"I just took your hammer. What should I use it for?"
"Nothing, give it back to me."
"Oh OK, I will NOT USE it. Here's your hammer."
Mars Mission: $2.5 billion - Worth It Given Alternatives?
- Thread starter than_west
- Start date
"I just took your hammer. What should I use it for?"
"Nothing, give it back to me."
"Oh OK, I will NOT USE it. Here's your hammer."
Sure, when you throw away any of your devices that have LED screens, stop flying on commercial airlines(benefit from various tech to allow cheaper rates), and take away your grandma's insulin pump.
I'll kick down $8 to nasa.
Some people in here are funny..
"NASA is great because they've accomplished a lot and they've made a lot of discoveries."
(a) So if I got a group of friends together and every year stole $5.00 from every resident in our city (and threatened them with kidnapping if they didn't comply, and violence if they resisted), and we used that money every year in attempt to better civilization through our group projects, and sometimes we succeeded while other times failed, you'd be OK with that? You'd be okay with my group of friends coming over to extract that $5.00?
I hope not. Because aside from marketing and a middleman known as the state, there's not a difference between the above scenario and NASA.
(2) To add to my scenario above, let's say a few years pass. Everyone is obviously sick of being thieved by me n' my bandits.. But then we decided to branch out into other endeavors like conquering other neighboring cities, and had to increase the yearly $5.00 theft to $100. The $95.00 went to war and only $5.00 went to our projects to better civilization.
So now everyone is in an uproar over the fact that $100 is being stolen every year instead of $5.00, and 95% of that money is going towards war. People then start wishing they could go back to (a), and use the atrocity of (b) to justify (a).
See what happens? People have been fucked in the ass so hard by the massive black statist cock, that they're willing to fucked in the ass by a small Chinese man, completely ignoring option (c) of remaining un-fucked and free.
"NASA is great because they've accomplished a lot and they've made a lot of discoveries."
(a) So if I got a group of friends together and every year stole $5.00 from every resident in our city (and threatened them with kidnapping if they didn't comply, and violence if they resisted), and we used that money every year in attempt to better civilization through our group projects, and sometimes we succeeded while other times failed, you'd be OK with that? You'd be okay with my group of friends coming over to extract that $5.00?
I hope not. Because aside from marketing and a middleman known as the state, there's not a difference between the above scenario and NASA.
(2) To add to my scenario above, let's say a few years pass. Everyone is obviously sick of being thieved by me n' my bandits.. But then we decided to branch out into other endeavors like conquering other neighboring cities, and had to increase the yearly $5.00 theft to $100. The $95.00 went to war and only $5.00 went to our projects to better civilization.
So now everyone is in an uproar over the fact that $100 is being stolen every year instead of $5.00, and 95% of that money is going towards war. People then start wishing they could go back to (a), and use the atrocity of (b) to justify (a).
See what happens? People have been fucked in the ass so hard by the massive black statist cock, that they're willing to fucked in the ass by a small Chinese man, completely ignoring option (c) of remaining un-fucked and free.
than_west, dreamache, hehejo, etc.
What do you want?
You don't want to pay taxes?
Or you want to pay taxes and have a referendum every time the man wants to spend a dollar of those taxes so the public can decide what is a worthy cause and what isn't based on popular vote?
You're all moaning about "theft" so what's it going to be guys?
What do you want?
You don't want to pay taxes?
Or you want to pay taxes and have a referendum every time the man wants to spend a dollar of those taxes so the public can decide what is a worthy cause and what isn't based on popular vote?
You're all moaning about "theft" so what's it going to be guys?
Personally I don't want to pay any taxes, and I'd spend my money in a more efficient manner towards the things I need / use. I think the idea is that private individuals would spend their own money more efficiently than the bureaucratic mess that is government.
Than_west, you gotta lay off the crackpipe, bro. Crack kills.
Look at how you worded the poll... How could anyone possibly get an option out of that to get their cash back? Talk about leading...
/Pollfail.
@Fatbat: Of course we don't want to pay taxes bro. I've donated money directly to the Planetary society before, sans government. That money went towards putting the first Solar Sail in space, and NO government beauracracy was inbetween me and that sail to waste my hard-earned money.
This has got to be one of the strangest threads I have read in WF. Do we seriously have people complaining about NASA? They have one of the smallest budgets they have ever had in the history of the program right now. The USA can not even send a man to space if they wanted to right now. They take what little budget they have and spend it on robots and probes and you complain? Really?
I am just dumbstruck. To the guys complaining you do realize that is one of the most advanced things NASA has ever done. The size, scale, and complexity of the project are larger than anything NASA has done in decades. This is something for the history books. No other country in the world could have gotten even remotely close to completing this project. This is a matter of national pride, yet you worry about a such a tiny amount of money.
The GDP of the USA is 12 Trillion Dollars(12000000000000), this project cost 2.5 Billion (2500000000). That is only 0.02% of the National GDP.
We have some serious retards up in here lately.
I am just dumbstruck. To the guys complaining you do realize that is one of the most advanced things NASA has ever done. The size, scale, and complexity of the project are larger than anything NASA has done in decades. This is something for the history books. No other country in the world could have gotten even remotely close to completing this project. This is a matter of national pride, yet you worry about a such a tiny amount of money.
The GDP of the USA is 12 Trillion Dollars(12000000000000), this project cost 2.5 Billion (2500000000). That is only 0.02% of the National GDP.
We have some serious retards up in here lately.
2.5 billion on mars, billions and billions on foreign wars = but we can't deport the mexicans and possibly work on the economy/unemployment?
Oh hey, me neither, wouldn't that be great!
Explain to me exactly how that's supposed to work though? When you get your monthly or annual bills for all the services you use are you going to pay them all, on time, like a good consumer?
How about those people that don't because they can't manage their money, or perhaps they are unemployed and broke? Are they going to have their rights to drive on roads taken away because they haven't paid their monthly roadworks bill? Will their kids get kicked out of school? Will their power get cut off because they haven't paid their federal power infrastructure upgrade bill? Oh, maybe they can just pay for everything using their credit cards instead!
If their house catches fire will the fire department come? Or will they cross check their payments database to find out those people are three months in arrears and just let it burn to the ground instead?
If those same people call the police because their home is being broken into in the middle of the night, will 911 tell them to get stuffed because they're a deadbeat and deserve to be robbed?
When your local area needs a new bridge or highway that's going to cost $500 million to build, but your city only has a population of 1 million people, are you going to fork over the $500 that's your personal share? Or perhaps you'll be happy to pay massive tolls every time you and your family wants to use it for the rest of time? Or will you just opt out because that rickety old bridge has served you well for the last 100 years, what's a few more?
Are you going to pay your annual federal services bill for Customs and Immigration and Coast Guard? Or should only those people that live on the borders or coast be responsible for those payments? Perhaps they should issue licenses so you can go swimming in the ocean to show you've made your payments. If you don't have a license and get into trouble they just let you drown instead.
The next time you visit your favourite national park, will you happily pay the $300 admission fee to cover their operations since they are no longer being given federal subsidies? Or should they just get rid of the park rangers and visitor's centres since they can no longer be afforded? With no one to pick up the trash the parks aren't going to be very nice to visit anyway.
Should only those people with kids pay for schools and education?
Only those people that drive should pay for roads and bridges?
How much more bureaucracy and expense would be created if every service will need to bill individual citizens?
If people fall behind on their payments, will the gov't send collections agencies after them or reposes all their belongings? I guess the people that work for the IRS will still find work. Seems kinda like paying taxes though doesn't it?
I've only barely scratched the surface of course. I can barley fathom what would be involved with everyone "not paying taxes". Sounds like a fantastic idea though.
In order to accomplish a goal (like getting a rover to another planet) you run into a series of challenges. That's what the money is for - you spend that money developing new technologies to counter those challenges. Going through this R&D process results in numerous inventions with practical applications in other fields that improve the lives of typical civilians and consumers.
Considering all of the bullshit that our government forces citizens to pay for, putting billions into NASA is easily the lesser of all of the evils.
Of the 600-700 billion that the US is spending on military, how much is actually going into science, rather than destruction?
Considering all of the bullshit that our government forces citizens to pay for, putting billions into NASA is easily the lesser of all of the evils.
Of the 600-700 billion that the US is spending on military, how much is actually going into science, rather than destruction?
Oh wow, look. This argument again. Don't we have like 3 different threads attacking Anarchist society running right now? You have to turn this one into that thread too? Sheesh.
I don't have all the answers for you bro but if we're talking about a voluntaryist (AnCap) society where there is no government, the most obvious (of many) answers to me would be to set up subscription services (Yep, rebills to the rescue!) for all of your chosen utils and services. Everything from health care to Road Tolls. All as monthly rebills.
So instead of having 10 bills you have to pay each month, you could have 50. -Sounds a little inconvenient, I know, but now that we can set up automatic bank payments online it sounds like an awesome alternative to paying taxes to me... And then there'd be no government bureaucracy wasting 99.999999999999% of the money you sent in for these same services. (Meaning they'd be far cheaper than Taxes are.)
That's all consequentialism, people actually made the argument "but who will pick the cotton if we abolish slavery?" People are problem solvers and will continue to solve problems. People will fight fires, people will build roads, the only difference is we're taking violence out of the equation.
The root it all comes from first principles. If something is wrong, you shouldn't continue to do it in fear of the consequences that might occur from righting that wrong.
Sorry if I'm repeating stuff in other threads, I've not seen any with this discussion. I'm sorry it's THIS argument again. Perhaps there's something to it though if it keeps coming up. One thing is certain, you're right, you don't have all the answers.
You don't think one level of bureaucracy is simply going to be replaced by 100 others? Are your phone or cable companies privatized? Mine always have been, along with power, gas, water, etc. How much do you like dealing with them? Models of efficiency are they? All my experiences with such companies have always been a nightmare especially when they outsource their customer support to third world countries to try to save a few bucks. Now multiply that by 50, or 100, for all the different gov't agencies that are going to have to go private to keep running.
Won't it be great when 911 services are outsourced to a call centre in Mumbai?