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Secretly Space Jesus

2012 Election thread

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While I think his time frame is a bit optimistic, his goal of incentive driven private development should yield drastically different results in terms of the quickness with which things happen. I do like the idea in general.

 

Listen, I'm all for ambitious space exploration, I just think he's talking out of his butt. That being said, private sector work seperate from NASA kind of worries me. The worst thing that could possibly happen is space turning into the next for-profit frontier. I would hate to see NASA take a hit because politicians decided it was better for privately owned companies to take the focus away from science in favor of a bottom line.

 

It starts with a company building a rocket for NASA, then all of a sudden you have a shopping mall in the space station. That could just be conspiracy mindset, but I don't think it's farfetched to think corporations would change the game in a very negative way.

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NASA? Really? Why do I care? I'm confused as to why these things can't be replaced more locally.

 

Well I, for one, am looking forward to the first Albuquerque flag planted on the moon.

 

And yes, that movie is fantastic.

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I'll address your full post later, but this is the most bafflingly inaccurate thing I've ever seen.

 

750,000 people died during the Russian civil war. That's over 75% more than the number of Americans who died during World War 2.

 

That seems to contradict what my western civ. book says, but you seem sure, and it seemed unlikely when I read it there, so I'll concede that point. They didn't give a number. Maybe the book was just comparing it to the loss of life when they turned agriculture over to the state during the Five Year Plan under Stalin, or somehow separating the civil war with the actual coup. Shows me for not fact checking.

 

Here is one of the reasons I hate to debate politics, though. I'm by no means a political science expert. I'd be happy to be wrong about the whole thing, though I'm not convinced I am. Politics is something that for some reason makes me irrationally passionate when debating, especially considering my overall lack of interest.

 

I will say that history has been kind so far to this country so far. I can't think of another government that has lasted this long without radical revolution. I guess maybe England, but they are a lot smaller. We flirted with disaster in the 1860's, but here we are. I just feel like we're due for some major revolutionary change.

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I think it's about time to update your atlas.

 

Ha. No I prefer the 90's. I'm more comfortable there. I can still pretend America is the center of the universe. Yugoslavia. That's deflating. Sorry.

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Speaking of insane things, holy ****:

 

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My wife is now going to vote for him. She's obsessed with space travel. What do you do, right? Ah well, she's got big boobs, so I'll overlook it.

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I expect a slow gradual fall into mediocrity (relative to where we were) rather than a massive revolution.

 

side note: my firefox spell check isn't working and I've just stared at several words for about 7 minutes trying to determine why they look so wrong.

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That seems to contradict what my western civ. book says, but you seem sure, and it seemed unlikely when I read it there, so I'll concede that point. They didn't give a number. Maybe the book was just comparing it to the loss of life when they turned agriculture over to the state during the Five Year Plan under Stalin, or somehow separating the civil war with the actual coup. Shows me for not fact checking.

 

Here is one of the reasons I hate to debate politics, though. I'm by no means a political science expert. I'd be happy to be wrong about the whole thing, though I'm not convinced I am. Politics is something that for some reason makes me irrationally passionate when debating, especially considering my overall lack of interest.

 

I will say that history has been kind so far to this country so far. I can't think of another government that has lasted this long without radical revolution. I guess maybe England, but they are a lot smaller. We flirted with disaster in the 1860's, but here we are. I just feel like we're due for some major revolutionary change.

Good posts. I mostly agree with what you are saying, especially the spirit behind the reasoning.

 

I think the biggest issue that people have with these types of concepts is that they have been lead to believe that the state somehow is a necessary entity in life in its modern form (where it is heavily involved in social programs, regulating nearly everything, lots of bureaucracy, etc.), where in fact, this form of state has lasted less than one hundred years.

 

Sure there were "nations" before that, but the state did not do what they do today, and there was a clear separation between "the state" (them) and "us" (the people), where the state largely was acting in their own interests and not really beholden to their people.

 

That is the the climate from which the United States was born, but in its original form the government looked nothing like it does today.

 

 

The one thing where DoM got a point mostly wrong is that states changes as a result revolution. Yes and no. Usually revolution very much involves economy and living conditions, this is what causes revolution and this is where I see the inevitable decline. Historically fiat currencies have a 30-40 year life span. The US dollar has just reached that ripeness and it is showing the weaknesses that fiat currencies do throughout history. Fiat currencies are totally worthless and the only value is in the faith that the printing nation can pay its debt. The weakening of ability to pay its debt erodes this confidence and ultimately causes its collapse.

 

Well, we are already paying our debt with printing. We have failed at bond auctions and the Fed is buying the debt with printed dollar. Countries which have invested heavily in our debt are already saying they consider this to be a default of sorts. We have had QE1, QE2, Operation Twist and now are heavily discussing QE3, all in a matter of a short period of history.

 

The one thing that the dollar has going for it is the fact that for the first time in history a fiat currency is a world reserve currency. This changes the dynamic a bit and slowing the decline, but this is changing as well. Countries are dumping the dollar for commodities in kind of an international hot potato. Already, for the first time since the seventies, a number of countries have made trade alliances with the expressed purpose of trading in their own currencies and leaving the dollar out of the discussion. The state of the petrodollar is also in question.

 

So far, a saving grace has been the drop of the euro, which has lead capital to seek safe havens and flee to the dollar a number of times this past 18 months and stopped its slide. But when one is comparing the rate of one sinking ship to another sinking ship and trying to decide which to stay on, the numbers get a bit skewed, in the end they are both sinking, it's just a matter which goes down first.

 

IMO, the underpinnings are coming apart with the economy. What happens with the state is simply a question of where all the pieces will fall when things get chaotic, and that nobody knows. I suspect they will either get far less free and more centralized, or far more free. We shall see.

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Good posts. I mostly agree with what you are saying, especially the spirit behind the reasoning.

 

I think the biggest issue that people have with these types of concepts is that they have been lead to believe that the state somehow is a necessary entity in life in its modern form (where it is heavily involved in social programs, regulating nearly everything, lots of bureaucracy, etc.), where in fact, this form of state has lasted less than one hundred years.

 

Sure there were "nations" before that, but the state did not do what they do today, and there was a clear separation between "the state" (them) and "us" (the people), where the state largely was acting in their own interests and not really beholden to their people.

 

That is the the climate from which the United States was born, but in its original form the government looked nothing like it does today.

 

 

The one thing where DoM got a point mostly wrong is that states changes as a result revolution. Yes and no. Usually revolution very much involves economy and living conditions, this is what causes revolution and this is where I see the inevitable decline. Historically fiat currencies have a 30-40 year life span. The US dollar has just reached that ripeness and it is showing the weaknesses that fiat currencies do throughout history. Fiat currencies are totally worthless and the only value is in the faith that the printing nation can pay its debt. The weakening of ability to pay its debt erodes this confidence and ultimately causes its collapse.

 

Well, we are already paying our debt with printing. We have failed at bond auctions and the Fed is buying the debt with printed dollar. Countries which have invested heavily in our debt are already saying they consider this to be a default of sorts. We have had QE1, QE2, Operation Twist and now are heavily discussing QE3, all in a matter of a short period of history.

 

The one thing that the dollar has going for it is the fact that for the first time in history it is the world reserve currency. This changes the dynamic a bit and slowing the decline, but this is changing as well. Countries are dumping the dollar for commodities in kind of an international hot potato. Already, for the first time since the seventies, a number of countries have made trade alliances with the expressed purpose of trading in their own currencies and leaving the dollar out of the discussion. The state of the petrodollar is also in question.

 

So far, a saving grace has been the drop of the euro, which has lead capital to seek safe havens and flee to the dollar a number of times this past 18 months and stopped its slide. But when one is comparing the rate of one sinking ship to another sinking ship and trying to decide which to stay on, the numbers get a bit skewed, in the end they are both sinking, it's just a matter which goes down first.

 

IMO, the underpinnings are coming apart with the economy. What happens with the state is simply a question of where all the pieces will fall when things get chaotic, and that nobody knows. I suspect they will either get far less free and more centralized, or far more free. We shall see.

 

Thanks for the understanding. As I said, I'm not much of a political afficionado, but I think the writing has been on the wall for a while. Since we left the gold standard, at least. my whole point with this opinion is trying to be as optimistic as I can be. I think collapse is inevitable, and I don't see a better solution. Anything else seems like either we become totally socialist, which is only a stopgap, as socialism wouldn't cure the failing dollar worth. It might postpone the inevitable, but the end will be either a military dictatorship or the same thing I've been saying above. Or we get attacked, and WWIII, and that's just bad. Or we just go into all out economic collapse, and refuse to change anything, which seems unlikely, since I can't imagine Americans just, what, giving up.

 

I know I don't have everything figured out in this scenario, but I hope I'm right compared to the alternatives that I see.

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To me, the best way to return to American superiority/prosperity/etc is a decentralized approach, as opposed to a top down, consolidation at the federal level, which is what seems to be the position of most Democrats and seemingly all liberals. IMO the feeral government doesn't do anything that the private sector couldn't perform at a higher level (with the exception of the military, which still is riddled with waste and mismanagement, I just don't trust that to the private sector).

 

As a Libertarian/Constitutionalist, I believe that the power of this Government resides in the states, first and foremost.

 

This is why I take issue with Republicans knocking Romney for his healthcare plan in Massachusetts. The people of the state wanted it, he was their governor and helped give it to them. Who would have thought, actually governing with the best intentions of your constituents in mind? Every state should have that right to do the same.

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