I think colonizing other planets may be one of the most important means we have for addressing systematic problems on earth:
Populating new places can enable a new start and experimentation with new forms of social organisation. Escape from the momentum of tradition.
This isn't just speculation. We've already seen demonstrations of this, like the founding of the United States and the democratic system they put in place there.
This sort of thing could help us address the sort of problems you mention. Like with the case of the US, successful new ideas can be transplanted back to other places.
Also the fact that in the long term colonization may help with overpopulation on Earth.
If you look at the way economies are currently run, they are, in a lot of ways, at odds with what economists think are the best way to run them (I think this can be easily explained by the fact that often what economists think are good ideas are not politically very popular). A fresh start might enable some of those things to be tested out.
In terms of social organisation, the thing is that we don't really know for sure. You have to do experiments and see how things work. You can't say, before the fact, that it definitely will or won't work. Being able to experiment is really important for progress, but it's really hard to do within established systems.
No single source. Just things I've read and heard over the years. I'd say a major one of those is listening to a lot of episodes of the Planet Money podcast.
> Also the fact that in the long term colonization may help with overpopulation on Earth.
the population growth rate in developed countries tends to 0 as sanitary conditions and child survival rates increase, it's even negative in some countries, actually. Do you really think it would be easier to develop industrial nations in a barren wasteland than on earth?
Populating new places can enable a new start and experimentation with new forms of social organisation. Escape from the momentum of tradition.
This isn't just speculation. We've already seen demonstrations of this, like the founding of the United States and the democratic system they put in place there.
This sort of thing could help us address the sort of problems you mention. Like with the case of the US, successful new ideas can be transplanted back to other places.
Also the fact that in the long term colonization may help with overpopulation on Earth.
(I heard this viewpoint from reading Robert Zubrin's "The Case For Mars" https://www.amazon.com/Case-Mars-Plan-Settle-Planet/dp/14516...)