How can NASA spend their budget effeciently when congressional representatives decide what they are allowed and required to work on?
What's the point of the question? If we, say, double the budget for NASA, congressional representatives will still decide what the money gets spent on. Congressional behavior can be changed just as NASA behavior can.
When NASA boosters complain about static/slowly declining funding, this is why it happens. This is well over 1% of the agency's annual budget squandered on something that everyone knew was useless. It's not even unusual. The entire manned space program has been useless for quite some time. That's over a quarter of the budget right there.
While the unmanned part of NASA is not quite as inefficient, it still prioritizes the spending of public funds (usually via development of new one-off projects) over the purposes for which those funds are allegedly spent (such as exploration of the Solar System or the study of Earth-side physical systems).
Between the two, that's a great majority of NASA's funding spent in terrible ways for at least four decades.
In that light, I think it reasonable to ask that before we increase NASA's budget, we insure that it spends its present, quite ample funding in a much more efficient way now. No more non sequiturs about how it's unfair that the big boys like the military or Medicare get to do that. Or terrible spin off arguments that totally ignore that most of NASA's spin offs would have happened anyway, the only meaningful difference being that NASA socialized the costs. Or terrible intangible benefit arguments that argue NASA does this really great but vague thing like international cooperation or inspiration, but nothing that we would spend our own money on.
Keep in mind that a few rolls also don't confirm that the dice are as loaded as you claim they are. A huge part of the problem is not that the dice are loaded, but a) nobody knows what unbiased dice roll like, and b) nobody has evidence to confirm that the current dice are as loaded as claimed.
And narrative thinking comes much more naturally than statistical thinking.
I notice that once again, we're heavy on "narrative thinking" and light on actual evidence.
Hurricane INTENSITY is projected to increase BY THE END OF THE CENTURY. That has nothing to do with hurricane FREQUENCY which is primarily driven by short term WEATHER patterns.
Right. Hurricane INTENSITY, let us note, is also primarily driven by short term WEATHER patterns. Which makes your observation completely pointless.
I think you should get your facts right Muhammad [wikipedia.org] was not a warlord in fact he was a merchant until he became a religious leader at age 26.
Exactly. He became the religious leader first, then the warlord, not the other way around.
Oh the drama. When something is so important that we're willing to pay well over its usual price, then it's a good thing we have do-gooders around to make sure we don't get it.
And what happens when, not if, actually crime happens because of law enforcement involvement or because the sting contributed in some significant way to the crime? We already have an example of the latter with the "Fast and Furious" operation by the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) contributing just over a couple thousand firearms (they assisted in getting those firearms smuggled over the US border to Mexico untraced and with who knows what else included in the package) to the Cartel wars in Mexico. Those firearms then showed up in numerous murder scenes (over 200 deaths by 2011, as I recall), including the death of a US border agent. The end result was that after two years, some minor characters in the smuggling operation were arrested, but not any important figures in a cartel.
The main problem here is that without the agency of the uncover agent, the crime might not have happened in the first place. But even when we know crime happens, the sting can actually make it worse in various ways (such as creating an easy, predictable route by which to commit additional crimes or enabling criminals to do worse than they could before).
Might be referring to the numerous sting operations bordering on entrapment where the prime impetus for a group of would-be terrorists turns out to be an undercover federal agent encouraging them to cause trouble.
You know, most of that willful environmental destruction does something useful in the process. Meanwhile Greenpeace's "one" "mistake" is more of the entirely useless showboating they've done for decades.
Mathematics is not truth. It is in a sense logical consequences. If certain premises hold, then certain consequences follow. The premises need not be true in our reality in order for us to study them mathematically.
You still have to show that the premises (such as your hypotheses) hold. That is beyond the ability of mathematics and leads you into some variation of empiricism such as scientific observation.
Do not expect your next car to last as long as current one. There is much much progress done in programmed life of product.
The only way to sell such a car is as a lease where the car gets junked at the end of lease. Else you'll suffer a reputation hit from all the people who held onto the car past the cutoff - that would mean lower demand for your products. But a lot of the value in leasing is selling the vehicle at the end of the lease. So this means a substantial loss in return. So you need a vehicle that is sufficient quality that people are willing to pay you enough over its lifespan to profit off the vehicle yet you're junking the vehicle at the end of its lifespan.
I don't think the economics make sense unless the car market is far less competitive than it currently is.
It isn't risk that is the problem, it's leverage. But I'm sure there's some current investment scheme (possibly to be enabled by the current bill you refer to) combined with future law out there that eventually will let someone borrow gobs of money on minuscule amounts of equity. Then we'll get another financial crisis like the many previous ones.
Basically, the claim boils down to ar pollution causes more serious and more frequent asthma attacks among those susceptible to them and can be the final straw for really unhealthy old people.
How do you know they deserve a rebate of a particular size? Are they going to have to keep records for a year, or is there an NSA-style bureaucracy that will know how much gas you consumed last year?
You might as well accept the fact that you'll never be a billionaire. Stop pretending like you will be one day, and stop licking their boots. Look out for your own interests, for a change. Authoritarianism is deadly.
I appreciate that you are trying to understand my point of view. But the process of creating inefficient and ill-advised "guarantees" and public goods, and then punishing unpopular parties like businesses for allegedly taking advantage of those (basically scapegoating some mostly innocent groups because the scheme doesn't work as advertised), doesn't further my interests even though I will never be a billionaire.
Also, I disagree on what is authoritarianism. Sure, Walmart has a centralized control structure and can be thought of as an authoritarian system. But it's not the only system out there in the developed world even for the niche that Walmart is part of. There is a great deal of diversification there. And there is a fundamental characteristic of employment which doesn't apply to usual governance. Namely, it is voluntary to associate with Walmart either as an employee or as a customer with low cost to disassociate oneself. If Walmart should get too set in its ways or ignore the concerns of its employees or customers, then there will always be competitors who will take advantage of that. That doesn't happen in a government.
Meanwhile the sea of regulation, taxes, and subsidies that interfere with the employment process all tend to come from a few highly centralized government bureaucracies with at best poor competition with other governments. That is the true authoritarian threat.
Companies like Wal-Mart pay very, very little in taxes due to their thin price margins.
Another way to put that is that they have low profit margins and hence, are very sensitive to higher labor costs.
It is a known part of their business plan to keep their price of labor and goods down (by utilizing government welfare and cheap overseas labor) to keep prices low (and shareholder value high).
I wouldn't call that "shareholder value" since lower prices mean lower profits and thus, less shareholder value.
The developed world guarantees a certain standard of living for everyone.
Only as long as it can afford to do so. Then the guarantee goes away.
That means anyone who wants to pay extremely low wages is relying on the government to keep their employees alive, fed and sheltered from the elements, and must expect to pay tax to contribute towards that.
Let us keep in mind that most such businesses already pay taxes as do most of their customers. If that isn't enough, maybe you should look at cutting back on those guarantees (particularly, the ones like Social Security and health care related stuff, that don't actually contribute in an efficient way to a standard of living).
Of course, the amount of tax paid is only a fraction of what it costs to keep the employees alive and productive
Anti global warming propaganda dimished a bit last 2 years. Before that we had 20 years of US based anti AGW propaganda...
I would have put it exactly the opposite. Climategate (which started in 2009) really opened up the field to anti-GW propaganda. And the opportunities have only increased in the wake of the back peddling in the 2013-2014 releases of the Fifth Assessment Report issued by the IPCC.
This is one of the several reasons why I don't take this stuff seriously. A silly ad hominem attack just because I persistently disagree? I have a better suggestion. How about evidence? Show me that this claim has a basis for which I should be concerned.
I'll note that for example, the research in question makes an unwarranted assumption about global warming-related heating at 500 meters. If the ocean doesn't heat anywhere near that much, then the concern is not warranted.
Another thing it indicates is that we may have vastly underestimated the natural release of methane from the ocean floors (and possibly as a consequence, the consumption of atmospheric methane from various means). Just because we're seeing sea bed methane releases now, when we look, doesn't mean that there weren't methane releases in the past when we didn't look.'
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How can NASA spend their budget effeciently when congressional representatives decide what they are allowed and required to work on?
What's the point of the question? If we, say, double the budget for NASA, congressional representatives will still decide what the money gets spent on. Congressional behavior can be changed just as NASA behavior can.
When NASA boosters complain about static/slowly declining funding, this is why it happens. This is well over 1% of the agency's annual budget squandered on something that everyone knew was useless. It's not even unusual. The entire manned space program has been useless for quite some time. That's over a quarter of the budget right there.
While the unmanned part of NASA is not quite as inefficient, it still prioritizes the spending of public funds (usually via development of new one-off projects) over the purposes for which those funds are allegedly spent (such as exploration of the Solar System or the study of Earth-side physical systems).
Between the two, that's a great majority of NASA's funding spent in terrible ways for at least four decades.
In that light, I think it reasonable to ask that before we increase NASA's budget, we insure that it spends its present, quite ample funding in a much more efficient way now. No more non sequiturs about how it's unfair that the big boys like the military or Medicare get to do that. Or terrible spin off arguments that totally ignore that most of NASA's spin offs would have happened anyway, the only meaningful difference being that NASA socialized the costs. Or terrible intangible benefit arguments that argue NASA does this really great but vague thing like international cooperation or inspiration, but nothing that we would spend our own money on.
And narrative thinking comes much more naturally than statistical thinking.
I notice that once again, we're heavy on "narrative thinking" and light on actual evidence.
Hurricane INTENSITY is projected to increase BY THE END OF THE CENTURY. That has nothing to do with hurricane FREQUENCY which is primarily driven by short term WEATHER patterns.
Right. Hurricane INTENSITY, let us note, is also primarily driven by short term WEATHER patterns. Which makes your observation completely pointless.
Pirate sites are illegal, so that OBVIOUSLY means anything uploaded to them are illegal.
Pirate sites aren't in themselves illegal. It's the content, such as movies and such, that is illegal.
I think you should get your facts right Muhammad [wikipedia.org] was not a warlord in fact he was a merchant until he became a religious leader at age 26.
Exactly. He became the religious leader first, then the warlord, not the other way around.
Oh the drama. When something is so important that we're willing to pay well over its usual price, then it's a good thing we have do-gooders around to make sure we don't get it.
Not ever idiot with a gun takes Australians hostage. Else it would be an exciting time in Australia.
And what happens when, not if, actually crime happens because of law enforcement involvement or because the sting contributed in some significant way to the crime? We already have an example of the latter with the "Fast and Furious" operation by the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) contributing just over a couple thousand firearms (they assisted in getting those firearms smuggled over the US border to Mexico untraced and with who knows what else included in the package) to the Cartel wars in Mexico. Those firearms then showed up in numerous murder scenes (over 200 deaths by 2011, as I recall), including the death of a US border agent. The end result was that after two years, some minor characters in the smuggling operation were arrested, but not any important figures in a cartel.
The main problem here is that without the agency of the uncover agent, the crime might not have happened in the first place. But even when we know crime happens, the sting can actually make it worse in various ways (such as creating an easy, predictable route by which to commit additional crimes or enabling criminals to do worse than they could before).
The stings offered them the opportunity to engage in terrorism, nothing more. They had the intent.
You still have yet to ask why is it the job of law enforcement to offer the opportunity to engage in terrorism?
Might be referring to the numerous sting operations bordering on entrapment where the prime impetus for a group of would-be terrorists turns out to be an undercover federal agent encouraging them to cause trouble.
You know, most of that willful environmental destruction does something useful in the process. Meanwhile Greenpeace's "one" "mistake" is more of the entirely useless showboating they've done for decades.
Mathematics is not truth. It is in a sense logical consequences. If certain premises hold, then certain consequences follow. The premises need not be true in our reality in order for us to study them mathematically.
You still have to show that the premises (such as your hypotheses) hold. That is beyond the ability of mathematics and leads you into some variation of empiricism such as scientific observation.
Do not expect your next car to last as long as current one. There is much much progress done in programmed life of product.
The only way to sell such a car is as a lease where the car gets junked at the end of lease. Else you'll suffer a reputation hit from all the people who held onto the car past the cutoff - that would mean lower demand for your products. But a lot of the value in leasing is selling the vehicle at the end of the lease. So this means a substantial loss in return. So you need a vehicle that is sufficient quality that people are willing to pay you enough over its lifespan to profit off the vehicle yet you're junking the vehicle at the end of its lifespan.
I don't think the economics make sense unless the car market is far less competitive than it currently is.
It isn't risk that is the problem, it's leverage. But I'm sure there's some current investment scheme (possibly to be enabled by the current bill you refer to) combined with future law out there that eventually will let someone borrow gobs of money on minuscule amounts of equity. Then we'll get another financial crisis like the many previous ones.
Is it more likely that there is a magic unobservable substance that makes our models correct or that our models need tuning?
Yes.
Your argument fails to address why you shouldn't pay for the externalities of your own gas usage.
How about the positive externalities of gas usage? Shouldn't we get paid for making the world a better place through gas usage?
Basically, the claim boils down to ar pollution causes more serious and more frequent asthma attacks among those susceptible to them and can be the final straw for really unhealthy old people.
How do you know they deserve a rebate of a particular size? Are they going to have to keep records for a year, or is there an NSA-style bureaucracy that will know how much gas you consumed last year?
You might as well accept the fact that you'll never be a billionaire. Stop pretending like you will be one day, and stop licking their boots. Look out for your own interests, for a change. Authoritarianism is deadly.
I appreciate that you are trying to understand my point of view. But the process of creating inefficient and ill-advised "guarantees" and public goods, and then punishing unpopular parties like businesses for allegedly taking advantage of those (basically scapegoating some mostly innocent groups because the scheme doesn't work as advertised), doesn't further my interests even though I will never be a billionaire.
Also, I disagree on what is authoritarianism. Sure, Walmart has a centralized control structure and can be thought of as an authoritarian system. But it's not the only system out there in the developed world even for the niche that Walmart is part of. There is a great deal of diversification there. And there is a fundamental characteristic of employment which doesn't apply to usual governance. Namely, it is voluntary to associate with Walmart either as an employee or as a customer with low cost to disassociate oneself. If Walmart should get too set in its ways or ignore the concerns of its employees or customers, then there will always be competitors who will take advantage of that. That doesn't happen in a government.
Meanwhile the sea of regulation, taxes, and subsidies that interfere with the employment process all tend to come from a few highly centralized government bureaucracies with at best poor competition with other governments. That is the true authoritarian threat.
Companies like Wal-Mart pay very, very little in taxes due to their thin price margins.
Another way to put that is that they have low profit margins and hence, are very sensitive to higher labor costs.
It is a known part of their business plan to keep their price of labor and goods down (by utilizing government welfare and cheap overseas labor) to keep prices low (and shareholder value high).
I wouldn't call that "shareholder value" since lower prices mean lower profits and thus, less shareholder value.
I was thinking the same thing. These sorts of rules always seem to favor the large, established player.
The developed world guarantees a certain standard of living for everyone.
Only as long as it can afford to do so. Then the guarantee goes away.
That means anyone who wants to pay extremely low wages is relying on the government to keep their employees alive, fed and sheltered from the elements, and must expect to pay tax to contribute towards that.
Let us keep in mind that most such businesses already pay taxes as do most of their customers. If that isn't enough, maybe you should look at cutting back on those guarantees (particularly, the ones like Social Security and health care related stuff, that don't actually contribute in an efficient way to a standard of living).
Of course, the amount of tax paid is only a fraction of what it costs to keep the employees alive and productive
That's what wages are for.
Anti global warming propaganda dimished a bit last 2 years. Before that we had 20 years of US based anti AGW propaganda ...
I would have put it exactly the opposite. Climategate (which started in 2009) really opened up the field to anti-GW propaganda. And the opportunities have only increased in the wake of the back peddling in the 2013-2014 releases of the Fifth Assessment Report issued by the IPCC.
This is one of the several reasons why I don't take this stuff seriously. A silly ad hominem attack just because I persistently disagree? I have a better suggestion. How about evidence? Show me that this claim has a basis for which I should be concerned.
I'll note that for example, the research in question makes an unwarranted assumption about global warming-related heating at 500 meters. If the ocean doesn't heat anywhere near that much, then the concern is not warranted.
Another thing it indicates is that we may have vastly underestimated the natural release of methane from the ocean floors (and possibly as a consequence, the consumption of atmospheric methane from various means). Just because we're seeing sea bed methane releases now, when we look, doesn't mean that there weren't methane releases in the past when we didn't look.'