order to see the world with my own eyes from a different perspective.  And for a long time China has appealed to me as an especially interesting place to check out - first, because over the last century or so it has successfully freed itself from Western colonialism, and secondly, because it seems to me to be among the wisest nations in its adaptations and preparations for passing through the challenges of the 21st century.  

A perfect opportunity came up last month, when the International Conference on Power and Renewable Energy (ICPRE), a subsidiary of the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), held their 11th International Conference in Shanghai.  I first heard about the conference back in July and immediately decided to sign up.  Then I was slightly misled by some American acquaintances of mine who told me that I would not need a visa as long as I stayed for ten days or less.  It turns out that that was only partially true.  When I asked more knowledgeable people about the travel process, I was informed that yes, I actually did need both a passport and a visa.  Fortunately I already had the passport, so I worked on obtaining a 10 year tourist visa which I received before the end of August.  After that came the frenzied process of catching up on work, arranging a pet sitting service, making sure I had a room in the hotel where the conference was held, and buying plane tickets.  Then came the night on which I boarded a China Air Lines wide-body jet for a 13 hour flight from the U.S. West Coast to Taipei, then from Taipei to Shanghai.  (Note to anyone who reads this: if you're older than 40, and if you don't want to torture yourself, don't try flying all the way in economy class!)

My first hours in Shanghai contained some funny moments, and some not-so-funny moments.  One of the funny moments came when I went through the security check procedure for new arrivals at the Shanghai Pudong Airport.  I was wearing a T-shirt which I had had printed in the U.S. with the following quote:

将欲歙之，必固张之；

将欲弱之，必固强之；

将欲废之，必固兴之；

将欲夺之，必固与之。

When one of the security personnel saw my shirt, he laughed and nudged his female co-worker, pointing at my shirt.  He asked in English, "Sir, do you know what that means?"  I said, "I do indeed!  If you want to shrink something, you must first expand it..."  Another funny time came when I was riding in a taxi from the airport to the hotel.  The taxi driver (a truly colorful character) offered me a cigarette during the ride, forcing me to find a way to say 对不起，我不抽烟。When he asked “为什么？” I pieced together a reply that ran something like “因为我想生活很多年。。。”  He pulled out his phone (which contained a voice translation app) and engaged me in a wide-ranging philosophical discussion until we got to the hotel.  However, I never took the taxi again while I was there, as the ride from the airport had cost me 400元.  The part that wasn't so funny was my own fault.  While I was at the airport I went to an ATM to withdraw some ready cash and forgot to take my bank card with me once I had received the cash.  That led to several panicked hours on my part until my Chinese friends in Shanghai taught me to use a couple of phone apps for payment.  Thus I found that in Shanghai, people very rarely use cash.  Instead, WeChat and Alipay are used for the majority of transactions.  (By the way, I got my card back.  The ATM operators found it and held it for me until I could retrieve it.  Imagine what would have happened if I had lost it while traveling in the USA!)

Now to the conference.  This conference provided me with an overview of what I would call China's "operational philosophy" concerning microgrids, modernization of grid transmission, and integration of renewables into the power grid.  I won't get into fine details here and now, but suffice it to say that a lot of the research presented provided me with ideas for my own engineering practice here in the U.S.  Of course, the presenters occupied a position close to the cutting edge of theory, whereas I am several steps removed from that cutting edge.  However, what often happens is that theoretical insights are turned into building codes and manufactured hardware, and it's good for day-to-day practitioners to understand the sorts of changes that may be coming to their particular fields of practice due to advances in theory.

As for the subject of academic and professional conferences in general, the United States under Trump has been playing a rather stupid, racist, white supremacist game in its attempt to restrict access to academic knowledge.  I have heard credible reports over the last eighteen months of academics from a number of nations who have been denied permission to enter the U.S. to attend conferences in which the exchange of valuable scientific and technical knowledge might benefit those nations.  China, on the other hand, has a robust schedule of academic conferences in 2026 and is planning similarly rich offerings in 2027.  And the process of obtaining a visa from China is far, far simpler and easier than the process in the U.S. has become.  China therefore, in concert with other nations of the Global South, is building a robust set of parallel institutions in the international sphere for the sharing of cutting-edge knowledge.  At the ICPRE conference I attended I saw people, both listeners (like myself) and presenters, from a wide range of nations.  The building of parallel institutions among historically marginalized nations has the power to turn the Unites States itself into an irrelevant bouncing ball.  This can begin in the academic arena.  If the U.S. wants to be like a six or seven year old brat shouting at the neighborhood kids, "I have a brand new toy!  And you can't play with it!", this nation may be surprised to find that the other kids have found other ways to be happy besides playing with that particular toy.

One other case in point regarding the sharing of knowledge: during September, Shanghai hosted the 48th annual WorldSkills Competition.  The WorldSkills organization has existed since the early 1950's and was formed initially in order to promote economic growth in the nations of Western Europe whose economies had been damaged or wrecked by World War 2.  The WorldSkills organizers saw that one of the keys to recovery was the development of a highly skilled workforce in the nations which had been so damaged, and this development of skills has become the mission of the WorldSkills organization. As the name of the organization indicates, the organizers have expanded this mission to the entire world. Unfortunately, I had to leave for the U.S. the day before the competition began, so I didn't get to see any of it directly.  But one of my Shanghai friends sent me a couple of video clips via WeChat.  WorldSkills is one of those examples of soft power which arises from genuine hospitality and decency toward all of the world's peoples.

Lastly, I want to note my observations of a couple of publicly-funded fixtures of Shanghai.  First, there's the library system.  Shanghai has two world-class libraries of the sort one would find at an R1 research university.  However, these libraries are entirely public, and hence open to the public.  I spent several hours wandering the stacks and aisles of both of them.  (Also I got my own Shanghai Public Library card...) A heavenly experience it was - even though my Chinese is so weak that I couldn't read most of the books!  What a contrast to many cities in the U.S., in which Rethuglican/conservative governments have slashed funding for public libraries.  Then there was the Shanghai subway system.  It did not take long for me to figure out how to use it, due in part to the fact that all of the subway signs are bilingual.  The Shanghai subway removes a great deal of stress from commuting, and is a vital part of getting around, due to the congestion which clogs Shanghai's streets and high-speed highways on a regular basis.  I am reminded of an American policy paper I recently saw titled, "Public transit delivers large gains for the local economy."  Shanghai has taken this lesson on board, as it is preparing to expand its commuter rail network even more.  Too bad that when I returned to the U.S., I found out that local governments where I live are cutting funding and service for TriMet, which for a long time was a shining light and example of public transit in the United States.

Anyway, now that I'm back in the USA, I can hardly wait until next year, when I hope to return to China, God willing, for another academic conference.  再见！

我爱上海！我想回来！

What I've Recently Been Up To, and A Preview of Coming Attractions

I just got back to the United States from a trip to Shanghai, China.  For a long time I had been wanting to visit China, and I found a perfect opportunity in an engineering conference that was scheduled to be held in Shanghai this month.  Unfortunately, it's late right now, I'm jet-lagged, and I have to get up early tomorrow for work, so I can't now describe my trip in more detail.  Hopefully I shall have the opportunity to do so sometime in the next several days.  Also, I have a few more posts on the role of parallel institutions in nonviolent liberation struggles.  Those of you who are regular readers of this blog, please stay tuned...

Bouncing Around On The Top

In my posts on strategic nonviolent resistance, I have emphasized how the organization of a righteous parallel society is a key component of resistance against a would-be tyrant.  I have also emphasized how the building of independent centers of economic power by, for, and among the oppressed is a key tool for bringing painful economic pressure to bear on the society of the tyrant via massive withdrawal of economic cooperation from the society of the tyrant.  Today I want to highlight how the building of the parallel institutions of a parallel society robs the tyrant's dominant society of its power.  Let's turn again to Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy, specifically a passage from Chapter 9, which I quote below:

Combined with political defiance during the phase of selective resistance, the growth of autonomous social, economic, cultural, and political institutions progressively expands the “democratic space” of the society and shrinks the control of the dictatorship. As the civil

institutions of the society become stronger vis-à-vis the dictatorship, then, whatever the dictators may wish, the population is incrementally building an independent society outside of their control. If and when the dictatorship intervenes to halt this “escalating freedom,”

nonviolent struggle can be applied in defense of this newly won space and the dictatorship will be faced with yet another “front” in the struggle.

In time, this combination of resistance and institution building can lead to de facto freedom, making the collapse of the dictatorship and the formal installation of a democratic system undeniable because the power relationships within the society have been fundamentally altered. Poland in the 1970s and 1980s provides a clear example of the progressive reclaiming of a society’s functions and institutions by the resistance...

 Even under martial law, with many imprisonments and harsh persecution, the new independent institutions of the society continued to function. For example, dozens of illegal newspapers and magazines continued to be published. Illegal publishing houses annually issued hundreds of books, while well-known writers boycotted Communist publications and government publishing houses.  Similar activities continued in other parts of the society.

Under the Jaruselski military regime, the military-Communist government was at one point described as bouncing around on the top of the society. The officials still occupied government offices and buildings. The regime could still strike down into the society, with
punishments, arrests, imprisonment, seizure of printing presses, and the like. The dictatorship, however, could not control the society.  From that point, it was only a matter of time until the society was able to bring down the regime completely. [Emphasis added.]

Turning Trump, his fat-cat brethren (including Musk), and the Rethuglicans into a bunch of irrelevant bouncing balls - now that would be a fine sight indeed!  And it is a worthy goal toward which to work, even though we must now start small and build incrementally.

How Grass Breaks Concrete

In my last few posts, I have discussed the evil foundations of the wealth of the world's richest people.  The loudest-mouthed man among these is of course Elon Musk.  A few months ago, Musk's fanboys (a.k.a. "flying monkeys") proclaimed him the world's first trillionaire, although a more recent valuation shrank the value of his holdings to "only" $684 billion.  Nonetheless, most pundits rank him as the world's richest man.  But Musk is a typical example of all of the world's richest people, in that the wealth of them all is built on similar foundations.  In particular, I wish to point out wealth obtained by exploiting defenseless human beings as well as monopolistic and monopoly-building practices as key elements of those foundations.  Let's zoom in on monopolistic and monopoly-building practices in today's post.

First, let's quickly define a monopoly as a market in which most of the goods or services sold in that market come from a single provider.  In the limit, all of the goods or services come from only one provider.  If this provider is a true saint, then he or she will provide the goods or services at high quality and at a price which can easily be borne by those who need these goods and services.  But monopolists usually are not saints.  Nor do saints usually create monopolies.  So monopolists naturally tend to charge the highest price they can get away with in order to provide the trashiest goods and services they can get away with, so that these monopolists can reap the highest profits they can get away with - even if the combination of high price and trashy quality eventually bankrupts most buyers in the market.  

Monopolies can arise seemingly naturally under certain circumstances.  For instance, in the North American West in the 19th century, executives of powerful railroad companies argued that their monopoly control of certain transportation markets was a natural outcome of the railroad business and therefore should not be opposed or interfered with.  This argument seems to have a certain validity in that sometimes the introduction of a transformative new technology like rail transportation requires so many resources that only a few players can enter the market for this new technology.  Thus a hundred-acre dirt farmer in 19th-century Iowa would not have been able to afford building his own railroad.  To consider space travel as another example, it is certainly true that for a long time, the only entities that were capable of sending rockets (and eventually humans) into orbit were the governments of large and wealthy nations.  Thus a 1960's geeky kid in a working-class family would not have been able to build her own rocket to fly to the moon.  However, it is also true that those players who were able to dominate capital-intensive new markets frequently did so not only because these markets required a potential player to have lots of resources, but also because some of these players relied on dirty tricks.  To see how this played out in the 19th-century North American railroad market, please read "For tech giants, a cautionary tale from 19th century railroads on the limits of competition", The Conversation, March 2018.

I would argue that it is these dirty tricks that are the dominant factor in the creation of the most recent monopolies and oligopolies which have dominated both the American and global economies over the last five or six decades.  One particular dirty trick is the use of "predatory pricing", which is the practice of a player entering a market in order to destroy competitors by selling the goods offered in that market at a price below the price at which other players can offer those same goods.  What is interesting is that the wanna-be monopolist player need not be a very big business at first - just as long as he or she has a huge cash reserve backing him or her up.  That way, he or she can stay afloat even while selling at a loss for a long time, while driving his or her competitors out of business due to the fact that these competitors cannot afford to stay in business if they don't sell at or above a certain price point.  

The harm caused by predatory pricing and the role of this pricing practice in the building of monopolies has been well-documented.  In December 2024, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (under the outgoing presidency of Joe Biden) hosted a virtual workshop titled, "Competition Snuffed Out: How Predatory Pricing Harms Competition, Consumers, and Innovation."  The topics discussed in this workshop are also captured in a January 2025 article written by Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance titled, "Competition Snuffed Out: Stacy Mitchell Testifies at FTC Workshop on Predatory Pricing."  Mitchell starts out by describing the predatory pricing practicing of the Amazon businesses of Jeff Bezos over the last 30 years.  But Amazon is by no means the only near-monopoly which has been built over the last several decades in the U.S.  There are also Wal-Mart and other large retail chains which wiped out many locally-owned mom-and-pop small convenience stores, as well as the Whole Foods "health food" store chain which wiped out many locally-owned smaller countercultural health food stores.  There is Uber with its predatory pricing and exploitation of so-called "independent contractor" drivers which wiped out many local taxi companies.  (By the way, at last count, there was a rape or attempted rape in an Uber vehicle every eight minutes in the United States.)  I would also argue that this may be true of the iFixit national electronics repair store chain, although I don't have concrete proof.  Yet all of the businesses I have named in this paragraph are examples either of monopoly or of oligopoly in the making.

I would therefore also argue (as I have in a recent post) that Elon Musk's SpaceX company is an example of attempted monopoly-building via predatory pricing.  Based on a link I provided in that recent post, Musk is selling access to low earth orbit (LEO) at a price per kilogram of payload that is significantly lower than the price at which other launch providers are able to send satellites into LEO.  However, we also know that SpaceX is a money-losing business which has most likely not paid U.S. taxes since it was founded in 2002.  (See also "The Final Frontier of Tax Avoidance: Elon Musk’s SpaceX Has $1.9 Billion to Gain from Defunding the IRS", Matthew Gardner, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, June 2026.)  Thus Musk has a number of ways to cushion the pain (which I'm sure he hopes will be temporary) of selling high-value goods and services at a loss!

Now we can certainly decry and condemn the desires and goals of those businesses which engage in predatory pricing in attempting to create monopolies.  And we can also decry and condemn the effects which these monopolies have on the rest of us once these monopolies are firmly established.  But we must also ask what kind of people we ourselves are that we allow such predatory arrangements to arise in the first place.  To quote Gene Sharp once again,

"Under the dictatorship the population and civil institutions of the society have been too weak, and the government too strong. Without a change in this imbalance, a new set of rulers can, if they wish, be just as dictatorial as the old ones."  

And,

"Dictatorships usually exist primarily because of the internal power distribution in the home country. The population and society are too weak to cause the dictatorship serious problems, wealth and power are concentrated in too few hands. [Emphasis added.]  Although dictatorships may benefit from or be somewhat weakened by international actions, their continuation is dependent primarily on internal factors."

Dictatorships can be entirely governmental, or they can start out as economic hegemonies that morph into political hegemonies.  And note that what Gene Sharp says about governments that are too strong applies just as firmly to businesses whose owners become too rich, even if the governments in the nations where these rich people reside are weak.  Thus do greedy piece-of-garbage heads of business like Mark Zuckerberg, Travis Kalanick, Elon Musk, or Jeff Bezos become the backers of piece-of-garbage heads of state like Donald Bump and political parties like the Rethuglicans.  But these people can become powerful only if we give them that power.  We too frequently give these people such power by being lured by the store-on-every-street corner convenience, the glitzy gizmo features, and the too-good-to-be-true low prices of their wares.  This convenience, functionality and cheapness act as a sort of bait - rather like the sugar water in certain commercially available ant baits.  However, the poor witless ants who chow down on that sugar water fail to notice that it's laced with borax.  And it's the borax that kills them.

I have mentioned the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which is an organization which seeks to use advocacy and political action to eliminate monopolistic and predatory practices in the American economy.  I am all in favor of their aims and goals.  Yet it seems to me that trying to use policy recommendations, advocacy and political action to achieve such goals in these days is about as hard as trying to build my own transcontinental railroad or to build my own rocket to fly to Mars.  To me it's much better and more direct to figure out on a personal and local level how to decouple from a predatory economy.  What can I do at a grassroots level to achieve this?  My answer to this question is as follows: Become frugal and learn to be content with what I have.  Learn to be personally self-sufficient.  Learn not to need or want certain things or to buy things from certain people.  (For instance, I haven't bought anything from Target or Amazon in a long time!)  And find other like-minded people in my local community and in my circle of acquaintances with whom I can form small localized collectives of communal self-reliance.  If enough of us follow this path, we will be to the monopolists what grass eventually is to concrete - namely, a soft, subtle, yet eventually shattering force - an ineluctable, silent, bottom-up change that does not become noticed until it's too late for those at the top.

From Ears Back to Eyes

I am once again extremely busy with work, which has greatly hindered my blogging over the last few weeks.  But one thing that occurred to me these last few days is the manner in which ease of access, convenience, and low cost are used by would-be monopolists as bait in order to ensnare ever-increasing numbers of people into dependence as consumers on monopoly businesses.  We see also how ever-increasing consolidation of businesses leads to ever-shrinking numbers of players in any particular market segment.  (Hopefully I'll have more to say on this subject in a future post.)

Take audiobooks as an example.  To rely solely on audiobooks as a means of consuming either fiction or nonfiction is increasingly an unsatisfying and potentially harmful strategy for people who want to educate themselves.  (That word "consuming" is unfortunate, but right now I'm tired, it's past my bedtime, and I can't think of a better word...)  I'm not too much of a fan of Google's generative AI (or anyone else's generative AI, for that matter), but when just now I typed "shortcomings 'audiobook industry' 'lack of variety'" into Google Search, I got a highly satisfying summary of some suspicions which have been growing in my mind recently.  The Google AI overview of my search results says "The audiobook industry faces a lack of variety due to publishers focusing mainly on bestsellers and popular genres, leaving niche subjects, indie authors, and translated works underrepresented.  Production costs also limit smaller books from getting audio versions..."  I would also say that an increasing number of nonfiction audiobooks in the business genre are turning out to be subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) cheerleading pieces designed to prop up a harmful status quo.  There seems to be a dearth of voices questioning that status quo.

So, because there are writers who are not well-known, yet whose writing interests me, and these writers are not part of the audiobook market, I'm switching back to running my eyes over a set of printed pages instead of just letting the sounds of spoken words hit my eardrums.  I also understand that making the switch will do my brain some good.  Now if only I can find the time...

Humpty Dumpty Part 2: Musk's Further Fallacies

I hinted (not so subtly) in my last post that Elon Musk likes to brag about solving the impossible problem of achieving cheap space flight because he wants to boast of being a totally awesome dude who is smarter than all the rest of us.  I also mentioned that Elon Musk's company SpaceX developed fully reusable orbital launch vehicles in the 2010's.  

However, on further examination I found that this is not true.  SpaceX has not, I repeat, has not developed the world's first fully reusable orbital launch rocket.  In fact, no one has.  It turns out that Musk has merely promised that SpaceX is on the verge of developing the world's first fully reusable rocket.  In an article by Stephen Kuper published in SpaceConnect Magazine in November 2025 titled "‘Next year’ Musk predicts ‘full reusability’ rocket imminent", Musk himself admits that his company has not achieved full reusability yet.  At best, his rockets are only partially reusable.  Also, there is an interesting piece also published in 2025 in Intereconomics Review of European Economic Policy titled, "The Missing Rocket: An Economic and Engineering Analysis of the Reusability Dilemma in the European Space Sector".  This article provides a further examination of the economic viability of reusable orbital launch systems like the SpaceX rockets, and discovers that these rockets have certain unaddressed economic liabilities.  

Lastly, it must be mentioned once again that SpaceX is a money-losing business despite its frequent rocket launches.  It may be that at least part of SpaceX's losses are due to a company policy of predatory pricing in an attempt to drive competitors out of business.

Humpty Dumpty's Orbital Wall

A month ago I wrote that a Chinese friend of mine who is an English-Mandarin practice buddy with me mentioned that Elon Musk is now the world's first trillionaire.  I pointed out that many rich and powerful people in the West (particularly in the U.S.) have skillfully constructed a set of larger-than-life myths and narratives around their own supposed awesomeness, and that too many people in the rest of the world have fallen for these myths and narratives.  I'd like to suggest that the reality of both Musk and of his notional wealth is far less impressive than the myth.  Musk is a major mouthpiece of aspirational propaganda, boasting that he is a self-made man who earned his wealth solely by means of his own vast capabilities and intelligence.  (Oh, if only you imitate and emulate his "atomic habits", you too can become just as rich!  Or maybe not...)

But the actual foundation of Musk's wealth rests on five less than praiseworthy pillars, namely:

• Wealth inherited from a family that got rich and made itself great by exploiting defenseless human beings;
• Monopolistic and monopoly-building practices;
• Corrupt and misanthropic friends in high places (such as his former BFF Donald Grump);
• Corporate welfare obtained via those friends in high places;
• And taking credit for technologies he did not himself invent.  (See also "Tesla Existed Before Elon Musk: Founders On How They Pitched The Idea," Green Car Reports, February 2021.)

One of those technologies is spaceflight, specifically spaceflight via reusable rockets.  It is not surprising that Musk would seek to take credit for this achievement, as doing so would boost his prestige as a supposedly brilliant man who is able to solve problems that no one else can solve.  But the reality of things is very different.  Indeed, anyone with a functioning memory who was born in 1970 or who knows how to read a history book will remember the Space Shuttle developed by the United States in the 1970's, and which first flew in 1981.  It should be noted that all of the components of the Space Shuttle were fully reusable except for the main fuel tank for the liquid-fueled engines on the orbiter portion of the Shuttle launch vehicle.  In addition, the Soviet Union developed its own mostly reusable shuttle, named the Буран (Buran) which flew one mission in 1988.  It is true that SpaceX and other private companies developed fully reusable orbital launch vehicles in the 2010's.  However, please note that for a given payload mass launched into orbit, a fully reusable launch vehicle saves only the expense of the launch vehicle.  A fully reusable launch vehicle which launches a given mass into orbit will actually use more fuel than a fully or partially expendable launch vehicle launching the same mass.  So there is a certain unavoidable price to be paid for spaceflight even when using fully reusable launch vehicles.

Now let's zoom in on a particular example of the use of spaceflight technology: namely, the launching of swarms (or "constellations") of satellites into low Earth orbit (or LEO, for those who like acronyms).  Some of the purposes of launching such swarms include accurate mapping and building of geographic information system (GIS) models, military spying, weather mapping and forecasting, and telecommunications.  Elon Musk's company SpaceX has for several years been building its own proprietary swarm of satellites in low-earth orbit.  Its swarm is, of course, the Starlink "constellation".  But we must note once again that Musk is not the first person to come up with this idea, nor is his company the first to try to implement it.  The first telecommunications satellite constellation was actually conceived by Motorola in 1987 and launched into low Earth orbit from 1993 to 1998 by rockets commissioned by Motorola.  This network is known as the Iridium network, and it is still operational. The only innovation which Musk has brought to the field of launching swarms of LEO satellites is the attempt to use such privately-owned swarms as a tool of monopoly-building.  Toward this goal, Starlink currently has 10,413 satellites in orbit, with plans to increase the number of satellites in its swarm to 42,000 satellites, with the ostensible goal of providing "fast internet service anywhere on earth."

There are just a few problems with Starlink, however.  One such problem is the obvious fact that in order for satellite operators to get along peacefully with each other, there must be rules and approvals to determine the altitudes at which satellite swarms can operate.  The Starlink swarms operate in two shells, one at altitudes of between 525 and 614 kilometers (326 to 332 miles), and a lower shell altitude of between 340 and 360 kilometers (210 to 220 miles) above earth.  With so many Starlink-owned satellites operating in these altitude bands, other satellite operators are increasingly being squeezed out.  Thus Musk is constructing the first space-based monopoly.

Is his monopoly sustainable?  I would argue that in the long run, it is not.  Why?  First, because spaceflight in its present state of development is inherently unsustainable.  This is especially true of chemically-powered spaceflight.  Every launch of a launch vehicle represents the consumption of a certain quantity of nonrenewable resources.  This consumption includes the propellants used in chemical rockets as well as the dry mass of rocket and satellite structures that are eventually launched into orbit.  If the satellite is launched into a high enough orbit (or worse yet, into an escape trajectory), in most cases both it and the final stage of the rocket that launched it are never coming back to earth.  If on the other hand the satellite is launched into LEO, sooner or later the materials of which the satellite is made will be turned into a thin cloud of gaseous metal oxides when the satellite's orbit degrades due to atmospheric drag and the satellite burns up in the earth's atmosphere.  This means that most satellites can never be recycled.  If moving to a circular economy is the key to building a sustainable industrial society of the future, then commercial LEO satellite swarms like Starlink are like a hole in a bag of sugar carried outdoors during a rainstorm - a leakage of something precious, a leakage which can never be recovered.

This is true especially because the materials used to make satellites include rare, high-value strategic minerals which are also sought after by nations who want to use these materials to develop other advanced technologies.  As commercial operators of LEO satellite swarms gobble up increasing amounts of these minerals, they will find themselves in increasingly direct conflict with other actors who also want to use these minerals for their own purposes.  They will also face worsening shortages.  I have mentioned that when a LEO satellite burns up in atmospheric re-entry, its materials are turned into unrecoverable smoke.  Because Starlink satellites operate at such low altitudes, they don't last long in orbit.  (See "Decay time estimate for LEO spacecraft", Niccolai and Mengali, Acta Astronautica, December 2024, and "Starlink Constellation: Deployment, Configuration, and Dynamics", Ali, et al, arXiv, March 2026.)    According to at least one source, one to two Starlink satellites burn up each day.  These satellites must be replaced with new ones in order to maintain the desired number of satellites in the swarm.  This replacement represents yet more consumption of nonrenewable rare strategic resources.

Lastly there is the ever-increasing risk of collisions between satellites when a multitude of satellites has to operate in a very narrow altitude range close to the Earth.  Please note that a collision between satellites moving at a relative velocity of thousands of miles per hour with respect to each other is not the same as a collision between two cars driven by a couple of impatient boneheads on the 605 freeway in Los Angeles County.  In the case of the road-bound speedsters, the collision debris will be spread over an area of perhaps a few dozen square yards at the very worst.  But a collision between satellites can produce tens of thousands of small fragments, each of which is traveling at orbital velocity, and each of which is in turn able to destroy or seriously damage other satellites which have been placed into the same orbital zone.  These small collision fragments can stay in orbit for much longer periods than the original satellites involved in the collision.  And as these fragments strike other satellites, they can in turn produce an increasing number of high-speed clouds of debris whose fragments strike still more satellites, in a chain reaction that eventually renders LEO unusable for satellites and unsafe for manned space flight that operates in the LEO altitude region.  Such a scenario is known as a Kessler syndrome.  Should the world experience a Kessler syndrome, either gradually or suddenly, it would be game over for Starlink.

The only reason why Starlink is valuable is because it has built a near-monopoly on satellite internet service.  According to one source, SpaceX (the parent company of Starlink) loses money every time it launches a rocket.  Musk's status as a trillionaire is built largely on a foundation of attempted monopolization of space in order to deliver a service to people who have been tricked into believing that they need this service.  We have seen that this foundation itself rests on some rather shaky ground.  What we can do is to give a bit of a shove to this foundation - namely, by learning not to need Elon Musk.  This should be a key strategic objective of strategic nonviolent resistance - namely, the destruction of monopolists by learning ways to stop needing their monopolies.  Once a sufficiently large number of people figures out how to make that happen, the monopolists will fall.  Then all the king's horses and all the king's men won't be able to put them back together again.