When the government collects more money from selling me a product than the people who actually made the product, what would you prefer to call it? I have a strange feeling if the oil companies and the government's positions were reversed you'd have no issue whatsoever calling it profiteering.
And, as one of the other commenters pointed out, the government's track record for efficiently and effectively spending said revenues is marginal even in the best of cases. Have you checked on the progress of California's high-speed rail project lately? Late, badly designed, over-budget, and with questionable potential ridership. But hey, those campaign contributors who lobbied for it sure made out like bandits didn't they?
Basically, people have become more-sensitive to moral issues
Some people are still sensitive about this thing called the "rule of law." You know, where laws are made and people are expected to follow them? And don't hand me the "but it's a bad law" argument. It may very well be "bad law" but the proper recourse is to change the law not legalize the defiance of it.
The practice of the government turning a blind eye to which laws it will or won't enforce is an extremely slippery slope. The whole "it's illegal but go ahead and do it because we don't want to enforce the law" engenders disrespect for law and law enforcement. It also opens the possibility -- as we're now seeing -- of the government deciding to enforce the law.
We have a method to easily change law in this country. It's called a "ballot box." If you want the law to be different, convince enough people to elect representatives that will change it. If you are unable to do so, the new law isn't acceptable. It's that simple.
But hey, enjoy your craziness. If y'all didn't have nukes it'd be a lot more fun to watch from the sidelines, though.
Yes, because Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea are such rational, non-crazy countries with benevolent, freedom-loving governments who also have nukes. Face it: the USA's nukes are the least threatening to the world. We've had them since 1945 and we had them first. If we wanted to use them in anger after Hiroshima/Nagasaki we would have by now.
is there some reason 'single payer' healthcare coverage is better than 'employer paid' healthcare coverage?
If you believe in government having a hand in the most intimate facets of your life, telling you what you will and won't be paid for based on political whims, higher taxes, rationed services, being subject to idiotic things like government shutdowns, and customer service on par with your average DMV experience then single payer is a fantastic idea.
Gas tax is $0.56 per gallon in California [bankrate.com], one of the highest tax states, while the total price is $2.80 a gallon, making it a 25% tax rate.
And that's just state taxes. There are Federal taxes on top of that. And don't forget in some places you pay city, county, and/or sales taxes on top of that. And don't forget the "embedded" taxes such as those paid by the corporations who prospected, drilled, pumped, transported, refined, and transported again the gasoline that finally made its way into your fuel tank. I'd be shocked if the total taxes didn't total up to at least 50%.
Make no mistake, the biggest profiteer of petroleum products isn't the oil industry. It's the government.
If only we had a spacecraft that could maneuver close to it, grab it with a big arm, put it in the spacecraft's payload bay, and take it where it was supposed to go. That would be amazing.
We did but it turned out to be ludicrously expensive to operate, flew missions at a rate an order of magnitude less than it was projected to do, and had an annoying tendency to kill astronauts who rode in it.
The Shuttle was and still is a shitty design, an example of what you get when too many compromises are made on the original design objectives. We'd have been far better off spending that money on uprated Saturn V's.
He said it's okay that women aren't equal here because that's how they are, we shouldn't bother changing.
I challenge you to post a link where this was actually said by Damore.
Oh, wait, you can't, because that's not what he said, it's your biased, chip-on-the-shoulder interpretation of what you want to believe he said because that fits your narrative and ideology better.
Damore committed the sin of saying an uncomfortable truth: women and minorities are underrepresented in tech not due to some overarching insidious plan by white conservative males but by self-selection, both by those in tech and those who eschew it. Women aren't inherently dumber than men but they have -- for varied reasons over the past half-decade -- chosen not to enter tech en masse. To avoid the patriarchy? Perhaps. Because they prefer other fields which are more attuned to their personal preferences? Perhaps. Because there's a vast right-wing, male-dominated conspiracy dedicated to disenfranchising them that's omnipotently powerful yet somehow able to function without sanction in today's obsessed-with-being-offended culture? Absurd to the point of ridicule.
Go to any school in the US and take a census of how many male teachers their are versus females, yet nobody complains about male under-representation in those fields. Ditto for nursing and many other traditionally-female professions. For that matter, why is OK to complain that NASCAR is too white but nobody would dare say something like "the NBA is too black" when 74% of its players are black but blacks make up only 13% of the US population? If diversity is so laudable, why is it only pursued when it's advantageous to certain racial/ethnic groups and totally ignored for others? The obvious conclusion is diversity isn't actually pursuing diversity for any beneficial goal whatsoever. It's a camouflaged project to denigrate, destroy, and otherwise minimize anything white, male, or conservative so those on the "diversity" side can feel better about themselves for "speaking truth to power" or similar neo-hippie nonsense. In the same sense, the current "feminist" movement has morphed from being all about pro-women to something manifestly anti-male. The two are not the same; the former is about empowering women while the latter is about bringing down men. You cannot elevate someone by dragging down others, yet the SJW movement seems to believe otherwise.
I have a dream that one day, people will be praised less for the color of their skin or what genitalia they have or who they want prefer to have sex with and more for the content of their character. Unfortunately the current politically-correct SJW climate is agitating for the exact opposite viewpoint and presenting it as "progress" in the "war against bigotry/racism/sexism/etc."
both major American political parties expound right wing, authoritarian viewpoints and philosophies.
I suppose it would look that way to someone raised and bred in a culture of left-wing authoritarian viewpoints and philosophies such as what can be readily found in most European nations these days. Cradle-to-grave government nannying and regulation have become a staple of the EU. Government expanding government for the sake of government, all at the cost of the people while telling them they're getting a better deal out of it.
History flash: real right-wing authoritarianism looks like Germany/Italy in the late 1930's. Unless you're prepared to make the preposterous argument current USA political stances are equal to those, your comment has nothing to do with reality.
I am in this field and there is no reason it cant cost less than $500.
And then you say this:
It costs $2 billion to push a sugar pill through the FDA clinical trials process.
You are aware these two things are related, right? The R&D and approval costs are baked into the final price of the drug. The whole "reason" it has to cost more the $500 right now and for the foreseeable future is those costs have to be covered. If not, there is no money put back into R&D and approval for the next medical breakthrough and healthcare research essentially stops.
Or we could do like other countries do: let the government pay for the research and the treatment.
By all means! After all, these "other countries" just magically shit money out of nowhere. It's not like the citizens pay taxes or anything, right?
Oh, wait, they do pay taxes! Which means perfectly healthy people are forced to pay for R&D and treatment of diseases they don't have, won't get, and more or less can never benefit from. Oh, sure, it's all noble to say you're helping your fellow man, but isn't that what charitable contributions are for? By golly, yes, that's exactly what they're for! What an amazing concept! People voluntarily helping others instead of the government taking their money and giving it to whoever they feel is most worthy of getting it. And of course such dispensations are never, ever politically motivated and the government never, ever wastes money through fraud, graft, inefficiency, or laziness, right?
there is no potential profit and no one is willing to pay for development, trials, and certification
How about instead of "there is no potential for profit" it's instead seen in terms of "there is no way to recoup costs associated with development, trials, and certification." It's not always about greedy, money-grubbing profiteers. For every "pharma-bro" there are thousands of people dedicated to helping the human condition. However, their labs don't come for free. Their research time isn't free. They have to put food on their tables, too. This is "greed" this is simple economics: the allocation of scarce resources based on costs vs. benefits.
If time and resources were infinite this wouldn't be an issue. Neither are, hence no matter how noble it would be to "fix" certain things, hard choices occasionally need to be made. Do you spend tens of millions researching a drug that will benefit, say, 500 people or that same money on a drug that will benefit 50 million people?
It really surprises me that the kind of people who have enough money to build a monorail weren't smart enough to think of this.
Who says they weren't smart enough? You're assuming the decisions on where the monorail will/won't go to were driven by logic and economics. This being a public works project, that's highly unlikely. it's far more likely the monorail's service locations were determined by who greased the local politicians to win the construction, labor, and supply contracts. That and also who paid/coerced the planning group the most to not disrupt local transport monopolies who stood to lose out on a captive market (i.e. taxis, etc.).
When a lot of tax money gets spent in a seemingly-stupid fashion, follow the money. You'll discover it wasn't the least bit stupid from the perspective of who made a killing on building the damned stuff or who would've lost business had the project been successful. Here in Atlanta (Democrat mayor) we spent $200 million on a stupid trolley. Who rides it? Almost nobody. But the company that built it made a handsome profit. Nevermind the taxpayers are left footing the bill for running a money-losing trolley service. They keep voting the same lackeys into office year after year no matter what so it's not like the politicians are ever held accountable.
DC (Democrat mayor) spent $200 million on a similarly-failing streetcar service. Projects in Cincinnati (Democrat mayor), Dallas (Democrat mayor), Detroit (Democrat mayor) and Honolulu (Democrat mayor) are dealing with similar problems: construction cost overruns, small ridership and no discernible evidence of economic benefits vs. costs. Not saying Republicans are immune to such shenanigans (see Bridge to Nowhere) but Democrats in particular seem to love spending tax money on stuff that never works as advertised. This is why I'm a Libertarian.
Since they refused to run it to the airport, which would be easier than running it to Mandalay Bay, the project was doomed from the start.
And why do they refuse to run it to the airport? I suspect you need look no further than taxi cab unions and/or similar organizations who would lose business to the monorail. Follow the money and I'm sure you'll find the appropriate amount of "campaign contributions" were made to ensure the monorail didn't disrupt any existing lucrative businesses. Hence its uselessness.
Then again, this is Vegas so perhaps it wasn't so much "contributions" as heeding a warning from the local mobsters that disrupting their near-monopoly on airport transportation would be hazardous to someone's health.
I spent five years working 70m from an operating nuclear reactor (at 3513'35.5"N 8505'25.5"W if you want to be specific). On nice days I'd take a walk around the plant to stretch my legs, close enough to hug some of the dry-cask storage containers holding spent fuel rods (at 3513'36.0"N 8505'21.9"W). Therefore I can speak with some authority on the dangers -- or lack thereof -- involved.
During my tenure I received a total exposure of 0.1 mrem. This is the equivalent of living in Denver for two days as opposed to, say, at sea level. The amount of hysteria involved when someone mentions "nuclear" or "radiation" is almost comical given how little the average person understands the physics around it.
Those things would have been made without the moon program too.
And you know this for a fact, right? And your inerrant prognostication also tells you these same advances would've been made in roughly the same time frame, right? And the iterative, compounded benefits we've enjoyed -- especially in the tech industry -- over the last 40 years would be as good or even better than what we have now without Apollo and its attendant technological breakthroughs?
Oh, wait, of course you don't know any of that. Because you can't. The rise of tech has benefited humanity across the spectrum, from commerce to dissemination of information to better medicines to providing voices and freedom in areas politically insulated from it and much more. If Apollo pushed us forward even a decade faster than we'd have gone without it, it's benefited BILLIONS of lives in the process.
we can't talk seriously about colonizing other worlds until we learn how to sustainably inhabit our own
Lucky for you the tech required to sustain humans in space and on otherwise-uninhabitable worlds would work just fine here on Earth to help us develop better recycling techniques, more power-efficient devices, and in general do more while using less.
Just like the computer you're using now benefited from the Apollo-era push for smaller, faster, efficient, more reliable computers, the spin-off benefits from space exploration are beyond counting. The idea that we should focus on Earth first and exploration second is absurd when you consider the latter naturally benefits the former.
Your understanding of the Constitution is...flawed to say the least. Private businesses have the right to hire or not hire whoever they want. They cannot be coerced into hiring someone simply because they're in a group unless that infringes on their Constitutional rights. Go read the Constitution and its amendments. You won't find the phrase "union worker" in there anywhere.
And if you insist on claiming there is some magical court decision that says otherwise, call up the SCOTUS and let them know. I'm sure they'll be amazed at your legal knowledge and immediately agree you know more than they do.
I still want to know how the system will handle a situation where the pod is trapped in the tube? And all of this seems very vulnerable to terrorist attack with miles and miles of expensive-and-fragile-yet-difficult-to-monitor tubing.
Honestly I'd bet more on self-driving vehicles than I would HyperLoop. Other than cargo there aren't a lot of people who regularly do intercity traffic.
Please, let's all remember that shops only go union when the employees vote to go union. If the employees want it, that's when it happens.
Really? Then why are we discussing the possibility of a minority of workers at Tesla somehow being able to force unionization? There's nowhere near a majority agitating for this to happen yet it can happen anyway because the UAW has powerful political allies (who owe them favors due to campaign contributions and union influence on the voting of its members) who can make life difficult or impossible for Musk should he fight this minority.
This is why I am so against unions. Not because I hate worker's rights but because the unions have formed this unholy alliance with politicians in union-heavy states to force people to unionize against their will. Well, that and the thuggish, violent tactics unions have frequently used to get their way. You can argue big businesses do the same but I'd counter-argue that such behavior is almost unheard of today and most of the worst happened over a century ago. With a vibrant economy it's an employee's market in most places. Businesses can't consistently and overtly run roughshod over workers like they used to. Does it still happen? Sure, but it's the exception not the rule. Unions, on the other hand, have become the rule not the exception.
They have the choice to find a job at a non-union shop.
And yet that's exactly what did happen. Yet when Tesla didn't go belly-up and fail, the UAW is now pursuing them. So what next? They move to another non-union company, do a good job, the company grows, and the cycle starts all over again? That's fucked up and you know it.
The UAW is terrified Tesla will become the first successful, large-scale automaker without a union. The UAW has wailed for over a century that this is impossible without unions. Tesla's non-union success is an enormous threat to their business model and ideology. Meanwhile, outside of a vocal UAW-supported minority of agitators, nobody at Tesla wants a union.
People are lined up to work at Tesla. Tesla can't make cars fast enough to satisfy demand. Remind me again how Ford, GM, etc. are doing in comparison? Oh, that's right...they've been in doldrums for decades, needed taxpayer-funded bailouts to avoid going belly-up, have huge inventories of unsold cars, higher injury rates, lower customer satisfaction, etc. etc. etc.
At some point people need to pull their heads out of the sand and realize that unions no longer serve the purposes they were created to serve. They are not about productivity, efficiency, or even basic logic. Unions exist to promote, extend, and defend themselves, not their members. Those few who crow the loudest about the benefits of unions are typically the types of workers who are only interested in getting paid the most while doing the least work they possibly can, all while using any and all rules and regulations to whine, moan, complain, and agitate.
The real scenario here is the union is utterly terrified of Tesla becoming the first major, successful automaker without a union. Such an example could plausibly lead to reduction in union influence at Ford, GM, etc. The UAW is concerned about preserving itself far more than it's concerned about what's going on inside Tesla. Any fool can see this is what's going on since Tesla is successful, the majority of the workers are happy, the injury rate is significantly below industry norms, and the only group that has anything big to lose by not unionizing is the UAW.
You're missing the point. They have the freedom to create a union, yes. Musk also has the freedom to refuse to hire union workers. What is being sought is the institution of a union by a minority of the workers, mandatory imposition of union dues on all employees, and the removal of Musk's prerogative to hire those he deems best for his company.
Slashdot Mirror
Or maybe a series of tubes analogy?
Hardly what you could call 'profiteering'.
When the government collects more money from selling me a product than the people who actually made the product, what would you prefer to call it? I have a strange feeling if the oil companies and the government's positions were reversed you'd have no issue whatsoever calling it profiteering.
And, as one of the other commenters pointed out, the government's track record for efficiently and effectively spending said revenues is marginal even in the best of cases. Have you checked on the progress of California's high-speed rail project lately? Late, badly designed, over-budget, and with questionable potential ridership. But hey, those campaign contributors who lobbied for it sure made out like bandits didn't they?
Basically, people have become more-sensitive to moral issues
Some people are still sensitive about this thing called the "rule of law." You know, where laws are made and people are expected to follow them? And don't hand me the "but it's a bad law" argument. It may very well be "bad law" but the proper recourse is to change the law not legalize the defiance of it.
The practice of the government turning a blind eye to which laws it will or won't enforce is an extremely slippery slope. The whole "it's illegal but go ahead and do it because we don't want to enforce the law" engenders disrespect for law and law enforcement. It also opens the possibility -- as we're now seeing -- of the government deciding to enforce the law.
We have a method to easily change law in this country. It's called a "ballot box." If you want the law to be different, convince enough people to elect representatives that will change it. If you are unable to do so, the new law isn't acceptable. It's that simple.
But hey, enjoy your craziness. If y'all didn't have nukes it'd be a lot more fun to watch from the sidelines, though.
Yes, because Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea are such rational, non-crazy countries with benevolent, freedom-loving governments who also have nukes. Face it: the USA's nukes are the least threatening to the world. We've had them since 1945 and we had them first. If we wanted to use them in anger after Hiroshima/Nagasaki we would have by now.
is there some reason 'single payer' healthcare coverage is better than 'employer paid' healthcare coverage?
If you believe in government having a hand in the most intimate facets of your life, telling you what you will and won't be paid for based on political whims, higher taxes, rationed services, being subject to idiotic things like government shutdowns, and customer service on par with your average DMV experience then single payer is a fantastic idea.
Gas tax is $0.56 per gallon in California [bankrate.com], one of the highest tax states, while the total price is $2.80 a gallon, making it a 25% tax rate.
And that's just state taxes. There are Federal taxes on top of that. And don't forget in some places you pay city, county, and/or sales taxes on top of that. And don't forget the "embedded" taxes such as those paid by the corporations who prospected, drilled, pumped, transported, refined, and transported again the gasoline that finally made its way into your fuel tank. I'd be shocked if the total taxes didn't total up to at least 50%.
Make no mistake, the biggest profiteer of petroleum products isn't the oil industry. It's the government.
If only we had a spacecraft that could maneuver close to it, grab it with a big arm, put it in the spacecraft's payload bay, and take it where it was supposed to go. That would be amazing.
We did but it turned out to be ludicrously expensive to operate, flew missions at a rate an order of magnitude less than it was projected to do, and had an annoying tendency to kill astronauts who rode in it.
The Shuttle was and still is a shitty design, an example of what you get when too many compromises are made on the original design objectives. We'd have been far better off spending that money on uprated Saturn V's.
He said it's okay that women aren't equal here because that's how they are, we shouldn't bother changing.
I challenge you to post a link where this was actually said by Damore.
Oh, wait, you can't, because that's not what he said, it's your biased, chip-on-the-shoulder interpretation of what you want to believe he said because that fits your narrative and ideology better.
Damore committed the sin of saying an uncomfortable truth: women and minorities are underrepresented in tech not due to some overarching insidious plan by white conservative males but by self-selection, both by those in tech and those who eschew it. Women aren't inherently dumber than men but they have -- for varied reasons over the past half-decade -- chosen not to enter tech en masse. To avoid the patriarchy? Perhaps. Because they prefer other fields which are more attuned to their personal preferences? Perhaps. Because there's a vast right-wing, male-dominated conspiracy dedicated to disenfranchising them that's omnipotently powerful yet somehow able to function without sanction in today's obsessed-with-being-offended culture? Absurd to the point of ridicule.
Go to any school in the US and take a census of how many male teachers their are versus females, yet nobody complains about male under-representation in those fields. Ditto for nursing and many other traditionally-female professions. For that matter, why is OK to complain that NASCAR is too white but nobody would dare say something like "the NBA is too black" when 74% of its players are black but blacks make up only 13% of the US population? If diversity is so laudable, why is it only pursued when it's advantageous to certain racial/ethnic groups and totally ignored for others? The obvious conclusion is diversity isn't actually pursuing diversity for any beneficial goal whatsoever. It's a camouflaged project to denigrate, destroy, and otherwise minimize anything white, male, or conservative so those on the "diversity" side can feel better about themselves for "speaking truth to power" or similar neo-hippie nonsense. In the same sense, the current "feminist" movement has morphed from being all about pro-women to something manifestly anti-male. The two are not the same; the former is about empowering women while the latter is about bringing down men. You cannot elevate someone by dragging down others, yet the SJW movement seems to believe otherwise.
I have a dream that one day, people will be praised less for the color of their skin or what genitalia they have or who they want prefer to have sex with and more for the content of their character. Unfortunately the current politically-correct SJW climate is agitating for the exact opposite viewpoint and presenting it as "progress" in the "war against bigotry/racism/sexism/etc."
both major American political parties expound right wing, authoritarian viewpoints and philosophies.
I suppose it would look that way to someone raised and bred in a culture of left-wing authoritarian viewpoints and philosophies such as what can be readily found in most European nations these days. Cradle-to-grave government nannying and regulation have become a staple of the EU. Government expanding government for the sake of government, all at the cost of the people while telling them they're getting a better deal out of it.
History flash: real right-wing authoritarianism looks like Germany/Italy in the late 1930's. Unless you're prepared to make the preposterous argument current USA political stances are equal to those, your comment has nothing to do with reality.
You say this:
I am in this field and there is no reason it cant cost less than $500.
And then you say this:
It costs $2 billion to push a sugar pill through the FDA clinical trials process.
You are aware these two things are related, right? The R&D and approval costs are baked into the final price of the drug. The whole "reason" it has to cost more the $500 right now and for the foreseeable future is those costs have to be covered. If not, there is no money put back into R&D and approval for the next medical breakthrough and healthcare research essentially stops.
Or we could do like other countries do: let the government pay for the research and the treatment.
By all means! After all, these "other countries" just magically shit money out of nowhere. It's not like the citizens pay taxes or anything, right?
Oh, wait, they do pay taxes! Which means perfectly healthy people are forced to pay for R&D and treatment of diseases they don't have, won't get, and more or less can never benefit from. Oh, sure, it's all noble to say you're helping your fellow man, but isn't that what charitable contributions are for? By golly, yes, that's exactly what they're for! What an amazing concept! People voluntarily helping others instead of the government taking their money and giving it to whoever they feel is most worthy of getting it. And of course such dispensations are never, ever politically motivated and the government never, ever wastes money through fraud, graft, inefficiency, or laziness, right?
there is no potential profit and no one is willing to pay for development, trials, and certification
How about instead of "there is no potential for profit" it's instead seen in terms of "there is no way to recoup costs associated with development, trials, and certification." It's not always about greedy, money-grubbing profiteers. For every "pharma-bro" there are thousands of people dedicated to helping the human condition. However, their labs don't come for free. Their research time isn't free. They have to put food on their tables, too. This is "greed" this is simple economics: the allocation of scarce resources based on costs vs. benefits.
If time and resources were infinite this wouldn't be an issue. Neither are, hence no matter how noble it would be to "fix" certain things, hard choices occasionally need to be made. Do you spend tens of millions researching a drug that will benefit, say, 500 people or that same money on a drug that will benefit 50 million people?
It really surprises me that the kind of people who have enough money to build a monorail weren't smart enough to think of this.
Who says they weren't smart enough? You're assuming the decisions on where the monorail will/won't go to were driven by logic and economics. This being a public works project, that's highly unlikely. it's far more likely the monorail's service locations were determined by who greased the local politicians to win the construction, labor, and supply contracts. That and also who paid/coerced the planning group the most to not disrupt local transport monopolies who stood to lose out on a captive market (i.e. taxis, etc.).
When a lot of tax money gets spent in a seemingly-stupid fashion, follow the money. You'll discover it wasn't the least bit stupid from the perspective of who made a killing on building the damned stuff or who would've lost business had the project been successful. Here in Atlanta (Democrat mayor) we spent $200 million on a stupid trolley. Who rides it? Almost nobody. But the company that built it made a handsome profit. Nevermind the taxpayers are left footing the bill for running a money-losing trolley service. They keep voting the same lackeys into office year after year no matter what so it's not like the politicians are ever held accountable.
DC (Democrat mayor) spent $200 million on a similarly-failing streetcar service. Projects in Cincinnati (Democrat mayor), Dallas (Democrat mayor), Detroit (Democrat mayor) and Honolulu (Democrat mayor) are dealing with similar problems: construction cost overruns, small ridership and no discernible evidence of economic benefits vs. costs. Not saying Republicans are immune to such shenanigans (see Bridge to Nowhere) but Democrats in particular seem to love spending tax money on stuff that never works as advertised. This is why I'm a Libertarian.
Since they refused to run it to the airport, which would be easier than running it to Mandalay Bay, the project was doomed from the start.
And why do they refuse to run it to the airport? I suspect you need look no further than taxi cab unions and/or similar organizations who would lose business to the monorail. Follow the money and I'm sure you'll find the appropriate amount of "campaign contributions" were made to ensure the monorail didn't disrupt any existing lucrative businesses. Hence its uselessness.
Then again, this is Vegas so perhaps it wasn't so much "contributions" as heeding a warning from the local mobsters that disrupting their near-monopoly on airport transportation would be hazardous to someone's health.
I spent five years working 70m from an operating nuclear reactor (at 3513'35.5"N 8505'25.5"W if you want to be specific). On nice days I'd take a walk around the plant to stretch my legs, close enough to hug some of the dry-cask storage containers holding spent fuel rods (at 3513'36.0"N 8505'21.9"W). Therefore I can speak with some authority on the dangers -- or lack thereof -- involved.
During my tenure I received a total exposure of 0.1 mrem. This is the equivalent of living in Denver for two days as opposed to, say, at sea level. The amount of hysteria involved when someone mentions "nuclear" or "radiation" is almost comical given how little the average person understands the physics around it.
Those things would have been made without the moon program too.
And you know this for a fact, right? And your inerrant prognostication also tells you these same advances would've been made in roughly the same time frame, right? And the iterative, compounded benefits we've enjoyed -- especially in the tech industry -- over the last 40 years would be as good or even better than what we have now without Apollo and its attendant technological breakthroughs?
Oh, wait, of course you don't know any of that. Because you can't. The rise of tech has benefited humanity across the spectrum, from commerce to dissemination of information to better medicines to providing voices and freedom in areas politically insulated from it and much more. If Apollo pushed us forward even a decade faster than we'd have gone without it, it's benefited BILLIONS of lives in the process.
we can't talk seriously about colonizing other worlds until we learn how to sustainably inhabit our own
Lucky for you the tech required to sustain humans in space and on otherwise-uninhabitable worlds would work just fine here on Earth to help us develop better recycling techniques, more power-efficient devices, and in general do more while using less.
Just like the computer you're using now benefited from the Apollo-era push for smaller, faster, efficient, more reliable computers, the spin-off benefits from space exploration are beyond counting. The idea that we should focus on Earth first and exploration second is absurd when you consider the latter naturally benefits the former.
Is it the size of Texas and is it slowing down? Because I think a movie predicted something like this would happen...
Agreed, but that's the point of the discussion. Right now he has the right to do what he wants since it's a non-union shop.
Your understanding of the Constitution is...flawed to say the least. Private businesses have the right to hire or not hire whoever they want. They cannot be coerced into hiring someone simply because they're in a group unless that infringes on their Constitutional rights. Go read the Constitution and its amendments. You won't find the phrase "union worker" in there anywhere.
And if you insist on claiming there is some magical court decision that says otherwise, call up the SCOTUS and let them know. I'm sure they'll be amazed at your legal knowledge and immediately agree you know more than they do.
I still want to know how the system will handle a situation where the pod is trapped in the tube? And all of this seems very vulnerable to terrorist attack with miles and miles of expensive-and-fragile-yet-difficult-to-monitor tubing.
Honestly I'd bet more on self-driving vehicles than I would HyperLoop. Other than cargo there aren't a lot of people who regularly do intercity traffic.
Please, let's all remember that shops only go union when the employees vote to go union. If the employees want it, that's when it happens.
Really? Then why are we discussing the possibility of a minority of workers at Tesla somehow being able to force unionization? There's nowhere near a majority agitating for this to happen yet it can happen anyway because the UAW has powerful political allies (who owe them favors due to campaign contributions and union influence on the voting of its members) who can make life difficult or impossible for Musk should he fight this minority.
This is why I am so against unions. Not because I hate worker's rights but because the unions have formed this unholy alliance with politicians in union-heavy states to force people to unionize against their will. Well, that and the thuggish, violent tactics unions have frequently used to get their way. You can argue big businesses do the same but I'd counter-argue that such behavior is almost unheard of today and most of the worst happened over a century ago. With a vibrant economy it's an employee's market in most places. Businesses can't consistently and overtly run roughshod over workers like they used to. Does it still happen? Sure, but it's the exception not the rule. Unions, on the other hand, have become the rule not the exception.
They have the choice to find a job at a non-union shop.
And yet that's exactly what did happen. Yet when Tesla didn't go belly-up and fail, the UAW is now pursuing them. So what next? They move to another non-union company, do a good job, the company grows, and the cycle starts all over again? That's fucked up and you know it.
The UAW is terrified Tesla will become the first successful, large-scale automaker without a union. The UAW has wailed for over a century that this is impossible without unions. Tesla's non-union success is an enormous threat to their business model and ideology. Meanwhile, outside of a vocal UAW-supported minority of agitators, nobody at Tesla wants a union.
People are lined up to work at Tesla. Tesla can't make cars fast enough to satisfy demand. Remind me again how Ford, GM, etc. are doing in comparison? Oh, that's right...they've been in doldrums for decades, needed taxpayer-funded bailouts to avoid going belly-up, have huge inventories of unsold cars, higher injury rates, lower customer satisfaction, etc. etc. etc.
At some point people need to pull their heads out of the sand and realize that unions no longer serve the purposes they were created to serve. They are not about productivity, efficiency, or even basic logic. Unions exist to promote, extend, and defend themselves, not their members. Those few who crow the loudest about the benefits of unions are typically the types of workers who are only interested in getting paid the most while doing the least work they possibly can, all while using any and all rules and regulations to whine, moan, complain, and agitate.
The real scenario here is the union is utterly terrified of Tesla becoming the first major, successful automaker without a union. Such an example could plausibly lead to reduction in union influence at Ford, GM, etc. The UAW is concerned about preserving itself far more than it's concerned about what's going on inside Tesla. Any fool can see this is what's going on since Tesla is successful, the majority of the workers are happy, the injury rate is significantly below industry norms, and the only group that has anything big to lose by not unionizing is the UAW.
You're missing the point. They have the freedom to create a union, yes. Musk also has the freedom to refuse to hire union workers. What is being sought is the institution of a union by a minority of the workers, mandatory imposition of union dues on all employees, and the removal of Musk's prerogative to hire those he deems best for his company.