Text 14748, 75 rader
Skriven 2007-05-18 23:55:45 av Josh Hill (1160.babylon5)
  Kommentar till text 14738 av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated (1150.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: unions
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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.

-- 
Josh

"The conservative movement is founded on the simple tenet
that people have the right to live life as they please,
as long as they don't hurt anyone else in the process. . . .
The radical right has nearly ruined our party. Its members
do not care about the Constitution and they are the
ones making all the noise." - Barry Goldwater
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32
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