so whats your alternative? pay higher energy prices now on renewables even though we don't need to pay those high prices until we run out of oil? we should go ahead and suffer those really severe economic consequences now by passing strict energy consumption regulations even though there are still huge amounts of oil out there?
if people are really worried about running out of oil, they should put their money where their mouth is and invest in companies that are producing energy from renewable resources. obviously no one really takes the danger all that seriously or there would be more companies like that.
instead liberals want to pass laws forcing restrictions on energy use, raising prices and taxes so that they can take my money and invest it in their windmills.
let the people decide what they think is important enough to put their money into. capitalism is the most direct form of democracy.
why will be sinking or swimming? what makes you think gas prices will suddenly go up? why wouldn't it be gradual? besides its not like there aren't alternative energy sources out there right now. they just aren't as cheap as oil. if we have to we can switch. it will just cost more.
well really. why bother? the energy is there, why not use it? the oil reserves are huge. even if they aren't as the european liberals love to worry about -- the market will take care of it. as oil becomes more and more scarce, prices will rise and we will use something else that is more affordable. really, i don't understand the hysteria.
there are no economically viable alternatives other than nuclear power. which liberals are of course against.
i think often that europeans don't realize just how big the US is. people in the states have to drive cars. the cities are much more spread out. government sponsered public transportation doesn't make sense in most places.
thank you. hear hear! and amen. climate changes all the freaken time. ice ages and whatnot. we might have something to do with it. no one knows for sure. 30 years ago enviromentalists were raving about global cooling. but we are supposed to put people of work and destroy entire industries when we don't even know if it will make a single bit of difference. get past the histeria people.
well i agree in an idealistic perfect world. but there isn't any renewable that works right now at a reasonable price.
you mention solar, but its cloudy and rains in a lot of places around the world. and we still don't have a good way to store the energy. what about portability (transportation?).
if it worked and was cheaper and more efficient than gas, capitalism would have sent it to the top of the market. obviously renewables have none of those features.
hear hear. and amen. very well said. there actually was a girl in my college who was part of the school's green club or whatever. she seriously felt we should live like the indians used to. i asked her that straight up and she said yeah. she also thought rocks had souls and that all the earth was tied together into some sort of greater conciousness. the funny thing is she was really smart. brilliant even. became fluent in spanish in one summer for example. she spoke several languages. sort of sad to see it wasted. she dropped out of school after a couple years. not sure why or where she went.
so cnn lied and bush doesn't actually want to raise nasa's budget by a $1 billion? funny thing, i saw the live broadcast of the speech on cspan where bush actually said that. search on google for: bush nasa budget. the 1st 30 links are all for different newspapers around the world that have arcticles talking about that speech and how bush proposed a $1 billion budget increase for nasa.
The NASA technology remains in the public domain and industry continues to derive financial benefits from the public sector. What part of that fact are you unhappy about?
i'm unhappy my money pays for an accounting officer who publishes financial statements that are off by $500 billion. in the private sector that action would have consequences. investors would lose faith and a company that sloppy would either die or change and become more efficient. but in big government, we just right them another billion dollar check the next year.
i'm unhappy about the part where i was forced to pay for that research and a lot of other waste of time projects like velcro, the origin of the universe, and a NASA tv channel. i don't watch nasa tv channel, why should i have to pay for it? maybe i'd rather spend my money on my kids college. maybe not. but that should be my choice. its about freedom. the higher taxes are, the less freedom an individual has because the government is deciding where to spend your money.
If the tax burden were shifted back to the 1960 schedule Mr. Gates' company would part with a portion of their income that would, at one point in the marginal rate schedule, reach 95% of their income. Billions from Bill and MSFT would do much more to lighten our burden than cutting NASA....
Let's say $2B/yr tax revenue from Bill's company and his top-paid staff. That works out to be approximately $1k/yr for every man, woman and child in the US. A $3k tax cut in my house...$4k for each of my siblings and $3k more for the living extended family - Bill and company - alone, could provide my immediate family with $14k in tax relief/yr. Hmm...
wow, you want to tax 95% of a person's income? why should bill and his company pay you for their hard work? what did you do to deserve his money? you are just a common thief.
when tax rates reach 95% of a productive person's income this country will collapse. don't expect people to produce when production is punished and mooching and looting are rewarded. when you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect people to remain good.
"Throughout man's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or
another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor....wealth was produced by the labor
of slaves -- slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind
and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force,
and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through
all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as
aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the
bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers -- as
industrialists.
"To the glory of mankind, there was for the first and only time in history, a
country of money -- and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay
to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production,
achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there
were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of
swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest
worker, the highest type of human being -- the self-made man -- the American
industrialist."
-- ayn rand
"an honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced."
-- ayn rand
actually you are right. i misread cnn. http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/01/14/bus h.spac e/
he's only increasing the budget by a mere $1 billion over the next five years. and nasa's annual budget is $85 billion (according to the above arcticle). thats actually $350 dollars a year per person.
i'd much rather have my 350 bucks a year back from that nasa investment. you really think private industry couldn't have come up with computing, mapping, radar, and composite materials on their own? oh wait they do that all the time. this stuff might have been discovered 5 years earlier than private industry would have discovered it, but at what cost? you say R&D from nasa is free. LWWs always think government programs are free and the money just comes out of nowhere. guess who pays for nasa's 85 billion dollar budget? private industry and private individuals.
and maybe i'd rather spend my money on my kids college than on side-looking radar. that should be my choice. its about freedom. the higher taxes are, the less freedom an individual has because the government is deciding where to spend your money.
i don't know what iraq has to do with nasa or anything else. red herring? but since you bring it up, i kind of agree. i'm not sure i want to pay for the war. perhaps its an investment in peace and in defeating terrorism that will pay off in the long run. i'm personally a little conflicted about it.
but i'd rather keep my 60 bucks and buy chocolate.
the point is you have a choice in the private sector. if you want to invest in internet connected refigerators, you can. i had to invest in nasa/velcro or go to jail.
its about freedom. the higher taxes are, the less freedom you have, because government decides where its going to invest your money.
bush wants to increase funding to nasa by $1 billion dollars this year and by $12 billion over the next five years. thats my problem with the guy. he's increased the size of nearly every government agency. its enormously frustrating. since when were republicans for big government? now who the hell am i supposed to vote for?
thats an extra $50 a year per person in the us. and we are already paying $50 a year person for the space program, so that comes out to $100 bucks a year per person. it doesn't sound like much but what have i ever received for my investments over the years? velcro? i want my money back.
ever think thtat all those problems at nasa are maybe just maybe government bureacratic inefficiencies? why is it that the engineers always warn the shuttle is going to explode and the people at the top never hear about it? unlike nasa, a private company would be held accountable for its failures through its stock price and through the number of people willing to buy the product.
>> It's all accounting oddities, not actual monetary loss.
right. so you are saying that nasa isn't incompetent? no private secter company is going to publish financial statements with a $500 billion overstatement. and if they did, their stock price would plummet at the first sign of such gross mismanagement. thats whats great about the private sector -- accountability. but the government doesn't even blink. we just send them another $15 billion next year.
there is a big difference between misbehavior in the government and misbehavior in the private sector. if nasa misbehaves, who pays for it? me the taxpayer. if walmart misbehaves, who pays for it? the company.
i HAVE to give money to nasa in the form of taxes. i can CHOOSE to shop at walmart and i can CHOOSE to invest in walmart stock.
its an issue of freedom. i should get to choose where i want to put my money. the more the government taxes me, the more my freedom is being taken from me.
think about all the good the private sector could do with an extra 14 billion dollars. thats about 60 bucks a person. it doesn't sound like much but what have i ever received for my investments over the years? velcro? i want my money back.
yet another example in an endless series of examples of inefficiency, incompetence and government bureacracy showing why we should lose the whole nasa organization.
government has no business being involved in this. if people really want to go to space they will pay for the product. capitalism is the most direct form of democracy.
think about all the good the private sector could do with an extra 14 billion dollars. thats about 60 bucks a person. it doesn't sound like much but what have i ever received for my investments over the years? velcro? i want my money back.
and were we really suffering before velcro? is it really such a leap of faith to think that private individuals could have come up with velcro on their own. sure the private sector might have invented it 10 years later, but it would have been done at a fraction of the cost.
you could create a laser missile defense system that fired two lasers an incoming missile. the first laser on one frequency and the second laser on a different frequency. if done right, i think the mirrors could only reflect energy through a certain range... i don't know.
also some other people said that the mirrors absorb the energy before reflecting the laser and so they would get burnt up.
couldn't you just develop a laser missile defense system that randomly varied its frequency? or fired two lasers at different frequencies at each missile?
huh. seems like this could have a really good application in a situation like we have with north korea. their trump card is all the missiles they have pointed at south korea. a defense system like that and they would just be yet another another poor commie country.
ok, so i was uninformed about the bbc being a monopoly. but i still say the government shouldn't fund tv programming.
you may personally care more about the quality of the output than the source of the income, but what about the public in general? if its really what the people want, why not let them vote with their money? i would submit that these kinds of taxes are put in place by people who feel they know whats best for everyone else. maybe the public doesn't want to be educated, informed or entertained in the way the bbc does it. or maybe they do. i say let the people vote with their pocket books. capitalism is the most direct form of democracy.
and as always the market is more effecient at allocating resources. currently part of your licence fee goes to waste because you don't watch pop concerts or soap operas. why not just pay for the factual programmes that you do want to watch?
also if the population doesn't like these factual programmes, why does the bbc need to make them? wouldn't the money be better spent by the taxpayers on food or healthcare or even the education, information and entertainment that they actually want to see?
i think person is freeloading off others when they say support a tax to create programmes that only that person and a few others watch and nearly no one else does. really its stealing. (i'm echoing what you said about some of the more experimental programmes that you like -- i know that bbc news is watched by a lot of people and i think the bbc generally does a really good job -- especially given that its government funded. the point is that there is waste.)
providing empty trains is hardly a good service. who does that benefit? a few people at the expense of many. more people would be better off if the state didn't take 50% of a persons paycheck to pay for the empty trains. then they could afford to buy a car and drive there themselves (or pay a private bus/train/taxi company).
i do think everything good does make a profit. i think even love can be expressed that way. both people give, both people receive -- it is the same as any financial transaction. whether people like to admit it or not i think people in relationships do keep score. if one person is giving a lot more than they are receiving, they decide they aren't profiting and they leave.
Slashdot Mirror
so whats your alternative? pay higher energy prices now on renewables even though we don't need to pay those high prices until we run out of oil? we should go ahead and suffer those really severe economic consequences now by passing strict energy consumption regulations even though there are still huge amounts of oil out there?
if people are really worried about running out of oil, they should put their money where their mouth is and invest in companies that are producing energy from renewable resources. obviously no one really takes the danger all that seriously or there would be more companies like that.
instead liberals want to pass laws forcing restrictions on energy use, raising prices and taxes so that they can take my money and invest it in their windmills.
let the people decide what they think is important enough to put their money into. capitalism is the most direct form of democracy.
why will be sinking or swimming? what makes you think gas prices will suddenly go up? why wouldn't it be gradual? besides its not like there aren't alternative energy sources out there right now. they just aren't as cheap as oil. if we have to we can switch. it will just cost more.
well really. why bother? the energy is there, why not use it? the oil reserves are huge. even if they aren't as the european liberals love to worry about -- the market will take care of it. as oil becomes more and more scarce, prices will rise and we will use something else that is more affordable. really, i don't understand the hysteria.
there are no economically viable alternatives other than nuclear power. which liberals are of course against.
i think often that europeans don't realize just how big the US is. people in the states have to drive cars. the cities are much more spread out. government sponsered public transportation doesn't make sense in most places.
heh. biblical quantities. i like that.
thank you. hear hear! and amen. climate changes all the freaken time. ice ages and whatnot. we might have something to do with it. no one knows for sure. 30 years ago enviromentalists were raving about global cooling. but we are supposed to put people of work and destroy entire industries when we don't even know if it will make a single bit of difference. get past the histeria people.
well i agree in an idealistic perfect world. but there isn't any renewable that works right now at a reasonable price.
you mention solar, but its cloudy and rains in a lot of places around the world. and we still don't have a good way to store the energy. what about portability (transportation?).
if it worked and was cheaper and more efficient than gas, capitalism would have sent it to the top of the market. obviously renewables have none of those features.
hear hear. and amen. very well said. there actually was a girl in my college who was part of the school's green club or whatever. she seriously felt we should live like the indians used to. i asked her that straight up and she said yeah. she also thought rocks had souls and that all the earth was tied together into some sort of greater conciousness. the funny thing is she was really smart. brilliant even. became fluent in spanish in one summer for example. she spoke several languages. sort of sad to see it wasted. she dropped out of school after a couple years. not sure why or where she went.
you crack me up. reminds me of college. i had this girl accuse me of being "speciesist" once. hilarious.
so cnn lied and bush doesn't actually want to raise nasa's budget by a $1 billion? funny thing, i saw the live broadcast of the speech on cspan where bush actually said that. search on google for: bush nasa budget. the 1st 30 links are all for different newspapers around the world that have arcticles talking about that speech and how bush proposed a $1 billion budget increase for nasa.
The NASA technology remains in the public domain and industry continues to derive financial benefits from the public sector. What part of that fact are you unhappy about?
i'm unhappy my money pays for an accounting officer who publishes financial statements that are off by $500 billion. in the private sector that action would have consequences. investors would lose faith and a company that sloppy would either die or change and become more efficient. but in big government, we just right them another billion dollar check the next year.
i'm unhappy about the part where i was forced to pay for that research and a lot of other waste of time projects like velcro, the origin of the universe, and a NASA tv channel. i don't watch nasa tv channel, why should i have to pay for it? maybe i'd rather spend my money on my kids college. maybe not. but that should be my choice. its about freedom. the higher taxes are, the less freedom an individual has because the government is deciding where to spend your money.
If the tax burden were shifted back to the 1960 schedule Mr. Gates' company would part with a portion of their income that would, at one point in the marginal rate schedule, reach 95% of their income. Billions from Bill and MSFT would do much more to lighten our burden than cutting NASA. ...
Let's say $2B/yr tax revenue from Bill's company and his top-paid staff. That works out to be approximately $1k/yr for every man, woman and child in the US. A $3k tax cut in my house...$4k for each of my siblings and $3k more for the living extended family - Bill and company - alone, could provide my immediate family with $14k in tax relief/yr. Hmm...
wow, you want to tax 95% of a person's income? why should bill and his company pay you for their hard work? what did you do to deserve his money? you are just a common thief.
when tax rates reach 95% of a productive person's income this country will collapse. don't expect people to produce when production is punished and mooching and looting are rewarded. when you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect people to remain good.
"Throughout man's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. ...wealth was produced by the labor
of slaves -- slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind
and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force,
and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through
all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as
aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the
bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers -- as
industrialists.
"To the glory of mankind, there was for the first and only time in history, a country of money -- and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being -- the self-made man -- the American industrialist."
-- ayn rand
"an honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced."
-- ayn rand
actually its not 60 bucks a year per person. its closer to $350 a year per person. nasa's budget is $86 billion.
c e/)
(source: http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/01/14/bush.spa
actually you are right. i misread cnn.s h.spac e/
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/01/14/bu
he's only increasing the budget by a mere $1 billion over the next five years. and nasa's annual budget is $85 billion (according to the above arcticle). thats actually $350 dollars a year per person.
i'd much rather have my 350 bucks a year back from that nasa investment. you really think private industry couldn't have come up with computing, mapping, radar, and composite materials on their own? oh wait they do that all the time. this stuff might have been discovered 5 years earlier than private industry would have discovered it, but at what cost? you say R&D from nasa is free. LWWs always think government programs are free and the money just comes out of nowhere. guess who pays for nasa's 85 billion dollar budget? private industry and private individuals.
and maybe i'd rather spend my money on my kids college than on side-looking radar. that should be my choice. its about freedom. the higher taxes are, the less freedom an individual has because the government is deciding where to spend your money.
i don't know what iraq has to do with nasa or anything else. red herring? but since you bring it up, i kind of agree. i'm not sure i want to pay for the war. perhaps its an investment in peace and in defeating terrorism that will pay off in the long run. i'm personally a little conflicted about it.
but i'd rather keep my 60 bucks and buy chocolate.
the point is you have a choice in the private sector. if you want to invest in internet connected refigerators, you can. i had to invest in nasa/velcro or go to jail.
its about freedom. the higher taxes are, the less freedom you have, because government decides where its going to invest your money.
bush wants to increase funding to nasa by $1 billion dollars this year and by $12 billion over the next five years. thats my problem with the guy. he's increased the size of nearly every government agency. its enormously frustrating. since when were republicans for big government? now who the hell am i supposed to vote for?
thats an extra $50 a year per person in the us. and we are already paying $50 a year person for the space program, so that comes out to $100 bucks a year per person. it doesn't sound like much but what have i ever received for my investments over the years? velcro? i want my money back.
ever think thtat all those problems at nasa are maybe just maybe government bureacratic inefficiencies? why is it that the engineers always warn the shuttle is going to explode and the people at the top never hear about it? unlike nasa, a private company would be held accountable for its failures through its stock price and through the number of people willing to buy the product.
>> It's all accounting oddities, not actual monetary loss.
right. so you are saying that nasa isn't incompetent? no private secter company is going to publish financial statements with a $500 billion overstatement. and if they did, their stock price would plummet at the first sign of such gross mismanagement. thats whats great about the private sector -- accountability. but the government doesn't even blink. we just send them another $15 billion next year.
there is a big difference between misbehavior in the government and misbehavior in the private sector. if nasa misbehaves, who pays for it? me the taxpayer. if walmart misbehaves, who pays for it? the company.
i HAVE to give money to nasa in the form of taxes. i can CHOOSE to shop at walmart and i can CHOOSE to invest in walmart stock.
its an issue of freedom. i should get to choose where i want to put my money. the more the government taxes me, the more my freedom is being taken from me.
think about all the good the private sector could do with an extra 14 billion dollars. thats about 60 bucks a person. it doesn't sound like much but what have i ever received for my investments over the years? velcro? i want my money back.
yet another example in an endless series of examples of inefficiency, incompetence and government bureacracy showing why we should lose the whole nasa organization.
government has no business being involved in this. if people really want to go to space they will pay for the product. capitalism is the most direct form of democracy.
think about all the good the private sector could do with an extra 14 billion dollars. thats about 60 bucks a person. it doesn't sound like much but what have i ever received for my investments over the years? velcro? i want my money back.
and were we really suffering before velcro? is it really such a leap of faith to think that private individuals could have come up with velcro on their own. sure the private sector might have invented it 10 years later, but it would have been done at a fraction of the cost.
unbelievably funny!
you could create a laser missile defense system that fired two lasers an incoming missile. the first laser on one frequency and the second laser on a different frequency. if done right, i think the mirrors could only reflect energy through a certain range... i don't know.
also some other people said that the mirrors absorb the energy before reflecting the laser and so they would get burnt up.
couldn't you just develop a laser missile defense system that randomly varied its frequency? or fired two lasers at different frequencies at each missile?
hmm.. maybe the laser missle defense thingy could vary its frequency randomly. that would defeat any sort of attempt at reflection sheilding stuff.
huh. seems like this could have a really good application in a situation like we have with north korea. their trump card is all the missiles they have pointed at south korea. a defense system like that and they would just be yet another another poor commie country.
heh. hear hear.
ok, so i was uninformed about the bbc being a monopoly. but i still say the government shouldn't fund tv programming.
you may personally care more about the quality of the output than the source of the income, but what about the public in general? if its really what the people want, why not let them vote with their money? i would submit that these kinds of taxes are put in place by people who feel they know whats best for everyone else. maybe the public doesn't want to be educated, informed or entertained in the way the bbc does it. or maybe they do. i say let the people vote with their pocket books. capitalism is the most direct form of democracy.
and as always the market is more effecient at allocating resources. currently part of your licence fee goes to waste because you don't watch pop concerts or soap operas. why not just pay for the factual programmes that you do want to watch?
also if the population doesn't like these factual programmes, why does the bbc need to make them? wouldn't the money be better spent by the taxpayers on food or healthcare or even the education, information and entertainment that they actually want to see?
i think person is freeloading off others when they say support a tax to create programmes that only that person and a few others watch and nearly no one else does. really its stealing. (i'm echoing what you said about some of the more experimental programmes that you like -- i know that bbc news is watched by a lot of people and i think the bbc generally does a really good job -- especially given that its government funded. the point is that there is waste.)
providing empty trains is hardly a good service. who does that benefit? a few people at the expense of many. more people would be better off if the state didn't take 50% of a persons paycheck to pay for the empty trains. then they could afford to buy a car and drive there themselves (or pay a private bus/train/taxi company).
i do think everything good does make a profit. i think even love can be expressed that way. both people give, both people receive -- it is the same as any financial transaction. whether people like to admit it or not i think people in relationships do keep score. if one person is giving a lot more than they are receiving, they decide they aren't profiting and they leave.
amen
so... how is it not government related if they are accountable to parliament and funded by the government?
at the very least the organization has a self interest in promoting large government in order to keep its funding going.