Well, with 2/3 of the budget going to the Iraqi war and to various military and defense related spending, there's not a whole lot left over to spend on even highly necessary things like, say, fixing the health care system or helping education, much less to fund a space program.

Private companies devoted solely to the mission of getting us into space with no other concerns (like running a country of several hundred million people) would be the best way to go.

Its still a longshot with our current technology, and its not going to be easy even when we do master cold fusion and plunk mass drivers all over Earth's surface.



Holy GOD that is so cool! Antimatter scanner

They were talking about how expensive it would be to get into space and tax payers didn't want to pay. The federal government already figured that out and made NASA set up a program or two to help private induster to get there.

2/3 of the budget is not going to the Iraq war. It is going to social spending.

I sincerely hope you do not live in the USA. Else I feel sad for you for being such an ignorant person.

As danielost said, 2/3 (quite possible even more) of the budget is going to social spending.



You think?

Having money hungry capitalist companies in charge of the lives of several hundred million people?

You heard of how greedy companies in charge of Hospitals have denied life-dependant operations because the patients could not pay?

And this is a bad thing...? If they can't pay, they die. It's as simple as that. Money is a way of recompense for your productivity. If you don't have enough money to pay for your medical bills, then you obviously weren't productive enough, and as such are a waste of resources which ought to be terminated.




Yes, the "c" does stand for the speed of light: the equation explains how if one kilogram of matter is converted entirely into pure energy you will wind up with approx. 30000000000 J of energy.



Thank you for clarification. "We" is not me and my pet gerbil, but me and the top scientists at Princeton, Cambridge, etc., as I believe I stated before.

Our entire concept of science is based around the laws of Cause and Effect; if they were not so, our entire universe would unravel! By this law we require a Cause for our universe, which would, necessarily, be outside our universe. Now, that cause will also need a cause, and so on, ad infinitum. Which is impossible. We are therefore in need of an "Unmoved Mover" or "Uncaused Cause" as Plato and his student Aristotle put it quite aptly. Any being possessed of this characteristic (i.e., being an "Unmoved Mover") would be a god.

I think that this answers your objection that my arguments have nothing to do with intelligent design as well as your objection of an unsupported premise.

Entropy is, of course, inexorable and unavoidable. Everything moves from order to disorder. No exceptions, and certainly no reverses. Right now, my desk is extremely messy, but I could, of course, clean it up. But this would contradict our notion that everything is constantly moving from order to disorder. Our only answer is that the process of cleaning up adds sufficient entropy to the universe to counterbalance what it's getting rid of. The only thing that I am doing in this exercise is expending energy. In this way, we can conclude that expending energy in some way contributes to disorder and entropy. Since entropy is irreversible, the energy is irrevocably lost to our use.

I must say that I am enjoying this argument, and I look forward to your refutation with anticipation.

My riposte:

Budget Spending Graph for 2007
and

Costs of the Iraq War

Additionally, the hospital dilemma is mainly a result of our health care system, which is in dire need of an overhaul, and, honestly, just because one company creates an unfair and possibly exploitative position for its customers, does that mean every single company is going to do the same thing?

Besides, if an organization is receiving federal aid and grant money, wouldn't it make sense to be sure that they were using that aid and spending that money wisely? Subject them to the Government Performance and Results Act and keep a federal staff member on board the project team and we'd be able to keep things going smoothly.

Forty billions years is a laughably short timescale for the end of the universe. You'll have stars burning for hundreds of billions of years. If you want death by entropy, you're going to have to wait for ten or so more orders of magnitude. I am not aware of any scientists claiming otherwise, but I'm not exactly involved in the peer review process for astronomy. The non-evil scientific community has exiled me to my fortified island lair.


The causes could go on ad infinitum, or the process could be perfectly cyclical.


Calling the forces of nature "God" doesn't really solve the problem with your argument. No where in here do I see support for intelligent design. You need to convince me that your "Unmoved Mover" is intelligent, and that it has a death ray. I refuse to acknowledge the existence of any god without a death ray.


Good for you.

-Dr. B

let me guess your rich?

look i am all for decreasing the population one way or another but this is not the answer for population or for the economy.

ok let look at it this way a 18 year old girl just lost her family, she is poor because the government took all the money to pay off bills and expenses here parents did not pay or where for the funeral. She is barely living from paycheck to paycheck, a few weeks past and she gets raped and gets pregnant. Nine months pass the baby is due. she goes to the hospital, the doctors tell her that every thing will be fine but she has to deliver the baby in a special way that only the doctors could perform or she and the baby will die. The doctor looks over here finical part and the doctor sees that she could not pay for it. So the doctor kick here out, and she goes home with nowhere to go. The next day she is dead, and for what, a problem that was not even here flat.
And do not tell me that this could never happen because some where some place on this crap shit place we call Earth is happening or happened and you know what this probably taking place in the grate U.S.A.

we are humans we have evolved past the laws of nature but yet thanks to that we have crated a new law. in steed of the strong live and grow while the weak die, in are own world we have made that the Rich live while the poor die and grow.

Nothing is black and white. So it is not as simple as that. Money is not a way to recompense your productivity, it is a medium for trade.

It is a bad thing because of social values and culture.

There are living examples of how investing to pay another person's medical bill have resulted in said person living a very productive life. Therefore the investment was returned tenfold.

People are also resources, do not be stupid and throw them away without thinking it over.



Yes.

If all the others companies want to remain competitive, they will have to do the same or be very creative to find another solution.



You ever heard of Red Tape? Or Bureaucracy? Expanding it is never the best idea.

So basically your vision of corporations is that of a faceless, heartless machine that exists only to squeeze the money out of people and not to, like, provide a legitimate service or product and expect a fair amount of payment back? EVERY SINGLE Corporation exists only to further its own agenda and is headed by men who have no principles or morals whatsoever? Is that the claim you're trying to make here?



So how does "requiring a company to submit to certain working standards and making sure they are using their government-allocated resources wisely" translate to bureaucracy and red tape?

Yes.

You should read up on Capitalism as written by people such as Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill.

A company ONLY purpose is to make money.

Take care of the people? That what the Goverment is supposed to do.



How do you make sure they are using their goverment-allocated resources wisely?

Eh? John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith were proponents of free market, laissez-faire economic policy. Granted, that kind of economic environment sets up nicely for capitalism, but the two are not mutually exclusive.

That, and how do you think a company makes money? By providing a service or good. If they treat their workers or their customers unfairly, or if their services/goods are substandard, then the market takes action against them, either through boycott of their goods, through whistleblowing and labor union action, or through direct government intervention if need be.

And besides, the corporations take care of you far than the government. They provide you with the food you eat, the water you drink, the roof over your head, the gas in your tank, the car that tank's attached to, etc. AND, on top of that, unless you are self-employed (in which case YOU ARE THE CORPORATION!) or work for the government, chances are you get your money and, therefore, your livelihood from the corporations.


The soul-less, heart-less corporation that ruthlessly oppresses its peoples are figments of imagination reserved for cyberpunk literature.



I... just said that. You require them to submit to the Government Performance and Results Act and you keep a federal advisor on their staff to oversee the project.

no, just the average sheltered middle class lolbertarian manchild roooooooonpaul08

Exactly, Free Market, where the only law is "Survival of the Fittest". Not the regulated market we have today where there exist anti-monopoly laws.



Didn't you just mentioned Free Market?

Anyway, those things are keeping the companies in check, that does not mean the companies are not "heartless machine that exists only to squeeze the money out of people."



The Goverment provides those sames things to poor people who has no money to pay for them, they have an obligation to do so. The corporations demand money for them, they have no obligation whatsoever, you push them too hard, they file bankrupcy and leave with their money.



Thank god its still just imagination, else the world would be boring.

But remember, just because a brat is behaving well now, does not mean that he has stopped being a brat. You just need to see him when his mother is not looking.



Submit..... more paperwork, hence Red Tape.

Keep Advisor.....another person's firm needed, more bureaucracy.

There will never be war between interstellar empires - only two choices, diplomacy and mutually assured destruction. An advanced interstellar empire will most probably have the technology required to nova a star. No fancy fleet battles, no cool planetary invasions with laser rifles, just system after system going *poof*.

And there goes what you were fighting over.

eventually what we will have to do. is put intersteller sats in orbit around the galaxy. Otherwise we go poof when a star goes poof on it's own. Maybe on an orbit that will eventually put them into inter galactic space.


We will become like the so called locust on independence day. Strip mine a system as we move by it.

Yes. And thus, as you have ably pointed out, Free Market economics are not capitalism and thus, not relevant.


Hey, you brought it up. Don't go pinning your choice in topics on me, MAAAN.



What I was trying to say was that a company can't afford to just go and maximize their profits as high as possible (squeezing all of the money out of you) because that would entail overstepping certain legal, moral boundaries. Corporations have another factor to keep in mind, and that is Public Relations.

When you start to gain brand recognition, people are going to attach all kinds of things to your brand based on what they hear. Take the example of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is infamous for its paper-thin profit margins and outsourcing cheaper foreign labor in order to undercut other businesses by giving the lowest price possible. Now, when people hear the Wal-Mart brand, they think of low prices, big stores and the negative stigma of its shady business tactics. They also attach to it the negative stigma of being operated and frequented by the "trash" of society (not to imply that everyone who shops or works there is garbage, but when one walks into a Wal-Mart...). These negative stigmas all affect Wal-Mart's business in that it makes it a less desirable place to shop.

If a company is not in good standing with its public because they've read that they beat their factory workers to death or because they exploit child labor and undercut local manufacturers or because they release pollutants into a city's drinking water, they're going to find that their profits are going down, not up.

If a corporation fails to take the comfort and security of its customers and laborers seriously in order to make a few more bucks, they're going to be finding themselves losing a lot more.


And where do those things come from? From welfare and food stamps, which comes out of your tax money, which is likely provided to you by a corporation, so, in effect, those poor people are receiving their necessities and livelihood from a corporation indirectly.


Well YOU remember that just because peanut butter and jelly go together well on toast doesn't mean you should bring a picnic lunch of nother but PB&J on toast. See, I can make non-sequitorial metaphors too.



That's some red tape but it really wouldn't be the huge hassle you're no doubt imagining it to be.

Well we'd already have NASA staff assisting them in the first place, right? Hardly a hindrance.

...and now that I've gone egregiously and totally off-topic, let me present my semi-realistic view of future politics:

Let's say that, in the future, mankind manages to overcome the many hundreds of massive obstacles to intersteallar travel and they do it: they build a relativistic colony ship and fire it off at Alpha Centauri and, wouldn' you know it, they get lucky and actually find a habitable planet to land on. Given that Earth is four lightyears away from the Big AC, meaningful communication of any kind would be impossible with the four years in between messages, and interstellar war between Earth and the Alphans would be equally impossible (for reasons I laid out a page or two ago) so there really wouldn't be anything stopping the Alphans from becoming their own unique entity.

Seeing as how the young Alphan colony could be torn apart by the actions of one individual, justice would be harsh and swift. Even minor crimes like theft could be met with the Alphans preferred method of execution (hopefully something brutal to dissuade other would-be criminals). Given the initially small number of citizens, government would be something like a democracy, everyone getting a say in the actions of the colony.

Aside from the occasional citizen going absolutely stir crazy, conflict would be minimal, as everyone would have to use their talents and abilities just to keep the colony going another day.

In an argument, if you have to explain what you were trying say.....

That usually mean you are loosing the argument.

For the first 10 to 20 years.

Not only that, but the second law of thermodynamics, otherwise known as the law of entropy, says that everything in the universe is winding downward from a state of order to a state of disorder. Without an outside force, nothing in the universe can become more complex. So how did we get a hydrogen atom from nothing? From where did DNA come? According to current scientific THEORY (not law), life came about from a state of disorder to a state of order. How is that possible?

It's not possible.

I forgot to tell you. You don't exist.

-Dr. B

www.eve-online.com

One of the most in depth and comprehensive space MMORPG ever created. Its political and technological aspects are extremely close to reality.

entropy is not necessarily disorder, the Earth is not a closed system, 2nd law only discusses net entropy and not individual systems. in the future, please keep your oh-so-subtle creationist talking point bullshit out of the thread, google (and talk.origins) exist for a reason.