Where Do We Draw The Line?

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Originally Posted by thebigspendur

There are many many things that are important and we use in our daily lives that came out of the space program. If a private outfit had been doing everything all those inventions would either have been salted away and kept secret of sold off to the highest bidder and all the products would cost multiples of what they do now. That's how private industry works.

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Products such as?

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Originally Posted by honedright

Products such as?

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Space food sticks. Duh!

James.

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Originally Posted by Jimbo

Space food sticks. Duh!

James.

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Oh, right.

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Originally Posted by honedright

Products such as?

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Mobile Intensive Care Units.

Computers.

Integrated circuits.

Inertial Navigation.

Just to name a tiny fraction.

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Originally Posted by Crotalus

Mobile Intensive Care Units.

Computers.

Integrated circuits.

Inertial Navigation.

Just to name a tiny fraction.

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Aren't many, if not all, of those products being produced by private industry today? The cost for computers has dropped dramatically since I bought my first about 20 years ago. Televisions, which utilize integrated circuits, continue to increase in size and quality while decreasing in cost. I remember the first cellular telephones in the 90's, a Motorola flip phone cost over a thousand dollars then, today flip phones are the cheapies at a fraction of their former price.

Seems to me that private industry has, to the contrary of an earlier post, made products cheaper, (not more expensive), better, and more available to everyone.

Besides, the federal government has no legitimate reason to be involved in product research and development.

One of the keys to this thread is the issue of legitimacy. The federal government has several enumerated and legitimate responsibilities. There are many more roles that the federal government has taken on that are illegitimate pursuant to the constitution.

A good question to consider: does consensus equal legitimacy? In other words, if everyone agreed that it was OK to steal, would that make it alright? Everyone seems to think that social security is a legitimate function of the feds, when anyone who takes a close honest look at SS can see, regardless of it's original intent, that SS, as it functions today, is nothing more, or less, than a Ponzi scheme. The SS check you collect today came from the paycheck of someone else. Theft by consensus? Seems to be. Legitimate? Does the end justify the means? I doubt it.

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Originally Posted by honedright

A good question to consider: does consensus equal legitimacy? In other words, if everyone agreed that it was OK to steal, would that make it alright?

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You are mixing up morality with legality. Of course, if everyone (but you can do it with much fewer people too) agrees that it is OK to steal it could be made perfectly legal. In fact many forms of stealing are already legalized.
Perhaps you ought to hire better lobbyists, then you'd know it can be done and how good it is...

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Originally Posted by gugi

You are mixing up morality with legality. Of course, if everyone (but you can do it with much fewer people too) agrees that it is OK to steal it could be made perfectly legal. In fact many forms of stealing are already legalized.
Perhaps you ought to hire better lobbyists, then you'd know it can be done and how good it is...

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I'm not mixing up morality with legality, it is the corruption in our society that is driving the two farther apart.

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Originally Posted by honedright

Aren't many, if not all, of those products being produced by private industry today? The cost for computers has dropped dramatically since I bought my first about 20 years ago. Televisions, which utilize integrated circuits, continue to increase in size and quality while decreasing in cost. I remember the first cellular telephones in the 90's, a Motorola flip phone cost over a thousand dollars then, today flip phones are the cheapies at a fraction of their former price.

Seems to me that private industry has, to the contrary of an earlier post, made products cheaper, (not more expensive), better, and more available to everyone.

Besides, the federal government has no legitimate reason to be involved in product research and development.

One of the keys to this thread is the issue of legitimacy. The federal government has several enumerated and legitimate responsibilities. There are many more roles that the federal government has taken on that are illegitimate pursuant to the constitution.

A good question to consider: does consensus equal legitimacy? In other words, if everyone agreed that it was OK to steal, would that make it alright? Everyone seems to think that social security is a legitimate function of the feds, when anyone who takes a close honest look at SS can see, regardless of it's original intent, that SS, as it functions today, is nothing more, or less, than a Ponzi scheme. The SS check you collect today came from the paycheck of someone else. Theft by consensus? Seems to be. Legitimate? Does the end justify the means? I doubt it.

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Private industry invented all those products under contract to NASA. NASA put a man on the moon, not for research, but to demonstrate to the Russians that we were ahead of them in missile technology so they better not try to nuke us. That sounds like a legitimate government function.

Yes, SS is a Ponzi scheme. The same thing that other people go to prison for.

Martha Stewart was put in jail for the same thing our Congressmen do, insider trading.

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Originally Posted by honedright

And with the value of silver going up, based on your post, I'd bet you'll be first in line for your next 30 pieces.

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Well done.

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Originally Posted by Crotalus

NASA put a man on the moon, not for research, but to demonstrate to the Russians that we were ahead of them in missile technology so they better not try to nuke us. That sounds like a legitimate government function.

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Yeah, but all the Russians had to do was worry about delivering a payload to the U.S. not the moon. I'm not knocking the technological achievement of landing on the moon, but isn't that kinda like swatting a fly with an atom bomb? We could have used a cheaper way to intimidate them. And we're still funding NASA well beyond that purpose.

And, there's really nothing in Article 1 section 8 of the Constitution that provides congress the power to collect taxes for the purpose of intimidating the enemy, unless you really stretch it.

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Originally Posted by honedright

Yeah, but all the Russians had to do was worry about delivering a payload to the U.S. not the moon. I'm not knocking the technological achievement of landing on the moon, but isn't that kinda like swatting a fly with an atom bomb? We could have used a cheaper way to intimidate them. And we're still funding NASA well beyond that purpose.

And, there's really nothing in Article 1 section 8 of the Constitution that provides congress the power to collect taxes for the purpose of intimidating the enemy, unless you really stretch it.

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Until we started working on going to the moon, all our rockets blew up on the pad.

Sputnik scared the hell out of us. The Russians could orbit a payload and we could not.

I can't believe the conspiracy idiots that believe the moon shot was faked.

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Originally Posted by honedright

Products such as?

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You have got to be kidding right?

if you do a little research you will find all kinds of products from industrial and medical applications into electronics, probably hundreds, maybe thousands of items. Also the Govt does all kinds of research. They have National labs, Medical institutes. Some of the most cutting edge items have come from the Govt directly and I don't mean Govt funded by private entities. The military has their own research and development labs, the list goes on and on.

Did you know the first heart valve replacement operation in the U.S was done at the Nation Institutes of Health.

I don't want to dis anyone here but anyone who says the Govt serves no useful purpose must live under a rock somewhere.

As far as private research and development goes yes once developed, private industry got them for free and then improved. The hard part was coming up with the concept in the first place. However, You know what would happen if you got an I-phone and took it apart and came out with your own vastly improved model? Either Apple would hire you or you would be sued out of existence by them.

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Originally Posted by thebigspendur

As far as private research and development goes yes once developed, private industry got them for free and then improved. The hard part was coming up with the concept in the first place.

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It's a little bit different, the concepts are easy. The issue is the huge costs of investment in basic research before you have a product you can sell. Most businesses and venture capitalists don't like to gamble with that amount of money (now patenting 'improvements' once there is a working technology is a whole other story). And that's where comes the US government and first of all the 'defense' spending.
Some of it goes into contracts some of it goes into government research facilities, but at the end of the day it's both a lot of money, and a very large chunk of the budget.
And the money the private industry is willing to invest in research has been declining for decades.
It's not hard to compare the innovations of Bell Labs, IBM, Xerox with those of Apple, or Facebook and you can get an idea of what's going on.

One more example - everybody built networks in the 1960s, but the difference between arpanet and everybody else was that the former had the backing and the resources of the federal government of US and the priority of a defense project. Just like the Manhattan project 20 years earlier.

And speaking of nukes and drawing lines, isn't it time for the nuclear weapons industry to be privatized?

And speaking of the Nuclear Weapons Industry I still want to know why I can't go out and buy a Thermonuclear Device. I mean, it's a weapon and an arm right? isn't that covered under the 2nd amendment? I only want a little one to play with. Talk about a nanny state.

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Originally Posted by thebigspendur

And speaking of the Nuclear Weapons Industry I still want to know why I can't go out and buy a Thermonuclear Device. I mean, it's a weapon and an arm right? isn't that covered under the 2nd amendment? I only want a little one to play with. Talk about a nanny state.

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The difference is a Nuke is a Weapon of Mass Destruction.

I don't think a $200 tax stamp will cover that. You might have a problem getting the Chief of Police to sign off on it as well.

Texas still has the monopoly on Nuke assembly.

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Originally Posted by thebigspendur

And speaking of the Nuclear Weapons Industry I still want to know why I can't go out and buy a Thermonuclear Device. I mean, it's a weapon and an arm right? isn't that covered under the 2nd amendment? I only want a little one to play with. Talk about a nanny state.

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Thanks, just spewed coffee all over my keyboard reading that. Strangely enough, it almost makes sense in the context of this thread.

Bob

Speaking of NASA, the federal government, and "the" space program...
The U.S. government’s secret space program has decided to give NASA two telescopes as big as, and even more powerful than, the Hubble Space Telescope.

Hmm.... I haven't gotten to use this one in awhile:


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