China has lowered its currency artificially, causing imports to be more expensive and exports less expensive, the same economic result as a tariff. How has that hurt their economy?
That generates inflation which harms those who save money or lend it.
the main argument for international trade, comparative advantage, violates "common sense"
It doesn't. One can see it in action in a group of people where one person is much more skilled than the rest (eg, an amateur home improvement job where an unskilled group is directed by someone who knows what they're doing). The experienced person can do all of the jobs better and faster than any of their unskilled companions, but in turn they don't get any of the advantages of having that labor unless those other people do some work. Common sense implying comparative advantage.
As to the assertion that trade builds wealth, well, voluntary trade is mutually beneficial (unlike externalities), else it wouldn't happen. And that's the condition you need to build wealth via trade.
Bad history. Our economy collapsed in 1929. Smoot-Hawley was passed in 1930.
No. Our economy collapsed for the next four years after the stock market crash. Smoot Hawley and the subsequent tariff war was a big part of what made that happen. I think sensible money policy and no tariff war would have resulted in a shorter recession.
Now how about we start over and you can tell me how the restriction of international trade benefits a country's economy. If you can, step up and collect your nobel prize in Economics.
Several countries have successfully pulled off this protectionism trick. The idea is that you close your economy usually via high tariff barriers though there is at least one case of near complete banning of trade. And then you obsessive focus on building up your industry and such at the expense of everything else, particularly labor. When your industries are competitive again with the global market, then you can selectively open it back up to trade to bring in more capital for industry building. The problem comes in the end game. Your workers aren't going to want to do this forever. So you either normalize to a healthier less focused economy or do crazy stuff like invade neighbors in order to keep growing your economy.
So who has done this? Japan did it twice. First, after it was coerced into opening itself for trade in 1853, and second, after the Second World War. Several countries have copied to some degree the strategy of the second time, I know of Taiwan, South Korea, China, Singapore, and Vietnam.
Another case which is particularly bizarre is Paraguay of the early 19th Century. From 1814 until 1864, Paraguay built up a powerful, industrial police state and then subsequently obliterated it in a massive war with three of its neighbors (Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay). It's particularly notable because virtually all trade with the outside world was blocked for most of that time.
Having said that, I note that it appears that the people advocating protectionism are doing so to protect labor benefits rather than hardcore industrial build up. I think that will be disaster at least of the scale of the Smoot Hawley tariff act during the Great Depression.
I'm just saying the last 30 years have been a superating wound on the middle class with no end in site, and our government is about to cut the social safety net completely away leaving the poorest and least able to take care of themselves without means to live.
I have a somewhat bitter solution here. Gut US spending everywhere so that the federal budget isn't a boat anchor on US competitiveness. Second, in addition to that, seriously cut back on anything that makes US workers more expensive. This includes environmental and worker safety regulation as well as some cutting of those "safety nets", particularly Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid (both which greatly harm labor competitiveness in the US).
The focus here is on cost reduction of employment which means that some regulations may be retained just by changing how the business is required to report things to a less expensive method. But some other regulations should just be cut back or dropped such as weakening threshold limits for chemicals in the workplace.
In addition, drop minimum wage substantially. I'd favor getting rid of it altogether so that the US isn't spending money at all on that particular regulation. Remember that the actual minimum wage is always $0 per hour. Anything above that is a win for your economy.
Strip out prepaid medical care and elective medical care as a requirement of health insurance. Reverse Obamacare and get employers out of the health insurance business.
And finally, I suggest growing up and reducing your expectations. The fundamental problem is that the pool of labor for global business has increased by a factor of several. Most of those people will work for much less than developed world workers do. Similarly, regulations are much less stringent leading to the greatest economic migrations of capital of all time.
I'm somewhat sympathetic to concerns about the developed world and the US in particular becoming "third world". But keeping expensive systems in place while discouraging the growth of US businesses, is just hastening the US's decline in wealth. I figure a controlled reduction of standard of living is better than the "drowning man" approach of attempting and failing hard to maintain past standards of living. It's not going to be a wonderful place, if government is no longer able to regulate pollution or arrest criminals. You can have the best standards of law and regulation and still be a disaster merely because none of those laws are enforced.
The US labor market has a particularly hard time because of all the punishments that have been heaped upon the act of employing someone. For example, a number of businesses are restructuring their labor force this year so that they can get under the 50 full time employees mark and save a lot of money (Obamacare charges a fine of $2k per employee past the first 30 employees for businesses that don't provide insurance, it's at least $40k in savings with this trick).
For example, if you have 100 full time employees now, you can save $140k (which is several employees' salaries) by restructuring as a company that has oh, 40 full time employees and maybe 120 half time employees. That game is going to have nasty consequences for the US labor force down the road.
I myself tend to long for the days a somewhat more protectionist American economy.
So what? There are cases where protectionism has worked to build an economic powerhouse. Japan did it twice, once in the late 19th century and once after the Second World War in the "Japanese miracle". Paraguay did something similar in the mid 19th century (before its epic fail in the Paraguayan War). And a number of Far East countries have followed the blueprints of the Japanese miracle.
So protectionism can work. But what do all of those have in common? An obsessive focus on industry building over labor. Labor always gets short shrift. Protectionism with a focus on labor or the "safety net" i
Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans
on
Let Them Eat Teslas
·
· Score: 1
OK, so you don't care about efficient allocation of resources.
I don't get it. Why do you think it's not more efficient?
I question this pithy assumption, big-time. And even if it were true, it would still limit education on the basis of access to capital, so it doesn't solve the problem, it simply shifts it a little.
It shifts it to the potential students themselves where it has always belonged. They're quite capable of paying for their own education. And honestly, what other explanation is there for college costs going up much faster than regular inflation for the last twenty years.
I did the calculation based on that table for the period 1958-1979 (took the 1958-2001 period and divided out by the 1979-2001 period). Tuition inflation (which you might not necessarily consider inflation) was about 6.6% increase per year for the period. "Normal" inflation was 4.6%. That's significantly higher tuition than normal inflation, but nothing compared to the 1979-2001 period which saw 7.37% increase per year for tuition, but only 3.96% normal inflation. The subsidized student loan program started kicking in after a 1965 law. So a portion of the 1958-1979 period is before the start of the federal student loan programs. And there were expansions of the loan programs apparently around 1986.
I've tried looking for better data, but I can say is that there has been a remarkable increase in tuition costs relative to regular inflation at a time when student loans were kicking in. That fits my model of subsidy-driven price increases in education.
Which just reinforces my point that public college education is necessary, and useful, both to individuals and to employers.
Unless it's not up to the task. The US spends considerable sums per student on K-12 education and gets poor results comparable to developed world countries that spend much less per student. I think it's because too many things have higher priority than what the students actually learn.
Now, what's going to keep the same dynamics from screwing up college level public education as well? For example, if in twenty years everyone is required to have a high school diploma and a college degree, yet most such graduates are only comparable in education ability to a high school student who graduated in 1960, how is that a good use of public funds or the time of the students?
This is why I don't buy into the public education thing. It's not working now. So how will extending it, that is, creating the same problem over for college level education, make it better?
Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans
on
Let Them Eat Teslas
·
· Score: 1
the goal would be to provide a baseline of services to those who can't afford them.
I suggest bread and circuses be the baseline. Anything past that can be paid for at the private level.
Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans
on
Let Them Eat Teslas
·
· Score: 1
Therefore the government/public whatever you want to imagine, needs to play a role in funding eduction.
Or we could make do with less than 17.5 million college students. Lower demand means lower prices. I see no need for government to be involved.
Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans
on
Let Them Eat Teslas
·
· Score: 1
I guess you meant ruthlessly competitive for students. I just don't see the reason for it when you can just pay and get what you want, an education.
Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans
on
Let Them Eat Teslas
·
· Score: 1
Actually, there is nothing preventing government funded schools from being ruthlessly competitive. You just have to limit how many there are, and not treat your preferred secondary education as some kind of right.
How does limiting the amount of school-level competition make it "ruthless"? I think rather the other way around works better.
Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans
on
Let Them Eat Teslas
·
· Score: 1
You do realize that blind obedience to the free market is really stupid, right?
Of course. But then why ask the question? A market is just another tool. I'm no more capable of obeying it than I am a screwdriver.
It just might be that our system (government, economic), by which I mean the U.S., while pretty decent, isn't perfect and the end-all and be-all of sovereign organization. Perhaps the role of politics and government and cash should be heavily examined and revamped to include benefiting citizens as a primary goal, not skimming and extraction rent and transaction fees for corporations.
I have a solution. Let's have a less "imperfect" government and society here. There is, as I noted earlier, a lot of room for reduction of imperfection.
Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans
on
Let Them Eat Teslas
·
· Score: 1
Welcome to the internet. I did get a chuckle out of that.
Why the emphasis on credentials? How does that make someone better at detecting fraud? And why discount Randi's life experience at detecting the sort of fraud that they were looking for? You need to keep in mind that as the AC described it, Randi could observe the dowsers in action. That seems plenty of evidence right there on which to base a determination. The behavior of people is quite revealing.
Then there's matter that the statistics backed up Randi's judgment. So it might look like to the naive and gullible outside viewer that Randi didn't give them a fair shake, but he ended up right.
It doesn't have to be scientific method to be a good approach. If you're blatantly force-choking someone across the room, Darth Vader-style, Randi will pay out. If your special powers are indistinguishable from faking it, then that's too bad.
Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans
on
Let Them Eat Teslas
·
· Score: 1
And those who are unable to find a way to pay for it don't get educated.
No problem here. They'll find something else to do.
Seems to me like that's a piss-poor way of allocating at least one resource: the workforce.
Not at all. When you don't have government running up the cost of education several fold, it'll become quite affordable for the people who want an education to get an education.
This problem is why we have public education, and why it's a good thing (even for those at the top of the economic pyramid).
A lot of the current problems are due to the dismal performance of public education. When a diploma isn't worth the paper it's written on, then employers are going to look for stuff that is, such as college diplomas.
An orbiter around Mercury is 80+ percent different than an orbiter for Titan which is probably 90 percent different from a flyby for Pluto.
But an orbiter around Mercury isn't going to be much different from an orbiter around Venus or flyby's of inner system asteroids and sungrazing comets. Similarly, an orbiter for Titan would be useful for all sorts of work around the gas giants. You could send one to Chiron or the Trojan asteroids. And the vehicle for the Pluto flyby could be flying by some of the other notable Kuiper Belt objects.
It doesn't take much imagination to come up with similar missions. It does take a little ambition, planning, and economic sense.
In other words, you are talking about thousands of man-years of highly skilled labor
In other words, if we cut a few orders of magnitude off the R&D per vehicle, we'd end up with a much cheaper vehicle. Here's my counter proposal. We put a small team together for a few man-months to man-years, depending on the problem and they put a prototype together.
It doesn't have to be perfect, just good enough to fit some generous mission constraints.
Once they're done, we stick it in orbit and see what happens. A few more more man-months to man-years to iron out the difficulties discovered.
Launch it to Jupiter or whatever. Send a second one as well. At this point, you've burned no more than ten man-years plus launch costs of the prototype test and the two real launches. You've spread those costs out between two vehicles.
Does it appear to work? Yes, then launch more to similar targets. Now the already minuscule development and operations costs are spread out among a bunch of vehicles. And you still aren't anywhere near thousands of man-years of labor in total.
Reusing old designs would save less than 10% of the cost
I don't know where you get that from. R&D is traditionally a lot more than 10% of the cost. Most of that goes away with reuse of the design. Then you have economies of scale from building multiple copies of the same design.
To be blunt, you have no idea what you are talking about. Do you honestly believe you're that much smarter than everyone at NASA?
I didn't say that. I merely said space scientists, which would include those at NASA, are profoundly ignorant of economic matters. That is evident from their actions.
How are you going to get the mass of the propellant into LEO?
Launch it. It's mass. We already know how to get mass into orbit. We also have some pretty good ideas on how to store propellant in space.
Hand-waving the time issue away is a big reach as well.
We already have probes that have lasted long enough. It's a solved problem.
Good luck getting anyone to spend a significant amount of money now for something that may pay off in 30-40 years.
The original post was about sending a unmanned Dragon capsule-based probe to Jupiter. It'll take 5 years or less. That's in a lot of peoples' investment horizons. I don't expect anything resembling a financial profit, but you'd see in a few years your spacecraft do what it's intended to do.
So sure, I handwaved the problems away. They are hard problems, but they are solved hard problems. I'm justified here.
Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans
on
Let Them Eat Teslas
·
· Score: 1
The fact they start well is justification enough that they are better.
No. It's not. You can't hit "pause". Time moves on. Then you have to start dealing with the many problems of empires.
You know, it's the same reason we don't drastically change our economy today just to appease some environmentalists who tell us that something bad (tm) might happen for our grandchildren (and they might even use your Pournelle quote against you)
They do tell me this all the time. The only problem is that these environmentalists just don't have compelling evidence of harm. A bad emperor or three bad emperors simultaneously is compelling evidence of harm. We already know from history that those circumstances are bad.
That's only a failure of a particular dynasty, not the resource distribution.
Well, given that it is inevitable no matter the dynasty and it becomes a resource distribution failure as well, I don't see the point of your attempt at nuance.
By applying this to a state/government level, Imperialism prevents the rise of communism (where as you pointed out, one empire gains absolute power, tries to prop itself up indefinitely, leading to inefficiency and stagnation).
Unless the empire adheres to Marxism-Leninist principles. I already named two empires that did that. Then it's a dive down a very lethal rabbit hole.
"The tree of liberty needs to be watered from time to time by the blood of tyrants and patriots." Well, with Imperialism it's not so much about liberty, but same idea: sometimes blood has to be shed, the herd has to be culled.
One can say the same of communism. Sometimes you need to off 10% of the population in order to remove counterrevolutionary thought. Still one can't help but wonder if maybe it would vastly better to go with a system, like democracy, that doesn't need so much killing?
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying capitalism is bad at resource distribution. But as you said, you get stuff done faster if you aren't worried about freedom or democracy.
That only works if I'm in charge. If I'm not, then it's not getting done faster. And why the emphasis on "faster" anyway?
Now, I don't know if you're serious or just yanking my chain, but I simply don't see the value in empire building. Sure, it's nice to be the guy in charge and there are some benefits from the standardization and infrastructure that marks the start of an empire, but it's never done for the sake of the people in the empire. And it always ends in a mess.
It's worth noting here that there are several democratic republics and democracies currently in existence that have lasted longer than most empires. One of those, the United Kingdom, even willing let go of the empire it had built (which makes the UK one of the few peaceful dissolutions of an empire). In other words, democracy ages better than empire does. And democracies are happier and more just places.
In summary, I just don't see the point of advocating empire. They're not that efficient, they don't represent the people of the empire, and I'd probably get jailed or worse for the stuff I say on Slashdot. You'll get no support from me.
Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans
on
Let Them Eat Teslas
·
· Score: 1
They have no interest -- often, a negative interest -- in an educated citizenry.
That explains why companies look for the degree first.
They understand science, so want regulation (or lawsuits) against polluters dumping crap in the air, water, and soil. They understand history, they read up on labor movements and find out how to organize for better working conditions and pay.
You seem to have a problem distinguishing between education and indoctrination. Understanding science doesn't mean that you want regulation against polluters who are already heavily regulated against "dumping crap". Understanding history, doesn't mean you develop a thing for labor unions especially when you see how they operated in practice and how they've fallen in recent decades under powerful labor competition from the developing world.
Nah, the next step will be to punish the companies when California government agencies accidentally leak that customer information.
Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans
on
Let Them Eat Teslas
·
· Score: 1
You would be most incorrect. The free market works great in specific instances, where there is perfect knowledge in the customer base, infinite competition, completely fungible products that aren't necessities, etc. Things like the market for cars, where I have a zillion choices, tons of companies are competing for me, and I can avoid the purchase if nothing meets my various criteria.
It also works great in cases where that doesn't all hold. I used the market for some recent dental care and that worked fine. I've also been quite successful in my education shopping over the decades. So my personal experiences don't indicate trouble with marketss for education and health care.
Going without is unacceptable.
Nonsense. Unless you plan on forcing a degree on everyone whether they work for it or not, then there will be people doing the "unacceptable". Maybe they're not smart enough, maybe they're lazy, or maybe they just don't want to be in a classroom for five more years.
Yes, the for-profit motivation is the shitstain on the fabric of modern society - it taints everything.
Not at all. Sounds like you need some more edumacation. For profit ventures have the shining virtue of being positive return on investment. For example, you seem to have this completely unfounded opinion that society would be better off with cheap or free education. Who pays for that and what could they have done with that money instead? What's the benefits of getting a shitty education for free rather than something useful to your life, like five or more years of work experience? Where's the positive return on investment when the costs exceed the benefits?
And that's the problem - somehow dozens of other countries manage to distribute needed resources to their population (healthcare, education) without it disappearing into the craphole of corporate/capitalistic skimming.
It's worth noting here that no one has actually solved the problem yet. Everyone is experiencing rapid cost increases (as a share of their GDP) in health care. Just because the US system is profoundly stupid even by the low standards prevalent in health care systems doesn't mean the other systems work. What I see are growing health care costs worldwide with no means to cap those costs aside from some bureaucrats just deciding they're not going to fund beyond a certain point.
I see no advantage of these systems over having everyone pay their own way. Poor people get worse health care than the rich? That's already the case. But when a person doesn't have to spend their own money, that encourages them to consume as much health care as they can get away with.
Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans
on
Let Them Eat Teslas
·
· Score: 1
I guess your education didn't teach you the difference between "leach" and "leech".
You do realize that we can't correct spelling after posting? There are plenty of misspellings throughout my posts. Feel free to waste your time dissecting them.
Or that we went the market route for the latter part of the 19th Century and were sufficiently dissatisfied that a Republican president (Theodore Roosevelt) became famous for putting reins on it.
One doesn't need a completely unregulated market in order to enjoy the benefits of a market route. What's happening these days though is that a lot of people are blaming failures of market regulation on the market not on the regulation. Then they make it worse by proposing even more broken regulation of markets and other things. Until people recognize the positive feedback between bad ideas and bad outcomes, we'll see more of this.
Slashdot Mirror
They have to be implemented first in order to create any situations. People tend to forget that.
It's no worse than biofuels. And travel generally is a higher value use of energy than converting bauxite to aluminum.
China has lowered its currency artificially, causing imports to be more expensive and exports less expensive, the same economic result as a tariff. How has that hurt their economy?
That generates inflation which harms those who save money or lend it.
the main argument for international trade, comparative advantage, violates "common sense"
It doesn't. One can see it in action in a group of people where one person is much more skilled than the rest (eg, an amateur home improvement job where an unskilled group is directed by someone who knows what they're doing). The experienced person can do all of the jobs better and faster than any of their unskilled companions, but in turn they don't get any of the advantages of having that labor unless those other people do some work. Common sense implying comparative advantage.
As to the assertion that trade builds wealth, well, voluntary trade is mutually beneficial (unlike externalities), else it wouldn't happen. And that's the condition you need to build wealth via trade.
Bad history. Our economy collapsed in 1929. Smoot-Hawley was passed in 1930.
No. Our economy collapsed for the next four years after the stock market crash. Smoot Hawley and the subsequent tariff war was a big part of what made that happen. I think sensible money policy and no tariff war would have resulted in a shorter recession.
Now how about we start over and you can tell me how the restriction of international trade benefits a country's economy. If you can, step up and collect your nobel prize in Economics.
Several countries have successfully pulled off this protectionism trick. The idea is that you close your economy usually via high tariff barriers though there is at least one case of near complete banning of trade. And then you obsessive focus on building up your industry and such at the expense of everything else, particularly labor. When your industries are competitive again with the global market, then you can selectively open it back up to trade to bring in more capital for industry building. The problem comes in the end game. Your workers aren't going to want to do this forever. So you either normalize to a healthier less focused economy or do crazy stuff like invade neighbors in order to keep growing your economy.
So who has done this? Japan did it twice. First, after it was coerced into opening itself for trade in 1853, and second, after the Second World War. Several countries have copied to some degree the strategy of the second time, I know of Taiwan, South Korea, China, Singapore, and Vietnam.
Another case which is particularly bizarre is Paraguay of the early 19th Century. From 1814 until 1864, Paraguay built up a powerful, industrial police state and then subsequently obliterated it in a massive war with three of its neighbors (Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay). It's particularly notable because virtually all trade with the outside world was blocked for most of that time.
Having said that, I note that it appears that the people advocating protectionism are doing so to protect labor benefits rather than hardcore industrial build up. I think that will be disaster at least of the scale of the Smoot Hawley tariff act during the Great Depression.
I'm just saying the last 30 years have been a superating wound on the middle class with no end in site, and our government is about to cut the social safety net completely away leaving the poorest and least able to take care of themselves without means to live.
I have a somewhat bitter solution here. Gut US spending everywhere so that the federal budget isn't a boat anchor on US competitiveness. Second, in addition to that, seriously cut back on anything that makes US workers more expensive. This includes environmental and worker safety regulation as well as some cutting of those "safety nets", particularly Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid (both which greatly harm labor competitiveness in the US).
The focus here is on cost reduction of employment which means that some regulations may be retained just by changing how the business is required to report things to a less expensive method. But some other regulations should just be cut back or dropped such as weakening threshold limits for chemicals in the workplace.
In addition, drop minimum wage substantially. I'd favor getting rid of it altogether so that the US isn't spending money at all on that particular regulation. Remember that the actual minimum wage is always $0 per hour. Anything above that is a win for your economy.
Strip out prepaid medical care and elective medical care as a requirement of health insurance. Reverse Obamacare and get employers out of the health insurance business.
And finally, I suggest growing up and reducing your expectations. The fundamental problem is that the pool of labor for global business has increased by a factor of several. Most of those people will work for much less than developed world workers do. Similarly, regulations are much less stringent leading to the greatest economic migrations of capital of all time.
I'm somewhat sympathetic to concerns about the developed world and the US in particular becoming "third world". But keeping expensive systems in place while discouraging the growth of US businesses, is just hastening the US's decline in wealth. I figure a controlled reduction of standard of living is better than the "drowning man" approach of attempting and failing hard to maintain past standards of living. It's not going to be a wonderful place, if government is no longer able to regulate pollution or arrest criminals. You can have the best standards of law and regulation and still be a disaster merely because none of those laws are enforced.
The US labor market has a particularly hard time because of all the punishments that have been heaped upon the act of employing someone. For example, a number of businesses are restructuring their labor force this year so that they can get under the 50 full time employees mark and save a lot of money (Obamacare charges a fine of $2k per employee past the first 30 employees for businesses that don't provide insurance, it's at least $40k in savings with this trick).
For example, if you have 100 full time employees now, you can save $140k (which is several employees' salaries) by restructuring as a company that has oh, 40 full time employees and maybe 120 half time employees. That game is going to have nasty consequences for the US labor force down the road.
I myself tend to long for the days a somewhat more protectionist American economy.
So what? There are cases where protectionism has worked to build an economic powerhouse. Japan did it twice, once in the late 19th century and once after the Second World War in the "Japanese miracle". Paraguay did something similar in the mid 19th century (before its epic fail in the Paraguayan War). And a number of Far East countries have followed the blueprints of the Japanese miracle.
So protectionism can work. But what do all of those have in common? An obsessive focus on industry building over labor. Labor always gets short shrift. Protectionism with a focus on labor or the "safety net" i
OK, so you don't care about efficient allocation of resources.
I don't get it. Why do you think it's not more efficient?
I question this pithy assumption, big-time. And even if it were true, it would still limit education on the basis of access to capital, so it doesn't solve the problem, it simply shifts it a little.
It shifts it to the potential students themselves where it has always belonged. They're quite capable of paying for their own education. And honestly, what other explanation is there for college costs going up much faster than regular inflation
for the last twenty years.
I did the calculation based on that table for the period 1958-1979 (took the 1958-2001 period and divided out by the 1979-2001 period). Tuition inflation (which you might not necessarily consider inflation) was about 6.6% increase per year for the period. "Normal" inflation was 4.6%. That's significantly higher tuition than normal inflation, but nothing compared to the 1979-2001 period which saw 7.37% increase per year for tuition, but only 3.96% normal inflation. The subsidized student loan program started kicking in after a 1965 law. So a portion of the 1958-1979 period is before the start of the federal student loan programs. And there were expansions of the loan programs apparently around 1986.
I've tried looking for better data, but I can say is that there has been a remarkable increase in tuition costs relative to regular inflation at a time when student loans were kicking in. That fits my model of subsidy-driven price increases in education.
Which just reinforces my point that public college education is necessary, and useful, both to individuals and to employers.
Unless it's not up to the task. The US spends considerable sums per student on K-12 education and gets poor results comparable to developed world countries that spend much less per student. I think it's because too many things have higher priority than what the students actually learn.
Now, what's going to keep the same dynamics from screwing up college level public education as well? For example, if in twenty years everyone is required to have a high school diploma and a college degree, yet most such graduates are only comparable in education ability to a high school student who graduated in 1960, how is that a good use of public funds or the time of the students?
This is why I don't buy into the public education thing. It's not working now. So how will extending it, that is, creating the same problem over for college level education, make it better?
the goal would be to provide a baseline of services to those who can't afford them.
I suggest bread and circuses be the baseline. Anything past that can be paid for at the private level.
Therefore the government/public whatever you want to imagine, needs to play a role in funding eduction.
Or we could make do with less than 17.5 million college students. Lower demand means lower prices. I see no need for government to be involved.
I guess you meant ruthlessly competitive for students. I just don't see the reason for it when you can just pay and get what you want, an education.
Actually, there is nothing preventing government funded schools from being ruthlessly competitive. You just have to limit how many there are, and not treat your preferred secondary education as some kind of right.
How does limiting the amount of school-level competition make it "ruthless"? I think rather the other way around works better.
You do realize that blind obedience to the free market is really stupid, right?
Of course. But then why ask the question? A market is just another tool. I'm no more capable of obeying it than I am a screwdriver.
It just might be that our system (government, economic), by which I mean the U.S., while pretty decent, isn't perfect and the end-all and be-all of sovereign organization. Perhaps the role of politics and government and cash should be heavily examined and revamped to include benefiting citizens as a primary goal, not skimming and extraction rent and transaction fees for corporations.
I have a solution. Let's have a less "imperfect" government and society here. There is, as I noted earlier, a lot of room for reduction of imperfection.
Welcome to the internet. I did get a chuckle out of that.
had genuine scientific credentials
Why the emphasis on credentials? How does that make someone better at detecting fraud? And why discount Randi's life experience at detecting the sort of fraud that they were looking for? You need to keep in mind that as the AC described it, Randi could observe the dowsers in action. That seems plenty of evidence right there on which to base a determination. The behavior of people is quite revealing.
Then there's matter that the statistics backed up Randi's judgment. So it might look like to the naive and gullible outside viewer that Randi didn't give them a fair shake, but he ended up right.
It doesn't have to be scientific method to be a good approach. If you're blatantly force-choking someone across the room, Darth Vader-style, Randi will pay out. If your special powers are indistinguishable from faking it, then that's too bad.
And those who are unable to find a way to pay for it don't get educated.
No problem here. They'll find something else to do.
Seems to me like that's a piss-poor way of allocating at least one resource: the workforce.
Not at all. When you don't have government running up the cost of education several fold, it'll become quite affordable for the people who want an education to get an education.
This problem is why we have public education, and why it's a good thing (even for those at the top of the economic pyramid).
A lot of the current problems are due to the dismal performance of public education. When a diploma isn't worth the paper it's written on, then employers are going to look for stuff that is, such as college diplomas.
An orbiter around Mercury is 80+ percent different than an orbiter for Titan which is probably 90 percent different from a flyby for Pluto.
But an orbiter around Mercury isn't going to be much different from an orbiter around Venus or flyby's of inner system asteroids and sungrazing comets. Similarly, an orbiter for Titan would be useful for all sorts of work around the gas giants. You could send one to Chiron or the Trojan asteroids. And the vehicle for the Pluto flyby could be flying by some of the other notable Kuiper Belt objects.
It doesn't take much imagination to come up with similar missions. It does take a little ambition, planning, and economic sense.
In other words, you are talking about thousands of man-years of highly skilled labor
In other words, if we cut a few orders of magnitude off the R&D per vehicle, we'd end up with a much cheaper vehicle. Here's my counter proposal. We put a small team together for a few man-months to man-years, depending on the problem and they put a prototype together.
It doesn't have to be perfect, just good enough to fit some generous mission constraints.
Once they're done, we stick it in orbit and see what happens. A few more more man-months to man-years to iron out the difficulties discovered.
Launch it to Jupiter or whatever. Send a second one as well. At this point, you've burned no more than ten man-years plus launch costs of the prototype test and the two real launches. You've spread those costs out between two vehicles.
Does it appear to work? Yes, then launch more to similar targets. Now the already minuscule development and operations costs are spread out among a bunch of vehicles. And you still aren't anywhere near thousands of man-years of labor in total.
Reusing old designs would save less than 10% of the cost
I don't know where you get that from. R&D is traditionally a lot more than 10% of the cost. Most of that goes away with reuse of the design. Then you have economies of scale from building multiple copies of the same design.
To be blunt, you have no idea what you are talking about. Do you honestly believe you're that much smarter than everyone at NASA?
I didn't say that. I merely said space scientists, which would include those at NASA, are profoundly ignorant of economic matters. That is evident from their actions.
This sounds pretty sweet. I got $28. How much more do we need?
How are you going to get the mass of the propellant into LEO?
Launch it. It's mass. We already know how to get mass into orbit. We also have some pretty good ideas on how to store propellant in space.
Hand-waving the time issue away is a big reach as well.
We already have probes that have lasted long enough. It's a solved problem.
Good luck getting anyone to spend a significant amount of money now for something that may pay off in 30-40 years.
The original post was about sending a unmanned Dragon capsule-based probe to Jupiter. It'll take 5 years or less. That's in a lot of peoples' investment horizons. I don't expect anything resembling a financial profit, but you'd see in a few years your spacecraft do what it's intended to do.
So sure, I handwaved the problems away. They are hard problems, but they are solved hard problems. I'm justified here.
The fact they start well is justification enough that they are better.
No. It's not. You can't hit "pause". Time moves on. Then you have to start dealing with the many problems of empires.
You know, it's the same reason we don't drastically change our economy today just to appease some environmentalists who tell us that something bad (tm) might happen for our grandchildren (and they might even use your Pournelle quote against you)
They do tell me this all the time. The only problem is that these environmentalists just don't have compelling evidence of harm. A bad emperor or three bad emperors simultaneously is compelling evidence of harm. We already know from history that those circumstances are bad.
That's only a failure of a particular dynasty, not the resource distribution.
Well, given that it is inevitable no matter the dynasty and it becomes a resource distribution failure as well, I don't see the point of your attempt at nuance.
By applying this to a state/government level, Imperialism prevents the rise of communism (where as you pointed out, one empire gains absolute power, tries to prop itself up indefinitely, leading to inefficiency and stagnation).
Unless the empire adheres to Marxism-Leninist principles. I already named two empires that did that. Then it's a dive down a very lethal rabbit hole.
"The tree of liberty needs to be watered from time to time by the blood of tyrants and patriots." Well, with Imperialism it's not so much about liberty, but same idea: sometimes blood has to be shed, the herd has to be culled.
One can say the same of communism. Sometimes you need to off 10% of the population in order to remove counterrevolutionary thought. Still one can't help but wonder if maybe it would vastly better to go with a system, like democracy, that doesn't need so much killing?
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying capitalism is bad at resource distribution. But as you said, you get stuff done faster if you aren't worried about freedom or democracy.
That only works if I'm in charge. If I'm not, then it's not getting done faster. And why the emphasis on "faster" anyway?
Now, I don't know if you're serious or just yanking my chain, but I simply don't see the value in empire building. Sure, it's nice to be the guy in charge and there are some benefits from the standardization and infrastructure that marks the start of an empire, but it's never done for the sake of the people in the empire. And it always ends in a mess.
It's worth noting here that there are several democratic republics and democracies currently in existence that have lasted longer than most empires. One of those, the United Kingdom, even willing let go of the empire it had built (which makes the UK one of the few peaceful dissolutions of an empire). In other words, democracy ages better than empire does. And democracies are happier and more just places.
In summary, I just don't see the point of advocating empire. They're not that efficient, they don't represent the people of the empire, and I'd probably get jailed or worse for the stuff I say on Slashdot. You'll get no support from me.
They have no interest -- often, a negative interest -- in an educated citizenry.
That explains why companies look for the degree first.
They understand science, so want regulation (or lawsuits) against polluters dumping crap in the air, water, and soil. They understand history, they read up on labor movements and find out how to organize for better working conditions and pay.
You seem to have a problem distinguishing between education and indoctrination. Understanding science doesn't mean that you want regulation against polluters who are already heavily regulated against "dumping crap". Understanding history, doesn't mean you develop a thing for labor unions especially when you see how they operated in practice and how they've fallen in recent decades under powerful labor competition from the developing world.
Nah, the next step will be to punish the companies when California government agencies accidentally leak that customer information.
You would be most incorrect. The free market works great in specific instances, where there is perfect knowledge in the customer base, infinite competition, completely fungible products that aren't necessities, etc. Things like the market for cars, where I have a zillion choices, tons of companies are competing for me, and I can avoid the purchase if nothing meets my various criteria.
It also works great in cases where that doesn't all hold. I used the market for some recent dental care and that worked fine. I've also been quite successful in my education shopping over the decades. So my personal experiences don't indicate trouble with marketss for education and health care.
Going without is unacceptable.
Nonsense. Unless you plan on forcing a degree on everyone whether they work for it or not, then there will be people doing the "unacceptable". Maybe they're not smart enough, maybe they're lazy, or maybe they just don't want to be in a classroom for five more years.
Yes, the for-profit motivation is the shitstain on the fabric of modern society - it taints everything.
Not at all. Sounds like you need some more edumacation. For profit ventures have the shining virtue of being positive return on investment. For example, you seem to have this completely unfounded opinion that society would be better off with cheap or free education. Who pays for that and what could they have done with that money instead? What's the benefits of getting a shitty education for free rather than something useful to your life, like five or more years of work experience? Where's the positive return on investment when the costs exceed the benefits?
And that's the problem - somehow dozens of other countries manage to distribute needed resources to their population (healthcare, education) without it disappearing into the craphole of corporate/capitalistic skimming.
It's worth noting here that no one has actually solved the problem yet. Everyone is experiencing rapid cost increases (as a share of their GDP) in health care. Just because the US system is profoundly stupid even by the low standards prevalent in health care systems doesn't mean the other systems work. What I see are growing health care costs worldwide with no means to cap those costs aside from some bureaucrats just deciding they're not going to fund beyond a certain point.
I see no advantage of these systems over having everyone pay their own way. Poor people get worse health care than the rich? That's already the case. But when a person doesn't have to spend their own money, that encourages them to consume as much health care as they can get away with.
I guess your education didn't teach you the difference between "leach" and "leech".
You do realize that we can't correct spelling after posting? There are plenty of misspellings throughout my posts. Feel free to waste your time dissecting them.
Or that we went the market route for the latter part of the 19th Century and were sufficiently dissatisfied that a Republican president (Theodore Roosevelt) became famous for putting reins on it.
One doesn't need a completely unregulated market in order to enjoy the benefits of a market route. What's happening these days though is that a lot of people are blaming failures of market regulation on the market not on the regulation. Then they make it worse by proposing even more broken regulation of markets and other things. Until people recognize the positive feedback between bad ideas and bad outcomes, we'll see more of this.