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>From OTA@S1-A Fri Jan 29 03:13:45 1982

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 2 : Issue 91

Today's Topics:
			 Subscription Cancelling
			 Indictments Handed Down
		       Humanists and Technologists
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Date: 28 January 1982 05:21-EST
From: Jerry E. Pournelle <POURNE at MIT-MC>
Subject: Subscription Cancelling
To: DIETZ at USC-ECL
cc: SPACE at MIT-MC

It must be extremely nice to be so very sure of being correct
about so very many subjects.  I wish I were.

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Date: Thu Jan 28 18:07:36 1982
To: Space@MIT-MC
From: ucbvax!mhtsa!alice!sjb@Berkeley
Subject: Indictments Handed Down
Source-Info:  From (or Sender) name not authenticated.


handed down by Grand Juries charging that they conspired to
defraud the government on construction costs for the space
shuttle.  One company, Mayfair Construction Co., has already
pleaded guilty, faces a $10,000 fine for its actions, but
has reached an agreement with the Justice Department under
which it won't be charged with any criminal dealings with
the other two companies, Capital Communication Corp. and
New World Construction Co., or with the three executives,
Phillip W. Akwa, Arthur L. Boschen, and James T. White, Jr.,
in return for its guilty plea.

Mayfair had been given four contracts totaling $13 million to build
ground support for the STS program.  Capital worked jointly with
Mayfair, while Mayfair subcontracted New World.  The defendants
``hid their profit-sharing arrangements from NASA'' and planned to
inflate costs, hours, and labor to NASA.

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Date: Mon Jan 25 23:01:28 1982
To: Space@MIT-MC
From: ucbvax!decvax!watmath!pcmcgeer@Berkeley
Subject: Humanists and Technologists
Source-Info:  From (or Sender) name not authenticated.


any major social problem has ever been solved by a `humanist' or other form
of social theorist.  Typically, it has been engineers and hard scientists (those
materialistic, crass, and soulless men) that have provided the solutions to
the major social and political problems of their day.  Slavery and hard,
grinding, muscle labor at poverty pay, to take two classic examples from
the 19th century, weren't eliminated by the wailing of philosophers but by the
designs of engineers, and by the money of financiers.
	Admittedly, this is largely counter-intuitive.  It seems unreasonable
that social and political problems can magically be solved by throwing devices
at them.  I suspect the reason that this apparent paradox holds is that people
will generally optimize their own condition subject to constraints, and the
constraints are always a lack in some way or other of resources.  Technology
tends to free resources, thus loosening the constraints and providing a higher
level of `potential' for most individuals, which they will happily take.
	The previous paragraph wasn't all that good an explanation of the
phenomenon.  The interested reader is referred to Smith[1776], Friedman[1957]
`Capitalism and Freedom', or Friedman and Friedman `Free to Choose' [1979].
	These references won't tell you a great deal about technology, but
emphasize the failure of `humanists' or `social engineers' to do anything
very productive in terms of ameliorating the human condition.  One wishes
that Prime Minister Trudeau could read...

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End of SPACE Digest
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