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Reading this and a lot of other similar pieces makes you wish you were in a position to do something. Really though America's the only nation that could really

by robryan 17y ago

Reading this and a lot of other similar pieces makes you wish you were in a position to do something. Really though America's the only nation that could really pull off any real space progress at the moment and even that would be questionable with the current state of the enconamy. Really though with a trillion dollar bailout, imagine the jobs that could be created and the uniting of the people with something like another space race but to mars.

smhinsey 17y ago
Historically the way out of these sorts of downward trends has been war of some sort. It would be interesting to see if a "science" war such as a renewed space race without the militaristic/jingoistic overtones of the moon race would serve the same purpose. I think I read too much utopic sci-fi, though.
- eru 17y ago
  Moore's second law states that `fabs' to produce chips are increasing exponentially at about the same rate as chips get better. If this law holds in the future, the building of fabs will force GDP growth on a race of its own. (However even if world GDP would stagnate, the cost of a producing a single fab would overtake GDP no sooner than 2040 or so. (I should dig out my calculation for that..))
- dantheman 17y ago
  War in no way creates wealth, it is an act of destruction and while it may employ people and kill off lots of people, everyone's standard of living is lower and they lose wealth. Instead of producing goods to improve the lives of those around them they waste time, effort, and material on tools of destruction.
  - smhinsey 17y ago
    I am certainly not saying that with approval, but I think it is undeniable that war has served, intentionally or otherwise, throughout history as a way of getting out from under economic crises of various forms. We can see examples of this in many of the British Empire's colonial conflicts. Without the growth sparked by WW2, it's hard to imagine the American economic boom of the post war period. Obviously this doesn't mean everyone benefited from it or that it was good, hence my musing about the benefit of a "science" war, although perhaps I should have been more clear that I am using the term as analogy only. I mean it as an intense period of competition, which surely you can agree can be beneficial.
    - dantheman 17y ago
      This is the standard broken window fallacy (http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html#broken_window http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html#broken_window). Just a hurricane destroying a city doesn't improve its economic well being even though there will be a boom in construction and other such industries -- at the end of the day everyone involved is poorer. If you want to talk about the post war boom, it could be explained by the complete destruction of europe and an industrial america able to sell to them. There can be big technology improvements during war due to individuals working night and day to save their lives, but in general the same thing can happen in peace time by people working night and day. It won't happen because they want to enjoy their lives.
      - smhinsey 17y ago
        It seems that a somewhat flippant comment has ended up with us talking around one another and me appearing pro-war in some weird way, which honestly couldn't be further from the truth. I'm not sure what is to be gained by continuing this discussion, so I will concede the point. I probably could've avoided this whole thing by quoting the word war instead of science. Mea culpa. All I was really trying to say is that I'd love to see a space race to Mars.
  - gaius 17y ago
    War in no way creates wealth I'm not sure that's actually true. How much wealth was created via the development of jet engines, radar, satellite communications, antibiotics, computers? The unprecedented economic growth of the latter half of the 20th century was driven by civilian applications of technologies developed for the purpose of fighting WW2.
    - eru 17y ago
      In the fifties Germany used industrial technology from the thirties to get back on her feet. Had the Reich used the twenties years in between for something other than destroying itself and the rest of Europe, it would have surely been richer and more advanced. "In the early twentieth century, the vision of a future society unbelievably rich, leisured, orderly and efficient -- a glittering antiseptic world of glass and steel and snow-white concrete -- was part of the consciousness of nearly every literate person. Science and technology were developing at a prodigious speed, and it seemed natural to assume that they would go on developing. This failed to happen, partly because of the impoverishment caused by a long series of wars and revolutions, [...]" (from "Chapter 3: War is Peace" of Emanuel Goldstein's `The Theory of Hierarchical Society' (from 1984)) Anyway, the greatest life-altering technologic advances have been made during the long and relatively peaceful period of the 19th century. And no, it was not all an application of inventions from the Napoleonic wars.
kiba 17y ago
Jobs are not created, only reallocated. Since we live in a world of scarcity, there would alway be work to do. The only reason why people don't have jobs is that resource are not reallocated yet, or worse, something is preventing the reallocation of resource.
- BrentRitterbeck 17y ago
  Let's not forget minimum wage. Though there are arguments for it, minimum wage creates a floor on the price of labor above the equilibrium price, which creates a surplus of labor, and that surplus is part of what goes into our unemployment numbers.
  - eru 17y ago
    Mostly. But there are some other factors, too. Wages tended to be sticky on the way down. There's an interesting book full of interviews on the subject: ``Why Wages Don't Fall During a Recession'' by Truman F. Bewley. It used to be that managers rather fired a some employees instead of letting them work for less money. See http://cowles.econ.yale.edu/news/bewley/tfb_00-02_wages.htm http://cowles.econ.yale.edu/news/bewley/tfb_00-02_wages.htm for a copy of the book's review in the Economist. Lately we have seen wages fall, so that this rigidity might be on the way out.
- tom_rath 17y ago
  "Jobs are not created"?!? What nonsense! There were ~1.7 Billion people on the planet in 1900. Are there only ~1.7 Billion jobs to go around for the ~6-7 Billion people on the planet today? Wealth is created from industry, which creates jobs to build that wealth. We do not live in a world of scarcity -- scarcity is imposed by nonsense such as a command economy's forced reallocation of resources.
  - Rexxar 17y ago
    > "Jobs are not created"?!? What nonsense! Try to understand what Kiba means, even if it is a big simplification. He probably agree with the rest of what you say.
chaosprophet 17y ago
> Really though America's the only nation that could really pull off any real space progress at the moment Well in my opinion, given the current state of the american economy in particular and the western economy in general, I'd think it's upto China and India to be the innovators in space for the next decade or so. After all both of them did do successful man and moon missions respectively, quite recently.
- lucifer 17y ago
  India? They certainly have the brain power required, but India is still figuring out how to feed its multitudes. IEEE Spectrum ran an issue devoted to the Mars mission recently. Very interesting read. Per my reading, the technical challenges are orders of magnitude more difficult on landing on the Moon. The problem does not appear to be one of mere political will (and subsequent funding). The barriers are principally technical in nature, and US and Russia (and potentially EU) are the most likely candidates to address these technical challenges. Special Issue: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/static/special-reports http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/static/special-reports Why Mars is hard: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/mars-is-hard http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/mars-is-... China: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/could-china-get-to-mars-first http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/could-ch... [edit: +links]
  - asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
    They certainly have the brain power required, but India is still figuring out how to feed its multitudes. America also has hungry people, look around the Appalachians. Having an underclass does not mean you can't go to the moon. Perhaps it should, but it never has and still doesn't.
    - lucifer 17y ago
      Perhaps (they are equivalent fractions) but I rarely meet American movers and shakers that worry about the American underclass. You should read my statement as a positive consideration of the priorities of the Indian elite.

by robryan 17y ago

smhinsey 17y ago

Historically the way out of these sorts of downward trends has been war of some sort. It would be interesting to see if a "science" war such as a renewed space race without the militaristic/jingoistic overtones of the moon race would serve the same purpose. I think I read too much utopic sci-fi, though.

eru 17y ago
Moore's second law states that `fabs' to produce chips are increasing exponentially at about the same rate as chips get better. If this law holds in the future, the building of fabs will force GDP growth on a race of its own. (However even if world GDP would stagnate, the cost of a producing a single fab would overtake GDP no sooner than 2040 or so. (I should dig out my calculation for that..))
dantheman 17y ago
War in no way creates wealth, it is an act of destruction and while it may employ people and kill off lots of people, everyone's standard of living is lower and they lose wealth. Instead of producing goods to improve the lives of those around them they waste time, effort, and material on tools of destruction.
- smhinsey 17y ago
  I am certainly not saying that with approval, but I think it is undeniable that war has served, intentionally or otherwise, throughout history as a way of getting out from under economic crises of various forms. We can see examples of this in many of the British Empire's colonial conflicts. Without the growth sparked by WW2, it's hard to imagine the American economic boom of the post war period. Obviously this doesn't mean everyone benefited from it or that it was good, hence my musing about the benefit of a "science" war, although perhaps I should have been more clear that I am using the term as analogy only. I mean it as an intense period of competition, which surely you can agree can be beneficial.
  - dantheman 17y ago
    This is the standard broken window fallacy (http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html#broken_window http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html#broken_window). Just a hurricane destroying a city doesn't improve its economic well being even though there will be a boom in construction and other such industries -- at the end of the day everyone involved is poorer. If you want to talk about the post war boom, it could be explained by the complete destruction of europe and an industrial america able to sell to them. There can be big technology improvements during war due to individuals working night and day to save their lives, but in general the same thing can happen in peace time by people working night and day. It won't happen because they want to enjoy their lives.
    - smhinsey 17y ago
      It seems that a somewhat flippant comment has ended up with us talking around one another and me appearing pro-war in some weird way, which honestly couldn't be further from the truth. I'm not sure what is to be gained by continuing this discussion, so I will concede the point. I probably could've avoided this whole thing by quoting the word war instead of science. Mea culpa. All I was really trying to say is that I'd love to see a space race to Mars.
- gaius 17y ago
  War in no way creates wealth I'm not sure that's actually true. How much wealth was created via the development of jet engines, radar, satellite communications, antibiotics, computers? The unprecedented economic growth of the latter half of the 20th century was driven by civilian applications of technologies developed for the purpose of fighting WW2.
  - eru 17y ago
    In the fifties Germany used industrial technology from the thirties to get back on her feet. Had the Reich used the twenties years in between for something other than destroying itself and the rest of Europe, it would have surely been richer and more advanced. "In the early twentieth century, the vision of a future society unbelievably rich, leisured, orderly and efficient -- a glittering antiseptic world of glass and steel and snow-white concrete -- was part of the consciousness of nearly every literate person. Science and technology were developing at a prodigious speed, and it seemed natural to assume that they would go on developing. This failed to happen, partly because of the impoverishment caused by a long series of wars and revolutions, [...]" (from "Chapter 3: War is Peace" of Emanuel Goldstein's `The Theory of Hierarchical Society' (from 1984)) Anyway, the greatest life-altering technologic advances have been made during the long and relatively peaceful period of the 19th century. And no, it was not all an application of inventions from the Napoleonic wars.

kiba 17y ago

Jobs are not created, only reallocated. Since we live in a world of scarcity, there would alway be work to do. The only reason why people don't have jobs is that resource are not reallocated yet, or worse, something is preventing the reallocation of resource.

BrentRitterbeck 17y ago
Let's not forget minimum wage. Though there are arguments for it, minimum wage creates a floor on the price of labor above the equilibrium price, which creates a surplus of labor, and that surplus is part of what goes into our unemployment numbers.
- eru 17y ago
  Mostly. But there are some other factors, too. Wages tended to be sticky on the way down. There's an interesting book full of interviews on the subject: ``Why Wages Don't Fall During a Recession'' by Truman F. Bewley. It used to be that managers rather fired a some employees instead of letting them work for less money. See http://cowles.econ.yale.edu/news/bewley/tfb_00-02_wages.htm http://cowles.econ.yale.edu/news/bewley/tfb_00-02_wages.htm for a copy of the book's review in the Economist. Lately we have seen wages fall, so that this rigidity might be on the way out.
tom_rath 17y ago
"Jobs are not created"?!? What nonsense! There were ~1.7 Billion people on the planet in 1900. Are there only ~1.7 Billion jobs to go around for the ~6-7 Billion people on the planet today? Wealth is created from industry, which creates jobs to build that wealth. We do not live in a world of scarcity -- scarcity is imposed by nonsense such as a command economy's forced reallocation of resources.
- Rexxar 17y ago
  > "Jobs are not created"?!? What nonsense! Try to understand what Kiba means, even if it is a big simplification. He probably agree with the rest of what you say.

chaosprophet 17y ago

> Really though America's the only nation that could really pull off any real space progress at the moment Well in my opinion, given the current state of the american economy in particular and the western economy in general, I'd think it's upto China and India to be the innovators in space for the next decade or so. After all both of them did do successful man and moon missions respectively, quite recently.

lucifer 17y ago
India? They certainly have the brain power required, but India is still figuring out how to feed its multitudes. IEEE Spectrum ran an issue devoted to the Mars mission recently. Very interesting read. Per my reading, the technical challenges are orders of magnitude more difficult on landing on the Moon. The problem does not appear to be one of mere political will (and subsequent funding). The barriers are principally technical in nature, and US and Russia (and potentially EU) are the most likely candidates to address these technical challenges. Special Issue: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/static/special-reports http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/static/special-reports Why Mars is hard: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/mars-is-hard http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/mars-is-... China: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/could-china-get-to-mars-first http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/could-ch... [edit: +links]
- asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
  They certainly have the brain power required, but India is still figuring out how to feed its multitudes. America also has hungry people, look around the Appalachians. Having an underclass does not mean you can't go to the moon. Perhaps it should, but it never has and still doesn't.
  - lucifer 17y ago
    Perhaps (they are equivalent fractions) but I rarely meet American movers and shakers that worry about the American underclass. You should read my statement as a positive consideration of the priorities of the Indian elite.