This is where not paying for government in the first place really shines. Without Big Mommy taking 50% of what you make, and 50% of what other people make by selling you stuff, and so on, without even mentioning the cost of complying with regulations with every step you take, what would you do with all that extra money?
Would you invest it in some crackpot rocketship? There are a whole bunch of people who would.
And yes, NASA has directly restricted the development of private space vehicles, by using tax money to undercut any possible competition. When they loosened their regulations just a little bit some few years ago, some crackpot rocket jockey proposed and built the "Pegasus" launch vehicle which puts small satellites into orbit at a tiny fraction of the cost NASA wanted to charge even with its massive taxpayer subsidy.
Why do you think only Big Corporations can build launch vehicles? Rutan isn't a big company. The Pegasus vehicle is exceptionally cheap to build, but requires a primary launch platform (F-15 style) that by law private people in the US may not own or operate. There's that regulatory burden again.
Murry Rothbard's "Conceived in Liberty" (Vols. 1-4, New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1973-1979), would make a great start, but unfortunately only a couple of chapters are online. Try the library, since it's $100 they may be the only place that has it.
For material online, I can whole heartedly suggest The Ludwig von Mises Institute online library which has numerous different authors and titles which concern the efficiencies of competitive market forces while documenting the absurd inefficiencies and distortions of forced regulation and command economies.
The daily articles are one of the things I start my day with, along with Dilbert and UserFriendly.
I do appreciate your comment of "don't just correct, educate", but I can only point you in the direction. One way to know that private mail came first is to recall that Benjamin Franklin was appointed as the first Postmaster General. Ok, so what existed before that? Private mail.
I disagree with your premise entirely. NASA has been a disaster for space travel, ensuring that resources get plowed into the most inefficient, expensive, hide-bound techniques and designs. The only effort more backward is the Russian one, and at least the Russians stuck with one basic design and perfected it to the point where they have the highest lifting capacity in the world.
Getting into space might have taken longer without the whole NASA "before the end of this decade" mission statement, but once done it would have been profitable and economical. Instead, "we" wasted 43 years of time just to repeat Shepherds sub-orbital pud-knocker.
Seriously, dump NASA completely. Let the government buy commercial launch room for its spy satellites the same way they use FedEx because it works better than the USPS.
And FedEx works better for exactly the same reason that Rutan came back with everything except his fuel, a feat NASA has never accomplished!
That means that Microsoft gets to write off $300 for each of 120,000 copies of Office and XP Pro, while costing themselves $.50 for duplication and packaging of each CD.
That $34M is going to cost Microsoft about $60K, and then they will make millions when the software they gave away comes due for upgrade and replacement.
That's right, Microsoft Makes Money from their own prosecution!
Keep in mind that Rutan had to ask PERMISSION before he could fly high this week, too.
Regulations crush innovation. Both sides of the Party of State Power just LOVE regulating everything you do. So if you voted for anyone other than a Libertarian, you voted for someone who enjoys regulating your life.
Deregulation is the antithesis of the bureaucratic "quick fix". As such it avoids the problem that von Mises talked about, that each regulation causes problems that require more regulations to fix, which in turn require yet more regulations, causing far more problems and costing anyone who tries to do business a fortune in compliance costs.
Deregulation simplifies new entrants into a market. This means that if a "problem" can be solved, be it technical or price, someone will step up and make a profit solving it.
The difference is one of time. While the benefits of deregulation are long term, the bureaucratic "quick fix" ensures that special interest groups and politicians can claim to have "done something". By the time their "something" has blossomed into a Frankenstein's Monster, they have either retired or can point fingers at anyone and everyone else.
After all, they have the moral high ground having "done something".
That's also the reason bureaucrats hate entrepreneurs. Bureaucrats are only "seen" to do something, entrepreneurs actually do it whether you see them or not.
Bob-
Just more of the ancient art of hardening.
on
Amorphous Steel
·
· Score: 1
Annealing is letting the metal cool slowly, to maximize the crystal alignments and make the steel as soft as possible. Easy to work into shape.
Hardening. I heat the steel to its decolessant point, where the atoms are moving so fast they can no longer align in a magnetic field (so magnets don't stick), then quickly cool the steel. It is hardened and at the same time becomes more brittle.
Tempering is then applied, where the hardened steel is warmed gently to various degrees and again quickly cooled to remove just a bit of the brittleness and add "toughness" to the hard steel.
[S]eperating rockets are the big block carboreator fed technology of space travel. Sure their are smarter ways of doing it, but sometimes a sledge hammer tool for the job.
I agree. We (as a species and society) have already "Been There, Done That". Real innovation is now how to get there better. Yes, "good, cheap, fast, pick two." We've done fast, it's now time to do cheap.
Ya see, "fast" isn't important. It's taken 43 years since Gagarin, to do only what Shepherd did but do it for a tiny fraction of the cost and no waste. That's not fast at all. This re-demonstrates the fact that politicians, since they're not spending their own money, don't take the "long view". They go for quick fixes and damn the repercussions.
Excuse me, it's time to go re-read "Net Assets" and "Kings of the High Frontier". I'm enthusiastic again!
Now we're into the realm of engineering. They can get above the atmosphere with the composite craft, all they have to do is keep going.
I agree with you that this is the easiest and best way to do the job. I loath the "blast-off" mentality, where 99% of your craft is thrown away just getting up there. Waste!
However, "just keep going" is easy to say and hard to do. It will require substantially more fuel to be carried, which itself requires far more fuel to be consumed accelerating the greater mass. The return flight also must be considered, heat shielding means more mass too.
Will Rutan's formula of nitrous oxide and tire rubber lend itself to this task? In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, "Nyaaaaa, (munch munch munch) Could be."
It will happen. It may be Armadillo Aerospace, it may be Scaled Composites, it may be someone none of us have heard of yet, but someone will do it and private people who care about their investment won't do it by throwing 99% of their property away.
Both faces of the Party Of State Power loath individual freedom, they have deliberately parceled out every issue over the years to try to polarize the voting public into as close to 50/50 as possible, so that which ever candidate the industrial/military complex wants to have elected can be just by shifting the press coverage a little.
Grant any power to government in order to control your neighbors, and that same power will be used to control YOU.
In order to be free, you must guarantee the freedom of the least desirable member of society as well. Anything else is tyranny. If you don't think it is tyranny, it's only because your particular choices which define freedom for YOU haven't been restricted....yet.
Liberty is not safe, it is not comfortable, it is not easy.
Slavery is very safe, and very easy. Just relax and give in. Do as you're told. Step out of the car and identify yourself when told. All very easy.
While he never mentions it, the GPL is the real object of his attack.
Examine his argument that "hybrid software" is not really "open source". He clearly states that "open source" is only the BSD or MIT licenses.
I also enjoyed the "hybrid source software can infect other software by some uses". Well, DUH!!!! The use, which he doesn't specify, is from directly using the source code.
Yeah, it's so obviously the old "Microsoft says GPL bad, BSD good" argument that it's pathetic.
To understand the importance of the GPL, everyone who doesn't know Microsoft continually copies from BSD, raise your hands. Nobody? Good. Lesson learned.
But maybe I see where you make your mistake. I am an anti-federalist by the definitions of the time. The Federal Constitution does indeed grant far too much power to the central government, and has vague language like the interstate commerce clause which can and has be used to define anything and everything.
So it's not so much that I believe the Bill Of Rights was needed. The Bill of Rights is just paper, and without the spirit to overturn and nullify each and every law that Congress passes and the President signs that is not explicitly authorized in the constitution itself, then the Bill of Rights isn't going to even get lip service.
You prove my point. Since the 10th amendment exists, in order for the Fed.Gov to "regulate" anything, it has to have that power explicitly granted to it.
Do you remember reading the reasons given by the Federalists as to why a "bill of rights" was not needed?
Just in case you missed that part, one of the reasons was that, since the constitution did explicitly not grant the Fed.Gov the power to, for instance, prohibit certain types of firearms for private use, having an amendment restricting such a power was pointless and redundant.
No matter how repulsive, I have to admit you are historically correct.
Rep. Dr. Ron Paul, Texas, is the only congresscritter who does for the most part fit the bill of "libertarian". You should check him out some time. Quite refreshing.
People indeed do get the government they deserve. What's a few million dead and imprisoned citizens anyway, since it is indeed the government the rest of the people are quite happy with?
Simple common law property rights cover this quite well.
Prosecution for signal overlap is just like trespassing. Prove deliberate action to the jury and demand damages and corrective action.
Easement, established right-of-way, and the simple fact that a radio station will want their customers to find them again means that staying on an established frequency will work best for everyone.
One good thing to do is look up the history of radio prior to the establishment of the FCC. Such difficulties as you mention were already worked out and business was flourishing.
It is not which regulations I object to, it is regulation itself.
Time to realize that if you grant to "government" the power to regulate other people in ways that you like, someone else will use that power to regulate YOU.
The FCC, like the rest of the unconstitutional ways that the Fed.Gov controls your everyday life, must be abolished immediately.
Ok, how about using solar as the heat source for the propane-vapor turbine?
The problem remains one of thermal difference, in that there has to be a way to cool the propane back down for liquification, to complete the cycle. This might be a way for people near slow rivers to use the river water since they cannot use it for hydroelectric.
A monopoly can only exist, without using force, so long as their price is low enough, or their service level high enough, that any competition does not want to spend the money required to compete.
Your examples ignore perfectly viable competition methods. For instance, two-way satellite IP service has been around for years. You might know Earthlink.
You also say "you'd better make some promises in return." In what way is this not a factor in the free market? It is not the freedom of choice that bumps up against ugly realities, what it bumps up against is ugly regulators. The ones that use their power to make money off of the regulations they are supposed to use to safeguard people from the illusions of danger.
Look up "Public Choice Theory" for a lesson in the effects of human beings as regulators.
Slashdot Mirror
This is where not paying for government in the first place really shines. Without Big Mommy taking 50% of what you make, and 50% of what other people make by selling you stuff, and so on, without even mentioning the cost of complying with regulations with every step you take, what would you do with all that extra money?
Would you invest it in some crackpot rocketship? There are a whole bunch of people who would.
And yes, NASA has directly restricted the development of private space vehicles, by using tax money to undercut any possible competition. When they loosened their regulations just a little bit some few years ago, some crackpot rocket jockey proposed and built the "Pegasus" launch vehicle which puts small satellites into orbit at a tiny fraction of the cost NASA wanted to charge even with its massive taxpayer subsidy.
Why do you think only Big Corporations can build launch vehicles? Rutan isn't a big company. The Pegasus vehicle is exceptionally cheap to build, but requires a primary launch platform (F-15 style) that by law private people in the US may not own or operate. There's that regulatory burden again.
Bob-
Murry Rothbard's "Conceived in Liberty" (Vols. 1-4, New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1973-1979), would make a great start, but unfortunately only a couple of chapters are online. Try the library, since it's $100 they may be the only place that has it.
For material online, I can whole heartedly suggest The Ludwig von Mises Institute online library which has numerous different authors and titles which concern the efficiencies of competitive market forces while documenting the absurd inefficiencies and distortions of forced regulation and command economies.
The daily articles are one of the things I start my day with, along with Dilbert and UserFriendly.
I do appreciate your comment of "don't just correct, educate", but I can only point you in the direction. One way to know that private mail came first is to recall that Benjamin Franklin was appointed as the first Postmaster General. Ok, so what existed before that? Private mail.
Bob-
Might as well burn some karma and comment on the negative moderators. If you don't agree with someone, ignore them. Works much better in life as well.
Bob-
FedEx may be better than the USPS, but who came first?
Private mail did. Check the history books.
Bob-
(Negative moderators, vent your abuse on this one and leave the rest alone.)
I couldn't agree more. Now, if only I could get the moderators to stop modding my comment to the same effect above (#9608664) as a "Troll"...
NASA uses FedEx. The reason: FedEx is private and therefore more efficient than the USPS.
That's why The US Government would be better off purchasing private launch space just like everybody else.
There's no reason to think that half a dozen universities wouldn't get together and build deep space probes, either.
Bob-
I disagree with your premise entirely. NASA has been a disaster for space travel, ensuring that resources get plowed into the most inefficient, expensive, hide-bound techniques and designs. The only effort more backward is the Russian one, and at least the Russians stuck with one basic design and perfected it to the point where they have the highest lifting capacity in the world.
Getting into space might have taken longer without the whole NASA "before the end of this decade" mission statement, but once done it would have been profitable and economical. Instead, "we" wasted 43 years of time just to repeat Shepherds sub-orbital pud-knocker.
Seriously, dump NASA completely. Let the government buy commercial launch room for its spy satellites the same way they use FedEx because it works better than the USPS.
And FedEx works better for exactly the same reason that Rutan came back with everything except his fuel, a feat NASA has never accomplished!
Bob-
Re-read the article. $34M in PRODUCT.
That means that Microsoft gets to write off $300 for each of 120,000 copies of Office and XP Pro, while costing themselves $.50 for duplication and packaging of each CD.
That $34M is going to cost Microsoft about $60K, and then they will make millions when the software they gave away comes due for upgrade and replacement.
That's right, Microsoft Makes Money from their own prosecution!
Oh, it's good to be the Gates.
Bob-
Keep in mind that Rutan had to ask PERMISSION before he could fly high this week, too.
Regulations crush innovation. Both sides of the Party of State Power just LOVE regulating everything you do. So if you voted for anyone other than a Libertarian, you voted for someone who enjoys regulating your life.
Bob-
Deregulation is the antithesis of the bureaucratic "quick fix". As such it avoids the problem that von Mises talked about, that each regulation causes problems that require more regulations to fix, which in turn require yet more regulations, causing far more problems and costing anyone who tries to do business a fortune in compliance costs.
Deregulation simplifies new entrants into a market. This means that if a "problem" can be solved, be it technical or price, someone will step up and make a profit solving it.
The difference is one of time. While the benefits of deregulation are long term, the bureaucratic "quick fix" ensures that special interest groups and politicians can claim to have "done something". By the time their "something" has blossomed into a Frankenstein's Monster, they have either retired or can point fingers at anyone and everyone else.
After all, they have the moral high ground having "done something".
That's also the reason bureaucrats hate entrepreneurs. Bureaucrats are only "seen" to do something, entrepreneurs actually do it whether you see them or not.
Bob-
Annealing is letting the metal cool slowly, to maximize the crystal alignments and make the steel as soft as possible. Easy to work into shape.
Hardening. I heat the steel to its decolessant point, where the atoms are moving so fast they can no longer align in a magnetic field (so magnets don't stick), then quickly cool the steel. It is hardened and at the same time becomes more brittle.
Tempering is then applied, where the hardened steel is warmed gently to various degrees and again quickly cooled to remove just a bit of the brittleness and add "toughness" to the hard steel.
These folks merely quenched liquid steel. Woopie.
This isn't news, folks, it's highschool shop.
Bob-
[S]eperating rockets are the big block carboreator fed technology of space travel. Sure their are smarter ways of doing it, but sometimes a sledge hammer tool for the job.
I agree. We (as a species and society) have already "Been There, Done That". Real innovation is now how to get there better. Yes, "good, cheap, fast, pick two." We've done fast, it's now time to do cheap.
Ya see, "fast" isn't important. It's taken 43 years since Gagarin, to do only what Shepherd did but do it for a tiny fraction of the cost and no waste. That's not fast at all. This re-demonstrates the fact that politicians, since they're not spending their own money, don't take the "long view". They go for quick fixes and damn the repercussions.
Excuse me, it's time to go re-read "Net Assets" and "Kings of the High Frontier". I'm enthusiastic again!
Bob-
Gen. Yeager should be one of the passengers used to qualify for the X-Prize. He deserves it!
Where do we send contributions to fund the ticket?
Bob-
Now we're into the realm of engineering. They can get above the atmosphere with the composite craft, all they have to do is keep going.
I agree with you that this is the easiest and best way to do the job. I loath the "blast-off" mentality, where 99% of your craft is thrown away just getting up there. Waste!
However, "just keep going" is easy to say and hard to do. It will require substantially more fuel to be carried, which itself requires far more fuel to be consumed accelerating the greater mass. The return flight also must be considered, heat shielding means more mass too.
Will Rutan's formula of nitrous oxide and tire rubber lend itself to this task? In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, "Nyaaaaa, (munch munch munch) Could be."
It will happen. It may be Armadillo Aerospace, it may be Scaled Composites, it may be someone none of us have heard of yet, but someone will do it and private people who care about their investment won't do it by throwing 99% of their property away.
Bob-
You're absolutely right, I8TheWorm.
Both faces of the Party Of State Power loath individual freedom, they have deliberately parceled out every issue over the years to try to polarize the voting public into as close to 50/50 as possible, so that which ever candidate the industrial/military complex wants to have elected can be just by shifting the press coverage a little.
Bob-
This is like searching your car. They have no probable cause, so they have to ask:
"Mind if I search your car?"
"You may not."
"Refusal is probable cause that you're hiding something. Step out of the car and put your hands on the hood." They then search your car.
If you don't like it, take it up with the judge (who happens to work for the same people the police do, and is rated by CONVICTIONS).
Bob-
Grant any power to government in order to control your neighbors, and that same power will be used to control YOU.
....yet.
In order to be free, you must guarantee the freedom of the least desirable member of society as well. Anything else is tyranny. If you don't think it is tyranny, it's only because your particular choices which define freedom for YOU haven't been restricted
Liberty is not safe, it is not comfortable, it is not easy.
Slavery is very safe, and very easy. Just relax and give in. Do as you're told. Step out of the car and identify yourself when told. All very easy.
Bob-
While he never mentions it, the GPL is the real object of his attack.
Examine his argument that "hybrid software" is not really "open source". He clearly states that "open source" is only the BSD or MIT licenses.
I also enjoyed the "hybrid source software can infect other software by some uses". Well, DUH!!!! The use, which he doesn't specify, is from directly using the source code.
Yeah, it's so obviously the old "Microsoft says GPL bad, BSD good" argument that it's pathetic.
To understand the importance of the GPL, everyone who doesn't know Microsoft continually copies from BSD, raise your hands. Nobody? Good. Lesson learned.
Bob-
Again you prove my point.
But maybe I see where you make your mistake. I am an anti-federalist by the definitions of the time. The Federal Constitution does indeed grant far too much power to the central government, and has vague language like the interstate commerce clause which can and has be used to define anything and everything.
So it's not so much that I believe the Bill Of Rights was needed. The Bill of Rights is just paper, and without the spirit to overturn and nullify each and every law that Congress passes and the President signs that is not explicitly authorized in the constitution itself, then the Bill of Rights isn't going to even get lip service.
The entire thing should be thrown out.
Bob-
You prove my point. Since the 10th amendment exists, in order for the Fed.Gov to "regulate" anything, it has to have that power explicitly granted to it.
Do you remember reading the reasons given by the Federalists as to why a "bill of rights" was not needed?
Just in case you missed that part, one of the reasons was that, since the constitution did explicitly not grant the Fed.Gov the power to, for instance, prohibit certain types of firearms for private use, having an amendment restricting such a power was pointless and redundant.
Bob-
No matter how repulsive, I have to admit you are historically correct.
Rep. Dr. Ron Paul, Texas, is the only congresscritter who does for the most part fit the bill of "libertarian". You should check him out some time. Quite refreshing.
People indeed do get the government they deserve. What's a few million dead and imprisoned citizens anyway, since it is indeed the government the rest of the people are quite happy with?
Bob-
Then, since the 10th amendment exists, you will show me what paragraph authorizes it?
Where is radio transmission specifically separated from "speech" in the constitution?
If you cannot find it, the power to regulate it does not exist. Doing so is therefore explicitly unconstitutional.
Bob-
Simple common law property rights cover this quite well.
Prosecution for signal overlap is just like trespassing. Prove deliberate action to the jury and demand damages and corrective action.
Easement, established right-of-way, and the simple fact that a radio station will want their customers to find them again means that staying on an established frequency will work best for everyone.
One good thing to do is look up the history of radio prior to the establishment of the FCC. Such difficulties as you mention were already worked out and business was flourishing.
Bob-
It is not which regulations I object to, it is regulation itself.
Time to realize that if you grant to "government" the power to regulate other people in ways that you like, someone else will use that power to regulate YOU.
The FCC, like the rest of the unconstitutional ways that the Fed.Gov controls your everyday life, must be abolished immediately.
Bob-
Ok, how about using solar as the heat source for the propane-vapor turbine?
The problem remains one of thermal difference, in that there has to be a way to cool the propane back down for liquification, to complete the cycle. This might be a way for people near slow rivers to use the river water since they cannot use it for hydroelectric.
Bob-
A monopoly can only exist, without using force, so long as their price is low enough, or their service level high enough, that any competition does not want to spend the money required to compete.
Your examples ignore perfectly viable competition methods. For instance, two-way satellite IP service has been around for years. You might know Earthlink.
You also say "you'd better make some promises in return." In what way is this not a factor in the free market? It is not the freedom of choice that bumps up against ugly realities, what it bumps up against is ugly regulators. The ones that use their power to make money off of the regulations they are supposed to use to safeguard people from the illusions of danger.
Look up "Public Choice Theory" for a lesson in the effects of human beings as regulators.
Bob-