Re-Elect Gaius Baltar!

The new seasons of Battlestar Galactica started. And we're all wondering; is Ellen really the Final Five? Or is she an older version of No. 6? Can Tigh be trusted as a human-wannabe-Cylon? Is Tyrol gonna go all Cylon or is he gonna be loyal to the fleet? Was that really Kara Thrace in the cockpit of that burned out raider or did she time travel?

But as an economist the one question in my mind is:

Why the hell was the MPK so low on New Caprica?

They had a year before the Cylons showed up. And after that year they were still living in freakin' tents. TENTS! After a year! Lazy ass bastards!

Now, the first explanation that comes to mind is that, you know, they just didn't have enough natural resources to work with. But that can't be. There's obviously woods around on New Caprica - where the search party from Galactica landed and the ambush took place. Cut down some of them trees and build some goddamn log cabins. You're in an virgin environment. Exploit it! You're in a world where diminishing returns have not set in. Take advantage! It took settlers in the American West less than two months to put up their cabin and that probably included plowing the land around it (I had a reference for that but lost it). What the hell where you people doing?

We are talking about a civilization that has FTL capability here! And they can't fashion tree trunks into adobes.

Also, there's obviously stone - where the execution of Roslin, Zarek and others was gonna take place. Now, if you take stones, and pile one on top of each other, at some point you make these things called *WALLS*. It's not a long shot from there to make a *CEILING*. And then you got a house. But when the Cylons showed up there was no *walls* or *ceiling* or *houses*, just freakin' tents.

And when the Cylons DID show up apparently they didn't have the same problems. They build a very large concrete building very quickly. Granted, them being Cylons, they build a prison. But they still build it. Why couldn't the New Caprica crew build a series of concrete buildings which, if they had been so inclined they could've called "apartments" (I think that word was mentioned somewhere in the Pythia prophecies). Was it just cuz they've all been feeling so sorry for themselves through out?

Alright, the obvious explanation here is the Presidency of Gaius Baltar. But as much of a shit as that guy is you just can't blame everything on him. Was Gaius Baltar really a *growth killing president*, say, like Robert Mugabe of the New Caprica?

It doesn't seem likely. From all indications Gaius just wanted pills, booze and hookers. In other words "non-distorting lump sum taxes". Or in yet in other words, do you really think that Gaius Baltar had the time to supervise the extraction of surplus from hard working New Capricans who were busy chopping down trees to build some comfy log cabins for themselves. No, in all likelihood he probably just collected enough lump sum taxes to fund the above mentioned activities and left everyone alone.

(As an aside, here I completely sympathize with the rabble rousing that Tyrol's union is about to do in the relevant episodes. Trade Unions make perfect sense - even more - when they're all anti-government in a government system. The Polish Solidarity being the prime example. The technical term for this is the *double marginalization problem*)

In fact, if you really think about it, then Laura Roslin seems like a much more of a "anti-development", "growth-killing" president than Gaius. She's got that 3rd grade autocratic marmish school teacher thing going and she knows what's best for everybody. Tom Zarek is not entirely wrong about her. Prime exhibit: the idea of randomly assigning people to tilium mining regardless of their background. I mean, even Lee Adama, who, like, plays the role of the "lovable dumbass" picked up on the fact that it's not really good to have English teachers, or cow farmers or ... people who turn logs into log cabins and stones into *walls* ... be miners.

You can't blame this one on Gaius. In fact I blame it on Roslin. She promised everyone she'd take care of them, they believed her and in the extraordinary circumstances it actually made sense for a while. People needed hope and change and then she gave it to them. And that's what she was good at. But once it settled into the nitty gritty the basic laws reasserted themselves. And ever since then she's been messing up the economy of the fleet, And they got all lazy.

They deserved it. Or if they didn't, it was Laura Roslin's fault.