subversion, while Americans tend to see Soviet agents behind any foreign relations imbroglio or domestic dissent. Preference for the known, or at least the already accepted, is a key finding in Kuhn's work on science (7), and the passionate defense of the increasingly indefensible is common in politics. Like the King of Siam in the Broadway musical, “Tis a Puzzlement” to determine what it is we absolutely know. The basic difficulty is that people resist submitting their beliefs to “reality tests” precisely because they fear the consequences of failure. Still, we cannot act without some kind of model to guide our thinking. It seems desirable that a model have as high a reality content as possible. We need, therefore, to examine both our beliefs and such empirical data as may be available. In the present case, we should consider alternative arguments for both private enterprise and collective enterprise in SI, with the aim of avoiding ideological traps which may prevent optimal policy choices. Private Enterprise: The Ideology Preference for private enterprise as the form for SI rests upon the now classic arguments presented by such advocates as Milton Friedman (8). We are told that free markets are the most efficient and rational of all methods for allocation of scarce resources, as individual interests are computed by the impersonal, decentralized mechanism of the market and transmuted into the greater interest of the whole society. Further — and further from any possible empirical test, into the realm of ideology — we are told that the free market is the most democratic of all possible economies, allowing “we, the people” to participate in a continuing plebescite on the use to which scarce resources will be put. Indeed, free markets are presented as a necessary defense against political tyranny: if your livelihood is independent of government control, then the ultimate coercion — obey or starve! — is not available to government. Free markets make free men! The free market alternative thus enters the SI controversy with an armory of powerful symbolic weapons. Surely we do not wish irrationality and inefficiency on the High Frontier, but quite the reverse. No one has yet advocated space industrialization as a way to increase either poverty or slavery. Certainly, if government tyranny through economic control is a serious likelihood and “free markets” can prevent it, the market becomes a preferred alternative. Collectivism: The Ideology The opposing view, or set of views, will be referred to here as the collectivist model (9). Collectivists take the position that wealth is created by cooperative efforts of a whole society. In this view individual effort builds upon an indispensable social base without which the individual could not succeed. Although individuals deserve recognition and reward for their particular contributions, society at large also has a legitimate claim to some share of the benefits, essentially as a return on social investment. In principle, sharing can be done in entirely democratic fashion and is inherently antityrannical: if all gain by general social advancement, to act tyrannically would be self-destructive behavior. Nor need inefficiency be a problem: all members of society stand to benefit from planning efficient and rational use of scarce resources, and would therefore work vigorously toward efficiency. In principle, collectivist societies may be either centralized or decentralized (even "anarchic”),
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