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Thread: Democrats and Republicans Find Common Ground

  1. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by CactusCurt View Post
    Some people think poetry is a self indulgent waste of time.

    I’m with Dave, every cent was spent here. And your trickle down economics would tell you that the little helicopter paid for those roads and schools.
    If poetry is a waste of time, it is only my own time I am wasting.

    I agree that the money spent can now be taxed to build a road. But if the money had gone directly towards building a road, I'd now have a road. As it is, I'll only see about 30% of that money coming back in taxes.

    If I wanted to build a road, it would have been a LOT cheaper and faster to do so directly than first building a helicopter on another planet.

  2. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dave Grubb View Post
    I don't have an answer to your question Kevin---mostly due to my own ignorance of the details of this particular endeavor. However, without a doubt there is or will be benefit here on earth. It is nigh onto impossible to do any scientific research that does not yield some benefit to mankind. Anything that expands the envelope of our understanding, ultimately returns benefit to us.

    If you care, begin here to see just a few of the results of space exploration.
    No one doubts that we all eventually benefit from any scientific exploration. Where would humanity be without Tang?

    But there is an opportunity cost. Money spent going to the moon was money not spent alleviating suffering right here. While we were congratulating ourselves for landing on the moon, we were ignoring a civil war in Nigeria, where 2 million people, over 75% of them small children, died of starvation. But we got a bunch of cool rocks!

    That's my point. While we are busy gallivanting in space, we are ignoring problems of human beings right here, right now, and I value them a LOT more highly than something, maybe, coming out of that mission to do something really neato cool on another planet.

  3. #18
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    A correction and a thought experiment.

    Curt, I've never described trickle down economics. I've discussed the multiplier effect, which is a different concept. Trickle down economics involves the multiplier but is describing a different idea.

    Thought experiment:

    We went to the moon because Kennedy was in a competition with the Russians, not for any scientific advancement as such. It was purely a vanity project. So what would have happened if the Russians had never sent up Sputnik?

    How much good could that money spent on space exploration done had it been spent directly to help human beings?

    We just don't value human beings as much as we do vanity projects such as space exploration. Put the money spent getting to Mars on curing cancer and I'll change that assessment.

  4. #19
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    I suggest you are taking a very narrow view of what you consider "helping" to cure the world's social and economic troubles. Yes---we could try to feed the hungry---but experience tells us that is a rat infested bottomless pit. The very origin of their hunger ultimately distributes (or more correctly disposes of) that relief.

    In keeping with the world hunger issue---I can (and I suspect you can as well) connect yield gains in modern agriculture directly to outgrowths of the space program. One of the most obvious, is the use of GPS technology to selectively apply fertilizer and seed density based on previous yield maps.

    We could go on all day with this debate, if time permitted, but I have other demands. I will leave you with the thought that world hunger has many causes and as many cures---handing a man a fish---or $10 is not always the most beneficial or long lasting.


    As a side note, I have read dissertations on the use and misuse of research funding in many areas of medicine, including cancer research. My reading indicates that effective oversight and coordinated management could yield better results than more money.
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” ---Sir Winston Churchill
    "Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all." ---John W. Gardner
    “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” ---C. S. Lewis

  5. #20
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    Yield gains associated with the space program are FAR outweighed by the Green Revolution in cereal grains developed by scientists who has nothing to do with the space program and which fed billions.

    Viewing the feeding of the hungry as a futile effort is the point of view of someone who is not starving or holding the body of a dead child. 1.5 million dead Biafran children have a much different viewpoint.

    We make choices and our choices show what we value. We are comfortable enough to view starvation and poverty and disease and violence with philosophical detachment and pursue vanity projects with other countries because we value prestige more than people who are not Americans.

    Both sides of my family left their world because staying meant starving. Maybe it is because I grew up with the original immigrants on my mother's side that the debate is less philosophical for me. Well fed as a I am, in all honesty.

  6. #21
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    Since I mentioned it, the Green Revolution was responsible for feeding vast populations. India was on the brink of starvation in 1961. It cost over $500 per hectare to produce rice. Green Revolution agronomists developed a new kind of rice and thirty years later, India is a huge exporter of rice and production costs are under $200 a hectare. This was repeated in Mexico, Brazil, the Philippines, etc. It was agronomy, not space exploration, that saved these people.

    The issue in Biafra was different. The Nigerian government had blockaded the ports and was preventing aid from reaching those who were starving. It was a government policy of pacification through starvation. We could have forced the Nigerians to lift the blockade and saved those children but we valued oil more than people. We left them to die when we could have, with a few well-chosen threats, ended the problem. But we were making other choices. And showing what we truly valued.
    Last edited by Kevin; 04-11-2021 at 12:31 PM.

  7. #22
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    I believe it is the nature of humans to explore the unknown. Whether space or literature.

    Yes, it’s an expensive adventure. I’m ok with that.
    "Back after 5 years. I thought you had died.

    don"


    Splitting my time between the montane and the mesas

    The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
    But I have promises to keep,
    And miles to go before I sleep,
    And miles to go before I sleep.

  8. #23
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    Kevin, sometimes this is how I feel when I talk to you. Kidding of course.
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    "Back after 5 years. I thought you had died.

    don"


    Splitting my time between the montane and the mesas

    The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
    But I have promises to keep,
    And miles to go before I sleep,
    And miles to go before I sleep.

  9. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kevin View Post
    If poetry is a waste of time, it is only my own time I am wasting.

    I agree that the money spent can now be taxed to build a road. But if the money had gone directly towards building a road, I'd now have a road. As it is, I'll only see about 30% of that money coming back in taxes.

    If I wanted to build a road, it would have been a LOT cheaper and faster to do so directly than first building a helicopter on another planet.
    I’m sitting here wondering how much money the taxpayers have spent on poetry. You suppose it’s reached the billions yet, or still stuck in the 100’s of millions?
    "Back after 5 years. I thought you had died.

    don"


    Splitting my time between the montane and the mesas

    The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
    But I have promises to keep,
    And miles to go before I sleep,
    And miles to go before I sleep.

  10. #25
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    No clue, but since I'm not defending spending taxpayer money on poetry...

  11. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by CactusCurt View Post
    Kevin, sometimes this is how I feel when I talk to you. Kidding of course.
    Reminds me of my college roommate, who spent all evening buying drinks and chatting up a young lady, only to be told later that the woman in question was gay and he was wasting his time. Two people on totally different wave lengths, hoping to get very different things from the encounter.

  12. #27
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    I wish they would find some common ground and stop the burning of public buildings in the North West.
    OPINION....a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.

  13. #28
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    Patio Umbrellas - I like it.

    Hunter
    I don't care if it hurts. I want to have control. I want a perfect body. I want a perfect soul. - Creep by Radiohead

  14. #29
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    you design a helicopter that can fly in very thin air of Mars in adverse conditions. I can see that technology getting incorporated into High altitude rescue helicopters on the civilian side and many applications on the military side
    "The only thing that we learn from torture is the depths of our own moral depravity"

  15. #30
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    Wouldn't it be more efficient to just solve the problem of high altitude rescue without also spending millions to go to Mars along the way?

    My objection from an efficiency standpoint is not that there are not spinoff applications. It is that by including many millions in the effort to go to Mars, those spinoffs cost us a helluva lot more than if we had looked for them directly, without also spending money on going to Mars.

    But my main objection is from the standpoint of the goal itself. Ok, now you've spent buckets of money and in payoff, you get a high altitude helicopter that can rescue what, 100 people a year that might have otherwise died? And that technology gets commercialized say, in ten years?

    Compare that to the number of people that could have been fed right now by that money. Or if you want to keep the space analogy going, on a cancer moon shot right here.

    Trying to justify going to Mars by the spinoff technology just won't work. It doesn't help nearly enough people and it is a supremely wasteful way to develop the technology that gets spun off.

    It is rationalizing a vanity national vanity project.

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