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You're making it far too simple. The military industrial complex causes us to spend more money on the military than we should. It's definitely possible to sup

by Charuru 16y ago

You're making it far too simple. The military industrial complex causes us to spend more money on the military than we should. It's definitely possible to support a military effort but at the same time not overspend on it. I'm not saying that we're spending too much on Iraq/Afghanistan, just disagreeing with the principle. On the other hand, not so sure about those fighter jets. :(

DanielBMarkham 16y ago
Hang on here, I'm not the one throwing up Afghanistan as compared to NASA. That would be the parent poster. I met those comments at the same level of abstraction as they were presented. EDIT: You guys read my comments and think I'm some kind of shill for the military-industrial complex. But that's not my point at all. What I'm trying to tell you is that comparing the high-level goals of national defense to the space program doesn't work. And if the high-level goals don't compare, it's not like you can pop down to some lower level and compare. You'll always get trumped at the higher level. This is a categorization and logic error -- nothing to do with politics. One B-2 bomber may be much less valuable to the nation than a new space system, but you can't compare bombers to rockets. Bombers always win. Charuru is heading in the right direction. Instead of picking a war -- arguably the one thing that has to be "on" or "off", pick the entire national defense system. Does the X dollars spent on national defense compare favorably against the Y dollars on NASA? That's the high-level question. If you argue at this level, and then somebody tries to pull you down lower "Yeah but it's not like we can just stop fighting in Afghanistan" then _you_ get to pull the trump card: "we're not talking about using lethal force in the national interest. We're talking about total expenditures and how they match up against the national interest."
- Vivtek 16y ago
  Well, sure, but I was comparing one project - the moon project - with another - the war in Afghanistan. For once, I didn't care one little bit about the morality of the project, all I wanted to do is to put the magnitudes of these projects into perspective. I mean, the ratio of this program's cost to the cost of the smaller war is nearly a factor of a hundred. The moon program is an accounting error in terms of the military budget for either war, and I was irked by the Times' mention of "$9 million a day", implying that this is an unGodly amount of money to be flowing down the drain, while not mentioning the far, far, far larger daily sums we toss away on other projects.
  - DanielBMarkham 16y ago
    I don't care about the morality either. I'm telling you that things that involve national defense trump everything else in the budget. Everything. You picked an awful example. All it does is lead to an argument about the use of force, which has nothing to do with NASA. Pick subsidizing fruit growers, or the rural electrification commission, or studies of prostitutes in Hong Kong -- there are a zillion projects that you can pick which will provide that same WTF moment you want. Hell, just point out the freaking size of the federal budget in general and how it compares with NASA's budget. But the project you picked leads us off into another direction entirely. Another commenter made a great point -- the closer NASA was to being another arm of DoD, the more funding and budget goodies it got. Perhaps if we could find some reason to fear an attack from outer space, NASA would kick into high gear again (and I'm only being slightly facetious) With all the downvoting I'm getting, perhaps I am mistaken. Perhaps most folks feel like the use of deadly force is more or less the same as any other expenditure: bomb an insurgent, watch some young kid die in an IED detonation, build a bridge, fund some research, build a space station, buy buses for a school system. I am not one of those people. And while I have strong moral feelings about this, it's not a question of morality. As a practical matter, the use of deadly force by the state should only be done in times of emergency, and in those cases funding for that use of force trumps everything else. Now we can argue whether or not Afghanistan holds up to that criteria, but that's a war discussion. You're dragging in another topic when there are plenty of examples of other funding that don't have the unique qualities of Afghanistan. Hell, entitlement spending alone counts for about 60% of current federal spending. http://reason.com/blog/2010/01/25/news-flash-entitlement-spendin http://reason.com/blog/2010/01/25/news-flash-entitlement-spe...
    - Vivtek 16y ago
      I really don't want to get into a back-and-forth here, because clearly we both consider each other idiots, but your belief that national defense trumps everything (and the fact that it's shared by all too many people) is why we're in this situation in the first place. Does national defense trump food? Does national defense trump disaster preparedness or emergency response? Does it trump basic research? (Consider that last answer carefully.) Cost-benefit ratios apply to everything, even including national defense. And it all has to be managed together. The idea that we have to put it all on the line every time some guy in a cave sneezes is the panic mode that let us spend off-budget for years on national defense, and it's the reason why entitlement spending doesn't actually account for 60% of federal dollars. So this is the crux. National defense spending is considered holy, and yet it's an immense drain on our national resources that, if it were examined in any honest way, would be cut so fast your scissor fingers would be blistered. I could say the same for lots of things, but national defense is such a sacred cow you just can't say any other program comes even close in terms of the way it short-circuits discussion at every juncture. You're 100% right in your plan to refund NASA, though. If we could just get Fox News to believe in alien terrorists, we'd be on Mars next week.

by Charuru 16y ago

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

Hang on here, I'm not the one throwing up Afghanistan as compared to NASA. That would be the parent poster. I met those comments at the same level of abstraction as they were presented. EDIT: You guys read my comments and think I'm some kind of shill for the military-industrial complex. But that's not my point at all. What I'm trying to tell you is that comparing the high-level goals of national defense to the space program doesn't work. And if the high-level goals don't compare, it's not like you can pop down to some lower level and compare. You'll always get trumped at the higher level. This is a categorization and logic error -- nothing to do with politics. One B-2 bomber may be much less valuable to the nation than a new space system, but you can't compare bombers to rockets. Bombers always win. Charuru is heading in the right direction. Instead of picking a war -- arguably the one thing that has to be "on" or "off", pick the entire national defense system. Does the X dollars spent on national defense compare favorably against the Y dollars on NASA? That's the high-level question. If you argue at this level, and then somebody tries to pull you down lower "Yeah but it's not like we can just stop fighting in Afghanistan" then _you_ get to pull the trump card: "we're not talking about using lethal force in the national interest. We're talking about total expenditures and how they match up against the national interest."

Vivtek 16y ago
Well, sure, but I was comparing one project - the moon project - with another - the war in Afghanistan. For once, I didn't care one little bit about the morality of the project, all I wanted to do is to put the magnitudes of these projects into perspective. I mean, the ratio of this program's cost to the cost of the smaller war is nearly a factor of a hundred. The moon program is an accounting error in terms of the military budget for either war, and I was irked by the Times' mention of "$9 million a day", implying that this is an unGodly amount of money to be flowing down the drain, while not mentioning the far, far, far larger daily sums we toss away on other projects.
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  I don't care about the morality either. I'm telling you that things that involve national defense trump everything else in the budget. Everything. You picked an awful example. All it does is lead to an argument about the use of force, which has nothing to do with NASA. Pick subsidizing fruit growers, or the rural electrification commission, or studies of prostitutes in Hong Kong -- there are a zillion projects that you can pick which will provide that same WTF moment you want. Hell, just point out the freaking size of the federal budget in general and how it compares with NASA's budget. But the project you picked leads us off into another direction entirely. Another commenter made a great point -- the closer NASA was to being another arm of DoD, the more funding and budget goodies it got. Perhaps if we could find some reason to fear an attack from outer space, NASA would kick into high gear again (and I'm only being slightly facetious) With all the downvoting I'm getting, perhaps I am mistaken. Perhaps most folks feel like the use of deadly force is more or less the same as any other expenditure: bomb an insurgent, watch some young kid die in an IED detonation, build a bridge, fund some research, build a space station, buy buses for a school system. I am not one of those people. And while I have strong moral feelings about this, it's not a question of morality. As a practical matter, the use of deadly force by the state should only be done in times of emergency, and in those cases funding for that use of force trumps everything else. Now we can argue whether or not Afghanistan holds up to that criteria, but that's a war discussion. You're dragging in another topic when there are plenty of examples of other funding that don't have the unique qualities of Afghanistan. Hell, entitlement spending alone counts for about 60% of current federal spending. http://reason.com/blog/2010/01/25/news-flash-entitlement-spendin http://reason.com/blog/2010/01/25/news-flash-entitlement-spe...
  - Vivtek 16y ago
    I really don't want to get into a back-and-forth here, because clearly we both consider each other idiots, but your belief that national defense trumps everything (and the fact that it's shared by all too many people) is why we're in this situation in the first place. Does national defense trump food? Does national defense trump disaster preparedness or emergency response? Does it trump basic research? (Consider that last answer carefully.) Cost-benefit ratios apply to everything, even including national defense. And it all has to be managed together. The idea that we have to put it all on the line every time some guy in a cave sneezes is the panic mode that let us spend off-budget for years on national defense, and it's the reason why entitlement spending doesn't actually account for 60% of federal dollars. So this is the crux. National defense spending is considered holy, and yet it's an immense drain on our national resources that, if it were examined in any honest way, would be cut so fast your scissor fingers would be blistered. I could say the same for lots of things, but national defense is such a sacred cow you just can't say any other program comes even close in terms of the way it short-circuits discussion at every juncture. You're 100% right in your plan to refund NASA, though. If we could just get Fox News to believe in alien terrorists, we'd be on Mars next week.