Re: unions

Charlie Edmondson (edmondson@xxxxxxxx) writes:
Josh Hill wrote:
On Fri, 18 May 2007 11:59:48 -0700, Charlie Edmondson
<edmondson@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Josh Hill wrote:

Cynical, maybe, in the way that many people are after years of
anti-government rhetoric from the right. I don't say that because I
don't think you're making some valid points about the tendency of
politicians to pork barrel or the corruption of elected officials by
wealthy special interests. But -- it's a bit like the joke about the
scientist who studies the physiology of the bee and concludes that it
can't possibly fly. In the US government took us to the moon,
developed the atomic bomb, and fought World War II. If you looked at
those efforts, you'd find all sorts of pork barreling and political
corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency -- but in the end, the jobs
did get done, and that couldn't have happened if the government hadn't
organized the effort.

Hi Josh,
Well, with the Manhattan project, we were dealing with a specific goal,
and were willing to fund multiple directions to that end, and it was all
basic science. Also, there was no existing atom bomb lobby to contest
and twist the research, and the fact that there was a war on lent a
certain air of enlightened self interest to the success of the whole thing.

But, they you mentioned the moon, and shot your own argument in the
foot! While we accomplished a great thing, getting to the moon, because
it was done by the government, we never went back again! Instead of
building the infrastructure that would have allowed a more efficient
means of exploiting space, we built a one-shot that got us there, and
then quit. After that, beauracratic PHBs took over, and we got a shuttle
with more bugs than an ant hill...

What would we have done with a more permanent infrastructure? Asking
that at this point is I think a bit like asking why Columbus didn't
establish a permanent settlement as soon as he landed in the New
World. There was just no economic, military, or propaganda
justification, and as for the scientific one, Richard Nixon was happy
to put his signature on a plaque and end the program prematurely.

Which isn't to say that the manned space program (as opposed to the
unmanned program, which has done marvelous things that don't always
receive the credit they should) didn't fall into a bureaucratic heap
when the government, which had chosen to go to the moon because it
feared competition from the Russians and no longer had that
imperative, lost interest and refused to fund ambitious programs such
as Von Braun's proposed expansion of Apollo to Mars.

But that's pretty much my point. Under Kennedy, and faced with the
propaganda advantages of the Russian space program, the government had
a reason to go to the moon; after that, the government was no longer
interested, and the manned program faltered. So when there's vision
and a perceived need, government can do extraordinary things. When
there's no vision or no perception of need, nothing happens. A
president with vision would address global warming and the energy
crisis; a president without, or rather, a president who has absorbed
in an unquestioning way the right wing belief in the inherent badness
of government and so won't even try to use it, won't. The sad thing is
that Bush isn't even a warming denier, and he's demonstrated in his
speeches an awareness of the technologies that will solve the problem.
He just believes, erroneously, that private enterprise will fix
everything without economic or regulatory incentives to do so.

Well, with a permanent infrastructure (that would have included a manned
space station...) we would have been able to have used cheaper and more
communications satellites earlier. We also could have established a
permanent presence on the moon, and had a staging area for Mars, which
we would undoubtably have reached by 1990. But we didn't. We got a one
shot PR compaign.

Theres a fallacy in this, that we had a choice between sustained development
of space infrastructure and Project Apollo.

This is not inevitable, as, it was that there was a Cold War Race purpose
to space in the 60s that opened up the national purse strings even that
much.

I would like it if it were true that we had a real world shot at a
non political and sustained space effort that would have started in
the 60s, but, unfortunately, thats now what was ever on the table.

And, we did get comsats fast enough. Telstar flew in 1962, and the
first geosynchronous comsat went up on Aug 19, 1964 ( Symcom 3 ).

And that is also my point with these government initiatives that so many
people seem to favor. They take a worthwhile goal, like getting us off
oil, or curing cancer, and then take billions of tax dollars, and
produce 'a result' that is preferably photogenic, certainly spectacular,
but very, very rarely what anyone in their right mind would have called
the original goal.

Yet, publically funded efforts did accomplish not a few real advances. CF
HMS Beagle.

So, some predictions for what government could do if they got involved
in the energy crisis business? Sponsor Halliburton to build a massive
hydrogen infrastructure across the US, including retrofitting pipelines,
filling stations and massive electrolysis stations. It would cost us
billions, would feather the pork nests of 100s of congresscritters, and
would leave us unable to move once we found out how much the cars and
fuel would actually cost.

Or, they could sponsor a national Billion Solar Roofs project, with tax
subsidies and grants to put in expensive solar panels across the US.
Then, five years down the line, when most of the panels have broken, or
caused fires because of improper maintanance, or just didn't work
because the contractors were ripping off the consumers, we would scrap
the whole thing, but again, the congresscritters would be happy thanks
to the huge pork input to their districts...

Well, cups can be half full, too.

Andre



.

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