No, it all starts with a government powerful enough to need buying.

The government in a republic democracy is the people. I'd agree with your premise if we lived in a oligopoly... but theoretically we don't.

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It's a government-created monopoly. It's not a "free market" in any sense of the word.


 

Not every business responds to the customer. In a free market, those that don't fail. If Comcast is that bad, why are people still buying their product? The reason is that the city GOVERNMENT has given Comcast a monopoly. Just about every government 'service' is a monopoly. The few that aren't will sometimes respond to competition, as the Post Office has to competition from FedEx and UPS.

 

Can you think of any government 'service' that has noticeably improved since its creation? Not the DMV. Not the federal highway department. Not the VA. Not inner city police departments. Not public schools. Not the Social Security Administration. Not the IRS. Not NASA.

While I gotta admire your tenacity in sticking to the "government IS the problem!" doctrine from the Reagan era, I completely disagree.

 

The post office was created by the US Constitution.  It's much better now than it used to be.

 

DMVs are hit and miss, and are a local nuisance or benefit.  In my county, they contract out the service to a private provider, and they suck worse than the government-run centers.

 

NASA, since it's inception and before it was neutered by funding cuts, has consistently yielded outrageously profitable tech improvements for not just the government, but the entire world.  Landing on the moon was cool and all, but satellite communication and the Global Positioning System have permanently changed the way we run our lives.

 

And I do find it ironic that the government invention known as "the internet" has provided the ultimate forum for those that would like to see the government eliminated.

 

I could go on, but the US government has been responsible for so many wondrous and useful things we take for granted in modern life, it would take me all day to catalog.

 

All government ain't evil, y'all.

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The government in a republic democracy is the people. I'd agree with your premise if we lived in a oligopoly... but theoretically we don't.

 

Only theoretically. You get to vote for one of the two choices approved by the ruling elite.

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"Why should I give information to you when all you want to do is find something wrong with it?"

While I gotta admire your tenacity in sticking to the "government IS the problem!" doctrine from the Reagan era, I completely disagree.

 

The post office was created by the US Constitution.  It's much better now than it used to be.

 

DMVs are hit and miss, and are a local nuisance or benefit.  In my county, they contract out the service to a private provider, and they suck worse than the government-run centers.

 

NASA, since it's inception and before it was neutered by funding cuts, has consistently yielded outrageously profitable tech improvements for not just the government, but the entire world.  Landing on the moon was cool and all, but satellite communication and the Global Positioning System have permanently changed the way we run our lives.

 

And I do find it ironic that the government invention known as "the internet" has provided the ultimate forum for those that would like to see the government eliminated.

 

I could go on, but the US government has been responsible for so many wondrous and useful things we take for granted in modern life, it would take me all day to catalog.

 

All government ain't evil, y'all.

 

GPS was a DoD creation, as was the internet. The DoD has outside competition in the form of other countries, particularly the Soviet Union. Note that DoD hasn't come up with any major breakthroughs since the collapse of the USSR.


 

All government is not evil. I do agree that a government agency can be productive in its early years. The problem is that eventually without outside competition it stagnates.


 

NASA has stagnated. Satellite communications have been around for nearly 50 years. NASA is now a firmly entrenched bureaucracy that has done nothing new since the days of the Space Shuttle. The planetary probes are nice, but the only improvements since Voyager are from technological developments in cameras and computers which were private enterprise developments.


 

WRT your DMV statement, contracting out a government monopoly does not change the problem. It's just subcontracting stagnation. The only theoretical advantage is that a private company finds it much easier to fire incompetent employees, but in reality they have little incentive to do so.

 

As I said before, the post office was another DMV, and is only "much better now" in response to outside competition. Most government agencies face no outside competition.

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"Why should I give information to you when all you want to do is find something wrong with it?"

While I gotta admire your tenacity in sticking to the "government IS the problem!" doctrine from the Reagan era, I completely disagree.

 

The post office was created by the US Constitution.  It's much better now than it used to be.

 

DMVs are hit and miss, and are a local nuisance or benefit.  In my county, they contract out the service to a private provider, and they suck worse than the government-run centers.

 

NASA, since it's inception and before it was neutered by funding cuts, has consistently yielded outrageously profitable tech improvements for not just the government, but the entire world.  Landing on the moon was cool and all, but satellite communication and the Global Positioning System have permanently changed the way we run our lives.

 

And I do find it ironic that the government invention known as "the internet" has provided the ultimate forum for those that would like to see the government eliminated.

 

I could go on, but the US government has been responsible for so many wondrous and useful things we take for granted in modern life, it would take me all day to catalog.

 

All government ain't evil, y'all.

Well said.

 

Anecdotal, the DMV's in and around Portland have been easy peasy for me. From getting my DL after I moved here to getting address changes to getting my passport. Was also automatically registered to vote. 

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GPS was a DoD creation, as was the internet. The DoD has outside competition in the form of other countries, particularly the Soviet Union. Note that DoD hasn't come up with any major breakthroughs since the collapse of the USSR.


 

 

NASA has stagnated. Satellite communications have been around for nearly 50 years. NASA is now a firmly entrenched bureaucracy that has done nothing new since the days of the Space Shuttle. The planetary probes are nice, but the only improvements since Voyager are from technological developments in cameras and computers which were private enterprise developments.


 

 

Last I checked, the DoD is still part of the federal government that we all support with our tax dollars.  And with just the two technological advances I listed, it has earned it's keep.

 

I don't know why you have such a problem with NASA, but till recently they did a fine job of installing those satellites needed by the DoD and communication companies.  Subsequent private companies have done a remarkably poor job of delivering those satellites.

 

AND...

 

and...

 

You get what you pay for

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While I gotta admire your tenacity in sticking to the "government IS the problem!" doctrine from the Reagan era, I completely disagree.

From Reagan's perspective and what he was saying, it still stands true.  Government can do wonderful things if not for the bureaucracy that comes with and government's inability to know when to let go.


The post office was created by the US Constitution.  It's much better now than it used to be.

Of coarse it is, how hard is it to improve with today's technology compared to the pony express?  The question today is, is the post office self sustaining and is it still relevant?  No to the 1st question and perhaps to the 2nd but only if they change how they do business.


DMVs are hit and miss, and are a local nuisance or benefit.  In my county, they contract out the service to a private provider, and they suck worse than the government-run centers.

The problem with a government run institution like the DMV is two fold.  One they have no competition therefore no incentive to provide better service.  Two, you can't get rid of non productive employees easily.


NASA, since it's inception and before it was neutered by funding cuts, has consistently yielded outrageously profitable tech improvements for not just the government, but the entire world.  Landing on the moon was cool and all, but satellite communication and the Global Positioning System have permanently changed the way we run our lives.

<b>NASA when it was founded had one goal.  Every single person involved with NASA right down to the janitor working the 3rd shift could tell you what that goal was.  "To get to the moon"  It also at that time was funded by the government and pretty much left alone.  No doubt the discoveries from that bygone era were life altering for the entire planet.  What has NASA done lately though?</b>

And I do find it ironic that the government invention known as "the internet" has provided the ultimate forum for those that would like to see the government eliminated.

You are being overly dramatic here.  Yes the internet has been a tremendous benefit to mankind but it is nothing today like it was initially intended.  This is due to the privatization and the competition that came with it.


I could go on, but the US government has been responsible for so many wondrous and useful things we take for granted in modern life, it would take me all day to catalog.

 

All government ain't evil, y'all.

You are correct, but please refer to my first point.

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Original Season Ticket Holder - Retired  1995 - 2020


At some point you just have to let go of what you thought should happen and live in what is happening.
 

Last I checked, the DoD is still part of the federal government that we all support with our tax dollars.  And with just the two technological advances I listed, it has earned it's keep.

 

I don't know why you have such a problem with NASA, but till recently they did a fine job of installing those satellites needed by the DoD and communication companies.  Subsequent private companies have done a remarkably poor job of delivering those satellites.

 

AND...

 

and...

 

You get what you pay for

 

And as I said if you actually read what I wrote, the DoD did do a nice job. Back then. That was when they had competition from the Soviet Union. What have they done since 1991? They fought some wars using technology developed pre-1991. The current DoD discontinued production of the world best fighter plane and instead we have the F-35 fiasco.


 

NASA does not launch communication satellites. The Shuttle was the last thing launched from KSC. The communication satellites are mostly launched from foreign countries these days (it's a lot cheaper). Those launched in the US are from Air Force launch pads. Private companies developed and make the rockets. NASA does arrange the manufacture of interplanetary probes and earth monitoring satellites, and receives and analyzes the data they acquire. It does not launch them.

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"Why should I give information to you when all you want to do is find something wrong with it?"

And as I said if you actually read what I wrote, the DoD did do a nice job. Back then. That was when they had competition from the Soviet Union. What have they done since 1991? They fought some wars using technology developed pre-1991. The current DoD discontinued production of the world best fighter plane and instead we have the F-35 fiasco.


 

NASA does not launch communication satellites. The Shuttle was the last thing launched from KSC. The communication satellites are mostly launched from foreign countries these days (it's a lot cheaper). Those launched in the US are from Air Force launch pads. Private companies developed and make the rockets. NASA does arrange the manufacture of interplanetary probes and earth monitoring satellites, and receives and analyzes the data they acquire. It does not launch them.

Well sure, the funding isn't nearly enough to replace the shuttle program. We can argue over weather NASA can do it cheaper than space x (doubtful) but let's not pretend they just decided to stop doing it one day. It's pretty much all due to budget cuts. 

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Still find it funny that people who earn 15 dollars an hour are leeches. Not the people who think they deserve 100xplus the salary of their employees whilst having no liability to any debts the business incurs.

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Still find it funny that people who earn 15 dollars an hour are leeches. Not the people who think they deserve 100xplus the salary of their employees whilst having no liability to any debts the business incurs.

To be fair, the click baity claim of leeches was because OP is claiming those that got the raise want less hours to stay on welfare.


Your not wrong though

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Well sure, the funding isn't nearly enough to replace the shuttle program. We can argue over weather NASA can do it cheaper than space x (doubtful) but let's not pretend they just decided to stop doing it one day. It's pretty much all due to budget cuts. 

 

Budget cuts may be a legitimate excuse now. But the NASA budget was flush with taxpayer money for most of the 30+ years of the Shuttle program, yet no tech breakthroughs were developed at NASA in those 30 years. Even the ill-fated Ares program just proposed re-using the same boosters from the shuttle. Now NASA is developing the Orion capsule. Nearly sixty years since Alan Shepard and we're back to capsules.


 

Government programs stagnate when they have no competition. Rarely do they have competition.

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"Why should I give information to you when all you want to do is find something wrong with it?"

Budget cuts may be a legitimate excuse now. But the NASA budget was flush with taxpayer money for most of the 30+ years of the Shuttle program, yet no tech breakthroughs were developed at NASA in those 30 years. Even the ill-fated Ares program just proposed re-using the same boosters from the shuttle. Now NASA is developing the Orion capsule. Nearly sixty years since Alan Shepard and we're back to capsules.


Government programs stagnate when they have no competition. Rarely do they have competition.

I gather your measuring stick for "new tech" is a new type of craft. Hard to do when rocket boosters are the only way currently to get out of orbit. Without access to research I am sure plenty of scientific advancement has occurred within NASA

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Budget cuts may be a legitimate excuse now. But the NASA budget was flush with taxpayer money for most of the 30+ years of the Shuttle program, yet no tech breakthroughs were developed at NASA in those 30 years. Even the ill-fated Ares program just proposed re-using the same boosters from the shuttle. Now NASA is developing the Orion capsule. Nearly sixty years since Alan Shepard and we're back to capsules.


 

Government programs stagnate when they have no competition. Rarely do they have competition.

NASA has launched countless orbital research platforms, including Hubble and Chandra, sent numerous probes out into deep space, including the Mars rover and New Horizons (among many others), was a leader in the design and assembly of the International Space State, and continues to run experiments and tests designed with the ultimate goal of getting us to Mars.

 

They might not have figured out a way to lob us to distant planets in the last 30 years, but to say that no tech breakthroughs were made is just flat wrong.

 

ETA: NASA does have competition, from other governments and, more recently, the private market. One of the stated reasons for terminating the shuttle program and not replacing it was that shuttles had become simply ferries to the ISS and repair platforms for satellites, functions that NASA believed the private sector was nearly ready to take over at costs much lower than what NASA could do.

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I gather your measuring stick for "new tech" is a new type of craft. Hard to do when rocket boosters are the only way currently to get out of orbit. Without access to research I am sure plenty of scientific advancement has occurred within NASA

 

Nuclear rockets were researched in the 1970s. There was progress made but it was abandoned in the anti-nuclear environment of the times. NASA could have restarted that program, but it was easier to just use the same old chemical rockets. After all, there was no challenge the were handed that required a order of magnitude leap in rocket tech.


 

The space station is a huge white elephant. It doesn't do anything that Mir or Skylab couldn't do. A useful space station would have been one where larger vehicles could be assembled for distant trips (Mars, anyone?). Right now the only vision of a manned Mars trip is in a capsule. Imagine four months stuck in a tin can. Ideally the ISS would be moved into a Mars-crossing orbit and used as a rec center for astronauts travelling to Mars. Instead it will eventually just be dropped into the Pacific like Mir.


 

There certainly has been scientific advancement in NASA. They still design and build spacecraft that accumulate tons of new information. NASA scientists collect, reduce, analyze and distribute the results. But they use technological improvements developed by private enterprise. The reason we get Cassini, Messenger, New Horizons etc. is because of the huge advances in computers and digital imaging. New Horizons got a free ride by using a test launch of the Atlas 5, another private enterprise advancement (admittedly just another chemical rocket using existing technology and a Soviet engine design). I love the scientific spacecraft work NASA does, but that's just a small fraction of a budget that is mostly waste.

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"Why should I give information to you when all you want to do is find something wrong with it?"