Posted on 01/16/2004 4:07:34 AM PST by from occupied ga
Imagine your neighbor throwing a party to show off his brand new high-tech boat – or flower garden or remodeled kitchen. Pick your item and imagine the triumph in your neighbor’s eyes, voice and body language. You would surely be a spoilsport to try to rain on his parade with any kind of negative or derisive comment. What a mean thing that would be! But imagine that you discovered that your neighbor had built his invention by first raiding his other neighbor’s savings account. His fabulous new gizmo no longer looks so fabulous to you and, you conclude, it is quite perverse that it looks fabulous to him. Sure, it is still something of a wonder – what a thing to create, to build. But it cannot be reasonably denied that the means by which the fellow got the thing done, namely, by robbing his other neighbor, cast a very serous cloud over whatever wonderful thing he made that way.
Well, that’s how I see all those fabulous achievements of NASA, including some of the American government’s space exploration. It is actually worse than that. Since most of those who take part in those ventures are completely oblivious to the venality of the means by which their projects get off the ground – how their funding is secured, how it deprives millions of citizens of various amounts of wealth from which they might have produced their own more or less fabulous creations – I am not only appalled at the viciousness of these celebrations but also at the rank moral ignorance of all those who go about the celebration without a clue as to its source.
It would, indeed, be more honest to witness at least some of the folks who come on television to proclaim the wonders of these achievements if they toasted the extortionist scheme that provided them with the funding. At least we would learn that these folks are aware of what they are doing, that they are vicious but not also stupid. Instead, however, they go about their celebrations blithely, as if nothing untoward had been involved in how it all came to be achieved.
I am by no means some kind of Luddite who thinks the great leaps of technology, including space explorations, demonstrate the sin of hubris on part of the human race. No, that ignorant scientists and technologists who can stand and cheer when a brilliant payload lands on Mars and sends back stunning pictures that tell us all kinds of stuff we could make use of. It isn’t even necessary in these cases to produce immediate utilitarian results – the feats in and of themselves, like those of other human adventures, are often sufficient to cause delight for most decent people.
However, when one knows that these feats are produced on the backs of millions of tax payers – folks from whom wealth is confiscated at the point of a gun, ultimately, and who might very well have had vital objectives to pursue with the aid of their wealth and were cruelly deprived of this – there is no way to take part in all the hoopla. In fact, witnessing the morally blind pride exhibited by all those scientists, engineers, and administrators is quite painful. I must deny myself the joy I know I would feel if the accomplishments had not had been fueled by blood money.
But, perhaps I am odd. When I run across the so called marvels of past civilizations in Europe and elsewhere, such as the palaces, cathedrals, pyramids, great walls, and magnificent monuments, I find it difficult not to reflect on the deliberate, utterly avoidable human devastation that it took to get many of these artifacts produced. I always ask myself how things would have gone had all those people who were conscripted to labor on all these wondrous creations had the chance to choose their own projects.
I realize, of course, that they would probably have squandered a good deal of their lives and resources but, then, I recall that their conscripted labor and resources also went to waste a good deal of the time – in the service of wars of conquest, subjugation or confiscation, or of idolatry and frivolity. And then I recall, too, that while perhaps some of these products of forced labor, just as the recent Mars landing of the unmanned space craft, were wonderful and even helpful, we will never know how it would have gone had individuals been left free to determine to what end to devote their own labors and resources.
And, of course, it is also worth keeping in mind that many of the fabulous achievements resulting from conscripted mass labor created environmental destruction, too, which the less grandiose, more modest voluntary projects of individuals and small groups of freely united humans tended to avoid. (Just think of TVA, the Interstate Highway System, the massive canal projects and damns around the globe.)
But, yes, some of these projects are wonderful. They are only made not so by the fact that their creation violated the most elementary principle of civilized human association, freedom of choice.
January 16, 2004
Tibor Machan [send him mail] holds the Freedom Communications Professorship of Free Enterprise and Business Ethics at the Argyros School of Business & Economics, Chapman University, CA. A Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, he is author of 20+ books, most recently, The Passion for Liberty (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Costs come down, you know it. You've got your head in the sand if you can't see the tremendous value of He3 alone. I've got to offer a criticism here, Occupied: you Libertarians seem to have a very short-term, myopic view of success. The country that controls the moon and its resources is the country that will control the world financially, technologically, and militarily. It seems you want to throw that away for a slightly lower tax bill. I can't understand it.
He3 is only valuable IF (mighty big if) fusion power becomes workable. Fusion power has been a will-o-the-wisp for the last 40 years. Basing your returns on something that is still science fiction is just more science fiction. When the first commercial fusion plant goes on line, then I'll agree that lunar He3 is worth a detailed economic analysis.
The country that controls the moon and its resources is the country that will control the world financially,
That's like saying that the country that controls antartica and it's resources will control the world financially. Or the country that controls Greenland will control the world economically. Just ain't so. Moon, Mars All of 'em are just money pits for the taxpayers and gravy trains for the aerospace industry. Like ethanol as a motor fuel. Less comes out than goes in, but some favored industries get a big chunk of taxpayer change along the way.
Take a good look at your local plantation home, then consider how you would like to be working the fields while Hillary Xlinton and Kofi Anan make out on the Veranda.
I wasn't upset about it. I simply replied in kind, and yes it is liberal to want to take other people's money to do something that you think is a good idea, but they don't. Two cornerstones of modern liberalism are wealth re-distribution and gun control.
So you're equating space exploration to defense? Where and who draws the line between wild ass spending and necessary military R&D?
Absolutely.
Where and who draws the line between wild ass spending and necessary military R&D?
Somewhere between zero-g alloy research, moon based earth observation posts, antimatter-matter annihilation based propulsion and weapons...and the F111. The F111 being wild ass spending.
As far as who draws the line? That's why we've got Rumsfeld. The Pentagon brass is still squealing like Ned Beatey over the Crusader.
Well here we differ. $820,000,000 for pictures of rocks and dust fall into the category of wild ass spending to me.
You can't see the forest, just the tree. Everything requires steps, Occupied. If we are going to lead the way, it requires mistakes as well.
As far as my equating moon-control to antartic control, that's really not accurate. The amount of resources on the moon compared to that of antartica is really staggering.
Bigger lump of rock, but millions of times more expensive to get to. Besides, What do you consider a resource? A lump of rock with 10-11 mass fraction of He3? (for which there is no significant market yet) If you consider lunar rock to be valuable, ordinary rocks here should be even more valuable because they lack the transportation cost problem.
This just isn't true, when it comes to certain exotic elements. They just aren't here in any usable quantity. The only He3 we have here is a by-product of our nukes. You've got to look ahead! We control it, or someone else does. There is no other way.
Money not spent to determine life, only possibility of water. As far as life outside our planet, this is extremely probable, but probably not in our solar system. Highest likelihood (and this is remote) would be chemosynthetic bacteria on Jupiter's moon Europa. Planetary systems are apparently fairly common. With trillions of galaxies and billions of stars in each, then the probability of life on one or more of them becomes almost unity.
Now intelligent life? Another question altogether. I'm not sure we have intellight life here when almost half of the country voted for Algore
And stop saying Mars. I've spent most of my arguments discussing the Moon. Unlike the Lousiana Purchase, the only cost in getting those resources is shipping/construction. We don't have to buy any land.
OK, the moon then. Rather than paying for the land, we'll pay hundreds of billions for getting a few people there. I don't consider space to be worthless, but rather that there isn't any material substance that I can think of that is worth the cost of getting it and returning with it. If the costs dropped to where it was about the same per lb mile as on earth, then it still would be prohibitively expensive because of the distance involved.
Article IV section 3 of the constituiton would imply that the Louisana purchase was constitutional, but I'm no expert on constitutional law, so you may be right, but this would not apply to Mars, because it is already under international treaty.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.