The Briefing Room
General Category => Science, Technology and Knowledge => Topic started by: rangerrebew on November 18, 2018, 06:19:17 pm
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After 50 Years Of Failed Predictions, Science Is In Crisis
Date: 10/11/18
Maurice Newman, The Australian
Whom or what to believe? After 50 years of failed predictions, people are reasoning that something other than science is behind this alarmism.
Last September the usual media suspects got wind of yet another Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. To those familiar, it was obvious from the “fire and brimstone†headlines. No matter how inconsequential, no heatwave, drought, hurricane or flood was missed. This is the customary softening-up period, intended to ensure that when a scary IPCC report lands, politicians will be pushed into taking even more drastic action on “climate changeâ€.
And so it came to pass. Last month, the world’s “leading climate scientists†confirmed we had only 12 years left to keep global warming to a maximum of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
https://www.thegwpf.com/after-50-years-of-failed-predictions-science-is-in-crisis/ (https://www.thegwpf.com/after-50-years-of-failed-predictions-science-is-in-crisis/)
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"Science" isn't in crisis, but "Climate Science" is. It's not Science, it's data-(mal)driven Propaganda.
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This mentality is frightening. Now that the charlatans of the climate catastrophe have been exposed, will the push to be to ignore the real science being done for the last decades? Now that genuine scientific results can be summarily ignored with the bogus crap that has led to bad legislation, poor policy, and needless panic and expense, virtually anyone can assert virtually anything and ignore real, verifiable, facts.
The purveyors of panic have done a great disservice to humanity, quite arguably for personal gain. Had the carbon credit exchanges been made necessary by law, a few folks stood to possibly make trillions of dollars, among them Maurice Strong, George Soros, and Al Gore.
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This mentality is frightening. Now that the charlatans of the climate catastrophe have been exposed, will the push to be to ignore the real science being done for the last decades? Now that genuine scientific results can be summarily ignored with the bogus crap that has led to bad legislation, poor policy, and needless panic and expense, virtually anyone can assert virtually anything and ignore real, verifiable, facts.
The purveyors of panic have done a great disservice to humanity, quite arguably for personal gain. Had the carbon credit exchanges been made necessary by law, a few folks stood to possibly make trillions of dollars, among them Maurice Strong, George Soros, and Al Gore.
I would submit, @Smokin Joe , that just this sort of thing has been happening all the way along, with proof surfacing only in the most egregious cases (Piltdown Man comes to mind).
Even in the case of real science, true science is not often attained, as even real science is steered by its rudder - The grants that fund it. That science is in large part a political animal cannot be denied... providing the proofs the political class requires, for a fee.
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The Global Warming cult is relentless.
First they said the polar caps were going to melt and NYC and all coastal cities on Earth would be flooded. That turned out to be nonsense. There are more polar bears today than ever before. The ice caps are growing.
Then, they turned to natural disasters. Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, etc. were going to destroy America. There were actually less of all of these lately than in a normal year.
Now apparently, they are shifting to Global Cooling. Keep in mind that according to their pretzel science, global warming is causing global cooling. So they were not wrong...see? It's easy to understand once you get the right indoctrination.
But yes. In the end, all of this dog and pony circus is about making money off of gullible easily frightened people. "The world is going to end, but I can save it!" is a scam older than the Bible. It's amazing that people still fall for it today.
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Science isn't in crisis. People falsifying data and pushing it off as 'science' is what is in crisis here.
THIS is science:
(https://myweb.rollins.edu/jsiry/vostok.gif)
Over 400,000 years of scientific data taken from the Vostok site in Antarctica. It shows a cyclical warming and cooling that repeats every 90-120,000 years. It also shows a close relationship between temperatures (measured by O18 isotope) and CO2 levels. Except that the data indicates that rises in temperature precede rises in CO2 levels, and declines in temperature precede declines in CO2 level.
That's science. This is the data itself, published by the UN. It isn't some failed former Vice President with zero science background narrating a movie. It isn't some ivory tower academic tampering with the data in order to reach his political ends. It's science. Science telling us that all this 'the-earth-is-going-to-drown' hysteria is all a bunch of hogwash.
So don't denigrate science here. Denigrate these 21st century alchemists who have abandoned science for the sake of their political agenda.
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Science isn't in crisis. People falsifying data and pushing it off as 'science' is what is in crisis here.
THIS is science:
(https://myweb.rollins.edu/jsiry/vostok.gif)
Over 400,000 years of scientific data taken from the Vostok site in Antarctica. It shows a cyclical warming and cooling that repeats every 90-120,000 years. It also shows a close relationship between temperatures (measured by O18 isotope) and CO2 levels. Except that the data indicates that rises in temperature precede rises in CO2 levels, and declines in temperature precede declines in CO2 level.
That's science. This is the data itself, published by the UN. It isn't some failed former Vice President with zero science background narrating a movie. It isn't some ivory tower academic tampering with the data in order to reach his political ends. It's science. Science telling us that all this 'the-earth-is-going-to-drown' hysteria is all a bunch of hogwash.
So don't denigrate science here. Denigrate these 21st century alchemists who have abandoned science for the sake of their political agenda.
Who can we trust to do science if we can't trust NASA and all of the most prominent scientific institutions on Earth?
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Who can we trust to do science if we can't trust NASA and all of the most prominent scientific institutions on Earth?
Is that a trick question? :smokin:
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Is that a trick question? :smokin:
NASA and all of the most prominent scientific institutions all over the world accept that man made climate change is real or likely to be real. If they're all in on a conspiracy to deceive the public then who can we trust?
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NASA and all of the most prominent scientific institutions all over the world accept that man made climate change is real or likely to be real. If they're all in on a conspiracy to deceive the public then who can we trust?
I can't say for sure, but I do know that governments and NGOs would be the last places I'd look for the truth. I spent >25 years in private sector R&D, and I'd believe that wayyy before I believed a Government Study. Corporations don't fudge data because that would lead to inferior product and subsequent loss of market share. Making up data (or misinterpreting good data) is the bread and butter of government studies.
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Corporations don't fudge data because that would lead to inferior product
Corporations sometimes have a monetary incentive to fudge data. I'm not saying the government doesn't do it too, but corporations certainly aren't innocent I think.
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Corporations sometimes have a monetary incentive to fudge data. I'm not saying the government doesn't do it too, but corporations certainly aren't innocent I think.
Depends on what is under study. If I want to know how many Angstroms of Gate thickness is ideal in a Field Effect Transistor, and how many Nanometers long it should be, I can be pretty confident of private sector data because fudging will lead to poor device performance and loss of market share to competitors who modeled those factors correctly.
When it's public policy/science being examined, then the researchers have every incentive to fudge, create and lie through their teeth about the data. None of the Scientists I worked with would ever dirty their hands with such.
Who does public policy research? Governments, NGOs and Lobbyists, a wretched hive of villainy and scum if I ever saw one.
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"Whom or what to believe? After 50 years of failed predictions, people are reasoning that something other than science is behind this alarmism."
Yes, it was "something other than".
It was a leftist political agenda trying to hitch science to the wagon, as well.
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"Science" isn't in crisis, but "Climate Science" is. It's not Science, it's data-(mal)driven Propaganda.
And then there's string theory. No testable predictions, everything that matters as to why physics is as observed fobbed off on "the vacuum state of the early universe".
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And then there's string theory. No testable predictions, everything that matters as to why physics is as observed fobbed off on "the vacuum state of the early universe".
Personally I think String Theory is BS. An attempt to explain things using limited present data. Like Keplar's model of the Solar System. You can only go so far if your best instrument is an Astrolabe.
We need a new model.
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Personally I think String Theory is BS. An attempt to explain things using limited present data. Like Keplar's model of the Solar System. You can only go so far if your best instrument is an Astrolabe.
We need a new model.
The problem with that is that science has long been beyond technical science - Far beyond what is observable and testable... It ventures with blind eyes, into the metaphysical.
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The problem with that is that science has long been beyond technical science - Far beyond what is observable and testable... It ventures with blind eyes, into the metaphysical.
Which is why I brought up the Keplar model. It was the best model we had until Galileo. This...this is how science works. It's not pretty.
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Corporations sometimes have a monetary incentive to fudge data. I'm not saying the government doesn't do it too, but corporations certainly aren't innocent I think.
Yes, and when a private corporation does it and gets caught, it loses reputation and money, and those who engaged in the fraud often lose their positions.
Not so with government fraud. The more blatant the government fraud, the more it becomes an article of faith for those who treat government as a religion unto itself. Witness the fraud of anthropogenic climate change.
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Yes, and when a private corporation does it and gets caught, it loses reputation and money, and those who engaged in the fraud often lose their positions.
Not so with government fraud. The more blatant the government fraud, the more it becomes an article of faith for those who treat government as a religion unto itself. Witness the fraud of anthropogenic climate change.
Hypothetically speaking, if AGW was real do you think there'd be any corporations out there with a monetary incentive to keep the public from flipping out about it?
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Who can we trust to do science if we can't trust NASA and all of the most prominent scientific institutions on Earth?
NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. They are experts on airplanes, rockets and satellites. They
are not expert at predicting the weather 50 years from today.
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"Science" isn't in crisis, but "Climate Science" is. It's not Science, it's data-(mal)driven Propaganda.
B I N G O ! ! !
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Hypothetically speaking, if AGW was real do you think there'd be any corporations out there with a monetary incentive to keep the public from flipping out about it?
Conversely, if it is not real, what would keep the Government from saying it is not?
It is all about the control over its populace.
It was never about the climate, but about controlling the citizens by saying so, modifying their behaviors.
What they grow, what they eat, what they drive, where they live, etc.
Subsidizes what they want and penalize what they don't.
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Conversely, if it is not real, what would keep the Government from saying it is not?
It is all about the control over its populace.
It was never about the climate, but about controlling the citizens by saying so, modifying their behaviors.
What they grow, what they eat, what they drive, where they live, etc.
Subsidizes what they want and penalize what they don't.
That and continuing big government funding for so called scientist to continue to play with their toys along with protecting certain Global conglomerates patents.
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That and continuing big government funding for so called scientist to continue to play with their toys along with protecting certain Global conglomerates patents.
Absolutely.
How many government programs, grants, taxes, etc, have ever been stopped, once they've been introduce.
There is a fine living to be made off of climate change.
Just ask Algore.
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Hypothetically speaking, if AGW was real do you think there'd be any corporations out there with a monetary incentive to keep the public from flipping out about it?
Duh. Of course there would be some private businesses out there that, for whatever reason, would want to wish it all away. And they would ultimately all go under. In other words, they would eventually be “disciplined†by the market for taking an unproductive position. Unless government were to prop them up, although even then, they would eventually go under; the explosion when they did would simply be bigger and more productive.
What was your point? I take it as being as obvious as gravity that some businesses take false positions because their owners/managers have concluded that their short-term interests outweigh the long-term consequences of being wrong.
Happens all the time. To see that, one need look no further than the American auto industry in the late 60s and early 70s, still pumping out 10 mpg behemoths and scoffing at the Japanese tin that was about to eat their collective lunch.
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Duh. Of course there would be some private businesses out there that, for whatever reason, would want to wish it all away. And they would ultimately all go under. In other words, they would eventually be “disciplined†by the market for taking an unproductive position. Unless government were to prop them up, although even then, they would eventually go under; the explosion when they did would simply be bigger and more productive.
What was your point? I take it as being as obvious as gravity that some businesses take false positions because their owners/managers have concluded that their short-term interests outweigh the long-term consequences of being wrong.
Happens all the time. To see that, one need look no further than the American auto industry in the late 60s and early 70s, still pumping out 10 mpg behemoths and scoffing at the Japanese tin that was about to eat their collective lunch.
I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that big oil and gas interests are pushing efforts to convince the public AGW isn't real even though it possibly is. I also don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that big government is lying out their ass for all of the reasons mentioned in this thread. I saw a debate between a climate scientist that believes AGW is real and some prominent skeptic, I forget his name. Basically the debate eventually came to "We can't say for certain that either of us is right or wrong."
So where do we go from there? I don't know. It really would suck if it's true and we don't take it seriously.
Pascal's Wager comes to mind.
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I guess my point was there is this ignorant misconception out there that only (or primarily) Governments and Universities are the drivers of R&D, and the fact is most R&D is in the private sector, done by people who don't fudge their data because there's no profit in it. I guess the "If we can't count on NASA who can we?" comment reminded me of that.
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So where do we go from there?
You can start by knocking off your insults of "Skeptics" by calling them "Deniers." You are putting climate skeptics into the same box as Holocaust Deniers.
Not pissing people off right off the bat is part of Winning Friends and Influencing People.
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You can start by knocking off your insults of "Skeptics" by calling them "Deniers." You are putting climate skeptics into the same box as Holocaust Deniers.
Not pissing people off right off the bat is part of Winning Friends and Influencing People.
Being a denier of something doesn't automatically make you wrong. It wasn't meant to be an insult. In no way was I trying to put them in the same box as Holocaust deniers. I'm a flat Earth denier. I didn't call the man stupid or wrong, and even admitted that he went toe to toe with a real climate scientist and came to a stalemate.
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I even edited my post. It was not meant to be aggressive.
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Pascal's Wager
There are only two kinds of people in this world. There are those who believe that there are only two kinds of people in the world, and there are those who don't.
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Who can we trust to do science if we can't trust NASA and all of the most prominent scientific institutions on Earth?
Trust the data. Trust the evidence. But sure as hell don't trust anyone who says that science is about 'consensus'.
Anyone who has the ability to think critically can examine the evidence, ask pertinent questions relative to that evidence (or lack thereof) and draw logical conclusions. And anyone who does not have that ability, who instead is easily swayed by non-rational persuasion and emotional tugs, is essentially a liberal.
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Trust the data. Trust the evidence. But sure as hell don't trust anyone who says that science is about 'consensus'.
Anyone who has the ability to think critically can examine the evidence, ask pertinent questions relative to that evidence (or lack thereof) and draw logical conclusions. And anyone who does not have that ability, who instead is easily swayed by non-rational persuasion and emotional tugs, is essentially a liberal.
I went to college for 6 years. During that time I learned that I know a whole lot less than I once thought. I lack the ability to expertly examine and interpret things outside of my field of expertise. I am not a climate scientist. To me blowing off their opinions would be similar to blowing off the opinions of my physician. They could be wrong, but they have a certain weight behind their words because they do know more about these things than anybody else.
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Being a denier of something doesn't automatically make you wrong. It wasn't meant to be an insult. In no way was I trying to put them in the same box as Holocaust deniers. I'm a flat Earth denier. I didn't call the man stupid or wrong, and even admitted that he went toe to toe with a real climate scientist and came to a stalemate.
Thanks for the edit. The term "Climate Deniers" was coined by the Watermelons as a way to paint skeptics as not just wrong, but evil. (A watermelon is green on the outside, red on the inside.)
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So on the one hand, you have someone telling you that scientists have reached a consensus and that the science is settled, and that half of Florida will be under water by 2015. And on the other hand, you have the actual data pulled from the Vostok site and published by the UN. Which of the two would the critical mind rely upon?
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published by the UN.
What do you think the UN's position on AGW is?
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What do you think the UN's position on AGW is?
I think the UNs position is the opposite of what that data indicates. Hence the irony of them publishing it since it directly contradicts their argument. Which is why one must examine the data instead of mindlessly taking their word for it.
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What do you think the UN's position on AGW is?
I think the UN's AGW position is agnostic, but they see it as a fabulous new tool to redistribute wealth from the US to everywhere else (after they fill their own coffers). US AGW enthusiasts see the same thing, and support it because they don't like the US and want to see her taken down a few pegs.
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I think the UN's AGW position is agnostic, but they see it as a fabulous new tool to redistribute wealth from the US to everywhere else (after they fill their own coffers). US AGW enthusiasts see the same thing, and support it because they don't like the US and want to see her taken down a few pegs.
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T H I S
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I can't say for sure, but I do know that governments and NGOs would be the last places I'd look for the truth. I spent >25 years in private sector R&D, and I'd believe that wayyy before I believed a Government Study. Corporations don't fudge data because that would lead to inferior product and subsequent loss of market share. Making up data (or misinterpreting good data) is the bread and butter of government studies.
Unfortunately, that is the crux of the crisis. The preponderance of "evidence" comes from government studies, funded by the flow of tax dollars or created "money", and hyped by a media which seek to toady up.
Real science doesn't necessarily get published, is often easily accused of being self serving in retrospect, and ever vilified when it comes into conflict with the results of the charlatans getting a grant. The academia or paywall (academia's access paid by their institution) makes it difficult or prohibitively expensive to conduct individual research, and legal restrictions on everything from materials to access to field areas and the opportunities to obtain data favor the university affiliated academics (often on government grant) and government agencies to the exclusion of less publicly funded research.
Even the kerfuffle over the Black Hills Institute obtaining rights to and excavating and prepping (which was in progress when the fossil was seized) the T-Rex skeleton known as "Sue" was rooted in academia and government vs. private enterprise. Regardless of the qualifications of those who had obtained the Rights to excavate, the Rights to the fossil, and who had done the work (preparations/preservation was in progress), the Government swooped in at the behest of the University academics, and stole the fossil, later selling it to the Field Museum for millions of dollars.
I have seen dozens of vertebrate fossils and archaeological sites just begging to be excavated. They lie where I saw them, what hasn't eroded away, because the last thing I need are the fines and career ending criminal charges which would come out of being discovered removing them from Federal Land.
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What do you think the UN's position on AGW is?
I think the UN will exploit whatever it can to loot the US and other industrialized nations. The majority of nations represented are less economically developed, and would vote for a slice of that pie.
If whatever findings can be used to justify anything which achieves the economic hobbling of this nation, they will be embraces to their useful extent.
For them it's all about 'sustainability'--namely theirs. If they gave a rat's ass about the environment, they'd clean up their cesspits at home first.
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I would submit, @Smokin Joe , that just this sort of thing has been happening all the way along, with proof surfacing only in the most egregious cases (Piltdown Man comes to mind).
Even in the case of real science, true science is not often attained, as even real science is steered by its rudder - The grants that fund it. That science is in large part a political animal cannot be denied... providing the proofs the political class requires, for a fee.
When science shifted gears from finding out where the evidence leads to proving a point, it failed. Unfortunately, only the most scrupulous and honest can step back from one of their own ideas and say "the evidence does not bear that out". Unlike Edison (We know another thing which will not work), many of those concepts and ideas are not immediately marketable if they do work.
To be sure, there are environments where having the right answer counts, where being able to admit something is not right counts, where being able to say the most truthful words in science "I don't know" should be and sometimes is followed with "Let's find out.", but those aren't so often in the halls of academia where individual reputation is often coupled to being believed to be right, whether a person is or not. Only the most preeminent in their fields can 'get away' with saying "We don't know the answer" without following on directly with "More research (funding) is needed". Of course, more research is always needed--for every answer we get, there seem to be more questions because we know a little more to ask about.
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When science shifted gears from finding out where the evidence leads to proving a point, it failed. Unfortunately, only the most scrupulous and honest can step back from one of their own ideas and say "the evidence does not bear that out". Unlike Edison (We know another thing which will not work), many of those concepts and ideas are not immediately marketable if they do work.
To be sure, there are environments where having the right answer counts, where being able to admit something is not right counts, where being able to say the most truthful words in science "I don't know" should be and sometimes is followed with "Let's find out.", but those aren't so often in the halls of academia where individual reputation is often coupled to being believed to be right, whether a person is or not. Only the most preeminent in their fields can 'get away' with saying "We don't know the answer" without following on directly with "More research (funding) is needed". Of course, more research is always needed--for every answer we get, there seem to be more questions because we know a little more to ask about.
Well said @Smokin Joe! And undeniably true!
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I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that big oil and gas interests are pushing efforts to convince the public AGW isn't real even though it possibly is. I also don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that big government is lying out their ass for all of the reasons mentioned in this thread. I saw a debate between a climate scientist that believes AGW is real and some prominent skeptic, I forget his name. Basically the debate eventually came to "We can't say for certain that either of us is right or wrong."
So where do we go from there? I don't know. It really would suck if it's true and we don't take it seriously.
Pascal's Wager comes to mind.
Since Exxon has already been sued for securities fraud on the basis that they’ve sort-peddled AGW, whereas Thomas Mann and the other conspirators at East Anglia who cooked the temperature data to create false evidence of a temperature increase have not even been publicly censured, let alone prosecuted for fraud, since the predictions of the AGW adherents have consistently failed, and since the climate models all have to be manually pushed beyond the point of reasonable assumptions to generate AGW based on human emissions, the possibility you speak of is very remote, whereas the possibility of outright fraud by the adherents of AGW is demonstrably true.
Furthermore, based on temperature data across eons of time, the climate should be warming based solely on the principle of regression to the mean, since the Earth is still colder than the mean when measured over eons.
The missing link - and the whole ball of wax - is the fact that there is nothing with any great certainty that ties global warming, or other climate changes, primarily to human activity.
In other words, the fly in the ointment isn’t the ‘GW’, it’s the ‘A’.
So, you can hypothesize all you want, but reality doesn’t seem to be in agreement with your hypothesis.
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So on the one hand, you have someone telling you that scientists have reached a consensus and that the science is settled, and that half of Florida will be under water by 2015. And on the other hand, you have the actual data pulled from the Vostok site and published by the UN. Which of the two would the critical mind rely upon?
Well, with rare exception, anyone who tells you "The science is settled." likely doesn't know much about science. Every answer raises new questions, or, as Einstein put it, "As the diameter of a circle of light grows, so does the circumference of the darkness around it."
Since we are constantly learning more, science is never settled.
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Pascal's Wager
There are only two kinds of people in this world. There are those who believe that there are only two kinds of people in the world, and there are those who don't.
There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Well done, sir.
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There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
The point is that the consequences are worse if you're wrong. I know a lot of you may not think so, but solar and other green technology will continue to improve until it someday equals or outpaces fossil fuel in efficiency. If we can put people on the moon we can solve solar storage issues and a handful of other problems. Go look up solar progress and you will see that its growth is extremely impressive. I don't think that's going to stop. The energy we get from fossil fuel originally came from the sun. Does anybody really think it's not possible to more efficiently get energy from direct sunlight? The green revolution will happen either way. It's just a question of time.
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The point is that the consequences are worse if you're wrong. I know a lot of you may not think so, but solar and other green technology will continue to improve until it someday equals or outpaces fossil fuel in efficiency. If we can put people on the moon we can solve solar storage issues and a handful of other problems. Go look up solar progress and you will see that its growth is extremely impressive. I don't think that's going to stop. The energy we get from fossil fuel originally came from the sun. Does anybody really think it's not possible to more efficiently get energy from direct sunlight? The green revolution will happen either way. It's just a question of time.
Guess we'll put you down in the not understanding binary camp.
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Guess we'll put you down in the not understanding binary camp.
*****rollingeyes*****
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one-zero-zero-one-zero-zero-one
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one-zero-zero-one-zero-zero-one
I don't think many are going to get that one.
And now it's stuck in my head.
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I don't think many are going to get that one.
And now it's stuck in my head.
:cool:
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The point is that the consequences are worse if you're wrong. I know a lot of you may not think so, but solar and other green technology will continue to improve until it someday equals or outpaces fossil fuel in efficiency. If we can put people on the moon we can solve solar storage issues and a handful of other problems. Go look up solar progress and you will see that its growth is extremely impressive. I don't think that's going to stop. The energy we get from fossil fuel originally came from the sun. Does anybody really think it's not possible to more efficiently get energy from direct sunlight? The green revolution will happen either way. It's just a question of time.
I am all for coming up with alternative sources of energy, so that we don't have to invest so much blood and treasure in keeping the GD Saudis happy.
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There are two main approaches that we can take. We can continue as normal and let the market determine what forms of energy are used, or we can make big and probably cost inefficient changes in an effort to fight the possibility that humans are expediting climate change. I think the consequences are worse if AGW is actually happening and we do nothing. If it's not happening and we spend a ton of money on R&D to improve alternative energy then we will have expedited technology that I think will eventually take over anyway.
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The green revolution will happen either way. It's just a question of time.
No, it is just a question of economics. If given a choice, people are always going to choose what serves them best. Or in economic terms, whatever gives them the most utility for their last dollar spent.
Let's take hydrogen for example - a tangible form of electricity. Put a gas station on one corner and a hydrogen station on the opposite corner. The gas station sells gasoline for $3/gal. The hydrogen station sells a 1-gal-gasoline equivalent of hydrogen for $9. Which station is the consumer going to utilize?
If you truly want consumers to stop using carbon fuels, then you must find a way to generate electricity (without using carbon) for less money than the carbon fuel equivalent. Until you do that, consumers will continue to choose carbon.
btw, all that carbon stored underground as gas, oil, and coal, started out in the atmosphere if you believe all the dinosaur nonsense. Just sayin'
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I happen to think science/technology R&D is one of the best investments humanity can possibly make. When solar takes over I want the panels being shipped all over the globe to have American flags on them, not Chinese or European ones.
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No, it is just a question of economics. If given a choice, people are always going to choose what serves them best. Or in economic terms, whatever gives them the most utility for their last dollar spent.
Let's take hydrogen for example - a tangible form of electricity. Put a gas station on one corner and a hydrogen station on the opposite corner. The gas station sells gasoline for $3/gal. The hydrogen station sells a 1-gal-gasoline equivalent of hydrogen for $9. Which station is the consumer going to utilize?
If you truly want consumers to stop using carbon fuels, then you must find a way to generate electricity (without using carbon) for less money than the carbon fuel equivalent. Until you do that, consumers will continue to choose carbon.
btw, all that carbon stored underground as gas, oil, and coal, started out in the atmosphere if you believe all the dinosaur nonsense. Just sayin'
What say you to making big investments in improving these alternative energy technologies?
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I happen to think science/technology R&D is one of the best investments humanity can possibly make. When solar takes over I want the panels being shipped all over the globe to have American flags on them, not Chinese or European ones.
I think Government has proved to be that absolute worst at managing their R&D. They are not incentivized properly to do the job honestly.
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What say you to making big investments in improving these alternative energy technologies?
I have nothing against "making big investments" for that. I have everything against Big Government forcibly taking money from taxpayers to do it. See the difference?
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I think Government has proved to be that absolute worst at managing their R&D. They are not incentivized properly to do the job honestly.
There has to be a way we can intelligently invest in R&D. I don't believe that it's impossible to expedite the growth of alternative energy technology.
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I have nothing against "making big investments" for that. I have everything against Big Government forcibly taking money from taxpayers to do it. See the difference?
A whole lot of taxpayer money is wasted on far more unworthy causes.
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it is just a question of economics.
We can expedite the growth of the technology so it's more capable of competing in the free market.
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There are two main approaches that we can take. We can continue as normal and let the market determine what forms of energy are used
In other words, allow consumers the freedom to choose for themselves.
. . . or we can make big and probably cost inefficient changes in an effort to fight the possibility that humans are expediting climate change.
Before we do that, you would first have to provide evidence that humans are expediting climate change. Do that first, and then we can talk about costly inefficient changes at the point of a gun.
I think the consequences are worse if AGW is actually happening and we do nothing.
Considering that fully 100% of global warming is caused by the sun, what steps should we take to control solar output so that it remains constant with no more solar eruptions? Maybe we could regulate the earth's orbit around the sun so that it remains constantly the same distance away from the sun instead of the wobbly harmonic elliptical orbit it currently has?
If it's not happening and we spend a ton of money on R&D to improve alternative energy then we will have expedited technology that I think will eventually take over anyway.
We? Who is 'we'? No one is stopping you from buying electric cars and putting solar panels on your house. But don't be using the power of government to deny me incandescent bulbs (which are 100% efficient - 5% light, 95% heat) or plastic grocery bags (which leave a heck of a lot smaller carbon footprint than their paper counterparts).
Let the market decide. If non-carbon is better economically, then consumers will figure that out on their own. The invisible hand knows best.
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A whole lot of taxpayer money is wasted on far more unworthy causes.
That is not a compelling argument for adding more waste.
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That is not a compelling argument for adding more waste.
It's not waste first of all, and maybe we can cut some of the actual waste to make room for things that will actually help humanity and America in the long run. If we let China and Europe outpace us with technology we will become more and more irrelevant.
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The point is that the consequences are worse if you're wrong. I know a lot of you may not think so, but solar and other green technology will continue to improve until it someday equals or outpaces fossil fuel in efficiency. If we can put people on the moon we can solve solar storage issues and a handful of other problems. Go look up solar progress and you will see that its growth is extremely impressive. I don't think that's going to stop. The energy we get from fossil fuel originally came from the sun. Does anybody really think it's not possible to more efficiently get energy from direct sunlight? The green revolution will happen either way. It's just a question of time.
What might happen on some sunny day far away won't keep my family from freezing to death tonight. The bottom line is that current technologies are evolving, and NOT just in the solar sector--it is that evolution and development which led to the current boom in producing oil and gas from unconventional reservoirs, and is fueling our economic recovery, quite literally, such as that is.
When the renewable sector can put forth power with the capacity and the reliability of the more conventional means of producing energy, and do so without taxpayer subsidy, I think there will be something there.
Usually, such new methods are tried on a test basis and prototypes refined before going into production. Unfortunately, it seems as if those renewable energy platforms have often been rushed to market to take advantage of free money from the taxpayer's pocket, and not developed to the degree that they can compete on a level playing field. That day may yet come when those energy forms reach the ability to provide power for many uses, but it is a long ways off before motor fuels will be replaced.
While the growth of the tech was expedited by subsidy, having more units out there which are not up to the job is not a winning proposition. It just takes up a lot of space and consumes fiscal resources that could have been saved for the day when the technology was fully developed.
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We can expedite the growth of the technology so it's more capable of competing in the free market.
Uh, no. That's not how it works. No one had to expedite the growtn of technology so that petroleum could become capable of competing in the free market. All it took was a chemical engineer to figure out a way to separate kerosene from crude oil which cost less than separating it from whale blubber.
Here's a newsflash for you. Fascism doesn't work. It cannot compete with capitalism. An entrepreneur putting an idea into action for his own benefit will always beat out a bunch of government bureaucrats determined to tell Willy Messerschmitt what to produce in his factory. You don't have a smartphone today because a bunch of bureaucrats decided to expedite cellphone technology. You have one because some entrepreneur though he could make money selling them.
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We? Who is 'we'? No one is stopping you from buying electric cars and putting solar panels on your house. But don't be using the power of government to deny me incandescent bulbs (which are 100% efficient - 5% light, 95% heat) or plastic grocery bags (which leave a heck of a lot smaller carbon footprint than their paper counterparts).
Let the market decide. If non-carbon is better economically, then consumers will figure that out on their own. The invisible hand knows best.
Telling you you can't use a technology is a lot different than advocating for government funds to be spent on improving other forms of technology so they can compete.
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tell Willy Messerschmitt what to produce in his factory.
You're assuming intentions that aren't there. I want the government to stop wasting so much money on nonsense so it can divert some funds to research that will unlock secrets that will compell Willy to produce those things on his own without coercion. If you think the government can't expedite the growth of technology you are simply wrong.
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What might happen on some sunny day far away won't keep my family from freezing to death tonight. The bottom line is that current technologies are evolving, and NOT just in the solar sector--it is that evolution and development which led to the current boom in producing oil and gas from unconventional reservoirs, and is fueling our economic recovery, quite literally, such as that is.
When the renewable sector can put forth power with the capacity and the reliability of the more conventional means of producing energy, and do so without taxpayer subsidy, I think there will be something there.
Usually, such new methods are tried on a test basis and prototypes refined before going into production. Unfortunately, it seems as if those renewable energy platforms have often been rushed to market to take advantage of free money from the taxpayer's pocket, and not developed to the degree that they can compete on a level playing field. That day may yet come when those energy forms reach the ability to provide power for many uses, but it is a long ways off before motor fuels will be replaced.
While the growth of the tech was expedited by subsidy, having more units out there which are not up to the job is not a winning proposition. It just takes up a lot of space and consumes fiscal resources that could have been saved for the day when the technology was fully developed.
I don't think we should try to force inefficient technology. I want smart people to have all of the funds they need to test and improve the technology. Subsidizing solar so it can pump out inefficient technology is stupid.
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If we let China and Europe outpace us with technology we will become more and more irrelevant.
Whoa, hold the phone. China doesn't outpace us in technology. Their system does not encourage innovation. Instead, it boasts the very same central planning that you advocate. The result of which makes China the biggest carbon polluter on the planet. This illustrates yet another pitfall of central planning - externalities. Pollution is an externality, which is not part of the bureaucratic equation. Which is why advancements in pollution controls and green energy originate in countries that embrace capitalism.
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It's not waste first of all, and maybe we can cut some of the actual waste to make room for things that will actually help humanity and America in the long run. If we let China and Europe outpace us with technology we will become more and more irrelevant.
We are helping humanity, @Dexter . What we disagree on is the way to do that. I do not agree that it is wise to produce vast numbers of devices or facilities which will not do the job at the expense of either industry which is getting the job done, or the average schmuck who is trying to feed their family.
Let the market decide.
Let those companies which pursue such technology do so with the help of their investors, who will gain if it works.
Do not force those who are getting the job done to pay for those who are not to continue their efforts.
If anything is to be funded from the public trough, let it be the fundamental research, and not the production level distribution. We are not in crisis.
As for AGW, when I obtained my Bachelor of Science in Geology, the talk was of the coming Ice Age. Now, we're supposedly going to boil in relentlessly rising oceans. Truth is, the climate changes, CO2 is a trailing indicator, not a forcing indicator, (like the fizz coming out of a beverage when it warms, the oceans give up CO2 as well, as they warm. Simple solution chemistry.)
There are people who have already become ridiculously rich off of climate panic, and continue to do so. Yet the globe has been warmer and colder, long before humans had the technology to make substantial impact on it, so I'm not buying that we humans are the cause. We are just along for the ride.
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Whoa, hold the phone. China doesn't outpace us in technology.
Not yet. If you're not worried about it then you're not paying attention.
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I don't think we should try to force inefficient technology. I want smart people to have all of the funds they need to test and improve the technology. Subsidizing solar so it can pump out inefficient technology is stupid.
Well, we agree on something. Fund basic research, as the National Science Foundation has in the past, and let the commercial development proceed without subsidy.
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I do not agree that it is wise to produce vast numbers of devices or facilities which will not do the job at the expense of either industry which is getting the job done, or the average schmuck who is trying to feed their family.
That's not what I am saying we should do. Subsidizing solar companies so they can pump out shitty technology is stupid. I want the government to fund researchers that can improve the technology to the point that the free market actually wants to sell and buy it.
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I want the government to fund researchers that can improve the technology to the point that the free market actually wants to sell and buy it.
I want private industry to fund the researchers that can improve the technology. That is what the free market does.
Government can't even figure out that people might want WiFi on Amtrak.
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Well, we agree on something. Fund basic research, as the National Science Foundation has in the past, and let the commercial development proceed without subsidy.
YES! I am saying we should do more of that. Let's stop wasting so many funds on GARBAGE and fund science research.
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I want private industry to fund the researchers that can improve the technology.
The technology will improve a lot faster if the government funds research too. Your way stifles the speed at which humanity becomes more advanced. To me the advancement of science and technology takes priority over almost everything. You are mistaken if you think the government is incapable of expediting the growth of technology.
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I want private industry to fund the researchers that can improve the technology. That is what the free market does.
Government can't even figure out that people might want WiFi on Amtrak.
Obastard provided us with an explanation why Government should not be doing Alt Energy. How much did he waste by dumping dumptrucks of cash on his cronies at Solyndra, and other companies he favored.
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That's not what I am saying we should do. Subsidizing solar companies so they can pump out shitty technology is stupid. I want the government to fund researchers that can improve the technology to the point that the free market actually wants to sell and buy it.
But that is not what has been happening. What has been happening is a subsidy for wind and solar, before those are ready for prime time.
Not only that, but there are other ways the playing field has been less than level. Endangered and protected species are not so protected in the vicinity of a mirror farm or windmill, for instance. https://www.livescience.com/31995-how-do-wind-turbines-kill-birds.html (https://www.livescience.com/31995-how-do-wind-turbines-kill-birds.html)
By contrast, https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2012/01/18/judge-throws-out-criminal-case-against-oil-companies-for-killing-birds-at-drilling-sites/ (https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2012/01/18/judge-throws-out-criminal-case-against-oil-companies-for-killing-birds-at-drilling-sites/) A few birds were found dead in 'reserve' pits and the government went whole hog against the oil companies involved, until the case was finally thrown out. There have been no such calls for imprisonment and fining of wind operators (or solar) like that of these individual oil company employees--and over far, far fewer birds than windfarms kill.
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The technology will improve a lot faster if the government funds research too. Your way stifles the speed at which humanity becomes more advanced. To me the advancement of science and technology takes priority over almost everything. You are mistaken if you think the government is incapable of expediting the growth of technology.
Government can't help themselves, they politicize everything they touch. The reason is simple: Politicians are in the business of taking and distributing bribes. I think the Government is incapable of expediting the growth of technology, and I am not mistaken. I spent too many years in private sector R&D to fall for that Socialist crap.
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But that is not what has been happening. What has been happening is a subsidy for wind and solar, before those are ready for prime time.
Why are people attaching all of that to the statements I am making? That's stupid, and anybody that doesn't think so is either also stupid or hasn't given it adequate thought. If it wasn't already clear I want to make it known to everybody that I am not an Obama drone. I have my own take on these issues because I use my own brain rather than letting other people do my thinking for me.
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I think the Government is incapable of expediting the growth of technology
Well, I hugely disagree. It might not be as efficient as private sector research, but it still gives us technology and information we didn't have before. Are you aware of how much technology has been produced by the military and NASA? Both of those are government funded.
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Well, I hugely disagree. It might not be as efficient as private sector research, but it still gives us technology and information we didn't have before. Are you aware of how much technology has been produced by the military and NASA? Both of those are government funded.
"The military" is the lone exception to my opinion of Government run R&D, and that's because it's an issue of war (the military is just as prone to waste in peacetime). It's interesting I didn't see you use the word "military" until now.
NASA was another potential exception, but the end of the Moon Flights happened, and it fell into the usual government pit of fraud, waste and abuse. These are the great big, giant brains who thought it was just fine to launch a Space Shuttle with ice hanging off the bottom of the booster.
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Why are people attaching all of that to the statements I am making? That's stupid, and anybody that doesn't think so is either also stupid or hasn't given it adequate thought. If it wasn't already clear I want to make it known to everybody that I am not an Obama drone. I have my own take on these issues because I use my own brain rather than letting other people do my thinking for me.
You clarified your statements by saying the government should fund some basic research.
I merely stated that in practice, our tax dollars put a lot of substandard hardware out there and made some purveyors of such and contractors rich.
I didn't mention Obama, nor his multitude of minions, nor the groupthink that has overshadowed environmental issues.
Since the topic is the failure of science, I'm just pointing out that 800 lb gorilla in the room, that science will be used/abused/and even reported fraudulently for prestige, political gain, and profit.
We need to guard against that, and against the pep-rally/consensus/up-for-a-vote mentality that seems to give credence to that which is most useful politically and which gets the most airplay, rather than scrupulously and dispassionately examine both the methods, data (unedited, thankyouverymuch!), and means of reaching conclusions before we go off half-cocked and throw the weight of the treasury behind the deployment of systems which are unnecessary and/or not fully developed.
Such corner cutting is only justifiable in times of genuine crisis, if then.
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"The military" is the lone exception to my opinion of Government run R&D, and that's because it's an issue of war (the military is just as prone to waste in peacetime). It's interesting I didn't see you use the word "military" until now.
NASA was another potential exception, but the end of the Moon Flights happened, and it fell into the usual government pit of fraud, waste and abuse. These are the great big, giant brains who thought it was just fine to launch a Space Shuttle with ice hanging off the bottom of the booster.
The government is capable of expediting the growth of technology. The idea that it's not just isn't practical. I'm not saying there's not waste involved.
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We need to guard against that
The integrity of scientific research absolutely needs to be safeguarded. We are in complete agreement. We can't just give up on the government's ability to do research though. There's too much potential there for expediting the growth of humanity. We can do better than this.
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The government is capable of expediting the growth of technology. The idea that it's not just isn't practical. I'm not saying there's not waste involved.
The government (sometimes) can expedite the development, the growth is and should be a market factor (even if the government is the purchaser of the tech). Development of the technology happens in University engineering departments, industry labs, and even garages and basements.
Let industry chase a profit, though, and the best minds will be on the problem, emphasis will be on the most promising leads, and the development from concept to viable product will be quick, relatively speaking.
If subsidies are offered for the deployment (growth, not development) of that technology, there will be those who chase that profit by being 'firstest with the mostest' in the marketplace, rather than ensure they have the most competitive product, and development will suffer as a result.
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Are you aware of how much technology has been produced by the military and NASA? Both of those are government funded.
What economic breakthrough has been achieved because of technology produced by NASA or DOD?
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The government (sometimes) can expedite the development, the growth is and should be a market factor (even if the government is the purchaser of the tech). Development of the technology happens in University engineering departments, industry labs, and even garages and basements.
Let industry chase a profit, though, and the best minds will be on the problem, emphasis will be on the most promising leads, and the development from concept to viable product will be quick, relatively speaking.
If subsidies are offered for the deployment (growth, not development) of that technology, there will be those who chase that profit by being 'firstest with the mostest' in the marketplace, rather than ensure they have the most competitive product, and development will suffer as a result.
(https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/riGkJB1g0gAD6XlXVN23PcD9ZZI=/0x0:746x449/920x613/filters:focal(314x166:432x284)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/60189509/tesla_model_s_fire.0.png)
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The government is capable of expediting the growth of technology. The idea that it's not just isn't practical. I'm not saying there's not waste involved.
And I maintain that if it was once capable, it is no longer in today's environment of Socialists politicizing everything they touch. Manhattan Project during WW2: Great example of government being capable of innovating. Solyndra: Great example of how that innovation can be turned into a fat piggybank for political cronies.
Alluding to the original topic (remember that?), the government corrupted science in order to advance Socialism, and now that they've done that, you'd have to be a fool to trust them to develop real technology.
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And I maintain that if it was once capable, it is no longer in today's environment of Socialists politicizing everything they touch. Manhattan Project during WW2: Great example of government being capable of innovating. Solyndra: Great example of how that innovation can be turned into a fat piggybank for political cronies.
I think the government is still capable of doing real research. Giving up on that would be a complete disaster. It's unacceptable.
the original topic (remember that?)
Good discussions almost always evolve far beyond what was originally put forth.
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What economic breakthrough has been achieved because of technology produced by NASA or DOD?
The orange drink TANG comes to mind......
Velcro?
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What economic breakthrough has been achieved because of technology produced by NASA or DOD?
What economic breakthroughs did we miss out on because of all the things our government(s) waste money on?
For all we know we got Tang and velcro for the low, low, cost of cold fusion.
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The free market will never undertake research and development, or ANYTHING really, unless it's profitable in the near future, but sometimes things are still worth doing even if they aren't currently profitable. That's where the government can be useful. Exploration comes to mind. What private business is going to pay big money for space exploration they have no way of profiting off of? Thinking everything should be handled by the private sector is short-sighted.
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Stratolaunch, Blue Origin, SpaceX
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Stratolaunch, Blue Origin, SpaceX
Elon Musk isn't going to do what NASA does (or should do). He's developing things that will make him money. When the goal is money rather than scientific discovery it limits the scope. The government is useful when the benefits of research are a generation away, because no private business is going to spend a bunch of money on that.
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Elon Musk isn't going to do what NASA does (or should do). He's developing things that will make him money. When the goal is money rather than scientific discovery it limits the scope. The government is useful when the benefits of research are a generation away, because no private business is going to spend a bunch of money on that.
OK, let's just give up and let the politicians politicize the rest of the sciences they haven't already corrupted. I don't give a crap why Musk did what he did, BTW. I'm just glad he shot that car into space. He did it for "profit." BFD.
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OK, let's just give up and let the politicians politicize the rest of the sciences they haven't already corrupted.
Maybe if our country was more of a meritocracy and actual scientists had more control over matters related to science things wouldn't be so screwed up. I won't give up on the potential government has for expediting technological growth. It's too important.
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Maybe if our country was more of a meritocracy and actual scientists had more control over matters related to science things wouldn't be so screwed up. I won't give up on the potential government has for expediting technological growth. It's too important.
Too important? Why? AGW?
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I'm just glad he shot that car into space. He did it for "profit." BFD.
That was huge publicity for Spacex = money. Also Elon is a bit of an egomaniac. The private sector will never spend large sums of money on science when the benefits of are a generation or more away. They're in it for money, which sometimes is AMAZING because there is more of an emphasis on efficiency, but sometimes things worth doing aren't profitable for at least a while.
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Too important? Why? AGW?
Too important because the progress of humanity is directly linked to its understanding of science. Science and technology gave us every comfort we have. Nothing is more important for the future.
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Elon Musk isn't going to do what NASA does (or should do). He's developing things that will make him money. When the goal is money rather than scientific discovery it limits the scope. The government is useful when the benefits of research are a generation away, because no private business is going to spend a bunch of money on that.
I just gave you three examples of private businesses that are doing exactly that, but go on making assertions based on how you feel things would be.
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I just gave you three examples of private businesses that are doing exactly that, but go on making assertions based on how you feel things would be.
How long do you think a company will stay in business if its main motivation isn't making money? No private business is going to take huge monetary losses for the sake of humanity. Not everything should be done and controlled by the private sector.
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That was huge publicity for Spacex = money. Also Elon is a bit of an egomaniac. The private sector will never spend large sums of money on science when the benefits of are a generation or more away. They're in it for money, which sometimes is AMAZING because there is more of an emphasis on efficiency, but sometimes things worth doing aren't profitable for at least a while.
And Obastard was motivated by charity when he wasted billions on Alt Energy. Right.
One more time, in case you missed it: I don't GAF why Musk did it.
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Too important because the progress of humanity is directly linked to its understanding of science. Science and technology gave us every comfort we have. Nothing is more important for the future.
And I maintain we should keep science out of the hands of government because politicians. Nothing is more important for the future.
Your move.
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And Obastard was motivated by charity when he wasted billions on Alt Energy. Right.
One more time, in case you missed it: I don't GAF why Musk did it.
Obama foolishly wasted money in the wrong places, and what's worse is he managed to turn people like you off to the possibility that the government can do useful things.
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And I maintain we should keep science out of the hands of government because politicians. Nothing is more important for the future.
Your move.
Your way limits scientific progress. I will never support that, ever.
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Obama foolishly wasted money in the wrong places, and what's worse is he managed to turn people like you off to the possibility that the government can do useful things.
No, the best thing the Federal government can do is what it is constitutionally mandated to do, and no more.
Why we are in the dilemma we face now, even with this debate on climate change, is the Federal Government has tried to do more than it should have.
Millions upon millions ($ Trillions $) of examples of this.
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How long do you think a company will stay in business if its main motivation isn't making money? No private business is going to take huge monetary losses for the sake of humanity. Not everything should be done and controlled by the private sector.
I'd say close to a decade so far for at least one of those three I mentioned.
Maybe you can tell us how we'll never have a cure for polio from the private sector as well?
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I'd say close to a decade so far for at least one of those three I mentioned.
Which of those companies is taking huge losses with no monetary goals for the sake of human progress? Can you give examples of how they are doing that? Also the polio vaccine is not a cure but a prevention, and a lot of people have made a lot of money off of it. I think you either don't understand or are refusing to understand my point. I'm losing interest because we're getting nowhere.
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No, the best thing the Federal government can do is what it is constitutionally mandated to do, and no more.
Why we are in the dilemma we face now, even with this debate on climate change, is the Federal Government has tried to do more than it should have.
Millions upon millions ($ Trillions $) of examples of this.
If the government can use my taxes to help a bunch of dumb/unproductive people then I certainly have no issue with it using taxes to expedite the growth of technology. This is the world we live in. The government takes our shit and it'll never stop. This is a worthy cause though, unlike most others. Maybe instead of helping a bunch of poor Mexicans and overspending on the military we should do something that will actually help humanity. It'll also help America. I want us to be putting the rest of the world to shame. That's my kind of nationalism.
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Your way limits scientific progress. I will never support that, ever.
"Progress" advanced in the name of Socialism isn't progress at all.
It's elusive, and you are damned right the politicization of science has turned me and just about every other sensible person off to the Idea of having government do it.
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"Progress" advanced in the name of Socialism isn't progress at all.
It's elusive, and you are damned right the politicization of science has turned me and just about every other sensible person off to the Idea of having government do it.
Why not join the group of people that wants to get politics out of science so we can use the government to achieve amazing things that the private sector can't or won't do because it's not profitable for them? If we did it before we can do it again. Would you agree with what I'm suggesting if steps were taken to keep out politics?
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The free market will never undertake research and development, or ANYTHING really, unless it's profitable in the near future, but sometimes things are still worth doing even if they aren't currently profitable. That's where the government can be useful. Exploration comes to mind. What private business is going to pay big money for space exploration they have no way of profiting off of? Thinking everything should be handled by the private sector is short-sighted.
Nonsense. The first Bakken horizontal wells were marginally profitable, and within a few years the changes included switching rigs to top drives, pad wells with walking rigs, vast improvements in MWD/LWD technology, and the batteries to power the tools downhole, and a host of other advancements. You see, being there with better tech, especially game changing tech, is the winner in fast paced, technology dependent markets. It is what makes your company the one to buy the other guys out, instead of the other way around.
For space exploration, there are a couple of companies working on that, the only problem is that the resources necessary to engage in such endeavours are often siphoned off by the government from the private sector.
It depends on how much it costs to do business. A big part of that cost is the government itself.
And, lest we forget, the huge drag on (national) space budgets was the cries of "Why spend that money there when we have problems right here at home?". So we subsidized the problems back here on Earth, and that worked out swimmingly. By then we had reliable and accurate ICBMs, anyway, and most of the satellite network we wanted....
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Which of those companies is taking huge losses with no monetary goals for the sake of human progress? Can you give examples of how they are doing that? Also the polio vaccine is not a cure but a prevention, and a lot of people have made a lot of money off of it. I think you either don't understand or are refusing to understand my point. I'm losing interest because we're getting nowhere.
I get your point. You think only government can do big things, and therefore any evidence to the contrary must be wrong.
I could give you examples, but you can't (won't?) leave the goal posts in one place. First it's no business will make long term investments, then it's about money being the main motivation, then it's no monetary goals at all.
And you do understand that the word "cure" can also refer to the elimination of a problem at a population level, it doesn't simply mean eliminating an existing disease from an individual. Nice try, though.
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If the government can use my taxes to help a bunch of dumb/unproductive people then I certainly have no issue with it using taxes to expedite the growth of technology. This is the world we live in. The government takes our shit and it'll never stop. This is a worthy cause though, unlike most others. Maybe instead of helping a bunch of poor Mexicans and overspending on the military we should do something that will actually help humanity. It'll also help America. I want us to be putting the rest of the world to shame. That's my kind of nationalism.
Frankly, I have an issue with both
This is the world we live in. The government takes our shit and it'll never stop
Not by allowing it to do things that are a worthy cause to some.
How did we get here?
Maybe instead of helping a bunch of poor Mexicans and overspending on the military we should do something that will actually help humanity.
There are some people on both sides of the aisle who think these things are a worthy cause, and they are wrong, too, except the constitution does provide for a common defense.
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I get your point. You think only government can do big things
No, I think only, or mostly only the government will make huge cost sacrifices to do big things. The private sector isn't going to make huge sacrifices for the advancement of humanity. They're willing to make big investments for the sake of their businesses, but if there's no clear path to making a lot of money then business owners won't be interested.
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Frankly, I have an issue with both
This is the world we live in. The government takes our shit and it'll never stop
Not by allowing it to do things that are a worthy cause to some.
How did we get here?
Maybe instead of helping a bunch of poor Mexicans and overspending on the military we should do something that will actually help humanity.
There are some people on both sides of the aisle who think these things are a worthy cause, and they are wrong, too, except the constitution does provide for a common defense.
How is expediting the advancement of technology not a worthy cause? It benefits all of humanity.
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How is expediting the advancement of technology not a worthy cause? It benefits all of humanity.
How is not Obamacare and Welfare not a worthy cause? It benefits all of humanity....... :cool:
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How is not Obamacare and Welfare not a worthy cause? It benefits all of humanity....... :cool:
That's objectively not true. Your comparison doesn't work.
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No, I think only, or mostly only the government will make huge cost sacrifices to do big things. The private sector isn't going to make huge sacrifices for the advancement of humanity. They're willing to make big investments for the sake of their businesses, but if there's no clear path to making a lot of money then business owners won't be interested.
Sure, the government will piss away huge sums without doing much besides feeding those who are involved, and making some rich. Results are nice, but not essential, after all it's all OPM.
In the event results are achieved, cost control isn't exactly first and foremost in the list of priorities.
In the instance of the space race (and the weapons deployment platform race which ran alongside it), I'm not so sure that just national prestige and the advancement of science were number one, so much as the ability to put a warhead where we wanted when we wanted to, which has an intangible benefit, one hard to measure in dollars--even though changing the (surviving) road signs to Russian would have been a mite spendy. So, the world gained (no apocalyptic nuclear war), and money was spent, not just on the devices, but the delivery systems, and we got some neat pics and rocks too. There is a potential long term gain in that, as well, from satellite images of the planet to information on low G environments and even the moon itself (how to land and be able to take off again). That may well come into play down the road on another planet, and likely should have in my lifetime, but time will tell. That doesn't mean a lot of money wasn't wasted, either.
In industry, yes, there has to be some benefit, whether it is immediate (although that can be short sighted) or long term (should a company be willing to make that investment for future returns). Wise companies keep costs from waste controlled (something government is notoriously bad at), and find ways to use off the shelf tech to do a job and refine that.
As another example, hydraulic fracturing as a completion method has been around well over half a century, but the adaptation of that to horizontal wellbores and multistage fracs (and the tools to do it) have been refined significantly, and those developments (continuously being refined) are what is fueling the present oil production in the US, as well as the ability to switch to natural gas for power generation purposes without making that same fuel too expensive for the millions of homeowners who use it for heat and cooking.
Many of those developments were made an experiment or a prototype at a time, until something that performed as desired was developed.
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How is expediting the advancement of technology not a worthy cause? It benefits all of humanity.
Actually, technology is a rock. You can build with it, you can shape it into tools or use it as one. You can break it into little bits and extract things from it. Or you can knock your neighbor over the head with it.
It is neither good nor evil, in and of itself, it just is.
Now, how it is used is a different story. Much depends on who wields it.
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Sure, the government will piss away huge sums without doing much besides feeding those who are involved, and making some rich. Results are nice, but not essential, after all it's all OPM.
In the event results are achieved, cost control isn't exactly first and foremost in the list of priorities.
In the instance of the space race (and the weapons deployment platform race which ran alongside it), I'm not so sure that just national prestige and the advancement of science were number one, so much as the ability to put a warhead where we wanted when we wanted to, which has an intangible benefit, one hard to measure in dollars--even though changing the (surviving) road signs to Russian would have been a mite spendy. So, the world gained (no apocalyptic nuclear war), and money was spent, not just on the devices, but the delivery systems, and we got some neat pics and rocks too. There is a potential long term gain in that, as well, from satellite images of the planet to information on low G environments and even the moon itself (how to land and be able to take off again). That may well come into play down the road on another planet, and likely should have in my lifetime, but time will tell. That doesn't mean a lot of money wasn't wasted, either.
In industry, yes, there has to be some benefit, whether it is immediate (although that can be short sighted) or long term (should a company be willing to make that investment for future returns). Wise companies keep costs from waste controlled (something government is notoriously bad at), and find ways to use off the shelf tech to do a job and refine that.
As another example, hydraulic fracturing as a completion method has been around well over half a century, but the adaptation of that to horizontal wellbores and multistage fracs (and the tools to do it) have been refined significantly, and those developments (continuously being refined) are what is fueling the present oil production in the US, as well as the ability to switch to natural gas for power generation purposes without making that same fuel too expensive for the millions of homeowners who use it for heat and cooking.
Many of those developments were made an experiment or a prototype at a time, until something that performed as desired was developed.
Not everything worth doing will turn a profit. Some things won't be profitable for entire generations or more. We can't count on the private sector for that. It's not good business.
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Actually, technology is a rock. You can build with it, you can shape it into tools or use it as one. You can break it into little bits and extract things from it. Or you can knock your neighbor over the head with it.
It is neither good nor evil, in and of itself, it just is.
Now, how it is used is a different story. Much depends on who wields it.
Without technology I would have died as a baby, my brother too. My dad would have died in his 20s when he had to get his appendix removed, and then again in his 40s when he needed heart surgery. Without technology we wouldn't know how to read or write, and we wouldn't have an internet to express our thoughts to each other. We wouldn't be living in nice, warm houses with refrigerated food. Technology can be used for evil, but by and large it is the biggest boon that humanity has. Technology is everything.
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That's objectively not true. Your comparison doesn't work.
Indeed, it does correlate .
The Federal Government is constitutionally mandated on what it can and cannot do.
Of course, it routinely oversteps it boundaries, and it fails every time it does so.
Every time.
Whether it be social reforms like Obamacare and welfare, or Science endeavors, it will become a large money pit, it will not go away, and the solution will always be to throw more money at it.
To say "They are spending our money, so they should spend it on something I want", is not a conservative argument.
You are not talking about a government too big, but that a big government that subsidizes what you want and taxes/penalizes that which you do not.
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Without technology I would have died as a baby, my brother too. My dad would have died in his 20s when he had to get his appendix removed, and then again in his 40s when he needed heart surgery. Without technology we wouldn't know how to read or write, and we wouldn't have an internet to express our thoughts to each other. We wouldn't be living in nice, warm houses with refrigerated food. Technology can be used for evil, but by and large it is the biggest boon that humanity has. Technology is everything.
Which is the EXACT reason the Federal Government should have no part of it.
They can reap the benefits of it, as we all do, but that's where their involvement should end.
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Without technology I would have died as a baby, my brother too. My dad would have died in his 20s when he had to get his appendix removed, and then again in his 40s when he needed heart surgery. Without technology we wouldn't know how to read or write, and we wouldn't have an internet to express our thoughts to each other. We wouldn't be living in nice, warm houses with refrigerated food. Technology can be used for evil, but by and large it is the biggest boon that humanity has. Technology is everything.
(Looking around)
Who here has suggested we don't want technology? You are engaging in fallacies again. Nobody suggested doing away with it, or even slowing it. What we object to is government creating research, then using its fudged results to try to force some Socialist crap down our throats.
If you continue to dance around and deny that point, then I'm finished here. You went one fallacy too far, @Dexter. **nononono*
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Which is the EXACT reason the Federal Government should have no part of it.
They can reap the benefits of it, as we all do, but that's where their involvement should end.
I find it hysterical his examples of life-saving technology were all done by the private sector. Left to government, his rels would be dead and he would not exist.
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I find it hysterical his examples of life-saving technology were all done by the private sector. Left to government, his rels would be dead and he would not exist.
@Cyber Liberty
I like @Dexter, but if he truly stops and seriously thinks about it, he would realize that these life-saving technologies were not begun by the Government.
I would submit, as you do, that if Goverment had their heavy hand in it, it probably would not exist, or at best, be subpar.
The red tape alone would have choked the research to death
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(Looking around)
Who here has suggested we don't want technology? You are engaging in fallacies again. Nobody suggested doing away with it, or even slowing it. What we object to is government creating research, then using its fudged results to try to force some Socialist crap down our throats.
If you continue to dance around and deny that point, then I'm finished here. You went one fallacy too far, @Dexter. **nononono*
I am suggesting that because technology benefits everybody it's worth doing everything we can to advance technology as quickly as possible.
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@Cyber Liberty
I like @Dexter, but if he truly stops and seriously thinks about it, he would realize that these life-saving technologies were not begun by the Government.
I would submit, as you do, that if Goverment had their heavy hand in it, it probably would not exist, or at best, be subpar.
The red tape alone would have choked the research to death
I was making a point about technology in general.
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I prefer my technology non-socialized, thank you.
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I am suggesting that because technology benefits everybody it's worth doing everything we can to advance technology as quickly as possible.
OK, one more: The best way to ensure technology doesn't happen, or happens only for the well-connected, is to let governments get their filthy mitts on it. I see you quoted Groucho...did you even read the post you quoted?
ETA: I got my grammar tied up. Fixed. Apologies to anybody who already quoted me.
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OK, one more: The best way to ensure technology doesn't happen, or happens only for the well-connected, is to let governments get their filthy mitts on it. I see you quoted Groucho...did you even read the post you quoted?
I sincerely hope your views don't take control of these issues, because I think it would be a tragedy for humanity. I think your views would stifle our growth, and to me there isn't much that's worse than stifling the growth of humanity. We should be learning and discovering through every means possible.
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Obama foolishly wasted money in the wrong places, and what's worse is he managed to turn people like you off to the possibility that the government can do useful things.
Don't blame Obama for that. Government has been doing a spectacular job at failure for centuries now.
Finding an example of the government doing something useful may prove as difficult as finding evidence that man causes global warming.
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Don't blame Obama for that. Government has been doing a spectacular job at failure for centuries now.
Finding an example of the government doing something useful may prove as difficult as finding evidence that man causes global warming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Burr#Duel_with_Alexander_Hamilton
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If the government can use my taxes to help a bunch of dumb/unproductive people then I certainly have no issue with it using taxes to expedite the growth of technology.
That's just it. The government doesn't expedite the growth of technology. It inhibits it.
I want us to be putting the rest of the world to shame. That's my kind of nationalism.
The greatest success at putting the rest of the world to shame occurs when government gets the hell out of the way.
The steam locomotive, the telegraph, the telephone, the internal combustion engine, radio, flight, rocketry, industrialization, semiconductors, processors, electronics, nanotechnology - all these occurred without government prodding or oversight. They all were birthed from the private sector, products of the invisible hand.
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I am suggesting that because technology benefits everybody it's worth doing everything we can to advance technology as quickly as possible.
Well, we are, too. I think we have different solutions for the same problem, but I will ask you this:
What things does government do that are done more quickly, more thoroughly, more efficiently, and at lower cost than industry? I'm not including the things that industry is kept out of, but there are plenty of other things.
Nothing outside of Constitutional bounds.
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Well, we are, too. I think we have different solutions for the same problem, but I will ask you this:
What things does government do that are done more quickly, more thoroughly, more efficiently, and at lower cost than industry? I'm not including the things that industry is kept out of, but there are plenty of other things.
Nothing outside of Constitutional bounds.
Businesses aren't going to do things that don't lead to profit, but not everything worth doing is profitable in the near future. Sometimes it might never be profitable. The ability to be profitable or not is the only thing the private sector cares about. It can't be counted on to maximize our scientific output on its on.
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Obama foolishly wasted money in the wrong places, and what's worse is he managed to turn people like you off to the possibility that the government can do useful things.
LOL! I have watched government eff things up since my childhood. It killed the river I grew up on, and the long list of boondoggles definitely preceded Obama, although he made even Carter's Keystone cops gig look good.
Reagan had it right when he said the words which should strike fear into the hearts of Americans were "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."
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Businesses aren't going to do things that don't lead to profit, but not everything worth doing is profitable in the near future. Sometimes it might never be profitable. The ability to be profitable or not is the only thing the private sector cares about. It can't be counted on to maximize our scientific output on its on.
I think you grossly underestimate the real source of invention: ideas, individual ideas. When those individuals are allowed to pursue those ideas wonderful things can happen, like even the PC, and the software that runs it.
Now, not everything worth doing is profitable, and not everything profitable is worth doing (imho) but the beauty of it all is that sometimes things cross over into sectors where they are both. People don't develop technology in a smooth line, but by fits and starts, one gadget will make yet another possible, a semi permeable membrane will lead to a dialysis machine, etc. Just as underwear made the printing press a practical device (the rag linen was used in paper), the small inventions of today will propel technologies of tomorrow. Many of those will be the brainchild, not of a publish-or-perish think tank, but some guy who woke up with heartburn and an idea...
When was the last time the Government did anything which reaped a profit? (The IRS couldn't run a whorehouse in Nevada in the black, for pete's sake.)
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I think you grossly underestimate the real source of invention: ideas, individual ideas. When those individuals are allowed to pursue those ideas wonderful things can happen, like even the PC, and the software that runs it.
Now, not everything worth doing is profitable, and not everything profitable is worth doing (imho) but the beauty of it all is that sometimes things cross over into sectors where they are both. People don't develop technology in a smooth line, but by fits and starts, one gadget will make yet another possible, a semi permeable membrane will lead to a dialysis machine, etc. Just as underwear made the printing press a practical device (the rag linen was used in paper), the small inventions of today will propel technologies of tomorrow. Many of those will be the brainchild, not of a publish-or-perish think tank, but some guy who woke up with heartburn and an idea...
When was the last time the Government did anything which reaped a profit? (The IRS couldn't run a whorehouse in Nevada in the black, for pete's sake.)
Maybe it's possible for the government to not hinder private sector innovation while also contributing to science and technology development in a meaningful way. People are pretty smart. I don't believe that's unattainable.
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Putting aside the profit motive for a moment, one should also consider the non-governmental non-profit agency which has also provided numerous technological advances - human stem cell research being one of them. The non-governmental researchers have come up with over 70 cures that have been developed through adult stem cells. And they have done so without any support or prodding from the government.
Compare that to government efforts where government has spent and spent and spent with one political objective in mind - to come up with a cure using embryonic stem cells. And in that endeavor, they have come up empty. Failure after failure after failure from government-driven research. Success after success after success from the private sector.
So this isn't always about someone having to have some profit motive before some innovation is discovered. The computer mouse was invented in 1957 by a company that never made a dime off of it. Yet it was discovered by the best and the brightest who are given free reign to put the human mind to work without the bondage of bureaucratic malaise. It was discovered by those who recognize what liberty can achieve without the shackles of government. Discovery just for the sake of discovery without concern for any greater good as defined by some mindless bureaucrat who doesn't even have the integrity to admit that there is no evidence to support man-made global warming.
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Compare that to government efforts where government has spent and spent and spent with one political objective in mind - to come up with a cure using embryonic stem cells. And in that endeavor, they have come up empty. Failure after failure after failure from government-driven research. Success after success after success from the private sector.
TRUE. And nothing proves it better than Global Warming, which is entirely driven by government grants steering science into what it wants to be true. THAT is the problem.
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TRUE. And nothing proves it better than Global Warming, which is entirely driven by government grants steering science into what it wants to be true. THAT is the problem.
Better watch out...he may declare he's hoping you don't get to decide. You are a "Maladroit." I'm already in the Deplorables. I have a baseball cap to prove it.
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Better watch out...he may declare he's hoping you don't get to decide. You are a "Maladroit." I'm already in the Deplorables. I have a baseball cap to prove it.
I take issue with some of your views, not you personally. Once two people reach an impasse there's not a whole lot left to say other than "I hope things go my way rather than your way."
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Putting aside the profit motive for a moment, one should also consider the non-governmental non-profit agency which has also provided numerous technological advances - human stem cell research being one of them. The non-governmental researchers have come up with over 70 cures that have been developed through adult stem cells. And they have done so without any support or prodding from the government.
Compare that to government efforts where government has spent and spent and spent with one political objective in mind - to come up with a cure using embryonic stem cells. And in that endeavor, they have come up empty. Failure after failure after failure from government-driven research. Success after success after success from the private sector.
So this isn't always about someone having to have some profit motive before some innovation is discovered. The computer mouse was invented in 1957 by a company that never made a dime off of it. Yet it was discovered by the best and the brightest who are given free reign to put the human mind to work without the bondage of bureaucratic malaise. It was discovered by those who recognize what liberty can achieve without the shackles of government. Discovery just for the sake of discovery without concern for any greater good as defined by some mindless bureaucrat who doesn't even have the integrity to admit that there is no evidence to support man-made global warming.
I think the private sector is magnificent when it comes to discovery. I also think there are uses for the government when it comes to discovery.
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Better watch out...he may declare he's hoping you don't get to decide. You are a "Maladroit." I'm already in the Deplorables. I have a baseball cap to prove it.
I will give you another one - The Freakin Spotted Owl. On the basis of ginned up 'science' the logging industry was stripped from the West.
What would make one think that the fed doesn't do exactly the same thing throughout the sciences?
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I also think there are uses for the government when it comes to discovery.
What is your basis for thinking this? Likewise, what is your basis for thinking that humans cause global warming? I ask because you seem to have made up your mind about both of these things without having any evidence to support it. Have you ever considered that you may have made a logical mistake?
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What is your basis for thinking this?
I've explained why I believe that probably half a dozen times.
Likewise, what is your basis for thinking that humans cause global warming? I ask because you seem to have made up your mind about both of these things without having any evidence to support it. Have you ever considered that you may have made a logical mistake?
My stance on AGW is that I'm not a climate scientist. I'm not educated enough to have a position I'm comfortable with arguing for.
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I will give you another one - The Freakin Spotted Owl. On the basis of ginned up 'science' the logging industry was stripped from the West.
What would make one think that the fed doesn't do exactly the same thing throughout the sciences?
Just consider the deleterious effects if the attempt to 'prove' fraccing was harmful to groundwater had been successful. The science was so bad on that the USGS (a government agency) refused to use data from the wells that had been drilled.
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Just consider the deleterious effects if the attempt to 'prove' fraccing was harmful to groundwater had been successful. The science was so bad on that the USGS (a government agency) refused to use data from the wells that had been drilled.
But OMG, how they tried. And you can bet money, it will come up again.
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I've explained why I believe that probably half a dozen times.
I have seen you repeat the premise a half dozen times. But I have yet to see the evidence of success.
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I went to college for 6 years. During that time I learned that I know a whole lot less than I once thought. I lack the ability to expertly examine and interpret things outside of my field of expertise. I am not a climate scientist. To me blowing off their opinions would be similar to blowing off the opinions of my physician. They could be wrong, but they have a certain weight behind their words because they do know more about these things than anybody else.
What is a "climate scientist"? Much of the model building and interpretation is done by Data Scientists I was interested enough to start an MS in Data Science. I'll be done in March.
So far, I know that it takes a lot of experience and finesse to build and interpret models. And, the model is only useful when you have reliable data to put into it AND you have good target variables to use for model training and testing.
Usually, that's a BIG problem.
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Putting aside the profit motive for a moment, one should also consider the non-governmental non-profit agency which has also provided numerous technological advances - human stem cell research being one of them. The non-governmental researchers have come up with over 70 cures that have been developed through adult stem cells. And they have done so without any support or prodding from the government.
Compare that to government efforts where government has spent and spent and spent with one political objective in mind - to come up with a cure using embryonic stem cells. And in that endeavor, they have come up empty. Failure after failure after failure from government-driven research. Success after success after success from the private sector.
Extra step: Why did the government researchers strive for a cure using embryonic stem cells, rejecting the adult cells? Because they wanted an industrial use for the embryonic cells to justify (to the remaining people on the fence) the killing of millions of babies in abortions.
When a government is in charge, science will be bent to serve the warped desires of the state.
Fer Chissakes.
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I've explained why I believe that probably half a dozen times.
My stance on AGW is that I'm not a climate scientist. I'm not educated enough to have a position I'm comfortable with arguing for.
So you simply defer to your betters? And how do you determine who your betters are?
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So you simply defer to your betters? And how do you determine who your betters are?
I at least consider what people more educated than me are saying about their field of expertise. You work in law, right? I'd consider your words weighty in a discussion about the law.
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I at least consider what people more educated than me are saying about their field of expertise.
I happen to be more educated than Bernie Sanders in the field of economics. Yet I don't see you willing to abandon the economic policy he advocates. Go figure.
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I happen to be more educated than Bernie Sanders in the field of economics. Yet I don't see you willing to abandon the economic policy he advocates. Go figure.
You're making a mistake in assuming I want to do everything Bernie says. I just happen to think he's a good guy. Also I'm more than willing to consider the things you say to me about economics. I might not see it your way when you're done, but I'll respectfully listen and honestly consider the things you've said.
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There's that old saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But in this case, we have 100 years of history to fall back on. And in that history, the economic philosophy that Sanders advocates has led to the deaths of over 100 million people.
I don't characterize people who continue to advocate such a heinous philosophy in the face of overwhelming evidence as "good". So we can agree to disagree on that one.
Personally, I prefer capitalism, wealth creation, and full stomachs over a system that can't even produce enough food to feed its people.
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Personally, I prefer capitalism
So does Bernie according to his public positions. He wants us to emulate the Scandinavian countries. They are capitalist. If you're calling Bernie a literal communist/socialist you either have to believe he's lying about his positions or you're simply uninformed about them. He has never advocated for the removal of the private sector, which is a mandatory part of communism/socialism. These labels get so abused that people barely know what's what anymore.
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So does Bernie according to his public positions. He wants us to emulate the Scandinavian countries. They are capitalist. If you're calling Bernie a literal communist/socialist you either have to believe he's lying about his positions or you're simply uninformed about them. He has never advocated for the removal of the private sector, which is a mandatory part of communism/socialism. These labels get so abused that people barely know what's what anymore.
:bigsilly:
You say you’re not smart enough to take a position on AGW because you didn’t study climate science. The same goes for political science, too.
Bernie Sanders is in favor of capitalism the same way that Lenin was in favor of capitalism: a stepping stone to the dictatorship of the proletariat.
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:bigsilly:
You say you’re not smart enough to take a position on AGW because you didn’t study climate science. The same goes for political science, too.
Bernie Sanders is in favor of capitalism the same way that Lenin was in favor of capitalism: a stepping stone to the dictatorship of the proletariat.
I said I'm not educated enough to take a position on AGW. There's a difference.
You've made it clear that you're in the "Bernie is lying about what he actually wants." camp. You think he doesn't actually want to emulate the Scandinavian countries apparently. I see no reason to assume he's lying about what he wants.
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So does Bernie according to his public positions.
Making "the rich" pay for everything (which is Bernie's public position) is NOT capitalism.
He wants us to emulate the Scandinavian countries.
So he wants 141 million Americans to get rid of their cars so that we can be more like Sweden?
If you're calling Bernie a literal communist/socialist you either have to believe he's lying about his positions or you're simply uninformed about them.
I call him a literal communist/socialist because he advocates communist/socialist policies.
“What being a socialist means is … that you hold out … a vision of society where poverty is absolutely unnecessary, where international relations are not based on greed … but on cooperation … where human beings can own the means of production and work together rather than having to work as semi-slaves to other people who can hire and fire.â€
-Bernie Sanders, 1988
He has never advocated for the removal of the private sector, which is a mandatory part of communism/socialism.
What do you think 'Medicare for all' does?
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Making "the rich" pay for everything (which is Bernie's public position) is NOT capitalism.
So he wants 141 million Americans to get rid of their cars so that we can be more like Sweden?
I call him a literal communist/socialist because he advocates communist/socialist policies.
What do you think 'Medicare for all' does?
I'm not going to be able to convince you that Bernie is not advocating for literal communism/socialism with his public political positions so I'm not going to continue trying.
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I'm not going to be able to convince you that Bernie is not advocating for literal communism/socialism with his public political positions so I'm not going to continue trying.
Bernie isn't advocating for the 'bad' socialism. He is advocating for the 'good' socialism, just like every other leftist walking down the pike. The only problem here is that socialism ignores human nature. It assumes that people will produce for everyone else just as hard as they produce for themselves. It assumes that people will take risks, suffer hardship, just to create something that will benefit humanity without reward. And it assumes that there would never be a need to surround our borders with razor wire and concrete just to keep people from leaving.
As I said before, there is already a lengthy historical record for what Bernie Sanders advocates. From the killing fields of Cambodia to Mao's Great Leap Forward, to the National Socialists of Germany, to the hyper-inflation of Robert Mugabe, to the failure at Jamestown in 1609, to the Euro-model which consistently lags behind the US, waiting patiently for the next American technological breakthrough to carry it through another decade, socialism is an utter failure, no matter how nice the person is advocating it.
So yet again, I ask you. What happens when "the rich" decide they no longer want to create any more wealth. Who's going to pay for all the free stuff then?
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Obama foolishly wasted money in the wrong places, and what's worse is he managed to turn people like you off to the possibility that the government can do useful things.
This has been going on long before Obama.
My earliest memories, when I started to pay attention, was around the time of LBJ.
History has taught me it goes back as far as Wilson, and even to Teddy Roosevelt.
There are probably older examples than this, if I were to go back and take a closer look.
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So does Bernie according to his public positions. He wants us to emulate the Scandinavian countries. They are capitalist. If you're calling Bernie a literal communist/socialist you either have to believe he's lying about his positions or you're simply uninformed about them. He has never advocated for the removal of the private sector, which is a mandatory part of communism/socialism. These labels get so abused that people barely know what's what anymore.
See the documentary "Sweden: Lessons for America?", by Johan Norberg.
It isn't what you would expect to see.
They've learned Socialism's lessons the hard way.
Ikea? They left Sweden, they couldn't make it there.
Have you seen a Saab lately?
Also, bear in mind that the population of Sweden is only 9.95 million as of 2017.
No, Scandinavian socialism is wrong, even for the Scandinavians.
It is something you won't hear on CNN.
This hour long documentary has been on PBS, and is played in private screenings around the US.
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See the documentary "Sweden: Lessons for America?", by Johan Norberg.
It isn't what you would expect to see.
They've learned Socialism's lessons the hard way.
Ikea? They left Sweden, they couldn't make it there.
Have you seen a Saab lately?
Also, bear in mind that the population of Sweden is only 9.95 million as of 2017.
No, Scandinavian socialism is wrong, even for the Scandinavians.
It is something you won't hear on CNN.
This hour long documentary has been on PBS, and is played in private screenings around the US.
Have you ever talked to people from Sweden about their country and how they feel about it? The vast majority of them love Sweden. Compare that to here where almost everybody is unhappy with the government. The only thing they've really had an issue with recently is the ridiculous decision to let a huge amount of poor people that don't speak the language into the country.
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This has been going on long before Obama.
My earliest memories, when I started to pay attention, was around the time of LBJ.
History has taught me it goes back as far as Wilson, and even to Teddy Roosevelt.
There are probably older examples than this, if I were to go back and take a closer look.
It goes back further for me too. I had just used Obastard as a case in point, not "the one who turned me off my natural love of government."
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Have you ever talked to people from Sweden about their country and how they feel about it? The vast majority of them love Sweden. Compare that to here where almost everybody is unhappy with the government.
The documentary wasn't made by an American, it was made by a Swede.
You can love your country, yet not trust its Federal government.
I think that would describe most people on this forum.
We've had a mistrust of the state all the way back to King George.
It's not a bad thing.
I think it is healthy to be skeptical.
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It goes back further for me too. I had just used Obastard as a case in point, not "the one who turned me off my natural love of government."
:beer:
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The documentary wasn't made by an American, it was made by a Swede.
You can love your country, yet not trust its Federal government.
I think that would describe most people on this forum.
We've had a mistrust of the state all the way back to King George.
It's not a bad thing.
I think it is healthy to be skeptical.
They have different priorities than we do. I haven't seen that documentary but I have talked to hundreds of Swedes, and I've spent time in their country and within their culture. I promise you they will never stop doing everything they can to elevate the average Swede. Their level of nationalism and pride is truly astounding and commendable.
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They have different priorities than we do. I haven't seen that documentary but I have talked to hundreds of Swedes, and I've spent time in their country and within their culture. I promise you they will never stop doing everything they can to elevate the average Swede. Their level of nationalism and pride is truly astounding and commendable.
You're moving the goalpost.
I can show you evidence where the Swedes, once very wealthy, got to the point to were that had to dial back the Socialist programs they'd enacted in order to remain solvent, and you change the subject to national pride.
Are we talking about economic sustainability of love of country?
Make up your mind.
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You're moving the goalpost.
I can show you evidence where the Swedes, once very wealthy, got to the point to were that had to dial back the Socialist programs they'd enacted in order to remain solvent, and you change the subject to national pride.
Are we talking about economic sustainability of love of country?
Make up your mind.
They love their country and its economic priorities. My fiance's mom is actually quite wealthy and she has no issue with her tax rate. She loves that there are no homeless in Sweden and that people that need help get help. Maybe at some point they had to dial something back (can you be specific?) but they'll never reverse course on their social priorities. Swedes would think you're nuts if you went over there and started talking about dismantling their healthcare system and social safety nets.
Your post is trying to give the impression that their way isn't working, but that's not really true. I'm sure they've had to make adjustments, but yeah, they're not changing the way they do things because they love how they do things and it is working (other than the immigration screw up). It's the same or a similar story in other Scandinavian countries.
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They love their country and its economic priorities. My fiance's mom is actually quite wealthy and she has no issue with her tax rate.
That would be because there is no tax on wealth. "The rich" don't get taxed. It is the people working hard to become rich who get taxed. So keep that in mind the next time you hear someone such as yourself repeating that same lie about taxing the rich to pay for your free stuff. It is income that gets taxed - not wealth.
Which brings us back again to the same question. What happens to Bernie's plan when "the rich" decide that their incentive to work has been taken away through exorbitant taxation, and they decide to stay home and enjoy the wealth they have already accumulated? What then? Who's going to pay for your 'free stuff' when that happens?
It's not a difficult question. Yet for some reason you continue to avoid it.
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That would be because there is no tax on wealth. "The rich" don't get taxed. It is the people working hard to become rich who get taxed. So keep that in mind the next time you hear someone such as yourself repeating that same lie about taxing the rich to pay for your free stuff. It is income that gets taxed - not wealth.
Which brings us back again to the same question. What happens to Bernie's plan when "the rich" decide that their incentive to work has been taken away through exorbitant taxation, and they decide to stay home and enjoy the wealth they have already accumulated? What then? Who's going to pay for your 'free stuff' when that happens?
It's not a difficult question. Yet for some reason you continue to avoid it.
I imagine the Socialists will just go to their tried and true system of extracting blood from the wealth turnip: Inflate the living crap out of the currency until accumulated wealth is rendered worthless.
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Dexter, I am guessing that you recently finished college, and that you are now facing a sizeable student loan debt that is charging 6.78% interest. If this is the case, you have my sympathy. And you also have someone who argued bitterly against those government bureaucrats who took over the student loan industry in order to "help" students. (Bernie Sanders was one of them). Just to give you a full picture, the interest on my student loans which were incurred before Obama took office were a paltry 2.32%. This was due to a competitive market where many lenders were competing for my business. Now that Big Brother Socialism has taken over, students are stuck with a government monopoly that sets the rate at 6.78%. Furthermore, that same government must now incur more debt because it now has to come up with the funds for your college instead of leaving it up to the banks.
So yes, I would be bitter too. But socialism is at fault here. Socialism is to blame. So ask yourself, would you prefer the free market 2.32% rate that I paid? Or do you prefer the 6.78% rate that socialism dictates?
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That would be because there is no tax on wealth. "The rich" don't get taxed. It is the people working hard to become rich who get taxed. So keep that in mind the next time you hear someone such as yourself repeating that same lie about taxing the rich to pay for your free stuff. It is income that gets taxed - not wealth.
Which brings us back again to the same question. What happens to Bernie's plan when "the rich" decide that their incentive to work has been taken away through exorbitant taxation, and they decide to stay home and enjoy the wealth they have already accumulated? What then? Who's going to pay for your 'free stuff' when that happens?
It's not a difficult question. Yet for some reason you continue to avoid it.
She's not that wealthy, and I guess I used the word "wealth" wrong because I wasn't thinking about it. She makes good money but she works damn hard for it.
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It's not a difficult question. Yet for some reason you continue to avoid it.
Driven people aren't going to stop being driven because of a higher tax rate. I don't answer the question because I already answered it and I just disagree with what's implied.
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I imagine the Socialists will just go to their tried and true system of extracting blood from the wealth turnip: Inflate the living crap out of the currency until accumulated wealth is rendered worthless.
This is true. However, the truly wealthy have various means of protecting the value of their wealth that are not available to the rest of us. So in the end, the wealthy remain wealthy while those of us working our butts off to save and get ahead end up getting screwed. It is a middle class tax increase that Congress never voted for.
Of course in the end, the socialists will eventually go after the wealth (provided that there are safeguards in place to protect their own). Good little socialists like the fresh NY Congresswoman will be able to complain about how they weren't able to collect their $180,000 salaries months before they actually started working while at the same time championing the proletariat by artificially driving up the costs of their education and health care.
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Driven people aren't going to stop being driven because of a higher tax rate. I don't answer the question because I already answered it and I just disagree with what's implied.
Let's think about this for a moment. Are you really saying that people will continue to work even if their tax rate is 100%?
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Are you really saying that people will continue to work even if their tax rate is 100%?
Are you really saying you think the tax rate in Sweden will ever be 100%? Are you really saying Bernie wants the tax rate to be 100%? You're making unrealistic assumptions.
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They love their country and its economic priorities. My fiance's mom is actually quite wealthy and she has no issue with her tax rate. She loves that there are no homeless in Sweden and that people that need help get help. Maybe at some point they had to dial something back (can you be specific?) but they'll never reverse course on their social priorities. Swedes would think you're nuts if you went over there and started talking about dismantling their healthcare system and social safety nets.
Your post is trying to give the impression that their way isn't working, but that's not really true. I'm sure they've had to make adjustments, but yeah, they're not changing the way they do things because they love how they do things and it is working (other than the immigration screw up). It's the same or a similar story in other Scandinavian countries.
Their 2 tax methods are a flat income (not wealth) tax and a VAT (consumption) tax.
This is new, and wasn't the case as before.
Bernie's type of tax the wealthy scheme did not work, and it had to change.
That way did not work and I am correct about this.
Why do you keep saying I am talking about dismantling their healthcare, etc....?
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Are you really saying you think the tax rate in Sweden will ever be 100%? Are you really saying Bernie wants the tax rate to be 100%? You're making unrealistic assumptions.
I am saying that before, Sweden actually had tax at a rate of 104%!
Yes, 104%, this is not a typo.
There is a Swedish children's author, who was been a proponent of their previous attempt at Socialism, who wrote an article about how they could not sustain this.
She was one of those who was tax at 104%.
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Are you really saying you think the tax rate in Sweden will ever be 100%? Are you really saying Bernie wants the tax rate to be 100%? You're making unrealistic assumptions.
Unrealistic assumptions? YOU are the one saying that "Driven people aren't going to stop being driven because of a higher tax rate". So based on that, why wouldn't Sweden raise its tax rate to 100%? According to you, they would continue to work. Right?
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Why do you keep saying I am talking about dismantling their healthcare, etc....?
In the end that's all Bernie and his crowd are really asking for. They want a national healthcare system and they want a public option for college. I really don't think they'd be too picky about how that was made possible. If Republicans came to the table and said "Well it won't work this way, but maybe if we etc etc." they'd be ecstatic.
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Unrealistic assumptions? YOU are the one saying that "Driven people aren't going to stop being driven because of a higher tax rate". So based on that, why wouldn't Sweden raise its tax rate to 100%? According to you, they would continue to work. Right?
You took my statement to an extreme that is unrealistic. I never said driven people won't stop be driven if they have no opportunities to elevate themselves as individuals. They won't raise it to 100% because that would be absurd and it wouldn't work. Nobody is talking about raising the tax rate to 100%. I don't feel like you're arguing honestly. You know that's not what I'm talking about.
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In the end that's all Bernie and his crowd are really asking for. They want a national healthcare system
I take it that there will be some sort of medical set-aside for Bernie and his ilk similar to what they had for Communist Party members in the USSR, and that Bernie won't have to wait 11 months for an MRI like the rest of us.
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I take it that there will be some sort of medical set-aside for Bernie and his ilk similar to what they had for Communist Party members in the USSR, and that Bernie won't have to wait 11 months for an MRI like the rest of us.
There are still private doctors in Europe for people with more money. Also there are horror stories in every medical system if you're willing to look for them. Nothing works perfectly, but European healthcare is absolutely not as low quality as a lot of conservatives think. They are very healthy and there is a high approval rating when it comes to healthcare.
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I am saying that before, Sweden actually had tax at a rate of 104%!
Yes, 104%, this is not a typo.
Can you show me a reliable source? I've never heard that.
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You took my statement to an extreme that is unrealistic. I never said driven people won't stop be driven if they have no opportunities to elevate themselves as individuals.
This is my exact point. If you take away their ability to elevate themselves as individuals, they will stop creating wealth.
They won't raise it to 100% because that would be absurd and it wouldn't work.
They won't raise it to 100% because they know that they will collect zero revenue with a rate that high - something which you are hesitant to admit.
Nobody is talking about raising the tax rate to 100%. I don't feel like you're arguing honestly. You know that's not what I'm talking about.
OK, then how about 95%? If you raise it to 95%, will every single one of these same driven people continue to work just as hard as they would if the rate was only 5%?
My point is that if you take away the incentive to work, people will stop working. I mentioned yesterday one of the major flaws of socialist ideology. Socialists argue that man has an inherent need to work. This premise is absolutely false. Man does not have an inherent need to work. Man has an inherent need to be rewarded for his work. Which is why capitalism is such a huge success at creating wealth while socialism is an abject failure.
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There are still private doctors in Europe for people with more money.
So what is there for those of us without more money, and who now have even less of it because our taxes just went up?
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This is my exact point. If you take away their ability to elevate themselves as individuals, they will stop creating wealth.
They won't raise it to 100% because they know that they will collect zero revenue with a rate that high - something which you are hesitant to admit.
OK, then how about 95%? If you raise it to 95%, will every single one of these same driven people continue to work just as hard as they would if the rate was only 5%?
My point is that if you take away the incentive to work, people will stop working. I mentioned yesterday one of the major flaws of socialist ideology. Socialists argue that man has an inherent need to work. This premise is absolutely false. Man does not have an inherent need to work. Man has an inherent need to be rewarded for his work. Which is why capitalism is such a huge success at creating wealth while socialism is an abject failure.
The incentive to work has not been removed in capitalist Sweden. Bernie and his followers are ignorant about immigration, but other than that all they're asking for is a public option for college and healthcare. They don't want to destroy capitalism and bring on totalitarian socialism. They don't want to lose their ability to buy homes and private property. Of the minority of people on the left that say they want to end capitalism, 99% of those are children speaking from a position of ignorance. They lack the ability to properly articulate what they're asking for. Literal socialism doesn't work, and anybody with a brain knows that.
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So what is there for those of us without more money, and who now have even less of it because our taxes just went up?
Their public healthcare system is pretty good despite what you might read from right leaning information outlets. There are always horror stories and people that slip through the cracks in every system. It happens here too. If their public healthcare option was that bad it wouldn't have a 90% or higher approval rating in a lot of European countries.
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Can you show me a reliable source? I've never heard that.
It is in an essay written by Istrid Lindgren, author of Pippi Longstockings.
It is also referenced in the documentary that I had mentioned earlier.
Slight correction:
102%, not 104%.
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You're making a mistake in assuming I want to do everything Bernie says. I just happen to think he's a good guy. Also I'm more than willing to consider the things you say to me about economics. I might not see it your way when you're done, but I'll respectfully listen and honestly consider the things you've said.
Bernie Sanders a good guy? The guy whose first regular paycheck was when he got elected to public office? The guy who wrote violent porn for publication? Whose wife just went to trial over a scam land deal? (She did get acquitted in what most would say should have been a slam-dunk conviction.) The guy who has gotten rich as a public servant? That guy? What is it you like about him?
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The incentive to work has not been removed in capitalist Sweden.
For many, it has. Quite a few have done the math and figured that there is a much greater incentive to do what they do in the United States instead of doing it in Sweden. So those individuals no longer contribute to the "free stuff" fund.
Sure, there are a number of people who continue to work despite a 61% tax rate. But that number would be much higher if that rate were only 25%. Your goal should be to maximize tax revenue. Yet you seem completely oblivious to the elasticity of tax rates, and equally oblivious to the fact that there is a revenue ceiling relative to GDP.
Bernie and his followers . . . all they're asking for is a public option for college and healthcare.
Right now, the US is not able to pay for all the 'free stuff' that we are currently giving away. Think about this for a moment. Every single dollar paid in personal income taxes does not cover the amount of money given out to other citizens residents as direct cash payments. So the government prints up new dollars to cover the difference, thus stealing wealth from anyone holding dollars. And this is all happening at a time where federal tax revenues are at an all-time high. Knowing that, how do you propose we pay for even more 'free stuff'?
They don't want to destroy capitalism and bring on totalitarian socialism.
Actually, they do want socialism, but they want capitalists to pay for it.
Of the minority of people on the left that say they want to end capitalism, 99% of those are children speaking from a position of ignorance. They lack the ability to properly articulate what they're asking for.
And Bernie Sanders is their champion.
Literal socialism doesn't work, and anybody with a brain knows that.
Then explain it to me. Explain why socialism doesn't work. Because if you really believed that, you wouldn't be calling for government monopolization of the health care industry - the same type of monopolization that has drastically driven up the cost of acquiring student loans.
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I feel I've adequately explained my views on this and that we're just going to go in circles now. I've been going on since last night in two different threads. I'm tired.
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I feel I've adequately explained my views on this and that we're just going to go in circles now. I've been going on since last night in two different threads. I'm tired.
You should be tired. Trying to defend indefensible views is hard work, requiring a lot of word-twisting and goal-post moving. Conservatives balk at that stuff.
See you on the next thread!
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Dexter, I am guessing that you recently finished college, and that you are now facing a sizeable student loan debt that is charging 6.78% interest. If this is the case, you have my sympathy. And you also have someone who argued bitterly against those government bureaucrats who took over the student loan industry in order to "help" students. (Bernie Sanders was one of them). Just to give you a full picture, the interest on my student loans which were incurred before Obama took office were a paltry 2.32%. This was due to a competitive market where many lenders were competing for my business. Now that Big Brother Socialism has taken over, students are stuck with a government monopoly that sets the rate at 6.78%. Furthermore, that same government must now incur more debt because it now has to come up with the funds for your college instead of leaving it up to the banks.
So yes, I would be bitter too. But socialism is at fault here. Socialism is to blame. So ask yourself, would you prefer the free market 2.32% rate that I paid? Or do you prefer the 6.78% rate that socialism dictates?
You left out the inflation which accompanies easy money: It costs more to attend for a year at my alma mater than it did to be there for four when I went, for tuition, fees, room and board.
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You took my statement to an extreme that is unrealistic. I never said driven people won't stop be driven if they have no opportunities to elevate themselves as individuals. They won't raise it to 100% because that would be absurd and it wouldn't work. Nobody is talking about raising the tax rate to 100%. I don't feel like you're arguing honestly. You know that's not what I'm talking about.
There is a point where you can make more money doing some slug job, when the taxes have been taken out. You have little or no responsibility, few hassles, few headaches, it's almost like a vacation. I work in an industry where pay fluctuates often with commodity prices--as do work opportunities. At some point, you say "I won't do it for that" and go Galt. I have done so in the past and will do so in the future. Just for the record, my job is a passion, not just a profession, but I won't be giving away skills and expertise acquired over decades, either.
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Driven people aren't going to stop being driven because of a higher tax rate. I don't answer the question because I already answered it and I just disagree with what's implied.
Absolutely wrong. They may last longer because they have a higher tolerance for pain, but eventually, they find alternatives.
And it’s the alternatives that actually end up sucking a lot of value out of the economy. Why do you think that employer-provided health insurance was never treated as taxable income? It’s a valuable asset, after all? Because that allows employers to pay higher without increasing the employees tax burden.
Then there are tax shelters. In the 1960s and 1970s, when the top marginal bracket was 90%, high income earners engaged in all sorts of tax shenanigans in order to generate paper losses that they could use to shield their very real income from tax.
Reagan and the Republicans in the 1980s got rid of that in large part by lowering the rates, coupled with some very punitive anti-avoidance measures in the tax code.
But that still exists. Particularly in the quasi-socialist countries you think so worthy of emulating. For most Europeans with above-median wealth, the question isn’t whether you’re engaged in offshore tax evasion, but rather what tax haven you use, and how likely is it your name will show up in the next set of the Panama Papers.
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Driven people aren't going to stop being driven because of a higher tax rate. I don't answer the question because I already answered it and I just disagree with what's implied.
Au Contrar...
I am not rich, but I once was doing pretty good...
As I rebuild, one thing that I am certain of... I will never again get bigger that that which I can handle myself.
No more employees. Never again.
That means no more monster corporate business, and I am alright with that.
I can make between fifty and a hundred bucks an hour all by myself, without all the bricks and mortar, without 10 service vehicles, without the massive investment outfitting those trucks and a shop, without all the headaches of employees, and without the government stone around my neck.
Piss on it. All of it.
And I am by no means alone. It is a thankless thing to be in business anymore. I will do for myself, and no others, and I will do much better.
Go get in business for yourself before you make statements you are not qualified to make.
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"Science" isn't in crisis, but "Climate Science" is. It's not Science, it's data-(mal)driven Propaganda.
Oh, I don't know about that. There's string theory which has failed predictions in a different sense: it fails to make any testable predictions at all, yet claims to be science.
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Oh, I don't know about that. There's string theory which has failed predictions in a different sense: it fails to make any testable predictions at all, yet claims to be science.
String theory is based on measurements and math. To date, it has not been proven, and is not considered proven science.
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String theory is based on measurements and math. To date, it has not been proven, and is not considered accepted science.
One of Hawkings theories was just debunked. Not sure which one.
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One of Hawkings theories was just debunked. Not sure which one.
It may have been the "information can pass through black holes" one. It wasn't as much debunked as it was found to be lacking.