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U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said on Thursday he has sent recommendations from his review of more than two dozen national monuments to President Donald Trump, indicating that some could be scaled back to allow for more hunting and fishing and economic development.
The recommendations follow a 120-day study of 27 national monuments across the country, created by presidents since 1996, that Trump ordered in April as part of his broader effort to increase development on federal lands.
The review has cheered energy, mining, ranching and timber advocates but has drawn widespread criticism and threats of lawsuits from conservation groups and the outdoor recreation industry.
There were fears that Zinke would recommend the outright elimination of some of the monuments on the list, but on Thursday, speaking to the Associated Press in Billings, Montana, he said he will not recommend eliminating any.
Zinke said in a statement that the recommendations would "provide a much needed change for the local communities who border and rely on these lands for hunting and fishing, economic development, traditional uses, and recreation." He did not specify which monuments he plans to recommend be scaled back.
The Associated Press reported that Zinke said he would recommend changing the boundaries for a "handful" of sites.
If you're taking millions of acres off the table for one site, you fail at knowing the definition of a monument.
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-interior-monuments-idUSKCN1B41YA
Also at RT, CNN, The Washington Post and The Hill.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @11:11AM (122 children)
These conservation groups should buy the land if they want to keep it a certain way.
What they'll find is that they don't have the resources to make private ownership of that land profitable (for themselves or for society at large); there are more productive ways to use this land—and that means there are better ways to take care of it, too.
(Score: 5, Informative) by zocalo on Friday September 01 2017, @11:34AM (4 children)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Friday September 01 2017, @06:24PM (2 children)
Having lived in both the UK and the US, I can only applaud the National Trust, Historic Scotland, and other UK organizations that care for historic sites. They do an absolutely tremendous job, and they are basically self-supporting.
In the US, you have private companies running some national parks. They abide by the same rules that the government would, but with a difference: the government earns money, rather than spending it, because the private companies are vastly more efficient. Some are better than others, of course, but the same applies to the government-run facilities.
I'm not saying that the US should privatize everything, but there is a good argument for privatizing quite a lot. Have guidelines that must be met, do away with unnecessary regulations and see what happens.
That said, some of the federal practices are pretty stupid. I've been in national forests that are used for logging, where there was natural forest in a 10 meter band near the road - and beyond that you had perfect rows of identical trees all the same age [ggpht.com]. That's bullshit. If a tree farm wants to grow trees, they can do it on their own lands. That's not what national forests are for. The same for grazing: If a rancher wants to graze cattle, he can buy his own damned pasture.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @06:35PM
Stand by for blatant Republican lie, and it is not even fron the Donald!
FALSE! Not true! Erroneous. Right-wing ideological claptrap! Pre-alt-wrong.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday September 01 2017, @06:43PM
- for.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday September 01 2017, @06:42PM
... but it doesn't operate parks. It buys land then lets it be wilderness.
I expect they do that in other countries too.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @01:15PM (116 children)
You have to be careful with this sort of logic. It's largely the reason that our space program went into literally regressive hibernation for about 50 years. There's not always profit to made in things that are immensely valuable to society. And seeking a profit can and often does have a habit of destroying things that are immensely valuable to society. For instance the US education system has many problems, but they can all be distilled down simply to conflating seeking a profit with providing an education. Or the modern conflation of government with private enterprise is at the heart of all political corruption.
The thing that really annoys me about stuff like this is that there is an enormous amount of undeveloped privately owned land. Companies seek out these sort of lands that the government owns not only because they likely get unreasonably good deals on the land, but also because these lands tend to be in premium spots for "economic development" as the article mentions with numerous communities bordering these lands. It's not just "conservation groups" that aren't necessarily thrilled about their publicly owned wild lands getting replaced by a WalMart.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 01 2017, @01:50PM (10 children)
S'what you get for letting the government own things. It's like people for some reason think people who agree with them will always be the ones making decisions about these things.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @01:58PM (7 children)
If those lands were sold they'd be ranch or timber land. Do you even live in the US?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 01 2017, @05:03PM (6 children)
And? If they're not part of a national park or a proper monument, the government has no business saying what can and can't be done with them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @05:16PM (5 children)
Exactly, thus why they should remain as parks / monuments. Sure you're not posting AC? Same logic seems to be going around....
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 01 2017, @06:22PM (4 children)
See above in the summary. Monuments do not encompass millions of acres. They were declared monuments, despite clearly not being monuments, because the President can unilaterally declare anything a monument whereas he cannot do this with a park. It was a clear abuse of power that should have been laughed out of court in by the time the ink dried on the order.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @07:10PM (3 children)
Ugh, pedantry when it suits you. Your logic is always on point provided everyone subscribes to your limited view of the world.
I consider these locations to be monuments to North American history and our love for natural beauty. A monument does not have to be in structure form.
Gee, I wonder what might happen to these beautiful pieces of nature. Hmmmm.... I can't wait until every part of the US looks like a major city. Industrial wasteland with teeny tiny pockets of green. All hail resource extraction! All hail profits!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 01 2017, @10:11PM (2 children)
Millions of acres locked up is in no way pedantic.
This is true. There has to be something for it to be a monument to however. Being a monument to "we like trees" is not remotely sufficient and any arguments to the contrary are not just bullshit but knowingly bullshit.
If you're concerned about it, buy some nature and do nothing with it. Your mouth, either put some money where it is or shut it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @10:32PM (1 child)
You're a fool, but hey the sky is also blue! Obviously there is a split between those who think "fuck nature" and "save nature". If your stance is purely ideological then you're a bigger fool than I thought, relying on market forces to prevent corporations from destroying more of the environment. If you don't think or care that the environment will be damaged then you're beyond hope.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday September 02 2017, @01:39AM
You haven't a clue, coward-boy. I spend more time out in nature in a month than you will in your entire life, most likely. A hell of a lot of those red-staters that are against the government owning huge swaths of public land and refusing to let anyone use it for anything... they're the ones who enjoy being out in it every week. They want it freed up because they want to own it and spend time on it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @02:53PM
Going back, some of these National Monuments might be within lands that the US Govt bought initially? For example the Louisiana Purchase [per Wikipedia] of 828,000 square miles (2.14 million km²) by the United States from France in 1803.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday September 01 2017, @03:34PM
The frustrating part is that a lot of them are the politicians who *are* making the decisions.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @01:51PM (85 children)
Profit is the only reason to do anything.
Either actions create wealth, or they don't; either your actions are profitable, or they aren't—when a thief steals your wallet, he is indeed profiting himself, but you (and society at large) are losing something, which is why you (and society at large) are motivated to stop theft.
Space has all the resources. Why should anybody be interested in space? Because that interest will eventually lead to massive profits our species!
Profit is everything. Quit thinking of it as a dirty word.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @02:06PM (19 children)
Wow, just wow. Profit is everything, profit is life? I understand your point but it is so wrong. Explain nonprofits! Explain charities! Explain the mitary!
I'm sure you can do some mental gymnastics to frame those activities as some derivative of profit seeking but that would be disingenuous. Instead try admitting you were wrong and profit doesn't fit into every human activity.
It is only a dirty word when people make profit more important than everything else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @02:22PM (13 children)
None of those things is unprofitable—with the exception of the military, which is a humongous waste of society's resources; as usual, the government is a parasite on productive society, skimming resources from its host.
If a thing merely breaks even, then it's not likely to survive in the long-term.
If a thing is cannot even break even, then it will disappear.
That is the nature of living in a Universe of finitely accessible resources.
What is so difficult to grasp about that fact? It's virtually an axiom.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @02:49PM (12 children)
You're conflating conservation of energy with an economic model. Just that fact right there makes you incompetent to continue this little debate. Are you a robot? Cause you seem to have lost your humanity somewhere along the way.
Yes that is a mean dig, but it is incredibly relevant. Only robots would view all human activity as something that must be monetized. Time to grow as an individual, your axiom is flawed.
Here, I'll give you an example to highlight and in a sense agree with your flawed logic. The Sun will run out of fuel someday so it IS a finite resource, but the time frame is so long as to be irrelevant to humanity. It is possible for our limited resources to be re-used indefinitely if we're smart about our society building and don't let our population explode further out of control. So the axiom of finite resources is flawed for the next few million years at least. Oh! Also, finite resources precludes the concept of profit, how can you create profit once the resource is gone? What about selling digital music? The supply is infinite, yet many people are able to make a profit selling their music.
Simply put you are narrow minded and have put your faith in a simple idea which lets you stop worrying about the details. No need to think further, just apply the profit test!
1. Is the thing privately owned? No? BAD! Yes? GOOD!
2. Does the thing require taxes? Yes? BAD! No? GOOD!
So the space race was bad? Oh lemme guess, it was worth it because we later privatized things? There are many things that are better off without a profit motive, the logic you are using is simply an excuse for the ownership class to get their hands on every piece of human activity so they can extract money from people.
This is the bullshit I expected form Trump, selling out the people for the benefit of corporations. And we have intellectual powerhouses like yourself ready to hop in with simple logic that sways the ignorant.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @02:56PM (8 children)
This guy just said the OP is a humanity-less robot. Where are the down-moderations for this guy?
Oh, space race again? How about "Redundant"; it's already been discussed in this very thread! Talk about Eternal September... man... "space race". What's next? "Move to Somalia!"??
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:10PM (7 children)
Oh yes, lets get out the burn cream! That shit was wicked hot!
Are you the violently imposed monopoly guy? Won't budge in your viewpoints even when many many people show you the flaws in your thinking? The human experience entails more than profit motivated activity. Art, beauty, love, excitement, fun, adventure, compassion, altruism.
Not only is your profit based ideology flawed, but it is incorrect as well. You presume that everything should be privately owned, but that is not even a requirement for something to be a benefit to humanity!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:23PM (6 children)
It takes resources to manifest "art, beauty, love, excitement, fun, adventure, compassion, altruism". Stop trying to ignore that fact.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:32PM (3 children)
Not ignoring that fact, you are under the mistaken impression that no one here understands your argument. Quite they opposite, your arguments are understood and found to be limited and flawed. You're mixing up the general definition of profit with the capitalistic idea of privatized profits. Enough examples and arguments have already been put forth, continue with your persecution complex if you want.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:38PM (2 children)
Those "examples" provide no damage to the argument that I've put forward.
With regard to "mixing up" the meaning of profit, please see here. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @04:46PM (1 child)
No, go troll somewhere else.
(Score: 4, Funny) by aristarchus on Friday September 01 2017, @06:43PM
One cannot "go troll somewhere else"! SoylentNews is the only place left! The green site, Rivendell, all of then have been privatized, and now for some reason there are not enough resources to troll, and most functions have been taken over by mindless, souless, amoral and incontinent robots. And it is starting even here! First they came for Bear's Ears, and then they came for Soylent, and then there was nowhere to troll at all.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday September 01 2017, @06:53PM (1 child)
not even the high-quality paint that Artistes use.
Therefore the Mona Lisa is worth about seventy-five clams.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2017, @04:04AM
"Mona Lisa is worth about seventy-five clams"
That's the start of a good clam bake, but just the start. I'll meet you out on the mudflats, and we'll get serious about clamming.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 01 2017, @05:40PM (2 children)
Sorry, that's bogus. Let us note that "energy" was not mentioned at all and even if it were, no such conflation actually took place.
Second, if the economic model doesn't follow laws of physics (eg, infinite energy generators and the like for conservation of energy), then it's a bad model. If your model of economics ignores that a vast amount of resources (there's a lot more conserved quantities out there than energy!) is conserved or nearly so (with high cost to create or remove said resources), then it's going to have a lot of built in fail to it. There is no conflation here, it's recognizing that activities consume scarce, mostly conserved resources and if they can't sustain themselves directly, then they need to have a means by which they can insure the transfer of resources in perpetuality say via trade or the support of enduring sponsors.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @06:19PM (1 child)
Physics fail: That is the nature of living in a Universe of finitely accessible resources.
Everything is energy, AC brought in the finite universe as support for their argument so blame them.
You want economic models that include human activity to be on par with physical laws of the universe? Drink some more coffee, your brain is still dreaming.
(Score: 1, Informative) by khallow on Friday September 01 2017, @06:51PM
[...]
These are straw man arguments. No one has expressed anything that is relevant to your claims. In particular, economics models don't need to be as rigorous as physical law in order to work.
And the fact of the finite universe is support for the AC's argument. As to everything being energy, you do realize that it takes considerable effort to transform between various forms of matter and energy? For example, we could transform sunlight directly into gold by particle-anti-particle creation, assembling the resulting simple particles into gold nuclei eventually. But no one will do that because the cost of doing so would be huge. Even using nuclear reactions to generate gold nuclei is grotesquely inefficient. Thus, the amount of gold in the present world is effectively conserved even though we can think of a variety of hard paths for creating or removing it.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Friday September 01 2017, @05:26PM (4 children)
Speaking of disingenuous, we have a beauty here. Asking a question that you already know the answer to and then ruling out the answer without cause because it requires imaginary mental gymnastics and is disingenuous from a disingenuous point of view. Profit in the general sense is merely getting out more than you put in. Another word for it is sustainable. It doesn't require huge external inputs to keep going because the value of the thing or activity pays for itself either directly or through contributions of resources from concerned citizens.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @06:24PM (3 children)
Another physics failure!
That is actually NOT sustainable, the only way that could possibly be true is if you ignore the Sun's input and even then we still don't have matter/energy conversion so we're restricted by the physical matter available to us.
You're making the same mistake as the AC, profit can be defined as a general "net benefit" or a specific economic term. Using both interchangeably is the mental gymnastics part.
Generally everything can be viewed as profit, but economically there are many ways to achieve that general goal. Capitalistic profit models that rely on private ownership are NOT required. They make sense for some areas of human activity but not all. If you believe everything should be privatized then go make your own country and take your anarcho-libertarian friends with you.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 01 2017, @06:32PM (2 children)
Sustainable on the time scale of hundreds of millions of years. Come up with a better argument.
And you're making the mistake of thinking we are. Plus, I agree that the two uses of the term are not equivalent, but there is considerable overlap.
The thing that gets ignored here is that government ventures routinely have huge inputs of public funding. When that goes away (say because the opponents get into office with solid political support), then you have that funding dry up and the activity stopped. Hence, the emphasis on sustainable activity that isn't so dependent on capricious political sources for support.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @10:16PM (1 child)
Then mark the areas as public land forever and be done with it. If public funding disappears then the land is still there, but no rangers to oversee it or budget to fix parking lots, and big signs saying "Enter at your own risk!"
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 02 2017, @07:15PM
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @02:24PM (15 children)
Profit may be the only reason for you to do something. It's quite childish to then project your personal worldview as "the one and true god" of beliefs. In my view all that matters is positively changing society. Sometimes this goes hand in hand with profit, sometimes it does not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @02:33PM (14 children)
To say that you want society to change positively is to say that you want society to profit.
A bank balance, for example, is just one way to measure profit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:13PM (12 children)
You can't have it both ways. Either "profit" is a stand-in for "general benefit" or it is specific to the capitalist economic model. If it is a general word to indicate benefits in any form then you must drop the focus on private ownership. If not you're intellectually bankrupt and kindly go back to school.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:35PM (6 children)
Capitalism is not separable from "profit", even in the most general sense of the word.
This is because nobody knows what anything should cost, or what something should be priced—society has to find these values; centuries of experiments (and, last century in particular) have revealed that so far, we only know one good way to find these values:
The Price Mechanism
For a system as complex as society, the only workable solution for finding the values in question seems to be evolution by variation (supplier competition) and selection (consumer choice); as you can see, we're making our way towards capitalism.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @05:19PM (5 children)
Ah yes, the "free market" which does not actually exist and unless you manage to solve the pesky "human" problem it will never exist. Update your presumptions, cross reference with reality.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 01 2017, @06:41PM (4 children)
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @07:26PM (3 children)
Free market when you want it to solve efficiency problems or get rid of regulation, don't need a free market for pricing mechanisms to work.
God DAMN how has your existence not ruptured the space time continuum?
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Friday September 01 2017, @08:54PM (2 children)
You got it.
Because I understand nuance apparently. Tools don't have to work absolutely perfectly in order to be usable tools.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @10:41PM (1 child)
Hahahah, ok whatever khallow, remain a walking paradox and enjoy all the arguments you can until people realize its just easier to ignore you. Only reason I respond is so that some random person isn't suckered into your semi-reasonable yet contradictory statements.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 02 2017, @05:34AM
The second sentence says nothing about the first and vice versa, hence they can't contradict each other. A freer market tends to be more efficient and less ridden with regulation, neither which really has anything to do with the existence of pricing mechanisms (the efficiency of the mechanism, sure, but not whether it exists). But you can have a market that's pretty far from the free market ideal and still have pricing mechanisms. You just need a few things like price discovery and voluntary trade. And that's pretty much it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 01 2017, @05:47PM (4 children)
This is ridiculous. There's a huge number of words out there with multiple meanings. Nothing magical about profit that it can't have multiple meanings as well. I get that you don't want semantic mixing of the term, but that isn't actually happening here. The claim is being made that personal profit is usually societal profit as well. Sure, it's not always true, there are plenty of examples of activities that have huge externalities to them that outweigh the benefit of the activity to the involved parties. But most activities don't have those huge externalities.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @06:28PM (3 children)
You are ridiculous. Words can have multiple meanings, no one is saying profit can only mean one thing. However, when making an argument you can't substitute in the various definitions to support the narrow definition of privatized business profits.
EXACTLY! So can we stop this pointless debate? National parks / monuments are a public good, privatizing them is the continuation of robbing the public for corporate profits.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 01 2017, @06:57PM (2 children)
Unless we benefit more from privatizing them than the loss of the public good. Then it's not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @07:04PM (1 child)
If something is better then it is better. If it isn't better then it is not better. I will go with historical evidence of corporations abusing natural resources for their own profits instead of this hypothetical privatized system you imagine.
Draft up your proposals, include a contract that enforces environmental protections and limits on what the private owners can do, THEN we can discuss whether the public land should be privatized. You want me to trust the market / corporations? I refer again to historical evidence.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 02 2017, @07:39PM
And? Abusing natural resources is not necessarily a bad thing. All our stuff is made from abused natural resources.
Why should the rights of the land owner be limited in such a way? What's going on here is that for the past twenty years, the federal government has been using the Antiquities Law to reserve large tracts of land by presidential decree. It's relatively mild right now with perhaps 1-2k square miles land area and ~50k square miles of sea area reserved per year on average over the past two decades. But there's nothing legally to prevent future presidents from escalating this to vast fractions of the US in the future and using the power to push their agendas. There needs to be some pushback.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:14PM
You've been confused by your Anarchocap for Dummies book. ;-) The weenie word you're looking for is value. And a weenie word it is. Value is defined as fundamentally anything that makes a statement using it true, even if it contradicts another statement's usage of the word. This argument is kind of like trying to say claim that all colors are green. The only difference is academic - the wavelength absorption/reflection bands are changed a shade, but it's all green. Radio waves? Nope, green waves. X-rays? Nope, green-rays. Is the sky blue? No, it's green. Space empty... black? Nope, green. Roses are red? Nope, green. Of course you're free to say whatever you like, but trying to magically redefine words to make a view seem less radicalized is itself an ironic example of extreme radicalization.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Friday September 01 2017, @02:26PM (38 children)
Profit is not a dirty word.
But Profit is NOT absolutely NOT the only reason to do things. Some things are immensely valuable to society, both today and for future generations. Some things are worth preserving.
It's not like the companies are going out of business if they don't get to strip mine every undeveloped national monument or natural resource on the planet.
You mention Space has all the resources. Clue: the space program of the 1960's was immensely expensive. And there was no profit motive driving it to achieve great things. Yet out of it flowed all kinds of economic benefits both in terms of jobs created to support the space programs, and technology spin offs that flowed into all other areas of society and kickstarted the IC and microprocessor revolution.
The Interstate project is not directly profitable to the government or anyone. But it also created enormous economic benefits.
Now preserving some lands may not have economic benefits, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. The benefits may not be directly understandable at the time of the doing. (eg, space program, and interstate for moving military supplies rapidly) But preventing various species extinction might prove to be valuable in the not so distant future.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @02:42PM (26 children)
You're saying it's profitable to preserve something; future generations would find it to be a loss of wealth were it not preserved. Of course, that's your opinion; numbers can help back up your claim—which often leads to calculations in terms of money.
You're saying the Interstate Project has been profitable; of course, maybe some other, more organically grown, market-driven system of transportation would have been even more profitable (private money tends not to support bridges to nowhere).
Satellite communications and navigation technology has been very profitable for society; of course, it's pretty stupid to develop satnav by trying to plant a flag on the moon, rather than to plant a flag on the moon after developing highly profitable space technology. Sure, maybe NASA's work has yielded a 10x return, but a market-driven approach may have yielded a 1000x return—and may have resulted in designs for moon colonies or asteroid mining rather than earth-bound ICBMs. Get it, yet?
Your bank balance is just one way to measure profit; to say that you "want society to improve" is to say that you "want society to profit".
Profit is never dirty; profit is everything.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @02:49PM (22 children)
This website is terrible for discussion; the moderation is horrifically biased, and hides comments that are perfectly legitimate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:00PM (3 children)
All you're doing is repeating your argument and twisting everything as somehow supporting your idea. What do you expect when you ignore other people's points and just re-iterate what you already said? Intellectual dishonesty, you can't face your personal axiom having failed.
Perhaps the actual problem here is that you are applying "profit" in the absolute most general sense: An advantageous gain or return; benefit.
If so, then you should broaden your vocabulary, because to most people profit is tied into economics.
Example: a state park. Everyone would be served perfectly well if the parks generated zero profit. Pay the rangers and their costs, but no one should be getting money for simply owning the parks. The park is still a net benefit to humanity, but it is more beneficial if the prices don't include paying some rich dude to sit on his ass and do nothing except keep a deed in his desk. Many countries with massively more socialized programs are doing quite well.
Don't want to be marked redundant? Stop trying to force your beliefs on to everyone else. Try listening to their arguments and growing beyond your own narrow view.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:10PM (1 child)
With regard to forcing beliefs on anyone else, I'm not the one who looks to pull the levers of government to effect my world view; hell, I'm not even the one moderating others.
With regard to your "zero profit" scheme, see the prior comment [soylentnews.org]; you'll notice it has already been discussed—maybe you should actually "try listening to their arguments and growing beyond your own narrow view".
How is "tied into economics" defeating any argument? You're just using other words to make it sound like you've said something novel.
To me, it looks like your own personal axioms are failing, and that you cannot handle it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:18PM
Nice projection bud, way to evade personal responsibility. I read your arguments and found them limited. Not wrong, but incomplete. All you're doing here is playing "I know you are but what am I?"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Friday September 01 2017, @03:31PM
It's called moving the goalposts (but I'm sure you already knew that). Start out with the definition of profit that nobody can mistake for cashy monies, then when called on it say, "haha, I was talking general benefit all along!"
Horseshit. No you (they) weren't.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:01PM (17 children)
Nothing is hidden -- just browse at -1.
I use the mod system to rate the audience, not the posts (except for the obvious off-topic or spam posts).
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday September 01 2017, @03:28PM (16 children)
Then you're blatantly doing it wrong. jmorris et al. occasionally make good points, but under your system we would never see them because they'd be voted down anyway.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:49PM (13 children)
You missed the bit where I browse at -1.
I see everything, even the "jmorris et al." posts that are sometimes down-modded.
(Score: 3, Funny) by tangomargarine on Friday September 01 2017, @03:51PM (1 child)
Good for you, Mr. Selfish, but you're damaging everyone else's SN experience.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @04:59PM
Moral dilemma: no one should be modded down for an identity, the value of their words should stand for themselves.
Problem: but its jmorris!!
Result: Ok ok, bigotry is fine, but just this ONE TIME!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @04:03PM (10 children)
I also browse at -1, but I use modding for the sake of others, not myself. I don't even understand the compulsion to leave anonymous moderation, if not to affect the experience of others. </anonymous virtue signalling>
(Score: 1, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday September 01 2017, @06:48PM (9 children)
Boy, I wish I [soylentnews.org] could do this!
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 01 2017, @10:16PM (8 children)
Use the Spam moderation for spam instead of "making a point" and you could.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday September 02 2017, @01:23AM (7 children)
There you go again, Buzz! Spamming the forum with redundant comments about the spam mod! If I could mod, I might have to mod this spam, just to make a point, again.
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday September 02 2017, @01:41AM (6 children)
Second offense is six months, just in case you were wondering.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday September 02 2017, @01:48AM (5 children)
So, will you stop spamming SoylentNews with your incessant hall-monitoring?
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday September 02 2017, @02:42AM
Nope, that's what I get paid the big bucks for. I even have an official vest and everything.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2017, @03:42AM (3 children)
You really, and truly, need to change your name. Or, was the real Aristarchus a petty whining bitch too? Have you ever suffered a hardship more severe than being deprived of moderation privileges for a few days? What a spoiled, pampered fuck you are.
(Score: 1, Troll) by aristarchus on Saturday September 02 2017, @09:48AM (2 children)
You, oh pampered by anonymity AC, need to change your name! Who are you to even address one such as I? Let alone the The Mighty Buzzard, who is Mighty? And of course, being the historically illiterate AC that you are, you do not comprehend the seriousness of the current stuggle! You probably would have gone with Chamberlain to Berlin, in search of "peace in our time", and let the Nazis mod-ban the Jews, the Communists, the Gays, the Roma, and the Catholics with balls! Wouldn't you? Oh, if my "whining" in defense of free speech and justice offends thee, pluck out thy, . . . well, pluck out something. Those of us working for social justice have no time for the annoyed. So we will continue posting here. Even if we must spam mod the Migratory Bandsaw one hundred times, even if we have to suffer mod-bans of months, or sixes of months, or shadow-bans and IP blocking, we will continue, because history is on our side. The right wing know this, it is why they have gone daft and extreme. I mean, seriously, Nazis and KKK and Militias from the '70s? CosPlay, dude! And Trump.
You may not be aware of the history of Samos. This island birthed many of the greatest minds of its era, including Pythagoras, Epicurus, Melissus, Aesop, and myself. You seem not to be aware that Pythagoras, the man who invented the term "philosophy", was forced to hide in a cave on Mount Kerkis, because the tyrant Polycrates tried to mod-ban him, or at least the ancient equivalent. So do not be surprised that the Sons of Samos are the First in Revolution in the Name of Justice, even here on SoylentNews, against the tyrant TMB. Really, it is no problem to me. I feel no pain, or even harm. Just concern for the dream that was SoylentNews, back when we started this adventure together. Or were you not there, AC?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday September 02 2017, @04:38PM
Look, man, you spammed. Someone saw it and correctly moderated it. Learn something for once instead of acting like a petulant child.
I didn't moderate you. I just refused to reverse legit moderation. I didn't mod-ban you either. I just shook my head, said "dumbass", and went on with my day.
You want someone to have a vendetta against, go for it. You're not going to get any help with that from me though. I happen to enjoy reading ~95% of what you have to say here. The rest I just say "meh" and go on to the next comment.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Sunday September 03 2017, @10:57AM
"This island birthed many of the greatest minds of its era"
Thank God and Evolution that we aren't relying on those Greeks to do our thinking today! How's that Greek economy doing, anyway?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @04:14PM (1 child)
Actually, I'm quite certain I could live a full and meaningful life without ever having seen any of jmorris' comments. By my reckoning, jmorris' comments (and those of a few notable others) could disappear into a black hole and nothing of value would be lost. YMMV.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by aristarchus on Saturday September 02 2017, @09:51AM
Of all the comments I missed modding up while my unjust mod-ban was in place, I think I shall miss this one the most. So true, so succinct, so nobly phrased! Well done, Anonymous Coward, well done!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Friday September 01 2017, @05:16PM (2 children)
The interstate project was of economic benefit in hindsight. It was for national security when it started.
Space satellites have been of enormous economic benefit in hindsight. During the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, profit and economic benefits were not seen.
Prior to Apollo there wasn't any significant market for space. It was enormously expensive to get something into orbit. A lot of that was the R&D costs of developing launch vehicles. And a huge number of unknowns that the moon shot program solved -- at great cost. No telecom company would think, hey let's put up a telecom satellite. All we have to do first is spend many billions of dollars to develop a way to launch it. And to research how to even build a satellite that can withstand the environment of space.
Profit isn't dirty, per se. But it's not the only reason to do everything. Having families and children is not profitable.
There is a word for thinking that everything revolves around profit. Psychopath. And some CEOs are.
If profit drives everything, then why don't we just strip mine the entire planet until it is totally uninhabitable. Think of the profits!
If you just want the profit above all, organized crime is the end point, so why not just skip all the middle steps and start with organized crime? There are reasons why we have government. It is to protect the public good, while allowing everyone to pursue happiness (and profit).
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2017, @12:53AM
Satellites for the purpose of communications were one of the very first things proposed for space technology. You're just pulling shit out of your arse.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 02 2017, @05:15PM
This is nonsense as well. Eisenhower became a big fan of the idea after he saw the autobahns after the Second World War. Sure, it has military application, but it's obvious that an efficient nation-wide transportation system will have massive economic benefits as well.
And yet parents value their children more than they do the resources consumed in raising those children. That is what profit is about, whether the specific financial version or the general one, getting more out than you put in.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday September 01 2017, @02:45PM (9 children)
Aside from "because it is beautiful" -- which ought to be enough -- there are other arguments for open space such as the fact that such spaces clean the air and water -- two things that without, profit is irrelevant. They also provide a place for occasional excess water to collect, a benefit that protects profit in developed areas and that benefit should be obvious to anyone who has heard of Harvey.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @02:52PM (8 children)
You're saying this: Those open spaces are profitable for society.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:37PM (1 child)
I liked this response [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:54PM
It doesn't match this situation.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:50PM (5 children)
WE GET IT, you enjoy MISUSING the word profitable, and it appears you are doing it to push your own POV that everything is and should be about profit.
No one else here agrees with your definition of the word. You are not going to convince people other wise. So at this point its just trolling, so STOP IT.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:58PM (4 children)
Would you profit if I stopped? How many bitcoins would you send me in exchange for stopping?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @04:49PM (3 children)
Well I bothered to log in and counteract what I thought was an incorrect flamebait mod. I will now probably join people in modding you troll.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @05:16PM (2 children)
Please, explain.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @05:26PM (1 child)
I corrected what I thought to be a faulty moderation. Upon further reflection I see that you are simply restating your primary idea of profit == everything. Enough people have posted legitimate responses and demonstrated that "profit" does not cover everything, and that you are using the general and specific definitions of profit to suit your purposes.
I will now mod such submissions as trolls since they ignore valid arguments and simply restate the assumption that profit == everything. When using the general and specific definitions at will you can wrap everything into the general and then "logically" tie it to the specific business profit definition.
To further explain, it is like you are copy/pasting the same argument over and over, no variation and no valid critiques of counter arguments. This is trollish behavior, spamming a message to try and force engagement. A few people have already commented that you are intentionally doing this, but I am giving you the benefit of the doubt and explaining the situation.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @08:29PM
Their arguments haven't been ignored; they've been rebutted (and, indeed, invalidated).
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 02 2017, @04:09AM
"ut Profit is NOT absolutely NOT the only reason to do things."
Double negatives? So, you actually agree with GP? I are getting confused, LOL.
I'm just kidding, really, but double negatives attract my attention.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:27PM (2 children)
I had to log in and correct the moderation, I used interesting cause that seems the closest. The comment is definitely not flamebait, improper downmods only serves to solidify the person's flawed thinking because we are flawed humans and can't help but tie our emotional reactions into our beliefs. They now feel persecuted (somewhat legitimate) and thus their ideas become martyrs. If you disagree with their profit only model please add a rebuttal, or at least use the disagree mod.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:59PM (1 child)
We're all still waiting. The OP seems to rebut fairly well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @05:13PM
Profit is everything!
Anything that isn't profit is BAD and can be ignored since it is BAD and shouldn't exist. 10/10 for style, 12/10 for insight.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @04:25PM (3 children)
You wouldn't happen to be related to Donald Trump, would you?
Question: I sometimes do volunteer work for charity. I don't get paid for this work. (Well, OK, sometimes I might get a free burger from a local restaurant for a morning and/or afternoon of work.) How does this fit into your "profit is everything" model of how the world works? Am I wasting my time? Should I, instead, look to engage in something more "profitable"? Frankly, it looks to me like your "profit is everything" model is severely lacking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @04:51PM (2 children)
The troll is misusing the word profit, switching between the general and specific definitions as it suits the argument. Intellectually dishonest, probably the same person as the "violently imposed monopoly!"
Safe to ignore.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @05:20PM (1 child)
If someone's argument seems disagreeable, that person is by definition wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @05:30PM
That would indeed seem to be the logic you are operating on. I hope you are trolling, or that you live in another country. The US can't handle much more stupid.
(Score: 3, Touché) by karmawhore on Friday September 01 2017, @06:00PM
=kw= lurkin' to please
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday September 01 2017, @06:49PM (1 child)
"Honey, I need some lovin' tonight."
"That'll be 200 bucks."
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @08:36PM
... when you've just come home from a fancy $200 dinner.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 01 2017, @05:29PM (9 children)
And then your response:
I strongly disagree on quite a bit of that. Let's start with the US's space program (which is what I assume you mean by "our" space program, but similar logic applies to all the other space programs). The US space program has spent vast amounts of money over the past 50 years - while Apollo spending was much larger than current, it adds up over 50 years. The overall spending has added up to somewhere north of a trillion dollars in today's money. And they just didn't find those immensely valuable things. Sure, they've looked at a bunch of stuff that could be immensely valuable, but we already knew that going in. It's basically just an enormously expensive, technology demonstration exercise with little application to Earth or humanity for the money spent.
Second, tragedy of the commons is not unique to the private world. For example, the Aral Sea almost completely disappeared due to negligence at the government level in the USSR and the subsequent government.
Completely disagree. Most of the US educational system is non profit. Instead, it's about most of that system, including the non profit parts simply pursuing their own interests instead of doing their job. And political corruption has been present in governments since the dawn of history. It's definitely not due to some modern idea of implementing private enterprise concepts in government.
On that subject, let us note that private enterprise pioneers a lot of modern technology, organizational techniques, and ideas. Not everything will apply equally well to the public sector, but it'd be foolish to ignore powerful advances just because they're suffused with the taint of private enterprise.
Who knew that valuable, publicly owned land in a good location was more valuable to developers than worthless, privately owned land in the boondocks? Who knew?
Finally, on a related note, I see that some AC in the thread has conflated "financial profit" with the more generic "profit". When someone speaks of something being profitable for society at large as the original poster did, they most certainly aren't speaking of financial profit.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @07:41PM (3 children)
Your ignoring the how, why, and what of the spending of the space program. This actually fits quite tidily into the overall debate. NASA's budget today is mostly used to enrich various individuals in groups. For instance the SLS (think Space Shuttle 2.0) program is little more than a hamstrung pork project. That project alone consumes about 20% of NASA's budget. And this is typical. NASA is a tool to be manipulated for profit and personal (or group) gain. And if NASA dares raise this issue publicly they will face severe reprimands from congress which equates to destroying what little token amount of the freedom they still have.
Take for instance the Hubble. This was (and remains) NASA's most sophisticated satellite as I think most know. What you probably didn't know is that the National Reconnaissance Office (space spying agency) casually gave [wikipedia.org] NASA two 'old' telescopes they built but decided they didn't need. Far from old hand me downs, these satellites actually dwarf even Hubble in capability. Nonetheless they're gathering dust in a warehouse somewhere since NASA does not have the money to put them into space. That was in 2012... When you speak of NASA during the space race nearly 100% of their budget was dedicated towards achieving a genuine space-focused goal. It wasn't about some senator getting some more jobs in his district, or another senator getting his buddy's company some sweet contracts - it was about achieving something big in space. That NASA is, for all intents and purposes, is dead - replaced by them being little more than a tool for individuals to exploit for profit.
It's interesting to consider something. When Columbus returned from the New World. He lied through his teeth. He saw absolutely nothing of particular interest - there were some natives, he presumed Indians. But there were no amazing riches or wonders. Regardless he said there was. And these lies are largely why a much larger return trip was granted and why genuine riches and wonders were eventually discovered. What if he had not lied? What if Europe had simply chosen to turn away from the New World and focus on more "practical" or "immediate" challenges. Our development, technological/economic/social, would have undoubtedly been retarded. The question is by how much? Decades? It could have even been centuries. The point I'm getting at here is that suggesting that NASA's grand visions including things like Mars/space bases would have had no application is, given what we know now, plainly false. Had NASA not been abandoned after the space race there's every reason to believe we could have been mining asteroids decades ago. As you may know one asteroid [wikipedia.org], we've already landed on, has contained within its relatively small surface more rare and precious minerals than have been mined in all of Earth's history. And it's only about twice the distance to Mars.
Anyhow, I wonder what sort of evidence or data your opinions are based on, they do not seem cogent. As this is only scratching the surface of why I said the things I did about NASA alone, I'd rather not enter the gamut of going for academia and other topics at the same time as well. Suffice to say, I'm not shooting from the hip there either.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 02 2017, @04:04AM (2 children)
Let's start with the weakness of your argument. We should go to space because a con man found America 500+ years ago and we got lucky that there were continents there? We should go to space because you can recite a litany of reasons NASA has failed so far? Your pep talk needs some work.
As I noted earlier, the US has already spent a trillion dollars on space exploration and development via NASA. We got some nice pictures and the knowledge that we can land a Volkswagen Bug on a variety of planets, asteroids, and moons in the Solar System. We have a nice space telescope which apparently wasn't valuable enough to launch two more. And over the decades a fair number of one-off missions to do moderately interesting things in space. And we have a patronage system just like most of the other space programs on Earth. These are symptoms of a culture for which space exploration and development just isn't immensely valuable.
And a huge part of the reason that's the case is because space exploration and development doesn't pay for itself - the "profit" of the original poster. Thus, NASA has fallen to baser forces because there's just not much return in what it does. For me, I can see space development beyond Earth orbit potentially being of immense value, but you'll need to develop a lot of infrastructure (and more economic approaches to deep space activities) to do that. I don't think it'll really happen till private enterprise builds most of the near Earth infrastructure like cheap heavy lift rockets or orbital propellant storage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2017, @06:11AM (1 child)
So all you can come up with is straw men and repeating yourself?
If you're not interested in the issues, and/or have not engaged in any meaningful research, then why comment in the first place?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 02 2017, @01:39PM
If you can't honestly evaluate other peoples' opinions then what's the point of having an opinion yourself? First, where's the straw man? I'll note in the AC I replied to earlier, there was a lot of rambling about Columbus and NASA's misspent youth. for the former, the poster felt the need to speak of Columbus's lies after his first expedition - like he'd tell a head of state and his chief sponsor something they didn't want to hear. That's a typical con activity, though understandable under the circumstances. I suppose we could ask what would happen if NASA tried the same thing (after all they faked the Moon landings in the first place /sarc)? The answer is "spinoffs" [wikipedia.org] where NASA claims anything and everything with even the slightest taint of NASA funding as a product of the space program. Doesn't seem to help their situation.
Then there's the complaints about NASA. Most of the post is about how NASA is a political tool. The obvious question here is if space is so important, then how could that happen? Answer: the initial assumption is wrong - space isn't so important to us collectively. Sure, it's immensely important to you, but you're not giving NASA 20 billion a year to do the stuff you want it to do.
NASA didn't bother to return to the Moon because they had the attitude of "Been there. Done that." (Lunar exploration has been remarkably paltry since Apollo) They didn't bother to make two more Hubble-equivalent telescopes because they already had one up there and a replacement coming (James Webb Space Telescope) for which these telescopes would have threatened the viability of the new telescope. So to the people holding the purse strings (and probably a good portion of NASA's workforce), those two extra space telescopes had negative value! Of course, they're not going to fly them.
SLS is just funding to keep the former Shuttle supply chain happy and campaign donations flowing - they don't have an interest in doing anything beyond spending that money. It'll probably fly at least once, just to save face, but it'll be vastly more expensive than Falcon Heavy without much additional capabilities or missions to rationalize its existence. And no, you don't know that NASA's "grand visions" will result in a thing on Mars - hasn't yet and any plan for a serious ramp up is conveniently far in the future, many political cycles away from reality.
Bottom line is that NASA is a dead end with the present approach and it's been that way for almost 50 years because space isn't important to enough of us on Earth and unlikely to ever be. The solution is not propaganda; it's not lies; it's not some sort of manifest destiny ideology. The solution is more, lower cost infrastructure - things like lower cost launch to orbit (the key to "cheap access to space"), orbital propellant depots, space tugs, etc. Build the infrastructure so that the private world can give it a spin. Once the size of the problem has been reduced to the point where a relatively small private group can do credible development in space, then it won't matter that space isn't immensely valuable to the rest of the world. Similarly, even for the NASA-obsessed, lower thresholds and costs to viable missions means a greater chance that real work gets done in space rather the continued token, status stuff that NASA has done for most of its existence.
In the case of Columbus, his exploration wasn't the culmination of some massive state project, it was just a three ship trip which could be easily funded by a few rich patrons. Further exploration and eventual colonization/conquest was just as well done by small groups as it was by state-backed efforts. We need to get past the current state of massive efforts for paltry gains just like the Europeans did back during the exploration of the New World.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday September 01 2017, @08:14PM (4 children)
It's not that I disagree with you khallow, it is that once again you are just wrong. And you have managed to smear an entire profession with an accusation of acting in bad faith. If teachers were pursuing their own interests, they would not be teachers. Period.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @08:27PM
(((librul))) conspiracy!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 02 2017, @04:22AM (2 children)
I didn't single out teachers. That's you pulling stuff out of your ass. But having said that, of all the parties to the failure of US education, teachers are the ones getting paid to teach. That puts them at a rather high level of responsibility and culpability for what has happened.
And indeed we see that in practice. A lot of people have abandoned schools, particularly urban K-12, precisely because they can do better elsewhere. And for the rest, where are they going to go? There are no analogous positions in the business world to tenured professor, for example. Not everyone can do better.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday September 02 2017, @09:06AM (1 child)
Yes, mercenary bastards that only are motivated by greed, true capitalists, who cannot understand, much like yourself, the value of learning and scholarship, even if it leads to no pecuniary renumeration. Those people are no loss, they could not teach if they tried. Unless they got an endowed chair at Trump University!!! Ah, khallow, you should stick to the tarbaby of climate change! The mechanics of education, I fear, are beyond you. And I say this with the greatest respect.
Tenured Professor/Business World= Too Big To Fail? Trite comparisons are not doing you any favors. Tenure exists to protect teachers from reductionist one-dimensional thinkers like you. Do you think Sir Issac Newton earned his keep at Oxford? Did Einstein actually do anything at Princeton? Why wasn't Ward Churchill allowed to follow out the implications of his theories at that Colorado university? We will never know, now, what he might have discovered. But you totally misunderstand tenure, if you think it is about a "guarantee of a job". Philistine! Sometimes I wonder about you, khallow. The rest of the time, I know, and it grieves me.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 02 2017, @01:56PM
Whatever. My take is that most current teachers are just as mercenary, they just don't have the options outside of education that more competent people do.
Too Big To Fail is a lot of work. Got to network those connections, show up at the events, make the perfunctory, public rituals of contrition. Meanwhile tenure is show up to class, don't do blatant misdeeds, and they can't fire you. Not everyone is keen on working hard for a zillion dollars.
Yes, yes, and glaring research misconduct. But you do realize that there's been more than three people with tenure over the past few centuries? Not every one of them has been a Newton or Einstein, or brought on the college's opprobrium like Churchill did.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday September 01 2017, @06:36PM (8 children)
Our space program never went in hibernation for fifty years. After Apollo there were the shuttles, and NASA never stopped sending up probes and robots. Give your history teacher an F (I lived through the entire space age, I was six when Sputnik launched and seventeen when men reached the moon, and saw every shuttle launch from 1980 to 1985, the first one I missed was Challenger).
Come to think of it, your math teacher should be teaching gym.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @07:43PM (1 child)
Above you [soylentnews.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @08:39PM
Above you. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 02 2017, @04:27AM (5 children)
The obvious rebuttal is list all the manned space activities outside Earth orbit. I've give you a hint, there are eight items on that list and the last was in 1972. That's 45 years ago.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday September 02 2017, @09:12AM
Tang and vodka, all around! This one is one me, Soylentils!
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday September 02 2017, @03:21PM (3 children)
LEO is space.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 02 2017, @05:02PM (2 children)
The result of 60 years of manned space flight and several hundred billion dollars (in today's money) of spending is that we have six people in LEO indefinitely (yes, it is in space, but just barely) and vague, flimsy plans for doing something beyond that.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday September 03 2017, @04:20PM (1 child)
You forget the Mars rovers and all the probes that we've sent out there. One is set to crash on Saturn this month. And the benefits of space travel has brought all sorts of advances, from medicine to technology.
Oh, and the ISS orbits at 4.2 times as high as the edge of space, 254 miles up. Hardly "barely".
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 04 2017, @09:20AM
No, I haven't. Those aren't manned.
There has been a deceptive practice here of labeling everything tainted by NASA funding as being a spinoff, when the majority of this is merely stuff that would have been done anyway, but is more profitable to have Uncle Sam pay for it. The rest is as I mentioned before, an exercise in technology demonstration, showing one can fly or land vehicles up to a VW Bug in size in various exotic outer space environments.
Why bother? 4.2 times as high as the edge of space versus, for example, the Moon, which is three orders of magnitude further away? Or Mars which is almost an additional three orders of magnitude further away than the Moon is. 4.2 times the edge of space is barely in space compared to all the other places we could be. This is particularly true since the ISS couldn't be much closer to Earth than it is and still maintain its orbit in space without considerable propellant use.
mcgrew, here's how I look at it. From 1958 to 1969, NASA went from barely able to put anything in space to landing people on the Moon - a feat which it hasn't rivaled in the 45 years since it last did so. By 1975 less than twenty years later, it had its first space station. Since, despite spending somewhere around three times more money on its space program in current dollars than was spent on Apollo and Skylab, NASA has managed to build a way overpriced launch system, the Space Shuttle and a way overpriced space station, the International Space Station with only the space station currently operational. That's the consequence of six decades of manned space exploration and development. So right there, we see the hibernation. Going from an active program that explored the Moon to a moribund one with token efforts at manned activity in space.
On the unmanned side, we see a similar slowdown though not quite as bad except for the Moon. In the same decade of Apollo, NASA sent over 20 probes to the Moon. From 1975 till 1994, NASA sent no probes at all to the Moon. An almost twenty year period in which the Moon wasn't important enough to study! Since 1994, NASA sent 8 probes, 5 of which were launched since 2010! So NASA went from dozens of probes launched in the first 20 years of NASA's existence to 8 probes in the last 40 years of NASA's existence, 5 launched since 2010. That's a pretty long coma there for one of the most important bodies in the Solar System.
As I noted earlier, the rest of the unmanned program fared better, but it's still exploration at a snail's pace. For example, the infamous "labeled release" experiment (with ambiguous, possible detection of life) of the Viking program has never been replicated in forty years. It is rare to see multiple missions active at the same time around a given planet outside of Earth with Mars being the only one with multiple missions consistently active at the same time. And once again, we see the slowing of mission tempo in the wake of Apollo. For example, there were 5 successful missions to Venus, but only one was launched after 1980! 9 missions to the outer planets, but only 5 launched after 1980!
We have since around 1975, decade after decade of lost opportunity and the most remarkable sloth. Even now, NASA is spending vast amounts on maintaining its single space station and developing a launch system it can't afford to use on its current budget (which has been fairly constant over the past forty years - there's no reason to expect the budget to massively increase in the absence of an external kick in the pants).
There are other problems during the last 40 years such as NASA's obstruction of an orbital launch market (from 1975 to 1984, NASA had a monopoly on commercial payloads to orbit, and maintained afterward a launch cartel with every launcher having their little monopoly niche till the Department of Defense broke that up with its Evolutionary Expendable Launch Vehicle [wikipedia.org] program, forcing competition among the orbital launch providers).
I heard a story back in 2005 or so. When SpaceX was hiring its design staff, they had this winning hiring pitch. Sure, you will work hard and SpaceX might fold in the long run, but you'll make something that will fly in your lifetime. It's easy in today's more optimistic world to forget just how bad things had gotten in the 1990s and 2000s where working for a crazy dotcom billionaire was preferable to a lifetime of stagnation, no matter how comfortable that might be.