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What If the Apollo Program Had Continued?
proslack writes "The die had been cast years before Apollo 11 had even reached the moon. In the late 1960s, the Vietnam war was straining US finances. A fatal fire on the Apollo launch pad in January 1967 had blotted NASA's copybook. The Soviet moon effort seemed to be going nowhere. In the budget debates during the summer of 1967, Congress refused NASA's request to fund an extended moon programme.
What if things had been different that summer? Suppose Congress had granted NASA's wish, then fast-forward 40-odd years..." A nice little what-if sort of story that makes sorta nostalgic for a non-existent present.
We wouldn't have had Vietnam (this frees up the money) and the Cold War would still be going on (this motivates rocket development).
The whole thing was fueled by the ongoing Cold War pissing contest. Continuation of the space race would have meant dealing with the ever-increasing tension of the Cold War. So I'm sad we never got our cities on the moon, but it's a damn good trade-off for not having to worry so much about all-out nuclear war.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
We would be working with Zoidberg and be drinking Slurm.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
The moon may have been a harsh mistress, but I guess we shall never know.
Highly likely that:
1) We would have full time orbital manned space station at all times.
2) Visits between Moon and Orbital station would be LESS frequent.
3) Visits between Moon and Earth would be MORE frequent. (because Apollo lifts off from Earth. Public-Private partnership would see to it that NASA doesn't use the most economical way of transport)
4) No Space Shuttle. Rockets all the way. (Why mess with something that works)
5) Ion Spacecraft launched to Asteroids.
6) Still no man on Mars. But a permanent computerized research station on Mars that operates from fixed locations.
7) No Mars Rover. The Rover was a roaming answer. Fixed stations would necessitate no rover.
8) SALT II would have long been abandoned and Earth would be surrounded by nuke armed stations.
9) No Cruise missiles. Why build a Mosquito when an Elephant would be cheaper.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
1: We would be whooshing around in solid fuel powered Jet Packs, and global warming would be a non-issue.
2: We would be whooshing around in liquid hydrocarbon Jet Cars, and global warming would be tripled.
3: We would be whooshing around on in intergalactic cruise ships, reclining in hovering lounge chairs, clapping for robot-delivered lunch-in-a-cup.
We'd all be dead from toxic levels of perchlorate in our drinking water?
What if Kennedy had set a lesser goal, such as orbiting the moon?
The Russians quite probably could have achieved with with Soyuz-based technology. We "know" this, sorta, because recently someone proposed putting a Soyuz capsule around the moon for a rich billionaire with $100m to spare.
Now you're in the situation where both superpowers are orbiting the moon, which makes it a military race. You can drop stuff easily from lunar orbit down to the earth, so both powers have to remain there.
Assuming we hadn't ended up dead (this is a high risk alternate history) I suspect we'd be a lot further along in space travel and technology now.
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
The rate of spending was unsustainable; we simply could not afford it, no matter how useful the research outputs might have been. On a more prosaic level, once the Cold War posturing had been successfully implemented, the political benefits would be virtually zero - even if the science would be extremely valuable.
...Vietnam was effectively the cold war. Rather than fight each other an an arena that had very high stakes (an invasion of Russia and the USA) the USA and Russia decided to fight in a number of "proxy" wars such as Vietnam and Korea.
And similarly, the cold war would have already ended itself. Soviet Russia while an interesting "experiment" ended up failing due to the fact that human nature plus the Soviet version of communism ended up with a government who could not financially sustain itself.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
No mention of Walmart anywhere in this article. I like this alter-verse.
Had we spent more on Apollo, we would have had more stuff on the moon. It is much less clear, though, that the economic relevance of doing so would have been any brighter than it is now.
TFA presents a fairly rosy picture, where lifting stuff, including vationers, out of Earth's gravity is routine and (relatively) cheap. Presumably, more Apollo would have driven some cost reduction; but that much?
TFA's predictions of bustling free markets on the moon seem even less plausible. With the possible exception of helium-3, the moon contains basically nothing worth shipping back to earth. Exploiting lunar resources really only makes sense to support lunar research activities(like big huge telescopes on the dark side) which might be "private" in the sense of "conducted by people not directly employed by the feds"; but would be largely publicly supported basic research stuff.
I'm not seeing it.
...but it's got no atmosphere...
Bow-ties are cool.
The Secret studios in Nevada where they faked the moon landings would be really busy, they would be having to fake not only the moon bases, but the Mars landings and the bases there as well.
Because we never made it past low earth orbit.
The Above thread is sarcastic, if you hadn't noticed.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Arizona would be littered with soundstages by now.
and then Slashdotters wouldnt be able to welcome their Nazi ... oh wait.
Both programmes followed up on the German research, USSR took the workers, US the lead engineers and in the end the USSR was the first in space. Sputnik crisis. That was shocking for the US. The US space program was an attempt to catch up with the Soviets. So if the US had not succeeded the USSR would.
What if Kennedy had set a lesser goal, such as orbiting the moon?
The Russians quite probably could have achieved with with Soyuz-based technology. We "know" this, sorta, because recently someone proposed putting a Soyuz capsule around the moon for a rich billionaire with $100m to spare.
The Soviets did have the Luna programme - including Luna 10, the first artificial satellite of the moon. Interestingly, they focussed on robot exploration of the moon and remote collection of samples - probably closer in principle to the methods that will be used for future exploration of other planets in our solar system than manned flights.
And similarly, the cold war would have already ended itself. Soviet Russia while an interesting "experiment" ended up failing due to the fact that human nature plus the Soviet version of communism ended up with a government who could not financially sustain itself.
And now the US looks like it will be emulating the USSR in decline.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
We would now try to colonize the moon with all the negative side-effects you can imagine. But guess what, it didn't happen so there is no point in speculating because it will never become anything more than speculating.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Mod parent up!!
A "cold war" is when both countries give each other the "cold shoulder" (Indirect fighting ect). In this case, they used puppet wars such as Vietnam and Korea. The cold war was more of an arms race more then anything, mainly to see who was the "Top dog" after WW2.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
what i mean is, just going out there just to have a look-see isn't a valid reason to spend quadrillions. we need to
1. discover an alien race, or
2. be faced with the definitive soon upcoming extinction of earth as a supportive biosphere for some reason, whether man made or cosmic or terrestrial in origin, or
3. discover some fantastic energy source or resource out there (or drug... spice?)
4. more tribal chest thumping and grandstanding a la the cold war
etc.
these are reasons that are easy to grasp and easily capture the attention and the imagination of all. this provides the political and cultural and popular compunction to spend large sums of cash on the endeavour
sure, there are lots of reasons to go out there right now. except they are all amorphous and ill-defined and longwinded. something pressing and urgent and/ or clear and easy to grasp is what is needed to get us motivated
there really is no motivation to go out there right now. again, i mean solid, clear, urgent, and earnest motivation
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Even the Earth has a whole lot of undeveloped acreage in the ocean.
Except the Soviets didn't really support North Korea. Even they realized they were crazy, but they were their crazy neighbor.
All the discussions about the space program overlook a critical fact. It costs about $10,000 a kilogram or more to lift anything into low earth orbit. That means that the entire manned space program is virtually useless : there's no point in learning how to put people into space and have them survive if no affordable way for a lot of people and supplies to go into space exists. If every kilo costs 10 grand, it makes a heck of a lot more sense to send robots and equipment into space than to send people. Even repairing Hubble never made any sense : it would have been a lot cheaper to build a brand new telescope every time than to pay for each repair mission.
The only way a moon base or a space station or a space hotel or anything else will ever be practical is if that launch cost is reduced through new technology. Personally, out of all the proposals I've ever seen, only one new technology makes the slightest bit of sense : laser launch.
We would still be driving around the planet in gasoline driven speedsters.
We would not have not cured world hunger.
We would have more than enough nuclear warheads to destroy the planet.
Wars would not have been abolished.
The 747 wouldn't still be the largest airliner.
Oh yeah.. wait a minute, where have I been?
We would have some buildings on the Moon, a much less unmanned space exploration history, a few more advances in the relevant technology, and even bigger a debt.
As interesting as going to the Moon can be, going there ourselves for 40 years continuously would serve little scientific purpose (cue the responses that we are meant to live in space like in all the cool scifi novels and that it should be our #1 priority regardless of reality), waste a lot of money (more than it'd be worth, scientifically) and divert resources from higher ROI science, like huge space telescopes and such.
So yeah, it was cool while it lasted, but I won't cry over what could have been, because it's not like there could possibly have been any drive to do more after over a decade of space racing.
You just got troll'd!
Apparently this alternate time line would be just like a 50s Science Fiction aimed at children, awesome! So I'll guess, the moon would be primarily inhabited by boy explorers who say "Gosh" a lot.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Seems to me to be the best use of the moon. Hearts last longer, perhaps, in less gravity ?
Old rich people squander their children's inheritance to gain another 10 years living
on the moon. Retirement homes on Earth are about as lonely as living on the moon.
It's a nice dream. But what strikes me as bit weird - is that there are AFAIK huge natural resources on the moon. It's basically a goldmine! So what is stopping today's multinational super-corporations from exploiting it? No natives to subdue?
And lets be realistic - only way human race is getting to moon again is commercialization.
Aside from Texas, do you really believe all the states are going to split off into independent republics?
And now the US looks like it will be emulating the USSR in decline.
???
I presume you are talking about the economy? Capitalism has cycles. You can't take a 6-month period and extrapolate it indefinitely into the future.
Who is modding this "interesting"?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
image what can be done in 1/6 g.
Yeah, apparently shipping up lava tube sealant enough to make a kilometre diameter section airtight for the city would have been trivial.
I think they would have bust their heads trying to get moon-dust concrete to cure, never mind sealing vast cathedrals of lava tubes. Never mind the moon dust problem in itself.
Even if they had sensibly chosen a 20m diameter lava tube, it would have taken years to seal off, never mind having airlocks every 50m for safety. Given the speed of ISS construction, it would have taken a few years just to get a stairway from the surface to the bottom of the lava tube.
It simply wasn't viable. It would have been cool, but nothing was known about actually going beyond trips to the moon.
However I hope it happens within my lifetime.
Would the Cold War have fizzled in the way that it really did, with Saudi Arabia flooding the oil market in 1984 and causing the oil dependent Soviet economy to collapse?
When watching a documentary on the space race they interviewed Americans after the Sputnik was launched and hit the news... The sense of alarm was palpable in the voices of people. http://atlantis2.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=3303172n has a great quote "We had better get on ours toes"
One must not forget the real historic event in the space race was not in the race itself but for one moment not often found in history one MAN decided to aim for something that was out of everyones grasp. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTyYM-dUgCI choosing to do it "not because it is easy, but because it is hard" it was reported that people at NASA thought it was a far stretch to accomplish it before the decade was out.
So see it for what it is, Humanity when it challenges itself can accomplish the unimaginable.
Just look at Baywatch.
We still haven't established what happens long-term in low-gravity. We know that zero-g is not someplace you could live forever. Is lunar gravity sufficient? We don't actually know. And it's one thing to follow the science fiction cliche that the martians and moonies couldn't adapt to Earth gravity anymore.... it's another thing if the first moonie baby is horribly disfigured.
We don't even know if, were you to raise ten generations of rats in a 1-g centerfuge and ten generations on Earth if the centerfuge rats would be healthy by comparison.
Helium-3 is also present on Earth. You can buy it by the tank. If just getting access to Helium-3 was enough to make fusion possible, we'd at least have one pilot reactor that was able to produce a decent sized net energy gain.
There was a significant concern inside of NASA that our flawless luck of moon launches would run out. What if we had done a few more missions and 19 left us with dead astronauts on the moon when the LM couldn't lift off? Do you think we'd have continued at that point? Remember, there could have been one more moon landing with the hardware we had but NASA didn't want to launch it.
The problem is, cutting off the Apollo program in favor of the Space Shuttle made fairly good sense at the time and awful sense in retrospect. Even a fool can predict the past.
Gentoo Sucks
While a great triumph for NASA, the Apollo program was chiefly devised to beat the USSR to the moon and thereby provide an immense propaganda victory over the commies. Once that was achieved, it had little practical use in developing space exploration.
.. X-15 rocket-powered aircraft .. set speed and altitude records in the early 1960s'
The US actually put its own space plane on the back burner for the duration of the Apollo program. What would have happened if the Apollo program never happened, they might have continued development of the X-15 and we would have had a safe reliable Space Shuttle decades sooner.
'The
Insert XKCD joke here about extrapolation, can't open it at work.
Kind silly spending $100B on something that only lasts 6 years.
The ISS and Hubble would probably be replaced with a small moon based research lab and observatory. While the value of the lab wouldn't be greater than the current ISS, moon-based telescopes (optical and radio) would probably far outperform anything we've got today.
The other changes would be the trickle-down effects of the technology developed to support such a base. Specifically, higher performance and cheaper solar power arrays would probably be commonplace.
I don't think a lunar base would be a stepping off point for a manned Mars mission. Robotics would be more or less where they are today, since the state of the art is not driven by NASA or military requirements. Unless the moon base revealed some necessity for having people on the ground, it might be an argument against further manned missions.
Have gnu, will travel.
There are so many reasons why America as the world once it is coming to an end.
Obligatory:
Police: Are you classified as human?
Korben Dallas: Negative, I am a meat popsicle.
Sent from your iPad.
After Apollo Twenty Congress took the manned space program away from NASA and handed it over to the Navy, there are now half a dozen space stations, two moon bases, and Admiral Heinlein never let the Soviets build spacecraft.
Or did I read the wrong article?
More missions would have lead to colonization of the moon, and would inevitably lead to us finding the secret alien outpost, which would piss them off and force them to eradicate us.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You'd all be talking German-Jap, which funny as it is, is not that funny now is it
The monumental amount of technical achievements which were instigated and generated by the moon program boggle the mind: digital electronics, computer engineering and microcomputers, satellite remote sensing technology, vast areas of communications, biomedical engineering, materials science and polymer chemistry, the list goes on and on ---- and lest we forget: TANG!
The Apollo moon shot required 90,000 lines of Fortran code....imagine what Windows Vista could accomplish!!! (OK - just kidding here...)
21st Century Reading List:
Other People's Money and It Takes A Pillage, by Nomi Prins --- Family of Secrets, by Russ Baker --- JFK and the Unspeakable, by James W. Douglas --- Hot Money and the Politics of Debt, by R.T. Naylor --- Brothers, by David Talbot --- John Kenneth Galbraith, His Life, His Politics, His Economics, by Richard Parker
What? In 1969 Vietnam had been "won" already. If not for the US Congress deciding to pull the plug the whole fall of Saigon thing wouldn't have happened. But the most important thing is that the money for Vietnam was already spent. The remaining six years until the fall of Saigon was the US pulling out and telling the NVA to come back and be friends with their brothers in the South.
Too bad they didn't get the message amd decided that a brother that disagreed with them about politics was better off dead.
What benefits would we have got? Hard to say, probably nothing tangible - just a group of half-a-dozen scientists and technicians spending a few months at a time far out of the public gaze. There might be the occasional documentary, but there's only so much footage of rocks and dust - and one patch of dirt looks a lot like any other. So I doubt there'd be much about it in the news (again, just like antarctica). Just about the only time it would make the headlines is when there's a debate about cutting funding (again), or when something goes wrong - or when there's an expose about the billions being spent on it, for not-much in the way of returns.
Is that what we thought we'd get?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
There's no tangible goal to take to the people there. What do you say? "Ha! We circled a man around the moon first!"? Doesn't hold much punch.
Do you remember who the first man was to orbit the earth? The vast majority of people wouldn't be able to answer. Some might answer "John Glenn". Only a small fraction of a percent of people would correctly answer Yuri Gagarin.
Do you remember who first set foot on the moon? Do you remember what his first words were? The fact that I don't have to answer either question speaks for itself.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
We were already entrenched in the Vietnam war before we landed on the moon (let alone before Apollo was cancelled).
Here you are, good sir.
I recall a story in either Asimov's or Analog that posited this same idea. A single year extension and they discover ice on the lunar poles, then differences back home (Jerry Brown and Jesse Jackson as presidents) and a culmination with Walter Cronkite doing a live remote on the lunar surface to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the first landing. One of the underlying themes was people in that alternate future wishing history had taken a slightly different course and even more had been accomplished. Anyone else remember this story?
"Soviet Russia?" Not nearly. It was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Lativia, Lithuania, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Chechnya, Georgia, and other VERY different national entities made up the USSR, in addition to Russia and others.
These nationalist forces ripped the Soviet Union apart as much or more than the "failed experiment" did.
Nationalism did in the Soviet Union as much as its inability to equitably deliver goods and services to its people.
Simplistic 'Russia failed because it was not America' arguments are completely unhelpful.
you have to put the question in concrete direct and compelling terms, like: holy fucking shit, that planet we just found near regulus is showing clear signs of photosynthesis
then we have a deep and strong desire to get our asses to regulus. not some sort of vague idea to go "out there"
we need concrete goals, not nebulous ones (pun intended)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's called Energia
Hopefully, after the Shuttle is retired, N.A.S.A. will
outsource their launches to Energia rather than the U.S.-based fly-by-night private space launch companies.
Yours In Kazakhstan,
Kilgore Trout
I would have rather they had stuck with the dropship idea like they ran with the X-15 and now Rutan's/Branson's method, at least for light duty, low earth orbit human movers. Big dumb capsules are good for moving bulk freight, but we need a real highly reusable, fast turn around and cheap spaceplane. The shuttle is a compromise between the two and just didn't cut it. There's trucks, then cars, we need both.
You've almost got it. There was also the Soviet war in Afghanistan, though some historians call this the Second Cold War. (I disagree.) . In a way, our current involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, and to some extent with Iran and Syria is basically a "cleanup" of loose strings leftover from the Cold War. I will leave you to draw your own conclusions about any other events surrounding these conflicts.
My blog
No, dumbshit, not just like "Soviet Russia". (It's just Russia now, FYI)
There's a whole spectrum between unbridled capitalism and total socialism. When a 12 trillion dollar economy cannot provide basic health care to all (no, ER visits don't count) there's a goddamned problem.
As we've recently seen, unchecked capitalism is not a good thing since the markets aren't rational after all. And as we've seen with USSR in the past, that doesn't work either. I see no problem emulating nations like Canada, New Zealand, or Sweden. Hell, I've got friends in South America with better basic health care for the poor than we have here in the states.
Did you know that disco record sales were up 400% for the year ending 1976? If these trends continues...
Soviet Russia was not just socialism. Limited socialism has been in place in much of Europe for years. And while I wouldn't trade our unemployment rate for theirs (even now), they are hardly in some kind of a Soviet-style decline.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." - Inigo Mantoya
Sorry, but remarks like this also reminds me Major Frank Burns - "When are you two going to learn about Chinese treachery? Did Pearl Harbor teach you nothing?"
Similar to the upcoming US election results
"It's utter bilge. I don't think anybody will ever put up enough money to do such a thing . . . What good would it do us? If we spent the same amount of money on preparing first-class astronomical equipment we would learn much more about the universe . . . It is all rather rot" -- Riet Wolley, Astronomer Royal.
He was so right.
Basic truth: space travel with chemical rockets is just too inefficient to be useful. Fuels are as good as they can get; we've been using liquid hydrogen since the 1960s. It's not getting any better. Space travel is about weight reduction, which means fragile vehicles. (Endeavour just had some foam fall off and hit the thermal tiles during launch. Again.)
Unless and until we get something better than chemical rockets, space travel isn't going to get any better.
If we'd launched an Orion or two in the 1950s, things might have been very different. Everyone would know there's a better way.
We didn't force you to buy it. Make your own game system, lowly peasant.
The recent bust might not have anything to do with his assessment.
The Soviet Union was done in by rampant corruption. Some see the previous
administration as a repeat of what was going on in the Soviet Union prior
to it's collapse. At a certain point, you need to reign in your own greed.
This isn't just altruism, it's also enlightened self interest.
If you steal too much ultimately the system won't be able to sustain itself
anymore and it will collapse. "Greed with no rules" ultimately destroys itself.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Basically, the landing itself was the doom of the Apollo program, and most of the subsequent space effort. Because they "finished the job," a huge chunk of a Federal bureaucracy (and NASA is a bureaucracy), found themselves "downsized" and punished for succeeding.
The lesson was not lost on other major endeavors. (Fusion is still "forty years away", and it was "forty years away" in 1969.) I have absolutely no doubt that other R&D-oriented programs have also been handicapped or effectively destroyed by the Lesson of Apollo.
For details of an earlier example, check out Penelope's tapestry in Homer's "The Iliad."
I know people say that the Soviet Union wasn't real communism. You can't get to the ideal version of communism without killing and hurting a whole bunch of people who don't want to be a part of it.
Just because they got stuck on the intermediary step doesn't mean they aren't sufficient to show the failure of communism. You have to get stuck on the government-coercion intermediary step because you have to force people into the communistic system.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
I remember when it happened and it was one of those big collective "oh shit!!" moments. Everyone grokked what this meant, the rooskies now had the high ground and could do stuff we weren't even close to doing yet. Ya, there was also a lot of grudging admiration..but it was tempered with some sober reality. The US people were used to being topdogs in about any tech out there, I mean this was just a default assumption "we're the bestus in anything!!", it was taken for granted, so this really got to people. Of course we caught up quickly, but it really was a good kick to the pants.
'limited'-socialism begins the moment any government takes any amount of money from the people and redistributes it back in other forms.
there isn't a government alive that doesnt have some sort of socialism.
got a better argument lined up?
Interesting, maybe, but incorrect. The US first got involved in VietNam in the fifties, before the first Cosmonaut reached space. We landed on the moon in 1969, only four years before we stopped bombing North Vietnam (I was stationed in Thailand then and saw the last B-52 leave Utapao to drop the last bomb).
The cold war ended during the Reagan Presidency and had nothing to do with rocket development; it was economics that stopped the cold war, the USSR went broke. If you have a Saturn V rocket that can get to the moon and back, an ICBM is trivial by comparison.
Free Martian Whores!
There is no need to weaponize the moon -- anything you launch for there would have to clear the lunar gravitation field, and then travel hundreds of thousands of miles. The goal during Reagan's Star Wars era is to militarize near space -- lasers achieve greater intensities at a nearer distance, projectiles get accelerated "for free" by the earth's gravitational field, and below geostationary orbit, you can position a satellite anywhere on the planet within hours.
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
The UK based North Koreans of course.
You're forgetting that saying something like that makes the speaker feel good about themselves, therefore evidence and logic are irrelevant. Making the US to be the bad guy/in decline is still very trendy with the kids despite Obama's election. Might take them a while to unlearn that reflexive cynicism and paranoia. /voted for Obama
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Here you go.
Actually, "Russia failed because it was not America" pretty much sums it up quite nicely.
-- artificial ethnic tensions
-- suppression of free enterprise
-- rampant corruption
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I am sorry but if you think what we have now is capitalism, you are clearly mistaken.
Liberty.
between the following situations:
1. there are lions out there who want to eat you
fills you with a vague unsettling feeling. you know this to be 100% true, but what to do about it? nothing more is done
2. look, on the other end of the valley, that's a lion staring at us
your mind instantly begins to scheme, your hands are instantly filled with intent: build a trap, build a defense, run away, go and kill it, etc
its psychological. you have to see the threat/ treasure in front of you before you actually do anything about it. i'm not saying it is good, i'm not saying it is bad, i'm just saying it is 100% true of human nature, this psychology
of course, something like a planet-killing asteroid, looming at us with 3 days warning before armageddeon is not a scenario such a psychology is properly equipped to deal with. so it is my hope that mankind bridges, on serendipity, the time between now, and some hypothetical future state where dispatching planet-killing asteroids is an afterthought, or their long term detection is accurate and foolproof
until such a hypothetical time, we are riding on luck, because indeed, the threat is real, but too vague to actually compel mankind to do anything about it. no one is going to spend trillions on asteroid defense. just not going to happen right now
now another way we might be compelled to spend trillions: a hit by a major asteroid, but not a planet killer, that does debilitating damage to the biosphere, but nothing mortal to civilization. then you have nothing to worry about: we WILL prepare, we WILL spend quadrillions, we WILL focus a hell of a lot more on outer space at such a time
in fact, its almost in the best interest of mankind for the earth to be hit by a major, non-planet killing asteroid right now. that would burn into us the need to spend a lot on outer space, fix our attention and focus, and definitely kick space exploration into high gear. in fact, amongst the reasons to kick space exploration into high gear (aliens discovered, resources needed, etc.), it is the only nonhypothetical reason to get our asses focused and motivated: a valid real threat to mankind and the planet
in fact, in the name of furthering mankind's technological progress, maybe some evil mastermind billionaire today should redirect some perfectly sized asteroid our way. he will of course be consciously responsible for the death of thousands or even millions of people, as well as untold trillions in damage, but his motivation can also be excused: "hey, get off your ass now, before its too late"
mr. bill gates, are you listening? its time to blue screen a comet, or windows tunguska edition
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Don't forget Robert Goddard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Goddard_(scientist)) without whom there wouldn't have been an Apollo program.
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
If you change a single moment in your past, will everything change?
In The end of Eternity, Asimov said that there was some "inertia" in time, if something changed in the past things somewhat keep being more or less the same, as most significative changes arent isolated events but more massive trends. If french revolution didnt happened that exact day, could had happened anyway a day or a year after. The apollo program could had been cancelled in a later date anyway.
Also, if it continued everything could had changed, even things that could look unrelated. Maybe arpanet and then internet would not exist now, as all could have been more focused in space, or maybe the IBM PC never saw the light, You know, the kind of stuff that make that if you kill a butterfly in the past, you get another president in the present
In space!
No, but history says you can extrapolate it twenty years into the future.
The book chronicles a real estate boom (like our generation had a few years ago) and the aforementioned stock market boom. The similarities between that time and ours, economically and sociologically, are astounding.
Give us another fifteen to twenty five years and our economy will be ok, most likely.
Free Martian Whores!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Arrow
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Streak_(missile)
All impressive stuff at the time, and if the UK government had the balls to continue at the time, a bit of Anglo-US competition could have been very interesting.
As for computers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer
Can't find a cite, but I believe Manchester engineers were the ones that taught IBM about floating point co-processors
Oh, finally, learn some history you US-centric ass-wipe.
I think you're wrong about Vietnam. The only reason the Vietnam war happened was a complete lack of communication. The situation in Vietnam at the time was this: The Viet Cong had defeated the French colonialists, and the Americans (because we had no ambassadors, and absolutely no lines of communications) came charging in to protect the South from Communism. Except there never was any Communism. If anything, the US helped promote Communism through this lack of communication with North Vietnam. Thankfully they turned out Socialist (which while I still find deplorable, I see it as much better than Communism).
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
According to The New York Times .
Maybe it's just a US/European thing, but Yuri Gagarin was at least as famous as Neil Armstrong when I was a kid (not long after the moon landings).
That kinda looks like where we are today.
Artificial ethnic tensions: Sotomayor is what might be termed a reverse racist, thinking (and saying) that her experiences as a "wise latina" will make her a better judge, while passing judgment that white firefighters can't be discriminated against.
Suppression of free enterprise: government takeovers of banking and auto industries, telling Chrysler they need to be bought by a foreign company, socializing the medical industry (they say they are not but look at the direction they are heading).
Rampant corruption: How many politicians are under investigation for how many different forms of corruption, from failing to pay taxes to taking bribes to misuse of government funds/equipment?
I'd say we are just about where th former Soviet Union was just before it collapsed, and I don't like it much. Just my .02 and, of course, YMMV.
As Americans, do we have a "Lewis and Clark complex"? Do we prematurely put space exploration into our existing ideas about "the frontier"? how much would we learn from a permanent moon-city, and would we really care if it wasn't all that much? (as long as we got to stick our flag into some more "virgin territitory")
Sounds like America 2009
-- artificial ethnic tensions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricci_v._DeStefano
-- suppression of free enterprise http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8143414.stm
-- rampant corruption http://www.oneangryman.com/ken/2009/02/21/obama-tax-cheats-liars-and-billionaires/
I was going to submit this but found someone else already has; currently it's languishing in the firehose. http://slashdot.org/submission/1039753/NASA-Loses-the-Lost-Moon-Tapes-After-All?art_pos=17
According to NPR's Morning Edition, NASA does not have the 'Lost Moon Tapes' containing the raw footage of Neil Armstrong's historic first steps on the Moon, after all. The article claims that the original Apollo 11 recordings were likely erased. Instead, the restoration is being done from the best of the broadcast-format video obtained from a variety of sources, not the original SST signal.
I browse Slashdot at +3, Funny
Adding to the AC above - apparently only US thing. People in Europe generally realize who Yuri Gagarin was.
(really, did US took this "hit" so badly?...)
One that hath name thou can not otter
While we are daydreaming about what might have been, I'd like to imagine an alternate history where NASA didn't stop iterating.
NASA got the Saturn V through an iterative development cycle. Get Werner von Braun, have him build rockets very similar to ones he had built before; fly them, collect data, improve the design. Fly the new ones, collect data, improve the design. Over and over.
And then, for the Space Shuttle, NASA essentially said "We don't need to do that test and improve cycle anymore; we are just going to design the Space Shuttle on paper, build it, and be done." NASA's unsung heroes of rocket surgery managed to make it work, but that's a triumph of hard work and overtime against management stupidity.
It would have been cheaper to keep the test/improve cycle going than to spend ten years building the shuttle and flying nothing. According to Wikipedia, the Shuttle program will have cost $174 billion by its conclusion in 2010; the Saturn V program cost $32 to $45 billion in today's dollars ($6.5 billion in 1960's dollars; the inflation is depressing, isn't it?). But at the time the Shuttle project was started, the Saturn V had already been paid for; just keeping it flying would have cost even less than those numbers suggest. And besides, you wouldn't need a Saturn V for every flight; just for ones where you need that kind of crazy lift capacity.
It would actually have been far cheaper to keep flying expendables, but keep developing them, and hopefully iterate into something reusable. Take the rockets from the 1960's, and spend 20 years flying and improving them, and what would you have in the 1980's? A lot more stuff flying, more safely, and a lot cheaper.
The Shuttle was a mistake, of management more than anything else.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Why?
No, actually the parallels are stunning, it just took the average person longer to see through capitalism than it took them to see through communism.
I'm talking here about the really existing models, not the ideals. The ideals are in both systems quite nice. The real models are, basically, the same. The difference is not how, but who.
In both (real) systems you have a ruling class which offers a dangling carrot for those not inside the system, claiming to give them a chance to become one of the ruling elements in the system as well, while in reality being a tightly knit society. Those inside have power and wealth, those outside are supposed to produce it. It's actually not even much different from older systems with a ruling class (nobility) and a serving class (peasants). Just harder to see through it.
In both systems economy and rulership are interwoven. The difference is in my sig.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I think we'd have a permanent outpost on the moon established in the 1990's but not so many people would live there..perhaps a dozen at a time. We'd perhaps know more about the composition of the moons crust by drilling into the rock, we'd know if there is a hot core on that moon or not, we may even discover subsurface ice or water, or caves or new types of materials. Helium-3 may make fusion work but not on earth but rather on the moon.
He would have beaten Rocky in both movies. That's simple.
"Soviet Russia?" Not nearly. It was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Lativia, Lithuania, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Chechnya, Georgia, and other VERY different national entities made up the USSR, in addition to Russia and others.
Don't mean to nitpick - but Mongolia was never part of the USSR (Maybe a USSR "satellite" or "protectorate", however you like to put it).
Tyranny isn't the worst enemy of a democracy. Cynicism is.
I don't think any of the weapons systems you linked to (all of which are inferior to their American equivalent) can connect to XBox Live or produce graphics anywhere near as nice.
As far as computers, my PC would kick the shit out of your Collosus any day of the week. It would probably beat an XBox 360 in many ways as well, but since its not a game system, and cost 4 times as much as an XBox I think it's pretty dumb to compare the two.. I'm sure for its day the Collosus was a great computer, but like the pyramids, steam powered cars, and England, it's time has past.
This British douchebag is complaining that American game systems aren't up to snuff when his country doesn't even produce anything comparable. Maybe that will cut it for you old-world snobs, but in America, when we don't like something, we make something better.
So have fun pissing all over America's accomplishments, but don't forget - we are better than you in every fucking way.
...the USA and Russia decided to fight in a number of "proxy" wars such as Vietnam and Korea.
Russia (USSR) didn't have that much involvement in the Korean War It was mostly North Korea and then China fighting against the United States. China asked for help from Russia but they only received some limited air support. So it seems to me a proxy war between the US and China more so than between the US and Russia.
Then maybe I'd have that flying car I've always wanted...
Come play free flash games on Kongregate!
Some see the previous
administration as a repeat of what was going on in the Soviet Union prior
to it's collapse.
I see the previous administration more akin to the gradual stagnation the Soviet Union experience in the late 60s-early 70s.
I see the *current* administration as to a source of rampant corruption, and very similar to what the Soviet Union was "done in by".
Gigantic budget deficits as far as the eye can see, centralization of economic, industrial, social, and financial policy, huge expenditures upon shady projects with little oversight, and bipartisan efforts to snatch as many crumbs as possible from the budget with little or no thought as to what that will to do the nation.
We are currently watching the socialization of all of our societies "little ills", including the failure of our major industrial sectors (Auto Industry and Large cutbacks in our military industrial complex), socialization of trillions of dollars of losses in the financial sector, and socialization of our escalating health care costs.
There are only so many economic guarantees that can be placed upon the Federal Government before it begins to loose credibility, and before the dollar collapses. While we aren't at that point yet (we are years away, even with trillion+ dollar deficits), there is nothing to suggest that our deficits won't continue to grow through at least 2020, and probably through 2050 (if we last that long). Worse, its not like this money is being spent on pressing concerns; an immediate war, an epidemic crises, or a massive natural disaster. This money isn't even being "invested" in future growth (ie industrial or financial policy). This is money being blown on "societal welfare", or "public goodies", also know as ways to game for votes.
$1 spent on road construction does not get you an additional $1 in economic growth; the same is true for medicare, social security, carbon credits, or bank bailouts.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
While you have a good point - the US seems to be oblivious to the fact that another communist nation is actively working against us, economically. Asassin's Mace.
China determined to surpass the United States economically, politically, and militarily some years ago. They aspire to surpass us in the sciences, but they aren't making much headway there, although the US' science and engineering is slippping.
Asymetrical warfare. It's working, if not as quickly as the Chinese might hope.
Besides which, the US abandoned it's capitalistic manufacturing base about 35 years ago. Capitalism has been running on credit for a decade or so, and the credit is being called in now. It isn't terribly clear that capitalism is going to survive in any form that our fathers would recognize.
sarcasm mode Thank God we have entered the information age, where the US can feed itself with technology and electrons!! Hooray for the "service industries"! /sarcasm mode
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I was actually thinking more along the lines of "In a civil war re-enactment we need lots of Indians to shoot."
Ok, I'm more a child of the early 90s than the late 70s.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Mostly, if you get overly greedy and it becomes obvious to everyone that you put your interests before that of your country, when you're supposed to be the leader of the country and thus should actually be an example, if anyone, the usual reaction of the common man usually is "Ask what you can do for your country, my ass. Why should I?"
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why?
What is the base purpose? For a few to accumulate much, live high, while others endure hardship, or for most to live OK ( with enough security so they don't just die from lack of basic necessities ( food, basic healthcare ) ) but with enough insecurity to incentive hard work and production, and still a few ( and probably more, since the "feeding ground" would be larger ) wealthy living high?
If the economy only has the purpose of remaking the aristocracy and serf conditions of long ago, then I am at a lose as to why the many should participate. CEO's get away with "what is in it for me". What is in it for those "less than" the CEO's?
So, why? Because people are more important than money.
emt 377 emt 4
Obama might seem like a "socialist" by comparison with the neocons there before, but in no other country in the world would the US Democratic Party be described as "socialist".
Have you seen the CBOs estimates for future deficits?
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/deficit.jpg
What will happen to our economy if both our trade deficit and federal budget deficit continue to grow to astronomical proportions?
Just how many trillions in treasury bonds do you think China, Japan, etc. . . are willing to buy? I don't think that we have an immediate 'debt' crises, in that our Debt to GDP ratio will not really be horrific until 2012-13 or so, but there is an issue of bond market saturation; you can really only sell so many hundreds of billions of bonds before you start to run out of buyers. We're going to bump into that in the next 12-18 months.
You know what is even worse? All these estimates (CBO, White House, otherwise), are old enough that they do not include the current unemployment calculations. Given that both payroll and income taxes are taking quite an unemployment hit, there is every reason to believe that the CBO deficit estimates are probably about 20%-30% better than reality. Oh, and of course, they don't include the costs of Obamacare, the increase in the capital gains tax (which, historically, actually *reduces* tax receipts), the Energy Cap-N-Trade bill, and other such regulatory nonsense.
Please describe to me how the structural "yearly trillion dollar deficits by 2015" is okay? Also, please describe to me how we the above named programs aren't going to make it worse? Also, given that both the SS and Medicare "Trust Funds" aren't "piles-o-cash", but are "piles-o-bonds", please describe to me how the liquidation and auction process for those bonds won't further worse out situation?
Exactly which one of these issues do you see being resolved after the current "6-month period"?
Capitalism is an economic philosophy, not a force of nature. The business cycle is a statistical phenomenon, not a natural law. Just because former downturns lasted for 12 months or so, doesn't mean that this one won't run for 24, or 36, or 60+.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
"We can quantify the deaths caused by both communism and fascism, but we will never know how many deaths have been the result of capitalism; of nothing more noble than a rich man wanting to be even richer, and sacrificing the health and lives of millions of workers to achieve this. Don't even try to count how many people capitalism has killed, because not only will you not know where to begin, but also it will never end."
we can extrapolate...
if it is cyclical as you say, then your whole premise is faulty.
boom-bust-boom-bust-boom-bust...etc.
Do you remember who the first man was to orbit the earth? The vast majority of people wouldn't be able to answer.
I think you meant "The vast majority of hillbillies wouldn't be able to answer.". Here in Sweden I'd be surprised if more than 15% didn't at least know he was russian and I'd be willing to bet money on at least 50% of them knowing his name was Gagarin.
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Besides which, the US abandoned it's capitalistic manufacturing base about 35 years ago
We may not make as much consumer crap as we used to, but our industrial output (until the recent recession) has been climbing, not falling. It's just that our productivity has been climbing even faster, leading to a net loss in jobs.
Don't worry about the Chinese. They've been artificially pumping up the US dollar for years. Inevitably, the dollar will eventually be worth less against their currency and they'll be sitting on a whole pile of our debt that isn't worth nearly what they paid for it.
In other words, a dollar isn't worth anything if you don't eventually trade it back for something American. Right now, we give them paper and they give us stuff... what a deal, right? Eventually they'll want stuff in exchange for this paper... expect to see some manufacturing jobs return this way.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Much of the rest of the world is incapable of providing good basic health care. Good is the key word here.
I've got family in Portugal, France and England who will tell you socialized health care is shit. I've got in-laws in Taiwan who have similar problems although it isn't quite as bad as Europe.
Everything people say about waiting lists, not treating those deemed not worth the expense, lack of good doctors and all the rest are true. Every couple of months I hear a story of something that directly effected a family member.
One of the most recent being my uncle, in Portugal, who was diagnosed with prostate cancer. If he waited for the government program he'd be sitting around 6 months. His doctor strongly recommended he pay out of his own pocket and get the treatment immediately. That's what he did. So explain to me again the point of government health care?
In France, my family there, 3 uncles and 2 aunts all married with families, have private insurance because the government keeps cutting back. They tell us they're moving towards a US style health care system because the government simply can't afford to support their current system. They're no happy about it, but they're even less happy with the crap the government is offering.
Taiwan's system isn't as bad, but it's suffering from overuse. When I was there it cost US$2 to see a doctor. What here someone would take Tylenol for there they'd be at the doctor. So what happens? Everyone gets a crappy, rushed 3 minute visit where the doctor asks the patient to describe the symptoms. You're lucky if they even take your blood pressure. They make a few assumptions and then type up some stuff on their computer and send you on your way with packs of several pills, one for each potential symptom. Although the government prohibits this, a lot of doctors try to encourage their patients to visit them at their private practices. The patients pay more and its out of pocket, but the promise is that they'll get a more thorough checkup.
One of the examples within the United States which politicians have trumpeted as a model for the entire country is MassHealth. Here's another piece of garbage where just recently they dropped coverage for legal immigrants because of budget shortfalls. My sister in law works at a hospital in the state and has many stories of abuse.
And that brings me to another problem, which is that people want this but expect it to be free. I know someone who's brother originally lived out of state, but moved in with her sister in MA temporarily in order to take advantage of the system because of something he got diagnosed with. It was great for him that the residents of the state got to pay for his treatment.
Americans tend to suffer from the grass is greener syndrome. I'm not suggesting that there aren't problems with the American system, because there are. But the solution sure has hell isn't to turn things into a big, government controlled mess that they won't be able to run efficiently and can't even afford.
I believe that limited socialism and very limited welfare are necessary. Without some regulations a small group of individuals manage to turn a free market into a restrictive one, actually the same happens with too much regulation, but that's another story. So I'm not naive to the needs of a nation. But Europe is a case study in the failure of excessive socialism, unfortunately too many Americans are blind to that fact. Of course, I can give examples until I'm blue in the face and some people still wont be convinced.
I don't think there's any possible way the Apollo program would ever survive to day. If it hadn't been cut in 1967 it would have been cut sometime later. There are too many small-minded people, in my opinion, who can't see the forest for the trees. They have a hard time imagining for envisioning why such ambitious projects are ultimately better for the country, and humanity in general than wasteful, overblown social programs. Of course, the social programs guarantee power to the politicians.
Give us another fifteen to twenty five years and our economy will be ok, most likely.
I won't try to speculate on the timeline, but I know the economy will most likely come back.
I think you give too little credit to the Fed... they acted much more decisively this time than they did in 1929. The banks haven't all failed, and the FDIC system has kept common people from losing their life savings. Add to this the much larger size of government and the moderating effect that this spending has... I think we're looking at a much quicker recovery than during the depression.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It's certainly not pure capitalism, but my point about the cyclical nature of our system - whatever you want to call it - still stands.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Procreation. Not sure what that has to do with anything ...
Once again, this has nothing to do with socialized healthcare. If you're going to respond to someone's comment it's generally considered good form to actually respond to it, instead of going off on a tangent.
Money isn't important at all - money is just a physical object which we use to represent human effort/action. And no, people are not more important than their actions. Human life has no intrinsic value except to the individual to whom it belongs - to society as a whole you provide value only when you actually do something.
What in the world are you going on about? Of course there is a "ruling class" - there always has been, there always will be. The ruling class in the US has very little in common with the ruling class of the Soviet Union. The "government controlling the commerce" is exactly the problem. Big rich dudes (nobility) with capital fighting it out for wealth produced by the "peasants" is a much more efficient system overall, but has the side-effect of being rather unstable... thus the cycles.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Well, if the Apollo program had continued we'd be spared endless repeats of the question "what if the Apollo program had continued?". Instead, we'd have endless repeates of the question "what if Apollo had been canceled and NASA built a reusable system?".
I stopped reading your post after the first paragraph because it was so fact-free.
The crater is 1 mile wide, not 3. The Barringer meteor was known to be an iron meteorite based on the debris found by the early settlers. The debris field was around 10 miles in diameter so San Francisco would have been safe. The earthquake the impact generated is thought to have been around a Magnitude 5, an event I've experienced more than once here in California. Exciting when it happens but not that big a deal in the overall scheme of things.
The impact would have been spectacular if you'd been within 50 miles but the rest of the folks in Arizona would have wondered wtf and then gone on with their daily activities. The folks in New Mexico probably never noticed it.
Ok I lied. I did read the rest of your post to see what other absurdities it held. And, verily, even though I'm an atheist, the good lord smiled upon my efforts...
It's not as if we're doing nothing right now. When we eventually see an asteroid headed our way that's large enough to warrant a response, odds are it'll be spotted way before impact. If it's a genuine hazard, it'll be big which means it will be visible to those good souls who make it their business to look for such a hazard. When that happens, assuming we haven't bombed ourselves back to the stone age, we'll be able to deal with the threat then. If we've bombed ourselves to oblivion, then we're toast anyway.
In the meantime, setting up a moon base to deal with the hazard is absurd.
We'll go to the Moon on a permanent basis if and when there's money to be made. It's what drove Isabella to back Columbus and it's what convinced Congress to underwrite Lewis and Clark. Both investments paid off in spades. The Moon has yet to promise any such return which is why we never went back.
What will happen to our economy if both our trade deficit and federal budget deficit continue to grow to astronomical proportions?
I don't worry about trade deficits... eventually those dollars have to come back or they are worthless.
As for budget deficits... I do worry about those, but right now they are borrowing money so inexpensively that it isn't really an issue. I'll be far more worried when the money gets more expensive. I'm very angry with the Republicans for being in charge for the better part of a decade and only managing to increase the national debt, despite all of their talk. No one expects the Dems to do any better.
The simple answer is that they'll default. Oh sure, they won't bounce checks - but you can bet that Social Security will convert into a need-based system so that they never have to touch the so-called "trust fund". The other way they'll default is by driving inflation so that the debt becomes smaller.
Just because former downturns lasted for 12 months or so, doesn't mean that this one won't run for 24, or 36, or 60+.
Agreed. I'm not predicting a quick end to the recession - just claiming that this is NOT the downfall of the US.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Mankind would establish the first permanent settlement on the moon which would logically be called "Alpha".
And because several hundred technicians and scientists would be working in this base, NASA would have to build special Earth-Moon transport ships that, in honour of the first Moon landing would be called "Eagles".
These Eagle craft would have interchangeable central pods that could either carry passengers or transport nuclear waste to the Moon so it could be buried on the dark side. Unfortunately, almost 30 years to the day of the first moon landing, on September 13th 1999, the build up waste would cause a massive explosion that would hurl the moon out of Earth's orbit, taking with it the moonbase people deep into the universe.
Oh wait...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Sorry to break the news to you. We need a vehicle that isn't 80% gastank. Isn't on the perpetual verge of constant failure. Doesn't need a freakin "mission control" just to keep it running in such precarious states. We need artificial gravity. We need to develop matter conversion. We need cheap sublight propulsion that actually allows real system wide navigational sublight speeds and doesn't explode crazy amounts of stuff thereby being extremely breakable. Need to replace NASA R&D with Physics researchers, that is the only way these basic physical problems are going to be solved.
So explode all the stuff you want, you aren't going to get anywhere with it. If rockets are the pinnacle of spaceflight then the human race is doomed. That's an actual fact.
Communism as a concept works well, input innate human nature and the system fails, corruption greed etc. Capitalism the would be inverse of communism also works conceptually input innate human nature and the system as we see fails. Instead of striving for balance there is a strive for power. Like it or not in the great proof of capitalism the present economy proves it a failure.
This is no 6 year cyclical drop, one woudl argue that the unatural growth of the economy between 2002 and 2005 was what through off the natural balance that capitalism needs to work. Thus the cascade failure of the US economy now, the reason it hasn't failed is because of the interjection by the government.
One might even say the underlying point of failure wasn't the concept in either case but the human factor.
Where did I claim that there were no socialist policies in the US?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
IIRC, the Soviets did provide NK with MiG fighters and other military equipment. They didn't support them to the great extent that China did though.
Look, we voted out the Republicans who turned a surplus into a deficit and left the economy a wreck.
The deficit will not continue to grow.
Taxes on the wealthiest will go up. Republicans will cry that these new taxes are ruining the economy, and they will have an impact similar to the Emergency Deficit Reduction act of 1993 (I think I got the title right...) 8 years of increasing prosperity and decreasing deficits (and eventually, expanding surpluses).
As long as the Republicans don't steal another Presidential Election...
Actually, a more sensible approach would be for the states to split off and form separate, smaller countries by region. For instance, the whole northeast would make a good independent country, as would the southeast, and the southwest, the northwest, etc. California would probably be better off being split in half, with the southern half joining AZ, NV, UT, NM, and CO as one country, and northern CA joining OR, WA, ID, and WY, and perhaps British Columbia.
The states would still be separate administrative regions in each country.
If you steal too much ultimately the system won't be able to sustain itself
anymore and it will collapse. "Greed with no rules" ultimately destroys itself.
I agree - but in our case the "system" is primarily private enterprise... and it did collapse. Which is good. Our government, though entangled, is still a mostly separate entity from the broader economy - so it survives when the economy crashes.
In the Soviet system, the government WAS the economy. When the economy crashed, so did the government. Or was it the other way around? You can't separate the two.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Unfortunately, there is every reason to believe that the causes of the current economic and financial problem are not being addressed. What the governments of the world are doing is artificially creating a boom by spending borrowed money on stuff.
I'm not saying that this spending is wrong, but if things don't change otherwise, then the next time the system crashes there won't be any funds to rescue it. And this WILL happen - it is an inevitable aspect of capitalism.
The Reagan model of economics that has informed the policy of almost every western government for the last 30 years is utterly discredited - light touch regulation and the whole Laissez-faire thing just don't work, and will grind us and the planet into the ground. The problem is that the few that benefit from things as they are, happen to be in control.
If Apollo had continued, it would have stopped at Apollo 20. That was the plan. Apollo itself was the dead-end plan to win the space race. And strange as it may seem, the loss of soonest and long term success in space and the the formation of NASA were one in the same.
The alternative project "Man In Space Soonest" could have had an American in orbit well before Yuri Gagarin's flight. An excerpt from http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/manonest.htm :
"On 10 July Brigadier General Homer A Boushey of Headquarters USAF informed ARDC that Eisenhower's Bureau of the Budget, firmly in favor of placing the manned space flight program in the new civilian agency, was blocking further release of funds for the program. On 16 July the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 was passed by Congress, and NASA was created out of the NACA and some Army and Navy rocket laboratories. But ARPA told the Air Force there was still a chance the White House would support MISS if costs could be kept to under $50 million in FY 1959. They could present the project as so far along, and with so low a cost to complete, that it would be a big setback to start all over with NASA.
But BMD couldn't make the figures come out this way. Funding of only $50 million in FY 1959 would delay the first American in space to early 1962. Instead, on 24 July, General Bernard Schriever at BMD issued the sixth revision to the MISS development plan. This had a total cost of $106.6 million with the bare Atlas as the booster. Salient features included establishment of a worldwide tracking network, resolving quickly the heat sink versus ablation heat shield issue, and continuing with design of the Thor WS-117L and Thor-Able as backups in case the Atlas proved to be unreliable. Assuming immediate authorization from ARPA, Schriever promised release of the final tender documents to the contractors within 24 hours, and orbiting of the first man in space by June 1960.
The next day there was one last session with ARPA Director Johnson at the Pentagon. BMD pointed out that only full, unrestricted, immediate program approval to go ahead with MISS would give the United States a real chance to be "soonest" with a man in space. Johnson flatly refused. Eisenhower saw no valid role for the military in manned space flight. NACA didn't plan to spend more than $40 million on their manned space program in FY 1959, fiscally much more attractive than the $107 million the Air Force was asking for.
On that day - 25 July 1958 - America gave up its chance to put the first man into space. A manager like Schriever could undoubtedly have rammed the project through on the promised schedule. The collection of scientists and tinkerers at NACA had no chance."
Had MISS progressed, Neil Armstrong may still have been first on the moon. However, he would almost certainly have been the first person ride a space craft into orbit and actually fly it home. He was scheduled to take the first orbital flight of Dynasoar http://www.astronautix.com/craft/dynasoar.htm in 1964. NASA's track placed this milestone under the space shuttle, 20 years later. The 'what if' scenario changed long before the question in TFA.
Had the original visions of space exploration been carried out, we may or may not have gotten where we did by 1970, but we darn sure would have gotten there with no intention of backing down and starting over again later. Instead of Ares and Orion, we'd have had true stepping-stone space stations building and launching manned planetary missions. Recall, some of Von Braun's ideas centered on building permanent construction sites in orbit, using the 'bicycle wheel' design. Time and again he was stifled and forced to channel his enormous talent from that which made good sense to that which he would be allowed to see succeed.
The front page of Encyclopedia Astronautica http://www.astronautix.com/ is covered with links to the actual history, the underlying and hidden history, and the might-have-beens of the race for the moon.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
"Even if, like 90 per cent of the population, you were born on Earth, you can't easily go back. "
I can't imagine what hell it would be to live on a gray, airless rock, stuck inside a hollowed out lava tube while a lush blue and green planet is just 250,000 miles away.
The moon would be a nice place to visit, but I sure as he#% wouldn't want to live there permanently.
Bob feels the same way you do in a similar scenario. :)
The enemies of Democracy are
Because people are more important than money.
Actually, no they aren't. Some people have no value, some people have negative value.
People who are in prison their entire lives and have long criminal record are good examples of people with negative value: they're costing society a lot of money, and proving nothing in return except destruction (of their victims' lives and happiness). If you gave me a choice between $100k, or preserving the life of a serial killer, which would I choose? The former, of course. Why would I want to preserve the life of someone who doesn't value life himself, and doesn't contribute to society?
What is in it for those "less than" the CEO's?
Simple: money to live on. If they don't want to work, then they don't get any money, and they starve to death. What are they going to do, take all the CEOs into slavery and make them work the fields? There's not enough CEOs to produce that much food.
And what's with all the complaining about CEOs? The big problem in recent days with CEOs is excessive compensation for CEOs whose companies have received government bailout funds, but that's something that's completely the fault of the Democrats. For all other CEOs, yes, a lot of them are overpaid, but these are privately-owned companies (though they have publicly available stock). If you're not a stockholder, your opinion on their pay is irrelevant. And if you are a stockholder, look in the mirror for someone to blame. Their pay isn't coming out of your pocket, unless you're dumb enough to be a customer of theirs. Overpaid CEOs usually mean companies that don't perform as well as the competition. When I found out about Ralph Nardelli getting a $200 million golden parachute for driving Home Depot into the ground, I stopped shopping at HD altogether (though I hadn't been shopping there much anyway, because they suck compared to the competition). If everyone did this, companies wouldn't waste so much on CEO paychecks.
Where are mod points when you need them?? +5 pseudo mod points Also bear in mind one of my favorite quotes (which I first read playing Civ4, sadly), "If you speak the truth, have a foot in the stirrup".
TomB
"You can't take the sky from me..."
thinking (and saying) that her experiences as a "wise latina" will make her a better judge
You realize that she was talking to, and trying to inspire, a room full of latina women? Context...
while passing judgment that white firefighters can't be discriminated against.
A valid criticism, but you are ignoring the other racial cases that came before her. You are also ignoring the fact that 4 other sitting justices agreed with her on this case, so she's not exactly breaking new ground here.
Suppression of free enterprise: government takeovers of banking and auto industries,
TEMPORARY takeovers. What about the socialism in the USSR struck you as temporary (besides that it fell apart)?
telling Chrysler they need to be bought by a foreign company
In bankruptcy court? You'd prefer that they were liquidated?
socializing the medical industry
It's been socialized since the day they passed the law forcing ERs to treat anyone regardless of ability to pay. No one in the US is without health care, and it has been this way for a long time. Obama and crew are not "socializing" health care... that's done. They are changing the way that it is paid for. I personally don't like the way that they are approaching it, but that's another matter.
How many politicians are under investigation for how many different forms of corruption, from failing to pay taxes to taking bribes to misuse of government funds/equipment?
The fact that they are "under investigation" at all is GOOD. Corruption in the US is pretty low by any historic standard. Most of our corruption seems to involve drugs, and frankly we need to expect that with any kind of silly attempt at prohibition.
I'd say we are just about where th former Soviet Union was just before it collapsed, and I don't like it much.
Reading even the tiniest bit about the USSR will cure you of that - even just the Wikipedia entry.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Toorcamp could have been held in a decommissioned lunar rocket tube this years instead of out in the Washington wasteland.
then the next time the system crashes there won't be any funds to rescue it. And this WILL happen - it is an inevitable aspect of capitalism.
I probably would have agreed with you last year, but the fact is that people are throwing money into US government bonds as fast as the Fed can collect it. It's pretty amazing, but I guess it makes sense... fed paper is considered safe and people are looking for safety. I suspect this will happen the next time that there is an event like this, too.
The Reagan model of economics that has informed the policy of almost every western government for the last 30 years is utterly discredited
I think you mean the Bush/Clinton/Bush model. Granted, Greenspan was appointed at the end of the Reagan presidency, but Reagan's administration was more characterized by Volcker - who far from being discredited, is part of Obama's recovery team.
You will see some retreat on Greenspan's ideas. It's already happened. The restrictions in place on hedge funds are already much tighter. Even Greenspan has expressed surprise and disappointment with the lack of diligence on the part of the investment banks.
and will grind us and the planet into the ground.
That's a bit of hyperbole. Getting the balance between government regulation and free-market capitalism is hard and complex. It will probably never be perfect... but we're not so far off as to risk a total collapse IMHO.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
not just like "Soviet Russia". (It's just Russia now, FYI)
Yes, but "just Russia" turned to a capitalist market after the USSR crumbled. Thus GPP was correct to say "Soviet Russia", since it was the Soviet Union that was socialist.
When a 12 trillion dollar economy cannot provide basic health care to all...there's a...problem.
Agreed, although I am not convinced that bigger government is the answer to the health care problem.
Regardless, revamping the health care system isn't the only thing that has people like GPP and myself concerned. How about dumping $13-17 BILLION into failing auto companies, then wanting to pour more money down the black hole when that didn't fix things as expected? How about trying to dictate how these companies do business? Or perhaps $13-17 billion isn't enough to raise any red flags, so how about another $700 billion to bail out America's banks? Does that seem Socialist to you? 'Cause it sure does to me.
As we've recently seen, unchecked capitalism is not a good thing since the markets aren't rational after all.
Yeah, sometimes the markets have to adjust themselves, and yes, it's frequently painful when that happens. FWIW, I do believe that government needs to intervene by setting laws on what companies can and cannot do -- thus we get things like the E.P.A., like child-labor laws, like minimum-wage laws, and I suppose even like SOX and SEC. But quite frankly, I don't like the direction that Obama seems to be taking the country (not that I was too thrilled with W's leadership, either...)
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
So, why? Because people are more important than money.
That's a nice platitude, but what about people that fuck up their own bodies? Smokers, the obese, heroin addicts... socialized healthcare for the lot of them! And of course once you accept that, then people will start to look at the books and say, "Wow, smokers are expensive!" and then the government will tell you that you can't smoke. Oh, and you can't be fat because fat people are the next line item. Oh, and now you can't ride a motorcycle because motorcycle injuries are our largest ER expense...
Socialized healthcare isn't going to be a panacea, and it's not possible to provide it in unlimited amounts to everyone. Right now cost is the main mediator - with a government pay system it will be government bean counters making rules. Maybe you see one or the other as morally superior, but I can't agree with you. Denying a kidney to a person because they are too old is not morally superior to denying a kidney to someone because they are too poor - either way someone isn't getting a kidney.
All that said, we actually have socialized health care right now, but it's expensive and based around the ER. I'm all for changing the way we pay for basic services to reduce costs... I just don't have any grand expectations.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
And just how do the Democrats plan on creating another Tech Bubble like the one that coincides with your "8 years of increasing prosperity?"
And if the taxes caused the prosperity, then why didn't that happen when George H. W. Bush raised them in his term?
You know, instead of causing a recession that lost him the election?
Just curious.
This is getting very off topic, but I just can't believe this post has been modded informative. I know little about the quality of health care in the UK, and nothing about the quality in Portugal and France, but I lived in Taiwan and still have Taiwanese friends. Blaming the low quality of public healthcare in Taiwan on the national health insurance system is ridiculous. The primary problem is that most of the doctors who participate in it are incompetent. The good doctors who actually went to quality medical schools do not participate in the national insurance program because the payments are much too small. None of my friends--mostly engineers--went to the public doctors for anything except routine matters. I tried it once, since expat workers are also covered, and quickly discovered why. A private Taiwanese doctor I later went to, who got his degree at Yale Medical School, commented that doctors who went to med school in Taiwan "can't diagnose their own ass."
they will have an impact similar to the Emergency Deficit Reduction act of 1993 (I think I got the title right...) 8 years of increasing prosperity and decreasing deficits (and eventually, expanding surpluses).
I'd argue that the surpluses came from three sources: 1. The slight boost in revenue you mentioned from taxes, 2. The inability of the government to spend money while Clinton fought with congress... remember the shutdowns? and 3. The bubble in tax receipts caused by the dot-com run.
Since we don't want to cause another dot-com bubble, I'm all for splitting the congress and presidency again. All we need is for the economy to outpace government spending - which is easy when they can't pass any spending bills!
Hiking taxes is prudent, but only after we swing out of the recession... just as was the case during '93 when we finally came out of that recession. It's also politically dangerous - I'd argue that it didn't help the Dems one bit when they were trying to fight off the "contract with america".
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
...but this post requires a response.
First if you think that what we've had in the last 40 years even remotely resembles unchecked capitalism you should try starting your own business (as I have). And no, I don't mean IT consulting. I mean a business that actually makes a product. Government is everywhere. Regulations, taxes, insurance, audits, min wage, overtime, unemployment tax, etc. They interfere at every turn and have driven manufacturing away. What they haven't driven out, they are taking over. The USA could do with a few decades of unchecked capitalism. By unchecked I mean no interference & no bailouts.
You say the markets are not rationale? They are far more rationale than the state. The state that is now propping up a failed automobile industry that the market would have fixed or done away with years ago. Check your premises.
As for health care... You mention people in South America with better health care. Bunk. In 2006 alone, Bush signed a foreign aid bill that sent $20.6B to South America. TANSTAAFL.
You have no right to health care or a job or a living wage or a house. You have no right to the fruits of someone else's (doctors & nurses) labor. You have the right to your life, your liberty and to pursue happiness, not to actually be happy. That's up to you.
I can think of no one who said it better than Ayn Rand. Yes, Ayn Rand. People quote it because it's relevant. Criticize it when you've read it.
From Atlas Shrugged...
"I quit when medicine was placed under state control, some years ago," said Dr. Hendricks. "Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill?
That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun.
I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward.
I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything - except the desires of the doctors. Men considered only the "welfare" of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter, was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, only "to serve".
That a man who is willing to work under compulsion is too dangerous a brute to entrust with a job in the stockyards - never occurred to those who proposed to help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy.
I have often wondered at the smugness with which they assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind - yet what is it they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands?
Their moral code has taught them to believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is the virtue I have withdrawn. Let them discover the kind of doctors their system will now produce.
Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man who resents it - and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn't."
Atlas Shrugged, 1957
Book 3, "A is A"
"Actually, no they aren't. Some people have no value, some people have negative value."
People, in general are. Your couple of examples really dont change the fundamentals.
"Simple: money to live on. If they don't want to work, then they don't get any money, and they starve to death. What are they going to do, take all the CEOs into slavery and make them work the fields? There's not enough CEOs to produce that much food."
I never said people should not work. In fact, I did say that "there should be enough insecurity to prompt productivity" ( or words to that effect ). But why cant that work ( and hard work ) produce an ability to have a couple small conveniences and food and healthcare? Perhaps you will come back with "what about (some small number ) of people who choose cigarettes and hookers and a million other bad choice items" rather than these other things. Your argument I would hold true, for them, but not everyone, nor even most do that.
"And what's with all the complaining about CEOs?"
There is lots there to complain about.
"something that's completely the fault of the Democrats"
Which is? The complaining, or the events leading to the complaining. I have a hard time believeing Every Democrat is 100% to blame, and all Republican is 100% pure as the driven snow in this. I am going to suggest you examine your bias.
"If you're not a stockholder, your opinion on their pay is irrelevant."
They affect society, I am part of society, so I have to say I dont agree with the above.
"And if you are a stockholder, look in the mirror for someone to blame"
I'm not, and you have a point, but it only goes so far. My only option as a stockholder is to withhold my funding. ( Something I would do were I in a position to invest. ) Stockholder control of the company is too diffuse to allow stockholders, in general, to do anything. Unfortunately, as we see, ethical or moral based investing does not keep unethical companies from getting investors.
"Overpaid CEOs usually mean companies that don't perform as well as the competition."
I agree, over the long term. Wall street is focused on the short term.
"If everyone did this, companies wouldn't waste so much on CEO paychecks."
Absolutely, but this has as much chance as working in the real world as Marx's Utopia.
emt 377 emt 4
It is entirely possible that your assumptions about my post are warranted, coming in the middle of a bunch of posts that I have not thoroughly read, but realize that my point was that healthcare should be available and affordable, not necessarily socialized.
emt 377 emt 4
Err, very true. Do you know the meaning of irony?
I notice that in the middle of your huge rant against social welfare in the form of annecdotes you forgot to "back up" your claim that the NHS in the UK was shit. I've used it. A lot. And it provides very good care.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
$1 spent on road construction does not get you an additional $1 in economic growth;
Perhaps not, but $1 spent on public transit can get you $9 of economic growth. So yes, there is value in investing in the public good.
Thankfully Steve Dahl and his Insane Coho Lips army dispatched Disco for the most part on July 12th 1979 at Comiskey Park, with "Disco Demolition" (or as he now calls it DD). Saving the youth of America.
Those who sacrifice Medial Liberty for the sake of Medical Security deserve NEITHER.
And it wasn't "unchecked capitalism".
I'd note that it was the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a GOVERNMENT REGULATED corp that caused the collapse of the markets.
Whoa, wait a minute...
Blaming the low quality of public healthcare in Taiwan on the national health insurance system is ridiculous. The primary problem is that most of the doctors who participate in it are incompetent. The good doctors who actually went to quality medical schools do not participate in the national insurance program because the payments are much too small.
The public healthcare system isn't to blame.... the doctors are no good because the public healthcare system doesn't pay enough for the good doctors to participate. But it's not the public healthcare system's fault. Nope, sorry... not following your logic there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(novel)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(film)
although the rich billionaire's plot is not defined as definitively true or false
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the markets are completely rational. Now, this is not to imply that the markets are at all predictable. That's where risk comes into play. The "irrational exhuberance" of recent years has been severely punished and the market is just correcting itself. You may not like what it's doing, or how the government is responding, but it is doing exactly what Hayek and Friedman and Krugman and decades of economic models all predicted it should do.
Very interesting post. I have also heard horror stories from relatives abroad, though none of them have worried about running out of money due to medical bills.
Recently I went to the Dr. because I had a cold that I was afraid was infectious. My doc touched my belly and sent me down to the ER to check for appendicitis.
A few weeks later I got a bill for over $1000. I have decent (by American standards) insurance. I really can't afford to go back to the hospital, though I was reffered to a specialist.. I hope whatever they found on that expensive CT scan wasn't too important...
By the way, the number one cause of bankruptcy in the US (when we aren't in a depression) is medical bills. If that isn't a sign of a totally broken system I don't know what is.
Overall I have to say that I like my insurance, but if my company didn't offer a group plan I would be stuck in the individual market that specifically excludes the prior conditions that I actually need medical care for.
I'm willing to roll the dice with a goverment plan because one day I would like to start a business, but I simply can't live without company group rate insurance.
Also, for all the great care I get, have spent tens of thousands of dollars if you count my premiums and what my company pays which basically comes out of my pay. I have a feeling that the kind of money I already drop on health care would go a long way in a public / private insurance model.
I'll second that. You have to consider what different countries get compared to what they spend. The US spends more per capita and as a percentage of GDP on health care than any other country, but we're not getting better outcomes than countries that spend less.
No bald babes projected by obscenely hybridized Voyager 6, because who needs robots when Manned Space Flight takes up soooooo much GDP that the Roddenberries have to realize the whole Q arc on YouTube.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
The space shuttle was a noble goal: "Make a reusable launch vehicle, one that can be operated every few days without having to be thrown away." "Every few days" turned into "every several months" and "without having to be thrown away" turned into "with only part of it being thrown away, part fished out of the ocean, and part torn apart and rebuilt", but the long term goal was good. No matter how many incremental improvements you make to an expendible rocket, you either need to make the non-incremental change of adding flyback systems or you need to accept that the price of each trip will include building and discarding one of the largest and highest performance vehicles in history. The Delta, Atlas, etc. people made the latter choice, and although iteration still led them to better satellite launchers than Shuttle, it's not something we can build a real space program on.
The trouble with the RLV alternative is that, if making a reusable orbital vehicle in shot is too hard (as I'd agree NASA proved), the only way to get there incrementally is from reusable suborbital vehicles. Start with something like the DC-X, bump up to something that can hit Mach 10, Mach 15, Mach 20, Mach 25, increasing the size and performance as necessary. But long before you've made enough incremental improvements to reach orbit, you'll probably have made too many for the public's patience. "We made it to the moon in 1969!" they'll tell their Congressmen; "why are we wasting so much money" (i.e. a tiny fraction of that expense) "on rockets that can't even stay in space?" Or worse, you'll lose the program to administrators who think "Here's a great opportunity to experiment with multi-lobed tanks, lifting bodies, linear aerospike engines, and a bunch of other untested technology all at once, just as soon as we weed the competition down to a single contract to the guys who made the best Powerpoint slides! What could possibly go wrong? Whateration, did you say?"
what you describe depends upon the existence of some mythical past where these elements of human nature were not present. on the contrary, the behavior you describe is part of every historical epoch, in every society. rather, what you describe is new to your personal experience, not new to humanity. you're projecting
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Because it is the right thing to do. (objectively, morally "right", not "right" as-in "correct")
America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, badass speed. -Eleanor Roosevelt, 1936
OK, let me break it down. The majority of the doctors in Taiwan DO participate in the national healthcare system. The majority of those doctors are incompetent. The public healthcare system did not cause that; low standards for licensing and poor quality medical schools did. Eliminating the public healthcare system won't improve the quality of care, it will just mean that fewer people will have access to even the crappy care they currently have. Increasing the payouts through the national insurance system might help somewhat, as it might encourage the good doctors to begin participating, and other good doctors who work elsewhere to come to Taiwan, but it would do little to improve the quality of care provided by the rest of the doctors. I am not arguing for or against free healthcare in any country, and I was trying not to get even farther off topic than the post I replied to already had. I am simply saying that in Taiwan, free healthcare can't be blamed for the poor quality of the medical care. Similarly, I would also agree that increasing the funding of the system there would do little to improve the situation.
And your message contradicts to the P how? Maybe public healthcare there is something to do with high volume with taxpayer funds, which lead to overworked, underpaid doctors who for this reason are self-chosen for their willingness to put up with it while the decent ones go private. Or it leads to parasolvency as in the former Socialist countries which has the advantage that it helps keep decent doctors around. A governing political party will not lose the next election due to substandard or inhuman public healthcare. But it will lose if it increases taxes to cover (badly attributed) funding needs. In Hungary, the political death of the current governing party was when it introduced a co-payment fee, which was intended to keep those away who have plenty of time and just go for a chatter with the doctor and the other gossiping patients sharing the lengthy waits. The co-payment fee became the subject of a national ballot (which itself cost more than a year's worth of co-payment at stake) where the majority of voters rejected it. The co-payment in question was going to be a little over $1 with lots of exceptions. The party trying to introduce it is on its way to become a political fringe while its former coalition partner can't get enough votes to get at least one member into the Parliament.
His doctor strongly recommended he pay out of his own pocket and get the treatment immediately. That's what he did. So explain to me again the point of government health care?
Great, he was able to pay for costly medical procedures himself. Many -- perhaps most -- people are not.
Back in 2004 I was in a low-paying job where I had no health insurance. I broke my wrist, which required about twelve grand in surgery to repair properly. Where was someone making barely above minimum wage going to come up with that kind of money? Maybe work out a payment plan, but who is going to want to deal with someone with as horrible credit as I had back then, and who was barely making enough to pay the bills as it was? Or perhaps I should have just splinted it myself and hoped it healed without leaving that hand crippled for life?
I was fortunate enough to have parents with money, and they were able to take care of this for me. Not all are so lucky.
Every time I hear someone whinge about waiting lists, I have to sigh. Waiting a few months for treatment might not be great but it beats the stuffing out of not getting treatment at all, which is what many people are facing today, right here in the US.
And, finally, I don't really see what's so great about our current system. Insurance companies exist to make profit, not to provide healthcare. A system where there is a profit motive in denying claims seems pretty dumb to me.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
One of the Big Decisions of Project Apollo was the choice of Lunar Orbit Rendezvous, because it had the best chance of getting to the Moon by the end of the decade. Direct Ascent wasn't feasible, and Earth Orbit Rendezvous, while safe and easy to get right, would take too long to develop.
Once Apollo 11 had landed and the race to the Moon had been won, a properly-funded NASA could have developed other space technologies. Stuff developed for EOR would have wider application, to go to Mars, the Lagrange points, and more. The Apollo hardware, while ingenious and effective, was a dead end. It proved a point, but it had no future.
That same properly-funded NASA would still have a need for an Earth-to-orbit shuttle. As part of a larger, coordinated plan, they would have come up with something quite different from the antiques that are straining their guts out and just-barely-failing to blow up on each launch. They would have been able to refine and rethink the design, and would have gone through several generations by now.
...laura
Everyone knows Velcro was invented by that Swiss engineer, walking through the forest and getting burrs stuck to his pants leg. Geez!!@##*@(_
And he's wrong about Tang, so chances are he's probably wrong about quite a few things. Everything I said stands up and can be verified by real research, not some silly "There WMDs in Iraq, because Dick Cheney told me so!" spiel from a Judy Miller-type newspaper (now with a highly paid job at the Manhattan Institute - yet another neocon-supported "stink tank."
Although, much thanks for the attempt at thoughtful feedback.
Well, by that logic, you could argue that giving everyone a free car is also the "morally right thing to do". That doesn't mean anyone should support such a scheme, though.
Besides which, I'm not sure that it IS morally right. I don't see how taking money from people in order to provide a "free" service is in any way moral. At best it's morally neutral (amoral), at worst it's immoral.
Now if you were to personally go and pay for a homeless man to have a checkup at the local clinic, you could certainly claim that your actions were moral and generous, and I would agree. I'd give you a medal, if I could. But if your only involvement in that persons treatment was to support a law which forces others to pay for it, then you haven't done anything which could be considered "morally right". Moral acts require deliberate decisions and personal sacrifice - what you're proposing is the exact opposite.
Build a linear induction motor up the side of Mauna Kea and launch all your bulk materials that way, leave the low-acceleration launch capacity for humans.
If the dark ages hadn't happened we'd probably have had the space program 400 years earlier, and then maybe it wouldn't have ended. We'd certainly have been to Mars by now, and there's no telling what else.
Obama might seem like a "socialist" by comparison with the neocons there before, but in no other country in the world would the US Democratic Party be described as "socialist".
Let's see.... Nationalized banks, brokerages, automobile manufacturers... moving to nationalize healthcare; subsidized with confiscatory taxes targeting less than 1% of the population...
Nope, doesn't sound socialist at all. Sounds Fascist.
"socialization of trillions of dollars of losses in the financial sector"
Private profit public risk ventures are not by any stretch of the definition socialist.
I agree - but in our case the "system" is primarily private enterprise... and it did collapse. Which is good. Our government, though entangled, is still a mostly separate entity from the broader economy - so it survives when the economy crashes.
In the Soviet system, the government WAS the economy. When the economy crashed, so did the government. Or was it the other way around? You can't separate the two.
We're currently in a massive shift from private enterprise to "the government's bitch". In fact, I think spending trillions on a phantom "bailout" actually accomplishes the tie-in itself. We're spending money we don't have, when we're already way too far in a deficit we can't possibly pay back. It's all phantom dollars. Once our lenders decide to call it in, or once they realize how much our overinflated buck is actually worth -- POOF! I'm hesitant to call lended money that doesn't actually represent any real value a solid economy OR government.
It's really not just one administration's fault either. It's no argument the previous one gave it a good start down the hill, especially in the last 4 years. But the current one is kicking it the rest of the way. I know many will argue the current administration is full of minigods, but it's like saying Cleveland is awesome because it's not Detroit (I apologize to the Cleveland population).
And now, the two major parties - and the extremists on both sides of the population representing them - are in such a hissy fit with each other, they're ignoring what the consequences of their fights. Instead of collectively using differing perspectives to strengthen the quality of decisions made, everybody's ignoring proper practice, using illegal and hideous methods to push and prod their way through ridiculous legislation, unable to see past their own noses, and damn everybody who gets in their way (including the well-being of their own country and citizens).
Time to stop fighting children. Look at what we're doing.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
Apollo Missions? Cold War? Back in my day, we had cable TV and the Gulf War!
The parent nailed it on the head. A very good doctor who has traveled to all the places mentioned by the parent echos the same messages.
(Posting as AC because the doctor is my Dad.)
Healthcare would be much less expensive if we paid for poor people's visits to their GP instead of the ER. I know it hurts some people to "pay someone's way", but one way or the other we are paying for life-saving medical care. I'd prefer to pay a $30 prescription and a $100 consultation rather than a $1,000 ER bill. I hate people but I'm willing to pay taxes that ensure everyone's continued life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Even if that person is lazy, or congenitally ill, or if maybe that person used to be just like me but they got laid off and their situation went from bad to worse due to no fault of their own. Shit happens.
Unemployment shouldn't be a death sentence.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
It would be called Moonbase Alpha.
Life always imitates art. Consider the name of the first space shuttle.
Smokers etc pay a disproportionate amount towards the system through taxes.
"Wow, smokers are expensive!" and then the government will tell you that you can't smoke.
Well let's see - in countries where we have national healthcare, smoking is still legal. OTOH, in the US without national healthcare, many drugs are illegal. So it seems there's no correlation, and no evidence for your assertion.
with a government pay system it will be government bean counters making rules.
I'd still rather that than a private insurance company doing that.
I'm in a well paid job, so would come off better than most. But I still don't want the risk of being ruined because I'm unlucky enough to have a bad accident - or if I rely on insurance, then I'm penalised for falling into certain groups, no matter what my individual health is like, or that I may be dissuaded from taking treatment for one condition out of fear of it increasing my premiums later on. Not to mention the problem of developing a condition when I don't have insurance, and then I can never get insurance because it's a "pre-existing condition".
I'd still rather everyone else receive healthcare too - An unhealthy workforce means more spread of disease, and less productivity, meaning less people paying taxes, more people receiving benefits.
Denying a kidney to a person because they are too old is not morally superior to denying a kidney to someone because they are too poor - either way someone isn't getting a kidney.
That's a completely separate issue, because the supply of kidneys are limited. But if we can afford to give healthcare to both - and I would hope the richest nation of the planet can - then why is it better to deny one of them?
There are degrees of "good". We moan about the NHS in the UK, in that we might have to wait a few hours to be seen to, but it's still miles better than not having any treatment at all, or being lumbered with a massive bill.
Same with the public transport. Yeah, we moan about the trains being crap here - but that doesn't mean it's anywhere near comparable to not having any at all!
I'm with ya - whether people should have access to health care is a settled question... they do. I'm not really out to improve their lot in life so much as to contain costs. Free clinics in cities would probably work, and in more sparsely populated places it probably just makes financial sense to pay people's doctor bill rather than set up clinics.
But the main goal, as you say, should be to get people out of the ER for routine health care.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If the russians had done the whole moon thing, we would have done the whole LEO thing except with 10X the warheads. I mean really, you want to send something up out of earth's gravity well into the moon's gravity well, and then back to earth? Do you have any idea how much more energy it takes to get to the moon vs. LEO? The moon is not, like, LEO plus 10 miles- It is a big deal.
Granted, having LEO nukes would have made the cold war WAY too tense for my comfort, so I'm glad it didn't happen.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
We're currently in a massive shift from private enterprise to "the government's bitch".
We're not in any kind of massive shift. The government has long had it's nose in banking, and the amount of money loaned out under TARP isn't actually all that much - it was simply a source of liquidity that kept the banks from going bust and in all likelihood it will be paid off, plus some. Remember, these were banks so if they failed the government would have ended up owning them anyway... better to spend a few billion up front that you actually stand a chance to get back than to let them fail and take on all responsibility for their deposits - not to mention the economic fallout of the entire banking system failing. They actually tried that with Bear, and it was a total nightmare.
The only other industry that has really seen a lot of government intervention is the auto industry. This was a charity case to prevent massive unemployment in the midwest, not some grand socialist agenda. Once again, the pittance spent bailing out GM is nothing compared to what the feds would have spend on welfare and unemployment had the entire auto industry collapsed. An I suspect that the government will even make money at the end of the day.
We're spending money we don't have, when we're already way too far in a deficit we can't possibly pay back.
When you are paying half a percent interest, why in the world would you pay it back?
Once our lenders decide to call it in, or once they realize how much our overinflated buck is actually worth -- POOF!
You think China is going to take any steps to de-value our currency? Who would buy their crap and keep their economic engine running. Any slide in the dollar versus their currency means a stop to new manufacturing construction.
I'm hesitant to call lended money that doesn't actually represent any real value a solid economy OR government.
All I can say is that you are pretty much on your own there. Whenever the US offers bonds, they auction them off with around 0.5% interest. This is because the world views federal notes to be the absolute safest place to put their money. When the auctions get tougher and we have to pay more in interest, then we'll talk about trouble. In particular, inflation... which worries the Chinese tremendously.
Instead of collectively using differing perspectives to strengthen the quality of decisions made,
Oh, DC is just the worst. So many self-serving jackasses.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Gotcha, thanks for the clarification.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It seems like you read only the top part of my post. I am with you - basic health care should not only be available to all, like it is now; it needs to be done in a much more cost-effective way.
Well let's see - in countries where we have national healthcare, smoking is still legal.
Legal, because prohibition is stupid. But even in France, it is heavily restricted. And yes, they use "health" as justification. But I'll grant that there may not be any correlation - it's pure speculation on my part.
I'd still rather that than a private insurance company doing that.
At least you can shop around for insurance.
Not to mention the problem of developing a condition when I don't have insurance, and then I can never get insurance because it's a "pre-existing condition".
This can be remedied by allowing people to join buying collectives, where the healthcare companies would lose the ability to reject individuals since they would be competing for the business of the collectives. In this way, uninsured individuals could pay the same, say $5000/year that businesses do and get very comprehensive health insurance.
and I would hope the richest nation of the planet can
No, we cannot. There is no end to the demand of people with free health care. It will have to be rationed. You can ration it with money, or with bureaucrats. I won't claim that one is better than the other from a moral standpoint - I'm simply pointing out that rationing is inherent to any health care system.
What I think we can afford, because we already provide it, is universal basic health coverage. I'd prefer to not do this through the very expensive ER system - and throw in some preventative care to boot.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The book "Voyage" by Stephen Baxter dealt with exactly this - he has an alternative history in which Kennedy Got Better and NASA pushed on to mars and everybody cheers.
If that's too upbeat, in "Titan" he has an alternative alternative in which signs of life are found on Titan - unfortunately a Shuttle flight has just crashed and a religious right president is dismantling science, but the remaining shuttles are used up to assemble last hurrah manned mission to Titan while Earth goes to hell in a handbasket. Spookily this was written before the second Shuttle disaster and pre-Dubyah. Part of Baxter's "NASA rejected me as an astronaut/Shuttle sucks/Apollo FTW" ouvre.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
I can give examples until I'm blue in the face and some people still wont be convinced.
If you dig for shit in any system, even one you'd think was perfect, you'll find it.
I'd be interested if your view is the same on other community services the government provides: Military, Police, Roadbuilding, Jurisdiction...
Many of these are very expensive and with the Government having the monopoly on them, it essentially blocks private entrepreneurs providing these services to the ones who want and can afford to pay for.
Just like you see people living an unhealthy way unbearable for a public Health Care, Oil Companies for instance are unbearable for public Military Services, since clearly the US Military is spending more time to protect their interests than the average taxpayers'. Or put in other way, what is the gain for the average tax payer to finance a couple of ships inhabited by a few thousand people floating around somewhere in the indian ocean?
Colour me confused.
If the previous administration were not all bad, how did they end up involving themselves and various other nations in two "wars" which have, and continue to cost an enormous amount of money without any clear goal or purpose?
As much as it's very nice to introduce the concept of democracy, the cost to the West, and to the civilians in the areas we chose to introduce it to is horrific.
Socialism isn't automatically a bad thing, unless, of course, you are a Dubya apologist.
The problem with the economy was caused by capitalism/greed, and isn't easily fixed by anything any party can choose to do; the moment you allow banks to lend to people who cannot pay it back, eventually the system will collapse again.
You could argue that all the major car companies had been allowed to fail through no government challenging them when they merged and acquired each other, but everyone assumed (and it was an assumption, as neither you, I, nor anyone else on /. actually sat down and worked the figures) that because a company controls 30% of the market and has assets valued at X billions, employs Y millions and sells to Z consumers, there was any chance that the sales would dry up, and all the other numbers would become meaningless.
In the same way a supermarket does not care if you, as an individual buy from them on any given day, or spend above a certain amount, as things are averaged, the system has a glaring flaw. If I, and everyone else in my town decide today to buy eggs, the stores will run out, but be quite cheerful about it. However if there is another salmonella news report and everyone in the town decides NOT to buy eggs, the stores figures will break down.
The world isn't about individuals, it's about large groups acting mostly predictably. If we all decide, tomorrow, to walk to work, the result will be obvious to the petrol companies. But we cannot, and will not do so, as people are lazy/in a hurry/commute to far.
The law of averaging consumer behaviour doesn't scale well to debt, and it certainly cannot be applied to a wider group, such as all Americans will bank accounts.
The system failed due to the system being flawed, and quite frankly anyone, such as you, who somehow believe that the government who was in power for 8 years didn't have a hand in this, and it is all the fault of the guy who has been in power for six months, is a fool.
Stanislaw Lem, "Peace on Earth"
Socialist Utopian fantasy, where the magical god government provides enough for everyone.
Of course... the magical government god also defines what "enough" actually is.
Look at the real picture:
loses power to Eltsin, who, apparently, tries to break old USSR and create new one, but fails.
What would Russia be today, if not communists? Another Nigeria? Where did 192x-196x sustained RAPID growth come from, if the system was so ineffective? (and have in mind, most of that time USSR was fighting either civil wars, or WWII or the cold war)
Yes, my views are consistent.
Police? Yes, heavy users should pay... organize a rally, concert, or parade? You need to pay for the police. Further, police should be (and mostly are) locally funded... so yes, the users pay for the protection.
Roadbuilding is similar to police. Most roads are local. I'm a big fan of user-funded roads... tolls, gas tax, etc.
The military is tougher, but I largely agree with your sentiment about oil companies. I can't help but think that our security would be better served by subsidizing alternate energy rather than protecting oil for ourselves and Europe in the Middle East. Even coal reforming + hundreds of billions of dollars per year puts us in a better position than we are today.
Anyway, arguments like this are why you should limit government as much as possible. Size of government is roughly inversely proportional to your freedoms. If you don't like other people telling you what to do, don't empower them to do so!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
What? You mean that going to the extremes of doing the idological opposite that our former nemesis used to follow isn't a good way to run things? I say, capitalism = American, therefore we can't get too much of it! Like apple pie. Or corndogs. Mmmh, corndogs!
You just got troll'd!
Actually there was a recent study that was published in Europe about smoking and health care, and the findings were the opposite of what we were generally told.
Bottom line was that smokers in general die quicker, and those that don't live for a long time. The most expensive health care costs are those associated with caring for the really old who have long term medical problems. Smokers just die without the hassle of all the long term care.
Not saying morally one way or another, only that that particular excuse doesn't wash anymore. (There are plenty of reasons why people shouldn't smoke mind you)
he wants his book back!
Either that or in 50 years his relatives will sue everyone that posted on this forum...
I saw that study... but didn't that just total up costs over lifetime? So smokers and obese people die sooner but are more expensive while they are alive. I guess you are right, ultimately fewer old people means lower health care costs.
Of course, as cancer, diabetes, and heart treatments improve I'd expect costs for smokers and the obese to increase.
Nevertheless, I believe the government would look at expenditures and go after demographics which cost the most money - I was merely using smoking as an (apparently poor) example.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I would assume this would be the ideal benefit of a Health Insurance type program in principle. Those in a higher cost bracket would pay more for their health care. Just like someone who smoke pays more for life insurance. (as smokers DO have a higher chance of dying earlier)
However we have seen time and time again how this doesn't work, mostly because of greedy corporations. However this does seem to make sense from the perspective that Obama is trying to socialize the system, but keeping it insurance based and not just free health care to all.
This however may also be based on the problem of all the illegal residents the US has as well. One of the things that I think kills health care up here in Canada is immigration.
Not to sound like an xenophobic bigot, but if someone wants to immigrate to Canada that is one thing. However what happens, is that when people do they usually eventually bring over their parents etc...
Which in principle is fine, but the problem is that the people paying for health care are becoming less and less and the old people on it (which by far cost the most) are becoming more and more. Effectively they haven't paid enough into the system to cover their costs and thus that tab gets paid by the general tax payer (who again are becoming less and less).
Dealing with the baby boomer shift will be bad enough without having to try and deal with this problem as well. The US has similar problems.
I saw a special on TV about the hybrid system they use in Singapore, where everyone has a mandatory health care savings fund (part of every paycheck automatically is deposited) and health care is additionally very subsidized as well. However it still has some disparages with the poor vs those who are not. A novel idea anyway.
Sorry 'tard. Completion in seven more missions in 2010. 2016 - 2010 = 6.
However we have seen time and time again how this doesn't work, mostly because of greedy corporations.
Government regulations aren't helping... maybe it's the same thing. I'll give you an example:
If I run a business, I can negotiate a deal with various insurance companies for blanket health and life insurance coverage... no physical exams, just negotiation on price.
Yet, I cannot gather a group of 100 people into a co-op and buy the same health or life insurance. This is total horse shit - an artificial restriction on consumer's ability to collectively bargain.
Not to sound like an xenophobic bigot,
Don't worry about that :)
I actually have the opposite opinion. You rightly point out that the ageing population is a problem - we simply don't have as many kids as we need to in order to keep the population from becoming top-heavy. At least in the US, this has so far been mitigated by immigration. Immigrants not only tend to have more kids, but they tend to be younger. Canada has a different immigrant profile, so I can't really comment on your situation.
I saw a special on TV about the hybrid system they use in Singapore,
That's not a bad idea, and at least it keeps the governments hands out of the money. There are a very large number of health care systems out there, and I think we can use many aspects of them. Personally, I'd like any federal money to get redistributed to the states to deal with the problem as they see fit. For one thing, not all states are the same demographically... free government-run clinics might work great in New York City, but they might be a terrible idea in Idaho where the population density is too sparse. Another reason is that different states using money differently would function like an experiment of sorts - I think that a decent system would end up bubbling to the top.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
when your mother decided to give birth to an ugly douche like yourself.
Devil is usually in the details, but I know up here in Canada I can register a business or corporation by simply paying a fee and submitting documents.
I am sure it wouldn't take too much legerdemain to create a corporate entity that could use combined buying power to purchase health insurance.
The trouble would be starting off. Finding enough people willing to put money into it to make it worthwhile.
You could have a system where 100 people pay into it. Perhaps eventually you can find other similar companies and amalgamate with them.
Now Just keep doing that until the whole country is covered.
At this point you are big enough, why not just skip the middle man and buy your own health care managing you own money.
That is basically the definition of socialized health care.
The only difference is that people would be paying some sort of set fee rather than a percentage of income as it currently is in Canada.
What you describe is illegal in the US, which is my point... it shouldn't be.
Having more than one entity would encourage competition, IMHO. Where the government should come in is in mandating certain paperwork so that every company doesn't have to devise their own system, and so that every hospital or healthcare provider doesn't need to learn a million different systems.
The government can even set up it's own co-operative and subsidize it, restricting it to the poor, for instance. Then people can join the government plan if they want, or they can get a private plan. For instance, I'd probably want a plan where I got a huge deductible - say $5000 - and pay out-of-pocket up to that amount.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Don't be dense.
If you get sick because you can't afford a doctor visit, and you get other people sick, then it costs everyone more money.
Or, if you can't afford to go to the doctor and get sick enough to require hospitalization, well then you sure as shit can't afford that, which means the taxpayer ends up paying, and once again, it costs everyone more money.
This is basic third grade math. Don't pretend you don't get it.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
Not being from any of those places, I can't really speak to the examples you raise here, so I won't try. But I want to raise a counter-example.
Here in MN, we have MinnesotaCare, which is sort of a more comprehensive, more inclusive version of Medicaid. Income based, sliding scale kind of thing. Very broad, pretty much anyone who doesn't have employer-offered health insurance can enroll.
But here's the kicker. It's not an insurance plan of its own. When you enroll in MNCare, they give you your choice of a few different insurers (Blue Cross and HealthPartners are the two I can name offhand, I think there are a couple others). It's publicly subsidized (and just as importantly, publicly accountable) private insurance.
Anyway, I'm on it right now (self-employed, times are hard). So I'm insured through HealthPartners' MNCare plan. It is by far the best insurance I've ever had, and it's so cheap it may as well be free ($10/month, 0 deductible, copays are three bucks for anything but an ER visit, which is $25, note that there are different levels of coverage with MNCare, this is a middle of the road one). And I can use it pretty much anywhere (this being Minesota, HealthPartners is fucking everywhere). Dental, vision, mental health, chiropractic, everything's covered. It is worlds better than any employer-provided plan I've ever been on.
To my understanding, the Obama proposal for a public option is broadly similar to what I've described here. I'm not saying that's a perfect plan on a nationwide level, although it does work very well here. My point is that it's not really a debate about "socialized medicine vs. free market." The right tries to paint it as such, but it's simply not true. We can decide what the future looks like in America, and it's no secret that we need to figure out because the way it works now is totally broken. A few old white dudes are getting filthy rich off keeping people sick. And that is fucked up. This is America, for God's sake. In the richest country in the world, you shouldn't have to pick between a tooth cleaning and groceries.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
Why?
What is the base purpose?
"The" base purpose? What do you mean, like, carved into the DNA of the universe? This person, or that person, or group. might have a purpose, many different such purposes, but there is no "one" purpose for everyone. It's all those purposes, interacting in proximity, that make up a society.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Nobody catches communicable diseases because of an inability to visit a doctor. This line of argument is only a valid reason to provide free vaccinations - something which we already do.
Unfortunately there's been a large increase in recent years of people refusing to receive these life-saving injections. Of course, that's a different topic altogether, but it does rather nicely illustrate the point that even making things free doesn't guarantee that they'll reach your target audience.
So let me get this straight ... you're complaining that it costs a lot for taxpayers to foot the bill for the small subset of patients who can't afford to pay ... while simultaneously arguing that taxpayers should foot the bill for everyone?
Go on, pull the other one.
I think the problem here is that I didn't drop out after the third grade.
""The" base purpose? What do you mean, like, carved into the DNA of the universe?"
No, of the economy. DNA's purpose is to create more DNA thru offspring.
emt 377 emt 4
So let me get this straight ... you're complaining that it costs a lot for taxpayers to foot the bill for the small subset of patients who can't afford to pay ... while simultaneously arguing that taxpayers should foot the bill for everyone?
Of course. For instance, the average cost of a dental checkup and cleaning is $1000. You can pretend to not get this concept all you want, but it's not that complex.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
And ... ??
WHAT concept? You didn't even try to make a point this time!
You think China is going to take any steps to de-value our currency? Who would buy their crap and keep their economic engine running. Any slide in the dollar versus their currency means a stop to new manufacturing construction.
Yes. They already called in some of the debt... thus our auctioning off of more bonds out of thin air. They had their own stimulus package to pay for, and they had to get some back somewhere.
Oh, DC is just the worst. So many self-serving jackasses.
Nice use of sarcasm for a defense. It's been long known how inefficient and bickery DC is. Also, if you don't think our "representatives" aren't self-serving jackasses, you're clearly blind to historical facts and current events.
The government has long had it's nose in banking
Our government always had their noses in banks, thus the federal reserve, but never in history on such a personal level. Combined with taking over by strong-arming the auto industry, bailing out (and taking ownership) of failed businesses, including FIRING AN EMPLOYEE OF A BUSINESS that the WH should have NO business in doing... all that happened within months of each other. If that isn't the beginning of a massive shift, I don't know what is.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
Yes. They already called in some of the debt...
You have any source for this? I see stuff like this in the news.
Nice use of sarcasm for a defense.
That wasn't sarcasm... I was agreeing with you.
strong-arming the auto industry
Strong-arming? The executives flew to DC and begged for money! If it weren't for the US government, they would be liquidating assets right now instead of restarting assembly lines.
If that isn't the beginning of a massive shift, I don't know what is.
It's certainly unprecedented - but it's also temporary. I suspect that the TARP money will get paid back and that the government will not own any GM after a few years of recovery.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I think you're missing the implication of the "In Soviet Russia" joke -- 'in the US, commerce controls the government'
It is. Cheaper. To keep people healthy. Than it is. To treat their. Unnecessary. Emergencies.
Christ. You make me want to drink.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
Hey, finally a straightforward statement!
Unfortunately you forgot to add the "[citation needed]" tag. For some reason every time I talk to a person who makes that claim, they fail to provide any evidence to support it. Weird, huh?
"something that's completely the fault of the Democrats"
Which is? The complaining, or the events leading to the complaining. I have a hard time believeing Every Democrat is 100% to blame, and all Republican is 100% pure as the driven snow in this. I am going to suggest you examine your bias.
The Republicans were really bad while they were in power (00-06), but for the last couple of years the Dems have been in power (in Congress, and now in the Executive Branch too), so anything going on now is really their fault. Any bills that have passed in the last 2 years are their fault, and that includes the big bank bailout.
Obviously, not EVERY Dem is to blame, there's a few good ones in there, but they're a minority (just like with the Reps). As a group, though, they bear the blame for much of today's mess.
"If you're not a stockholder, your opinion on their pay is irrelevant."
They affect society, I am part of society, so I have to say I dont agree with the above.
Gay people making their behavior public affects society too. So do you think it would be OK for the Religious Right to sponsor legislation to criminalize homosexual behavior, because of its effects on society? If we go around legislating about everything that affects society (which is actually everyone's behavior), we might as well have a police state with no freedoms at all. (Disclaimer: since I'm not religious, I have no problem with gay people making homosexuality normal or tolerated, as I believe in freedom for all.)
"And if you are a stockholder, look in the mirror for someone to blame"
I'm not, and you have a point, but it only goes so far. My only option as a stockholder is to withhold my funding. ( Something I would do were I in a position to invest. ) Stockholder control of the company is too diffuse to allow stockholders, in general, to do anything. Unfortunately, as we see, ethical or moral based investing does not keep unethical companies from getting investors.
So what? Again, those companies' behaviors are the sole responsibility of the investors, and also the customers. If you're neither, then you're interfering in dealings between two private parties, and it's none of your business.
Of course, there is the problem of various illegal acts (bribery, etc.), and monopolies, and that's why there's laws dealing with those things. Government DOES have a valid role to play in limiting the power of corporations (as much as some strict Randians would disagree with me), as an extremely powerful company in a monopoly position is just as bad as a totalitarian government. But in the general case of a normal-sized company which has significant competitors, and isn't engaging in illegal acts like bribing government officials to get sweetheart government contracts or whatever, then it's simply not your business. I refer back to my example about scumbag Bob Nardelli from Home Depot. It sucks that he made off with so much money after such terrible performance, but it's a private company and it was their dumb choice to sign that contract with him. It's my choice to shop at Lowe's, Ace, etc. As long as HD doesn't become a monopoly (not likely with their performance), it's none of my business.
"Overpaid CEOs usually mean companies that don't perform as well as the competition."
I agree, over the long term. Wall street is focused on the short term.
Yes, but again these are all private parties. Don't like it? Invest in companies focused on the long term, or don't invest in Wall Street at all. Start your own small company with good ethics; there's lots of small companies that have been around for ages and are doing just fine because they didn't focus on the long term. They don't make tons of money for do-nothing shareholders, but that's ok too. It's not government's job to make sure all our investments are good. Buyer beware.
I never said people should not work. In fact, I did say that "there should be enough insecurity to prompt productivity" ( or wor
There's no question that commerce controls the government to a large extent. Or it at least dominates government policy. But how does that make the "parallels stunning"? It's the exact opposite situation!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
"Yes, but again these are all private parties. "
If private part(ies) light a fire outside my house, and it is in danger of catching fire, I would say I have the right to stick my nose in.
"You seemed to be implying that all workers should rise up and overthrow their corporate masters, which sounds like something right out of the Marx Manifesto. The only way such a thing works is people continue to produce, rather than just stealing everything from their former bosses. And, this creates a giant disincentive to become a successful boss yourself, since you'll just be the next target when a bunch of disgruntled workers think you have too much."
That would be a slight misreading. I think those that consider themselves our corporate masters should pull their heads out of their third point of contact and realize where their true best interests lie, go ahead and make a profit, even a large one, but stop with the over the top stuff.
But say they did. I would only shed tears over actual blood. But I do agree with you, as I have repeatedly mentioned, that people would have to produce.
I think, actually, that the best thing would be to make it such that corporations had no official or unofficial contact with government. No campaign contributions, no lobbying, no nothing. I think the market would then be freer, and closer to something that worked for everyone, rich and poor.
emt 377 emt 4
Nonsense, I provided an example in the previous post about dental cleaning vs. emergency dental procedures. Those numbers are easily verifiable, don't be lazy. Look it up.
I personally use that example because it happened to me. I had no access to dental care for the better part of a decade. I am now on public assistance, and receiving the dental treatment I need. It is costing my state's taxpayers north of $15000. I need about 14 fillings, 8 crowns, and a root canal (done, thank god). All of that - ALL OF THAT - is completely unnecessary and could have been avoided if I had had proper preventative care during my teenage years and early twenties, at the cost of about $75 a year. For those keeping score at home, that is (75*10) $750 vs. $15000. This is simple math. It's not hard, it's not complicated, everybody knows it.
You know it too, you're just trying to be a dick.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
Yes. They already called in some of the debt...
You have any source for this? I see stuff like this in the news.
http://www.fourwinds10.com/siterun_data/business/currency/news.php?q=1246389934
and
http://business.watoday.com.au/business/markets/china-calls-for-end-to-us-dollar-domination-20090627-d077.html
While they can't "call it in" in a direct sense, there's more than one way to skin a cat. It's no secret China is very quickly losing faith in the value of US bonds. Them losing faith in value = actual loss of value. If they think they aren't getting paid anyway, they can cut us off, which they've done some of already, and can certainly devalue our economy if they wanted to, forcing the USA to scramble for a new loan source... and if China dumps us, welcome to the REAL depression.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
http://www.fourwinds10.com/siterun_data/business/currency/news.php?q=1246389934 [fourwinds10.com]
and
http://business.watoday.com.au/business/markets/china-calls-for-end-to-us-dollar-domination-20090627-d077.html [watoday.com.au]
It looks to me like they are using treasuries as a form of hard currency to buy up commodities. This seems reasonable to me, since their own currency does not float and is essentially worthless on the world market.
It's no secret China is very quickly losing faith in the value of US bonds.
Losing faith? No - they continue to buy them. What they are is worried that their economic model is unsustainable. They are in the unenviable position of having a huge trading partner and wanting very little (comparatively) of that trading partner's goods. They refuse to let their own currency float because it would make their manufactured goods too expensive, so they are restricted to trading with foreign currency... and most people still want dollars.
If they think they aren't getting paid anyway, they can cut us off, which they've done some of already,
What do you mean? Buying up bonds and then trading them for stuff is not "cutting us off" by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, it devalues our currency compared to whatever commodity they buy - but that is the inescapable consequence of printing extra money. Remember that their currency is necessarily tied to ours, so any fall in the dollar also effects their own currency.
forcing the USA to scramble for a new loan source...
They are our largest bondholder, but they are hardly the only source of money flowing into US treasuries. Sure, the interest rate that the fed would have to pay would go up - but that's not exactly the end of the world.
and if China dumps us, welcome to the REAL depression.
Dumps us? Where would they send their manufactured goods? While it is true that we would not fare well if China suddenly cut off trade, the impact on their economy would be even greater. They accumulate billions of dollars in US currency. This currency is worthless ultimately except for buying American goods. If they cut off trade, they are stuck with a huge stockpile of worthless paper while we sit on trillions of dollars worth of finished goods. While I'd certainly rather that they cash in those US dollars to receive American goods, I can't really see how the Chinese would have anything to gain by giving up all of that money.
Ultimately, it is the Chinese system that has to change. They can't be a serious player unless they float their currency... but when they do that, their goods will become significantly less competitive. They are in a very unenviable position, and it's no wonder that we see them whining.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.