🚀 go-pugleaf

c2xrib@kocrsv01.delcoelect.com (rex i beard) writes:
>[...]
>I pay for the research into building planes
>somewhere in the price of my airline ticket. Those who want to launch
>satellites should do the same. And they should pass the costs right
>on down to me on my phone bill. If I think it costs too much I'll find
>another way to communicate. How else can we decide if a venture is worth
>while? By political decree?

I almost agree with you... to a point.  In the system we have imposed on
ourselves, certain activities exceed a threshhold of costliness where
NOBODY is willing to risk the necessary resources.  Unless we change the
system, certain ventures WILL have to be done by decree.  Of course, my
personal opinion is that we SHOULD change the system.  In this case, the
enormous burden of regulatory paperwork required to launch something into
space must be removed and replaced with something rational.

>[...] Again, the number of humans is *FINITE*!!!!

This is simply irrelevant.  If there's a market for something, it will
be produced.  It only took "two guys in a garage" to jumpstart the whole
computer revolution.  There are fewer people producing food today than
there were fifty years ago, and feeding many more with a greater amount.
Technology can and will compensate for fewer bodies.  If there were only
50 people working on your floor, the ECMs would still get built; in fact,
each person would probably have twice as much budget, and be able to use
better tools than at present.

>[...]
>Now, the even bigger fallacy. One person can do a job just as well
>as another. This is untrue. The vast majority of the people who are
>unemployed have *fewer* valuable skills than the people who are employed.
>Thus if we "take out" a person currently holding a job and replace them
>with someone who is unemployed on average the replacement won't be able
>to do the job as well.

The replacement won't be able to do the job as well IMMEDIATELY.  You are
confusing skill with experience.  The vast majority of unemployed people
are not less CAPABLE than the vast majority of the employed, they just do
not necessarily know how to do the job YET.  They can learn.

>[...]
>If you hire all the engineers at Delco to work for NASA then you will
>need to replace them with folks who have associates degrees or technicians,
>And then you will need to replace those former technicians with high school
>math majors, And you'll have to replace the burger flipping jobs of those
>high schoolers with Bums off the street. At every step down the line you
>will have less qualified people than you had before.
>
>So, the person who replaces our mythical "One" will (on average) be less
>qualified and produce less. And who will replace the position our
>replacement use to have?

Your arguments do not convince me.  There are PLENTY of capable people
who can fill each position you mention.

>Imagine a convention of the top 500 Physicist in the world. Imagine
>some tragedy (a bomb) killing them all in one swoop. Now sooner or later
>all those physicist jobs *will* be filled, Heck pretend we could fill
>them instantly.  Wouldn't it still be a net loss? The new physicists
>wouldn't be the "top" physicists.

Bad example.  A lot of "junior physicists" would probably consider this
event to be VERY GOOD for physics in general, because it would quickly
sweep out the "old guard" and its unintended but very real bias against
new ideas.  We might lose a couple of truly important genius-level ideas,
but we'd probably find it a net gain to have the "fresh blood" in place.

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Alan Anderson                               | Ignorance can be fixed,
(I speak AT, not FOR, Delco Electronics)    | but stupidity is permanent.