So how many kilos of bullshit is your memory worth?
As for me, I find it interesting how much of the most alarmist climate research comes out of two places, the University of East Anglia (this research) or the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in NASA (particularly, the James Hansen stuff).
The problems in Greece happened because Greek politicians lied to the EU and their own people with the help of Goldman Sachs.
That's just end game thrashing like how a heart attack victim might injure themselves as they fall unconscious. One didn't need to wait this long to see that Greece was going to fail sooner or later.
Second, it's worth remembering that much of that excessive spending was bribes to the voters to look the other way while Greek politicians squandered the wealth of that country.
By what actual mechanism do you expect Greece to recover when it's burdened with debt and unable to invest in itself?
Well, let's look at what actually happened. Private holders of debt took a large haircut, more than half the Greek debt they held. That cut a portion of the debt right there (about a quarter of the amount). The EU refinanced a considerable portion of Greece's debts at lower rates. Austerity cut the crazy spending. And Greece is slowly implementing structural policies to improve their economy. This is a huge gift to Greece and its future yet all I hear about is the whining over the cost containment from "austerity" which while it has some negative consequences for economic activity is a short term issue.
All they really need is for their creditors to ease up a bit for a few years while the Greeks invest in their economy. But that would require accountability for people in power, and that won't happen.
That's happened several times. Why should the Greeks be treated better than their creditors? And why do you think there's going to be a magical way out of this huge mess that's easier than austerity?
Do you know why we have so many cases of cancer now? Two reasons. First, we don't die of something else first. Second, we now know how to diagnose cancer. Observer bias is a powerful thing.
Minium is first, a mineralogy name and named after a river (naming after people and places is very common in mineralogy). It's not an engineering name (which I gather is "red lead oxide"). Second, it is a very funky oxidization state for lead which is rare in nature.
The more common lead oxide, lead monoxide or "lead oxide yellow", sometimes goes by the name, litharge (a product of refining gold and other low reactivity precious metals with lead in a forge while blasting air through the mixture). That doesn't quite fit in with this naming convention. But as a general rule, if there weren't a bunch of exceptions to the rules, it wouldn't be English.
That would create the incentive for companies to provide as much of the compensation package as possible as a benefit and as little as possible as cash salary.
We don't even need to consider this intellectually, when we can just go look at the US health care system. About a third of the cost comes from untaxed health care benefits which have been used in place of wages.
Adams was one of the masters of contrived situations (not just in his Hitchhiker books!) which is perhaps the worst bane of science fiction. We're keeping the analogy and losing the bogus moral lesson.
So the real problem isn't the financial deficit, it's the trust deficit. Hold the politicians who committed the fraud accountable, as well as the bankers who helped. That, combined with a huge push for financial transparency should be all that's needed to get the loans these countries need. But nobody wants to do that. Instead they'd rather punish the poor.
Ignoring here that fiscal deficits create trust deficits, why should the people who don't care about fiscal deficits care about trust deficits? And why not punish the poor? They're most of the votes, and have to be voting for the problem.
Now I have to ask you. Where will the money come from to pay back Greece's debt, if no one can afford to buy anything and no one can afford to hire, how will they collect the taxes they need to pay back their debt? And more importantly, how does paying back their debt improve Greece's economy.
Nobody asked for the remaining debt to be fully repaid in the next few weeks. When Greece recovers, it'll have the economy to pay off this debt. Austerity will be the tool that makes that happen.
First, a bit of nuance. Stupidity is a class of behavior we all occasionally indulge in. But I don't see it as something so prevalent or inevitable that we need to be protected from it. Most people learn from experience and stopping doing it. Those that don't, what I labeled the "stupid", well I don't want to compromise my quality of life for them. I don't have anything against them. I'm not interesting in creating tests to weed out the stupid or making them suffer. I just don't think there is anything to gain from coddling them at the expense of our health.
As to the emergency contraception, the key is that it has to be taken rather soon after the act of sex and that it is relatively benign. The delay induced by getting a prescription is long enough to allow for pregnancy. And if I actually were some eugenicist breeding humans for less stupidity, I sure would make contraceptives as freely available to the stupid as possible.
The FDA is far from alone in compromising my life for people who really should know better. For example, consider this warning sign. It's an actual sign that says:
This Disney Resort contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.
Proposition 65, California Health & Safety Code Section 25249.6 et seq.
The crazy soccer mom blog that follows that picture is hilarious.
Anyway, the point of the sign is that somewhere inside that Disney Resort are some cleaning chemicals, pesticides, or whatever, which, if you feed them in high concentrations to rats seem to correlate with bad things. California doesn't actually know anything outside of that or care.
There's no consideration of whether any of Disney's guests are exposed to those chemicals or not. Ultimately, it's just a way to scare people who don't know any better. It's just useless as public health information because everybody has those chemicals.
It's not much, but bits of our society are wasted making and putting up those signs.
The reason you don't see democracy and capitalism today is because they haven't been around since... well, the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment really.
Looking at your original statement, I still don't get why you wrote that. Capitalism and democracy are still with us. Their modern forms even started with the Age of Enlightenment (AoE). Further, you have way too broad a meaning for capitalism. Capitalism is fundamentally private ownership of the means of production.
That means first, that there has to be a distinction between public and private. If owning a lot of stuff means I run society, then that's not capitalism. Corporatism is on the verge of that, but it's worth noting here that buying law is not the same as running society. There remains strong distinctions between the private and public worlds in most human societies.
Second, there has to be means of production. Hand tools have been around at least as long as there have been primates who were considered humans. But capital generally refers more to bigger assets than what you can carry. Things like granaries, furnaces, ovens, shipyards, etc. Large things which enable you to make things faster or more efficiently.
Third, there has to be ownership. Most societies, even the avidly communist ones of the 20th century allow for a degree of ownership of some personal property including various things that could be considered capital. But capitalism doesn't bound that ownership. It is possible to own factories and vast businesses. Ownership is also much more secure in capitalism. One may pay a tax on the capital, but there is no arbitrary seizure of capital. This is the huge difference between capitalist societies and ancient societies.
For example, in Athens it was possible and often done to build up considerable wealth. However, that could be taken away from you in an instant, if a majority of the democracy voted against you. Similarly, you could be proscribed in the Roman Republic and deprived of both your property and your life (usually done to fund a depleted treasury and remove a troublesome political opponent). Admittedly, that was usually done during the times of tyranny, the most undemocratic parts of the Republic.
So we really haven't seen capitalism till the Netherlands during the AoE. A lot has to be in place, laws, actual capital, distinction between public and private, and of course, private ownership of said capital.
Fundamentally, you do not own your own money/wealth. You live in a society that allows people to accumulate individual wealth almost infinitely beyond their needs. This is not some rule of nature, it is a distorted version of civilisation.
I disagree that your original assertion is a distorted view of civilization. It is fundamentally a self-contradictory statement. To say that you don't own the money and wealth that is "yours", that is, which you own is an inherently false statement of the classic form, "A is not A".
A CEO does not need to have thousands of times the wealth of his workers. It doesn't do him any good, never mind society as a whole.
We don't do such things because of need, but merely because it's a better idea than the alternatives we come up with. It's worth noting here that no one else needs that wealth either. As to whether wealth does the rich any good or not - it's not your place to decide what is good for other people. No one should ever have that authority.
When someone spends $500m on a yacht, he is simply thumbing his nose at society.
That's ok. Society needs their nose rubbed in this sort of thing every now and then. It means either that the person provided something of immense value and demonstrates that to the rest of society (who has a nasty habit of ignoring contributions to society from the wealthy). Or it means that they obtained wealth via deception or coercion with the acquiescence of society (in which case it's a scornful reminder that society let that happen). Either way, this is a means to attack envy and greed in society.
There is no particular reason why the overwhelming majority of the population couldn't pass a law limiting wealth to ten times a reasonable average.
The particular reason is that such a policy would take money out of the hands of the people who make things, create jobs, and power society. And put that wealth in the hands of people who can't balance a budget or manage a thing. It's very harmful to society to do that. There are other reasons as well, but they don't stand out like this one does.
Sure, not all the wealthy fall in that category. But it's the primary reason we should tolerate wealth.
The billionaire is ALLOWED to get away with having that money, he has not in any way EARNED the right to it. Working hard is no justification for anything. Plenty of miners, postmen and cleaners work a lot harder than any CEO.
Bottom line is that a CEO has tremendous responsibilities and does a job that matters a lot. None of those other guys do. That's why he gets paid a lot more. And none of those guys are doing a job for which they'll get hated till the end of time no matter what they do.
I think that's possibly the most depressing comment I've seen on a technology news website.
Look. I value knowledge too. But I don't like overpaying a lot for it or ignoring what else could have been done with the money spent.
What I think is mildly depressing here was the argument that launching the occasional very expensive space probe somehow is an "investment" or will give an advantage in some future space race. It doesn't follow logically.
Here's what I think the real argument is. I want space probes therefore space probes must be good for something. The rest of the argument is merely a fleshing out of a possible "something". The big things that are missing are a) cost/benefit discussion, and b) opportunity costs.
Now, consider also that this bit of wish fulfillment was done in response to a mention of fiscal responsibility and a near complete ignoring of the unhealthy economic situation of the present US. Where will the money come from? Why ignore the situations in countries like Greece or Japan who have spent too much and now have limited options for spending more?
The reason you don't see democracy and capitalism today is because they haven't been around since... well, the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment really.
They've been around to some degree a lot longer than the Age of Enlightenment has. For examples of some degree of democracy prior to the "Age of Enlightenment, we have ancient Athens, the Roman Republic, Iceland, Hanseatic League, Switzerland, and the Iroquois Confederacy. Wikpedia has many more examples than this.
As to capitalism, Wikipedia indicates the modern form started in the Netherlands at the start of the 17th century, which would have been around the start of the Age of Enlightenment. The Tulipmania bubble popped in 1637. But many aspects of it such as markets, private ownership of capital, and accounting systems have been around since ancient times.
which includes questioning the capitalist system that has been working for humanity since the dawn of time.
That's not capitalism. IMHO the earliest economic systems would have been things like tribal communism, gift economy, and the palace economy (the first centralized economy). Trade would have been present from the very beginning. It would take a significantly organized society to even have capital worthy of the name (at least beyond personal belongings such as hand tools). From there, it's a big step to having that capital owned in a legal sense by non-leaders of the society.
It is worth noting that the most ancient codes of law, for example, the Code of Hammurabi, does have a section which deals with contracts and trade. That would be necessary for any sort of legally recognized trade of privately owned capital to occur.
As to capitalism's roots in the Age of Enlightenment, one can look to both John Locke and his theory of value, and later, Adam Smith and his book, "The Wealth of Nations".
Having said all that, liberalism and so-called "progressive movements" also have their origins in ancient times. For example, the ideological divide between Sparta and Athens resembled the modern division between authoritarian and libertarian ideas. And the many conflicts over who gets represented (such as veteran soldiers in Athens or the proletariat in the Republic of Rome) echo the principles of liberalism.
Ancient religions often contained elements which are now considered progressive such as compassion and aid for the poor or the contributing or sacrifice of resources towards a common good.
I think rather the Age of Enlighten was unique in that it entailed the comprehensive analysis of the ideas and processes that humanity had grown up with and developed in the process the tools that would make future progress possible both in human knowledge and understanding, and our physical presence in the world.
Stating that life is going to leave a monstrous footprint on the surface of a planet is a pretty major assumption, that I think at this point is unwarranted.
I think it's reasonable to assume that any life on Mars would be self-replicating and subject to evolution (which isn't Earth-centric). Meaning that it would adapt to a variety of living conditions over time.
Given that the extremophiles which live deep underground and survive in very marginal environments on Earth are genetically tied to some of the earliest organisms indicates to me that metabolic processes of Earth organisms were among the earliest things to be optimized and that there probably was some spread of single-celled life to just about anywhere it could live in the early history of life.
Similar patterns of adaptive radiation have been seen in plants and animals in isolated environments (such as geologically recent Pacific islands) on Earth. So the idea isn't something that hasn't been seen before.
It seems reasonable then to expect that any sort of life evolving on Mars would adapt relatively quickly to a variety of environments including deep underground. If it exists, it would have had a long time to adapt.
A possible alternative here is that due to the mass wasting of the atmosphere and the supposed deep sanctuaries for life, there would be evolutionary pressure to be very efficient. Any waste products which aren't used would escape eventually to the surface and be lost.
Let's give you an idea how these "investments" work. Every so often, you see people complain about how the private world is making 50 year old rockets. Part of the reason for that is that NASA hasn't done anything in the last 50 years to improve on that situation. The Space Shuttle was the only wokring orbital launch vehicle that NASA created since the 60s and it's far from being viable in a commercial sense (too much maintenance between flights and way too complex).
So one of the biggest problems in US space flight - how to get things into orbit and NASA hasn't done anything usable in the past forty years. That's definitely not "investing".
Sacond, NASA has (or perhaps had) research going back to the 30s (when it was NACA). What is it doing with that huge body of research? Throwing it away. As far as I know, there's no public discussion of the downsizing of NASA libraries over the last couple of decades, but that results in the loss of "investment" already made. Gives you an idea of how much the powers that be value research.
Finally, how do multibillion dollar probes actually help? They don't develop space technologies that will be reused for other purposes. Anyone who wants to use NASA tech to land things on Mars will probably have to start from scratch simply because there won't be a working example of that technology (or the people who designed it!) around any more. These are remarkably poor as investments just due to the lack of any long term usable infrastructure.
Basically, we'll learn some cool knowledge, and that'll be it. Terrible return on investment. And since everyone else gets that information as well, it won't help the US any more than it would help anyone else. There's nothing there that says, "We're doing something for the US." So what of this is actually going to help a US presence in a few decades? It'll all be gone by then.
In short and medium terms, it will be a net gain, and give some temporary economic advantage over the Europeans, the Chinese and the Japanese (and, pretty soon, Brazil, I'll wager). But at some point, when they've made advances far in advance of the Apollo program, the US will have to rebuild what it gave up in the name "fiscal responsibility", and it may find that that is a lot easier said than done.
It'll be the same for anyone else and the US will have a considerable economic advantage over those countries and supranational organizations which didn't do so.
I'll finish up by saying that I tire of people labeling any goofy spending as an "investment". The key aspect of an actual investment is positive return on investment. Spending a lot of money for scraps of knowledge fails that test.
You asked for examples, I provided quite a few. As to the rest of your post, I agree that is a possible failure mode of human civilization. But I don't think the "smart" people have the kind of control that you think they have.
Exactly. As I see it, this isn't a technology problem else we would have solved it long ago. I don't see lasers making much of a difference over current technology in fighting (or as the case may be, not fighting) pirates.
My guess is that this is merely a technology demonstration stepping stone. The lasers will probably be upgraded at some point so that they can take out aircraft and missiles.
we've caused many times more (hundreds of thousands) of Iraqi deaths than Saddam did.
"We" includes the suicide bombers and paramilitary executions (including groups that were created by Saddam Hussein or other Ba'athists). And it's worth noting that a number of the studies which claim to compare Saddam Hussein deaths with present deaths have a habit of downplaying the former and exaggerating the latter (eg, the Lancet studies).
Not at all. Balanced budgets are great. But the time to balance the budget is when the economy is healthy. Borrow during lean times, pay it back in times of plenty. It's not that complicated.
And for the most part, it's not done. Countries like Greece are suffering from austerity precisely because they didn't follow the plan.
Yes, because we all saw how well austerity worked in Greece, Ireland, Cypress, etc.
Don't blame the cure for the disease.
For example, if you get a severe heart attack away from prompt medical care, the usual first aid treatment, cardiopulmonary resuscitation or CPR is brutal. If done correctly, it can break your ribs and there's a good chance you'll die anyway (Wikpedia claims long term survival rates under 10%!). But if done correctly, it can beat doing nothing, most of the time.
The conditions that lead up to the need for austerity are a lot like a predictable heart attack. There might have been plenty of times the patient could have caught the symptoms leading up to the heart attack (sometimes it is a genuine surprise, but usually there's a long build up). They might even have ignored the early stages of the heart attack for days before they got to the point of requiring CPR.
But it's foolish to merely look at the downside of CPR and not the improved chance of survival. Or to even blame the heart attack itself on CPR.
I feel this is what has been done with austerity. People have ignored that this is an emergency treatment for a country in a situation where the government has lost most of its credibility, and spending and debt are so far out of control that the government lost the ability at least for a time to borrow and spend money (that includes losing the ability to spend your way out of a recession!).
One doesn't do austerity on a healthy society any more than one does CPR on a healthy person. Such societies and governments have to do it at the worst time (in the midst of hard recessions) because they put off fiscal responsibility for as long as they possibly could.
And frankly, I think defenders of Greece are delusional to think that the short term GDP decline from austerity is more dangerous than the long term threat to the EU from a completely insolvent Greece would be. Where will the money come from to pay for Greece's continued spending? There's no exit strategy aside from just stopping spending at some point, then you're back to austerity. It's very similar to the Gambler's Ruin problem where the gambler places bigger and bigger bets until they run out of money.
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This is yet another reason to build high speed rail wherever it makes sense
That's crazy. If we only build high speed rail lines where they made sense, we wouldn't have any.
As far as I can remember
So how many kilos of bullshit is your memory worth?
As for me, I find it interesting how much of the most alarmist climate research comes out of two places, the University of East Anglia (this research) or the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in NASA (particularly, the James Hansen stuff).
The problems in Greece happened because Greek politicians lied to the EU and their own people with the help of Goldman Sachs.
That's just end game thrashing like how a heart attack victim might injure themselves as they fall unconscious. One didn't need to wait this long to see that Greece was going to fail sooner or later.
Second, it's worth remembering that much of that excessive spending was bribes to the voters to look the other way while Greek politicians squandered the wealth of that country.
By what actual mechanism do you expect Greece to recover when it's burdened with debt and unable to invest in itself?
Well, let's look at what actually happened. Private holders of debt took a large haircut, more than half the Greek debt they held. That cut a portion of the debt right there (about a quarter of the amount). The EU refinanced a considerable portion of Greece's debts at lower rates. Austerity cut the crazy spending. And Greece is slowly implementing structural policies to improve their economy. This is a huge gift to Greece and its future yet all I hear about is the whining over the cost containment from "austerity" which while it has some negative consequences for economic activity is a short term issue.
All they really need is for their creditors to ease up a bit for a few years while the Greeks invest in their economy. But that would require accountability for people in power, and that won't happen.
That's happened several times. Why should the Greeks be treated better than their creditors? And why do you think there's going to be a magical way out of this huge mess that's easier than austerity?
Do you know why we have so many cases of cancer now? Two reasons. First, we don't die of something else first. Second, we now know how to diagnose cancer. Observer bias is a powerful thing.
Minium is first, a mineralogy name and named after a river (naming after people and places is very common in mineralogy). It's not an engineering name (which I gather is "red lead oxide"). Second, it is a very funky oxidization state for lead which is rare in nature.
The more common lead oxide, lead monoxide or "lead oxide yellow", sometimes goes by the name, litharge (a product of refining gold and other low reactivity precious metals with lead in a forge while blasting air through the mixture). That doesn't quite fit in with this naming convention. But as a general rule, if there weren't a bunch of exceptions to the rules, it wouldn't be English.
The researchers estimated that such crew members receive up to nine mSv a year.
Out of 3,877 crew, 169 developed cancer, compared to 153 in a similar-sized sample of non-pilots.
A possible 10% increase in cancer rate over a control sample? That's a sleeper.
That would create the incentive for companies to provide as much of the compensation package as possible as a benefit and as little as possible as cash salary.
We don't even need to consider this intellectually, when we can just go look at the US health care system. About a third of the cost comes from untaxed health care benefits which have been used in place of wages.
You say that as if you believe he doesn't earn his income.
Well, we do have the poor quality of his statement. It should not be a lesson in irony for starters.
Adams was one of the masters of contrived situations (not just in his Hitchhiker books!) which is perhaps the worst bane of science fiction. We're keeping the analogy and losing the bogus moral lesson.
So the real problem isn't the financial deficit, it's the trust deficit. Hold the politicians who committed the fraud accountable, as well as the bankers who helped. That, combined with a huge push for financial transparency should be all that's needed to get the loans these countries need. But nobody wants to do that. Instead they'd rather punish the poor.
Ignoring here that fiscal deficits create trust deficits, why should the people who don't care about fiscal deficits care about trust deficits? And why not punish the poor? They're most of the votes, and have to be voting for the problem.
Now I have to ask you. Where will the money come from to pay back Greece's debt, if no one can afford to buy anything and no one can afford to hire, how will they collect the taxes they need to pay back their debt? And more importantly, how does paying back their debt improve Greece's economy.
Nobody asked for the remaining debt to be fully repaid in the next few weeks. When Greece recovers, it'll have the economy to pay off this debt. Austerity will be the tool that makes that happen.
As to the emergency contraception, the key is that it has to be taken rather soon after the act of sex and that it is relatively benign. The delay induced by getting a prescription is long enough to allow for pregnancy. And if I actually were some eugenicist breeding humans for less stupidity, I sure would make contraceptives as freely available to the stupid as possible.
The FDA is far from alone in compromising my life for people who really should know better. For example, consider this warning sign. It's an actual sign that says:
This Disney Resort contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.
Proposition 65, California Health & Safety Code Section 25249.6 et seq.
The crazy soccer mom blog that follows that picture is hilarious.
Anyway, the point of the sign is that somewhere inside that Disney Resort are some cleaning chemicals, pesticides, or whatever, which, if you feed them in high concentrations to rats seem to correlate with bad things. California doesn't actually know anything outside of that or care.
There's no consideration of whether any of Disney's guests are exposed to those chemicals or not. Ultimately, it's just a way to scare people who don't know any better. It's just useless as public health information because everybody has those chemicals.
It's not much, but bits of our society are wasted making and putting up those signs.
The reason you don't see democracy and capitalism today is because they haven't been around since... well, the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment really.
Looking at your original statement, I still don't get why you wrote that. Capitalism and democracy are still with us. Their modern forms even started with the Age of Enlightenment (AoE). Further, you have way too broad a meaning for capitalism. Capitalism is fundamentally private ownership of the means of production.
That means first, that there has to be a distinction between public and private. If owning a lot of stuff means I run society, then that's not capitalism. Corporatism is on the verge of that, but it's worth noting here that buying law is not the same as running society. There remains strong distinctions between the private and public worlds in most human societies.
Second, there has to be means of production. Hand tools have been around at least as long as there have been primates who were considered humans. But capital generally refers more to bigger assets than what you can carry. Things like granaries, furnaces, ovens, shipyards, etc. Large things which enable you to make things faster or more efficiently.
Third, there has to be ownership. Most societies, even the avidly communist ones of the 20th century allow for a degree of ownership of some personal property including various things that could be considered capital. But capitalism doesn't bound that ownership. It is possible to own factories and vast businesses. Ownership is also much more secure in capitalism. One may pay a tax on the capital, but there is no arbitrary seizure of capital. This is the huge difference between capitalist societies and ancient societies.
For example, in Athens it was possible and often done to build up considerable wealth. However, that could be taken away from you in an instant, if a majority of the democracy voted against you. Similarly, you could be proscribed in the Roman Republic and deprived of both your property and your life (usually done to fund a depleted treasury and remove a troublesome political opponent). Admittedly, that was usually done during the times of tyranny, the most undemocratic parts of the Republic.
So we really haven't seen capitalism till the Netherlands during the AoE. A lot has to be in place, laws, actual capital, distinction between public and private, and of course, private ownership of said capital.
Fundamentally, you do not own your own money/wealth. You live in a society that allows people to accumulate individual wealth almost infinitely beyond their needs. This is not some rule of nature, it is a distorted version of civilisation.
I disagree that your original assertion is a distorted view of civilization. It is fundamentally a self-contradictory statement. To say that you don't own the money and wealth that is "yours", that is, which you own is an inherently false statement of the classic form, "A is not A".
A CEO does not need to have thousands of times the wealth of his workers. It doesn't do him any good, never mind society as a whole.
We don't do such things because of need, but merely because it's a better idea than the alternatives we come up with. It's worth noting here that no one else needs that wealth either. As to whether wealth does the rich any good or not - it's not your place to decide what is good for other people. No one should ever have that authority.
When someone spends $500m on a yacht, he is simply thumbing his nose at society.
That's ok. Society needs their nose rubbed in this sort of thing every now and then. It means either that the person provided something of immense value and demonstrates that to the rest of society (who has a nasty habit of ignoring contributions to society from the wealthy). Or it means that they obtained wealth via deception or coercion with the acquiescence of society (in which case it's a scornful reminder that society let that happen). Either way, this is a means to attack envy and greed in society.
There is no particular reason why the overwhelming majority of the population couldn't pass a law limiting wealth to ten times a reasonable average.
The particular reason is that such a policy would take money out of the hands of the people who make things, create jobs, and power society. And put that wealth in the hands of people who can't balance a budget or manage a thing. It's very harmful to society to do that. There are other reasons as well, but they don't stand out like this one does.
Sure, not all the wealthy fall in that category. But it's the primary reason we should tolerate wealth.
The billionaire is ALLOWED to get away with having that money, he has not in any way EARNED the right to it. Working hard is no justification for anything. Plenty of miners, postmen and cleaners work a lot harder than any CEO.
Bottom line is that a CEO has tremendous responsibilities and does a job that matters a lot. None of those other guys do. That's why he gets paid a lot more. And none of those guys are doing a job for which they'll get hated till the end of time no matter what they do.
I think that's possibly the most depressing comment I've seen on a technology news website.
Look. I value knowledge too. But I don't like overpaying a lot for it or ignoring what else could have been done with the money spent.
What I think is mildly depressing here was the argument that launching the occasional very expensive space probe somehow is an "investment" or will give an advantage in some future space race. It doesn't follow logically.
Here's what I think the real argument is. I want space probes therefore space probes must be good for something. The rest of the argument is merely a fleshing out of a possible "something". The big things that are missing are a) cost/benefit discussion, and b) opportunity costs.
Now, consider also that this bit of wish fulfillment was done in response to a mention of fiscal responsibility and a near complete ignoring of the unhealthy economic situation of the present US. Where will the money come from? Why ignore the situations in countries like Greece or Japan who have spent too much and now have limited options for spending more?
The reason you don't see democracy and capitalism today is because they haven't been around since... well, the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment really.
They've been around to some degree a lot longer than the Age of Enlightenment has. For examples of some degree of democracy prior to the "Age of Enlightenment, we have ancient Athens, the Roman Republic, Iceland, Hanseatic League, Switzerland, and the Iroquois Confederacy. Wikpedia has many more examples than this.
As to capitalism, Wikipedia indicates the modern form started in the Netherlands at the start of the 17th century, which would have been around the start of the Age of Enlightenment. The Tulipmania bubble popped in 1637. But many aspects of it such as markets, private ownership of capital, and accounting systems have been around since ancient times.
which includes questioning the capitalist system that has been working for humanity since the dawn of time.
That's not capitalism. IMHO the earliest economic systems would have been things like tribal communism, gift economy, and the palace economy (the first centralized economy). Trade would have been present from the very beginning. It would take a significantly organized society to even have capital worthy of the name (at least beyond personal belongings such as hand tools). From there, it's a big step to having that capital owned in a legal sense by non-leaders of the society.
It is worth noting that the most ancient codes of law, for example, the Code of Hammurabi, does have a section which deals with contracts and trade. That would be necessary for any sort of legally recognized trade of privately owned capital to occur.
As to capitalism's roots in the Age of Enlightenment, one can look to both John Locke and his theory of value, and later, Adam Smith and his book, "The Wealth of Nations".
Having said all that, liberalism and so-called "progressive movements" also have their origins in ancient times. For example, the ideological divide between Sparta and Athens resembled the modern division between authoritarian and libertarian ideas. And the many conflicts over who gets represented (such as veteran soldiers in Athens or the proletariat in the Republic of Rome) echo the principles of liberalism.
Ancient religions often contained elements which are now considered progressive such as compassion and aid for the poor or the contributing or sacrifice of resources towards a common good.
I think rather the Age of Enlighten was unique in that it entailed the comprehensive analysis of the ideas and processes that humanity had grown up with and developed in the process the tools that would make future progress possible both in human knowledge and understanding, and our physical presence in the world.
I have given many thousands of dollars of my money to charities, including Alzheimer's. How about you?
About seven years volunteering for a non profit aerospace group with some donations over that time. I am satisfied by your explanation.
Stating that life is going to leave a monstrous footprint on the surface of a planet is a pretty major assumption, that I think at this point is unwarranted.
I think it's reasonable to assume that any life on Mars would be self-replicating and subject to evolution (which isn't Earth-centric). Meaning that it would adapt to a variety of living conditions over time.
Given that the extremophiles which live deep underground and survive in very marginal environments on Earth are genetically tied to some of the earliest organisms indicates to me that metabolic processes of Earth organisms were among the earliest things to be optimized and that there probably was some spread of single-celled life to just about anywhere it could live in the early history of life.
Similar patterns of adaptive radiation have been seen in plants and animals in isolated environments (such as geologically recent Pacific islands) on Earth. So the idea isn't something that hasn't been seen before.
It seems reasonable then to expect that any sort of life evolving on Mars would adapt relatively quickly to a variety of environments including deep underground. If it exists, it would have had a long time to adapt.
A possible alternative here is that due to the mass wasting of the atmosphere and the supposed deep sanctuaries for life, there would be evolutionary pressure to be very efficient. Any waste products which aren't used would escape eventually to the surface and be lost.
So one of the biggest problems in US space flight - how to get things into orbit and NASA hasn't done anything usable in the past forty years. That's definitely not "investing".
Sacond, NASA has (or perhaps had) research going back to the 30s (when it was NACA). What is it doing with that huge body of research? Throwing it away. As far as I know, there's no public discussion of the downsizing of NASA libraries over the last couple of decades, but that results in the loss of "investment" already made. Gives you an idea of how much the powers that be value research.
Finally, how do multibillion dollar probes actually help? They don't develop space technologies that will be reused for other purposes. Anyone who wants to use NASA tech to land things on Mars will probably have to start from scratch simply because there won't be a working example of that technology (or the people who designed it!) around any more. These are remarkably poor as investments just due to the lack of any long term usable infrastructure.
Basically, we'll learn some cool knowledge, and that'll be it. Terrible return on investment. And since everyone else gets that information as well, it won't help the US any more than it would help anyone else. There's nothing there that says, "We're doing something for the US." So what of this is actually going to help a US presence in a few decades? It'll all be gone by then.
In short and medium terms, it will be a net gain, and give some temporary economic advantage over the Europeans, the Chinese and the Japanese (and, pretty soon, Brazil, I'll wager). But at some point, when they've made advances far in advance of the Apollo program, the US will have to rebuild what it gave up in the name "fiscal responsibility", and it may find that that is a lot easier said than done.
It'll be the same for anyone else and the US will have a considerable economic advantage over those countries and supranational organizations which didn't do so.
I'll finish up by saying that I tire of people labeling any goofy spending as an "investment". The key aspect of an actual investment is positive return on investment. Spending a lot of money for scraps of knowledge fails that test.
Well, I think were at apples and oranges.
You asked for examples, I provided quite a few. As to the rest of your post, I agree that is a possible failure mode of human civilization. But I don't think the "smart" people have the kind of control that you think they have.
Exactly. As I see it, this isn't a technology problem else we would have solved it long ago. I don't see lasers making much of a difference over current technology in fighting (or as the case may be, not fighting) pirates.
My guess is that this is merely a technology demonstration stepping stone. The lasers will probably be upgraded at some point so that they can take out aircraft and missiles.
Because fiscal responsibility never helped anyone in the future.
we've caused many times more (hundreds of thousands) of Iraqi deaths than Saddam did.
"We" includes the suicide bombers and paramilitary executions (including groups that were created by Saddam Hussein or other Ba'athists). And it's worth noting that a number of the studies which claim to compare Saddam Hussein deaths with present deaths have a habit of downplaying the former and exaggerating the latter (eg, the Lancet studies).
A 50 cal (and analogous weapons in metric) is sufficient heat for pirates. So why are there still pirates?
Not at all. Balanced budgets are great. But the time to balance the budget is when the economy is healthy. Borrow during lean times, pay it back in times of plenty. It's not that complicated.
And for the most part, it's not done. Countries like Greece are suffering from austerity precisely because they didn't follow the plan.
Yes, because we all saw how well austerity worked in Greece, Ireland, Cypress, etc.
Don't blame the cure for the disease.
For example, if you get a severe heart attack away from prompt medical care, the usual first aid treatment, cardiopulmonary resuscitation or CPR is brutal. If done correctly, it can break your ribs and there's a good chance you'll die anyway (Wikpedia claims long term survival rates under 10%!). But if done correctly, it can beat doing nothing, most of the time.
The conditions that lead up to the need for austerity are a lot like a predictable heart attack. There might have been plenty of times the patient could have caught the symptoms leading up to the heart attack (sometimes it is a genuine surprise, but usually there's a long build up). They might even have ignored the early stages of the heart attack for days before they got to the point of requiring CPR.
But it's foolish to merely look at the downside of CPR and not the improved chance of survival. Or to even blame the heart attack itself on CPR.
I feel this is what has been done with austerity. People have ignored that this is an emergency treatment for a country in a situation where the government has lost most of its credibility, and spending and debt are so far out of control that the government lost the ability at least for a time to borrow and spend money (that includes losing the ability to spend your way out of a recession!).
One doesn't do austerity on a healthy society any more than one does CPR on a healthy person. Such societies and governments have to do it at the worst time (in the midst of hard recessions) because they put off fiscal responsibility for as long as they possibly could.
And frankly, I think defenders of Greece are delusional to think that the short term GDP decline from austerity is more dangerous than the long term threat to the EU from a completely insolvent Greece would be. Where will the money come from to pay for Greece's continued spending? There's no exit strategy aside from just stopping spending at some point, then you're back to austerity. It's very similar to the Gambler's Ruin problem where the gambler places bigger and bigger bets until they run out of money.