Text 14783, 101 rader
Skriven 2007-05-21 09:27:13 av Charlie Edmondson (1196.babylon5)
  Kommentar till text 14748 av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated (1160.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: unions
==================
Josh Hill wrote:
> On Fri, 18 May 2007 11:59:48 -0700, Charlie Edmondson
> <edmondson@ieee.org> 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.

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.

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...

Charlie
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