kfl@ai.ai.mit.edu (07/29/86)
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Date: Sat, 19 Jul 86 18:04:01 EDT
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <KFL@AI.AI.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Technology and Government
To: steven@LL-XN.ARPA
cc: KIN@AI.AI.MIT.EDU
From: steven@ll-xn.ARPA (Steven Lee)
1) space exploration
The cost of the NASA space program through the Apollo missions
was on the order of a trillion (current) dollars. Is there a
private enterprise whose *revenues* over a decade are that
large?
I hope fellow space advocates won't lynch (ahem) me for saying this,
but it is my opinion that the Apollo project was performed much too
soon and for all the wrong reasons. Witness the fact that now, 17
years later, nobody has returned to the moon, and nobody in any
country plans to do so in the remainder of this century.
Space travel is very expensive. This is partly because it is very
new technology, partly because of the extreme safety measures that are
taken (which have made space the least fatal new frontier ever
explored), and partly because of government inefficiency.
I believe that the cost of space travel will continue to drop, until
it is within the cost of any family who wishes to go homestead space.
Quite possibly this would have happened much sooner if there wasn't an
effective government monopoly on space until recently.
No, I don't know of any industry with trillion dollar revenues.
Neither do I know of any company with deficits as great as the US post
office has. But that doesn't mean that many companies haven't
successfully competed with the USPS - and made a considerable profit
doing so.
2) eradication of small pox
Small pox was eradicated from developed nations long ago. It
was eradicated from the world a few years ago, the effort
sponsored by a UN agency. Why would insurance companies be
interested in eradicating it from places like Ethiopia?
Perhaps so that it wouldn't spread to the rest of the world?
Perhaps because healthier people are better customers for insurance
AND FOR EVERYTHING ELSE, regardless of their level of wealth or
poverty.
One reason many American companies are loath to get heavily involved
in third world countries is because they rightly fear that they will
be nationalized, i.e. their assets seized by the third world
government.
Anyone who opposes smallpox is (was) free to donate to the cause.
Why use taxpayer money? I would say to the victims "I am sorry you
have smallpox, and I know it isn't your fault. But it isn't my fault
either, so I don't see why I should have to pay." Actually, I
probably would donate some money. But the amount *I* donate should be
up to ME, not up to anyone else.
3) the first computers
Not counting Babbage's efforts, the interest in calculating
machines and their development to computers was for
code-breaking (WWII).
That was certainly a big part of it. But there was plenty of
private interest all along. The computer industries (hardware,
software, support, sales, data, etc) are certainly very profitable
today. And they employ many millions of people.
Nothing like this seems to have happened in the countries with
'controlled' or 'planned' economies. No government bureaucrat ever
'planned' for personal computers. But they happened anyway in
countries where people and voluntary organizations of people are free
to make plans of their own.
4) planning ahead: governments try--the free market doesn't
The free market is not an individual or an organization, even though
it is sometimes talked about as if it was. The free market is the sum
total of the actions of millions of freely acting individuals and
organizations. Collectively, it is true, they don't together plan for
anything. Individually, they have many plans, many hopes, many
dreams, many aspirations.
Soviet Russia is a good example of the absense of the free market
and the presense of government planning. Soviet citizens aren't
stupid, in fact they are better educated than most US citizens. So
any failure of this method cannot be blamed on low IQ.
The Soviet government has had many five year plans. None of them
have ever been successful. None of the plans ever planned for lasers
or TV or computers or jet planes. Since the economy is compelled to
try to follow the government plans to the exclusion of any individual
plans, none of these things was ever produced, until the technology
was devised in another country and 'borrowed' by the Soviets.
Their plans are for much more modest things like becoming self
sufficient in food production, something even the Czars were able to
manage (precisely because they DIDN'T try to manage it, but left it to
individuals). So far, they have not been successful. There would be
a great famine in the Soviet Union, the country with more farmland
than any other, as there was in the 1930s, if people in the US and
other free countries were to stop selling food to them.
5) long term investments--example
Do you believe that interstellar travel will eventually be
enormously profitable?
I don't know, but I think it is very likely.
Are you interest in investing in it *today*?
No. Neither would I have invested in Manhattan real estate in the
1500s, or in personal computers in the 1950s.
Or investing in the development of androids?
I am not sure what you mean by androids. If you mean robotics, I
*AM* investing in it, and my stock has been doing quite well, thank
you.
6) "What is made is what people want to pay for ..."
Not true. What is made is what people are willing to pay
for-- a profound difference (consider built-in obsolesence).
I don't get your point.
7) controlled fusion
Check the experiments at Princeton last year for sustained
fusion reactions in a laboratory. Then read National
Geographic's article on energy, Nov. 1967, on when researchers
then thought sustained fusion reactions would be achieved in
the laboratory, and when it they thought it would be
commercially viable.
I don't happen to have that issue handy. Want to summarize it for
us?
8) public transportation ...
is fars less subsidized than automobile transportation is
through highway construction and maintenance. I happen to
like riding Amtrak.
I think that highway construction is payed for by taxes levied
against drivers, i.e. the gasoline tax, and road use tax for large
trucks. If not, it should be. I don't think people who don't drive
should subsidize those who do.
Private roads, including private highways, are another thing there
should be a lot more of.
9) Founding one's own company is -one- American dream, and that
doesn't justify it. So was manifest destiny ... at the cost of
Native Americans and Mexico.
You are right, simply being dreamt of does not justify something. I
didn't say it did. Starting one's own company doesn't NEED
justification, any more than does any other activity which doesn't
violate anyone's rights.
I don't see any comparison to 'manifest destiny' or the Mexican war,
other than that they are both dreamt of.
10) "Russia has no shortage of brilliant people."
Really? Then why do they mind their emmigration? NO nation
deems itself as having enough truly brilliant people. And
remember Sputnik in 1957? As for Japan, consider the
magnitude and scope of their AI project.
Many of the brightest ones wish to leave, for understandable
reasons.
I don't understand your point about Sputnik. That should be proof
that there are (or at least were) a lot of bright people there. Of
course the IDEA behind Sputnik was mostly German.
I don't understand your point about Japan.
11) MY point is that there are things people want their government
to do for which a free market provides no incentive.
So? If you want something to be done, do it yourself. Nobody is
stopping you or anyone else from spending your own time and money on
whatever you think it should be spent on. Nobody is stopping you from
trying to convince others to spend their time and money on whatever.
What I am objecting to is when some individuals choose to spend OTHER
people's money according to THEIR OWN whims! What possible
justification can there be for that?
12) Wealth
exists because of a subjective belief in value. Who owns it
depends on your poltical philosophy.
WRONG! Not unless your 'political philosophy' is completely bogus.
It is owned by its creator, or whoever its creator chooses to give it
to or trade it to.
13) Name a major dam which was privately built and owned.
I don't know which dams are private and which aren't. I don't think
it's important. If the power produced sells for more than the dam
cost to build and maintain, then it is profitable, and at least could
have been built privately. If the power produced sells for LESS than
the dam cost to build and maintain, then the dam shouldn't have been
built in the first place. Given that it was, the people who chose to
risk their money on it should be the ones to take the loss. NOT the
rest of us!
14) Most of the synthetic fuels research was government sponsored,
which is why it's possibly ready as an alternative.
The same thing I said about dams goes here too.
15) "...one theory that there is thousands of times the natural
gas anyone thought..." When faced with potential calamity, I
don't like the idea of pursuing just one speculative theory.
Which is one of the things wrong with a government planned economy.
Government tends to settle on one theory. The free market, being many
different individuals and organizations, never does.
...Keith
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