Chaos Manor – Jerry Pournelle – Page 311 – the original blog of Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor

Social Contract and Constitutions

By Jerry Pournelle | Sep 22, 2011 - 11:47 pm | Updated: September 22, 2011 - 11:47 pm | View

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View 693 Thursday, September 22, 2011

The Republican debates went fairly well. There wasn’t anyone on that platform that wouldn’t be preferable to Barack Obama for President of the Republic. Once again I found Newt impressive, as was Cain.

The Internet is abuzz with Elizabeth Warren, and no wonder. Those interested should listen to her speech. It’s short and done well. Here’s some of what she says:

“You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

“Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Her supporters are enthusiastic because she is in essence pleading natural law in defense of Obama’s tax policies. It’s pretty good natural law, too. Parts of it sound conservative. She appeals to “the social contract” as opposed to the libertarian precept. She says that capitalists are greedy, which they are, and that they ought to have more sympathy for the rest of us who built the social order that allows them to get rich. Time to give some back. What’s wrong with that?

Well, to start with, social contracts aren’t Constitutions. They Social Contract is a convenient fiction, but in fact there isn’t one, and to the extent that there is anything like one, Thomas Hobbes comes a lot closer to the agreement that creates a state than Rousseau or even Thomas Aquinas. Social Contracts sound great, but you can’t sit down and read the Social Contract. Constitutions are specific. Even then they can be embraced and extended: it’s a long way from Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion (which was intended to forbid Congress from establishing the Episcopal Church as a national religion, but also intended to forbid Congress from disestablishing the religions in the seven out of thirteen states which had a religion by law established) – it’s a long way from the specific language of the First Amendment to the US Supreme Court forbidding a manger in the public square.

Constitutions try to limit government. Social contracts may be seen as a limit of government power or as an empowerment, depending on your point of view.

As to the specifics, surely the man who built the factory can plead that he paid his share of the taxes that paid for the roads and operated the schools; he took his chances that his factory would be successful and people would be willing to pay enough for its products to cover his expenses and leave him a profit; and if he got lucky and made a lot of profit, isn’t he entitled to it? If he’d been unable to make his widgets for less than people wanted to pay for them, is he entitled to a subsidy because he tried? Well, maybe – if he’s trying to create Green Jobs the rules do seem to change, and the public is expected to give him a big break and maybe half a billion dollars in loans that won’t be paid back. Is that covered by the social contract? After all, the intention was good. We’re trying to save the earth and create Green Jobs.

As to defense against marauding bands, it depends on the marauders, as port operators in the state of Washington found when the unions came in to take over.

Ms. Warren sounds very reasonable because most of us sort of agree with her – there is some obligation on the part of the successful to contribute to making the society work better. It’s called providing for the common defense and promoting the general welfare. And the Constitution having set out the goal:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

They then set up the mechanism for doing that. They didn’t just say here’s your social contract, here’s a declaration of the rights and duties of the citizen, now let’s let Congress get on with it. The result was a Republic that achieved some remarkable achievements, including fulfilling a lot of Ms. Warren’s social contract, but with a rule of law. It lasted a long time, nearly as long as the Roman Republic, and it was a power in its time. Now all that is under reconsideration.

Note that what Ms. Warren says that we need the money for police and roads and fire services. It’s time for the successful to pay more because we’re broke, and without new money we won’t have roads and schools and fire and police and all those things you need in order to build and operate your factory. No political regime ever threatened to fire the bunny inspectors and the Department of Education SWAT team if the rich didn’t pay more in taxes. It’s pay more or lose the essentials.

No, the problem is that the rich have too much money and they don’t pay as much as we do and they have to pay more.

There are those who question whether soaking the rich will actually produce much more revenue: we need to be careful how close we sheer the lamb. Others say look how much they have!

And I will repeat yet one more time: if the problem is that the rich have too much money, we can debate that; but what I am hearing is not a plea for reducing the divide between rich and poor, or for breaking up great power centers into something smaller, or fulfilling a social contract. It’s simply a way to raise taxes, and the money will go to pay the salaries of those who want the taxed raised. If they want to despoil Bill Gates and Paul Allen and Eli Broad because they think they can spend the money more wisely than its present possessors, the most charitable thing I can say is “not proven”. I’m more tempted to say Stop talking nonsense. You spend money on bunny inspectors. Why in the world should I give you more? You pay an army of bureaucrats and you want to pay more.

If you want to despoil the rich, then put the money in baskets and throw it out of airplanes. Don’t reward yourselves.

Yes, Ms. Warren, it’s true: those who get rich did so because they thrived under the blessings of liberty. Is that contrary to the actual contract signed in Philadelphia in 1787?

Social Justice and the Theory of Surplus Value

Much of Marx’s main work, Das Kapital, is devoted to the theory of value, specifically the labor theory of value, which says in essence that things have value because of the labor put into them. Said that baldly this is either trivially true or ridiculous. A statue wouldn’t be worth much without the labor of the sculptor. A gold nugget found on the street has value, and does so whether the nugget was dug out of the ground with great effort, or simply washed down out of the hills.

The naïve view of the labor theory of value confuses effort and work. That is, in physics, you can push against a wall with all your strength and continue to do so until you fall exhausted, but if you have not moved the wall, you have only expended effort: you have done no work. The classic refutation of the naive labor value theory is making a pie: an inept cook can reduce the valuable ingredients to a valueless mess that needs cleaning up, while an expert cook can make an apple pie that sells for a profit. It is fun to ridicule Marx as if he had not understood this, but it is also unfair. He understood it pretty well.

He did have a naïve view of technology and the industrial revolution. He was somewhat familiar with small factories in Thuringia, but he had no real understanding of technology and that shows in his undervaluing of management and entrepreneurship. Communist societies were able to produce technology by concentration of effort, but it took constant attention to make such things work well. Even toward the end in the USSR, when many of its economists understood the value of markets and information, only a few industries operated with any appreciable efficiency, and some, like the shoe industry, were ludicrously inefficient. As Possony used to put it, after a while the KGB didn’t want West Germany to go Communist: they understood that communism would muck the place up and West Germany was more valuable as a trading partner than it would be as a full satellite.

The labor theory of value does say that most of the value comes from labor; the labor force uses capital (technology, tools, etc.) and those have their contribution to the final value, but most of that value comes from labor. The working class puts the work into the equation, and creates goods that have more value than their labor. The bourgeoisie confiscate this surplus value as profit. Progressives want to take more of that surplus value from the bourgeoisie and give it back to the workers.

Many social theorists invoke the social contract to justify doing this. Property is theft! Oddly enough, both Marx and Max Stirner rejected this proposition, but many social contract theorists say there is an essence of truth here. And of course that justifies any scale of property taxation you might like.

Now there are those who say the proper course is to tax the rich to exactly the optimum point: when raising taxes no longer brings in more income, it is too much and time to scale back. Up to that point, though, all is well. Clearly that view accepts the notion that property is theft: the rich have no right to their wealth. We let them keep some so that they will continue to create jobs and go work hard at investing, but when they falter, we send in the tax collector. It’s really our money, and they are only its temporary custodians.

It used to be that the notion of a free country included rights to property.

The problem here is that Ms. Warren invites the rich to “worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this.” The marauding bands will be tax collectors. The someone to protect against this will be lobbyists. That’s if we are lucky.

If we aren’t lucky, we can look at contemporary Mexico as a model for the future. Or perhaps Russia under the nomenklatura. Or maybe we will be partly lucky and we’ll only get Greece.

Rick Hellewell has created www.BunnyInspectors.com, a site on which you can post your candidates for government activities we’d probably be better off without. Go look at it, and if you think of something to add, post it. It’s well to have such a list. More than well.

Fairness, cheap gas and more Mail 20110921

By Jerry Pournelle | Sep 21, 2011 - 6:15 pm | Updated: September 21, 2011 - 6:15 pm | Mail

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Mail 693 Monday, September 19, 2011

· Gas below $2

· More letters from England

45% of Canadians illiterate????!

How can anyone believe that 45% of Canadians are illiterate?

socialism is the cause?

Has the author ever travelled to Canada? Doubtful

If you believe this, us good old dumb boys will sell you acres of oilsands at $100 / acre since we have so much

Stephen crawford

I don’t believe that either. The piece referred to Quebec, not Canada, but I doubt that anything like half the Quebecois are illiterate. The linked article says:

By sheer coincidence (or perhaps not ) a few days later, front page news in Montreal’s newspaper was a grim statistic: 50% of Quebec’s population are virtually illiterate, meaning they cannot grasp more than simple statements. The percentage is not much better for Canada as a whole, standing at 45%. The numbers should not be that surprising, since some 55% boys and 45% girls drop out of high schools in Quebec.

My guess is that it’s an exaggeration, but perhaps not. I am not familiar with Quebec; and of course it’s a judgment call when you deal with “virtually illiterate”. By my lights, literate means to be able to look at the written text and say it. English is slightly less phonetic than French, but both are phonetic languages (as opposed to Chinese with is ideographic).

Subject: Price of Gas

Jerry-

I predict that the price of gasoline will be $2.00/gallon by January 1, 2012.

Three driving forces:

Over the next 5 years, perhaps 15% to 20% of the commercial truck fleet will convert to natural gas. See:

http://www.tulsaworld.com/business/article.aspx?subjectid=49&articleid=20110412_49_E4_CUTLIN746179

Gaddafi can’t hang on forever, and something that can’t go on forever will stop. I expect that to happen in the short term.

The petrostates will need to pump oil to buy the grain they need to keep their subject populations fed. This will exert significant

downward pressure on the price of oil. In a battle between OPEC and hunger, hunger wins.

-Steve

Want to bet?

Jerry Pournelle

Chaos Manor

Price of Gas

Jerry-

$2/gallon gasoline by January 1, 2012 still seems like a good bet to me. Note that the increasing production of oil from the Canadian Tar Sands is pushing the cost of WTI down under $90/barrel. This is hard to explain on the basis of pipeline capacity and storage constraints as is often said. Why aren’t the Canadians decreasing their production? I expect that the Canadians are pumping that oil as fast as they can because of the risk of a drop in oil price. At some point the Chinese housing bubble will burst and world demand will drop. Petrobras is expanding production of their huge proven reserves, fracked oil is now ramping up in the US, and natural gas is expanding. These factors will play out over years and decades, but their effect on oil prices will be much earlier. The high price of oil is artificially maintained by the cartel and can not be sustained in the face of a long term expectation that prices will drop. A recent prediction is that the US will become the #1 producer of "oil-like fluids" by 2017.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8367#more

http://www.stockhouse.com/Columnists/2011/Sept/7/Best-companies-in-Brent-crude-oil

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2011/09/21/another-big-reason-for-natural-gas-to-pick-up.aspx

http://www.suntimes.com/business/7772009-420/gas-prices-slip-in-chicago-area-may-even-go-lower.html

$2/gallon gas by January 1, 2012. What shall we wager?

-Steve

Perhaps so. You make an interesting case, and it is not a matter I have much thought about. On the other hand, I have great confidence in the ability of the Federal Government to get in the gears.

Letters from England

You want it bad; you get it bad

Expensive (half billion pound) fiasco: http://preview.tinyurl.com/6azbm9f http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14974552

UK police informant system in disarray: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/sep/20/ukcrime-metropolitan-police

—

Harry Erwin

Stories of interest

Analysis of the UK fire service fiasco: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/20/fire_service_469_million_flop_caused_by_it_illiteracy/ Full report: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmpubacc/1397/139702.htm

Guess who was responsible for this attack: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14982906

—

Harry Erwin

Only in Europe

Deportation of rapists violates their right to a family life: <http://preview.tinyurl.com/64jq34t http://preview.tinyurl.com/6emwhfh

Economy enters dangerous phase here. (America is slightly better off) http://preview.tinyurl.com/5r2u45z http://preview.tinyurl.com/5w76pe2 http://preview.tinyurl.com/6jsghmf http://preview.tinyurl.com/675u95t

Police back off http://preview.tinyurl.com/6huj8hq http://preview.tinyurl.com/69stgjg http://preview.tinyurl.com/5uwtgfs http://preview.tinyurl.com/3uhzeds http://preview.tinyurl.com/6z7xe77

The reason for using the Official Secrets Act was because there’s no public interest exception.

—

Harry Erwin

See <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/21/profs_school_cameron/>. Fields no longer to be supported include pure mathematics, applied mathematics, fluid dynamics, number theory, geometry, astronomy, and theoretical physics.

—

Harry Erwin, PhD

A bit more on the maths story

There’s a Guardian story with a bit more detail. http://preview.tinyurl.com/6yuh9m6 This is the second shoe. The first shoe was three years ago when the UK Government decided to halve its research funding for mathematics. I had noticed that the UK seemed to be losing ground in science during my summer visit, and this just confirms that the UK Government has decided it’s too expensive to keep up with the rest of the first world in science and math. I wouldn’t recommend that path to Americans–it leads to a very bad place.

—

Harry Erwin, PhD

"If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to be a horrible warning." (Catherine Aird)

Of course the way we compete with the rest of the First World is even more expensive and probably not all that much more effective. We spend enormous sums teaching Algebra II to dull normal hich school students, and then we furnish bonehead math courses at Universities which keep raising their tuition costs.

I have a new campaign for public schools: at least half the publc money should be spent on students who are not discipline problems and are of average or above intelligence. That, at least, would mean that some of the money might actually be invested in activites that might possibly generate a return on that investment. In the real world, it’s unlikely that university education for more than 20% of the population will do much good, but we could certainly profit from investment in various trade education and apprenticeship programs. Unlikely, of course. Fairness trumps investment until you run out of other people’s money to be fair with.

As to the subject of federalism, I agree that the smallest appropriate federal government is a great idea and key to the overall success of the US. And, yes, I will agree that the current federal government is too big.

However, we must remember that the major reason that the federal government has gotten involved in issues is because of inappropriate/dangerous conduct by the states. Do we really believe that Brown v. Board of Education was a bad idea?

In today’s world where everything is connected, for example, how can we let the individual states regular food safety? If I buy chicken that happens to come from Arkansas, should I just assume that it is safe? You know that the states in the south will never fund their local governments at an appropriate level to provide some key government services.

While I voted for Obama, I’m also deeply disappointed in how he has worked out. However, for god’s sakes, if Michelle Bachman becomes president we are on a very slippery slope downhill. No mandate for vaccines? I have a dear friend who got cervical cancer, recovered, but is now 38 and will never have a child. The HPV vaccine would have easily taken care of that if it was around when she was at the right age.

Living in a community means a certain sharing of rights AND obligations. Lets not simply look at the Republican Party talking points and at what Rush says and forget that there might be some reasonable people who have reasonably differing ideas.

Respectfully,

Alex Thurber

Los Altos, Calif.

Note that a chicken shipped across state lines is certainly in interstate commerce, and thus subject to regulation by Congress. We had agricultural inspection programs for interstate commerce for a very long time. But when Congress claims to be able to set minimum wages for window washers on a building that might rent to a firm that might engage in interstate commerce, perhaps things have gone a bit far?

It is legitimate to open the whole subject of federal/state relations for new debate; of course that won’t happen. Just as any cut in federal spending means that veteran pensions will not be paid, or the food inspectors will be closed, but there is never any discussion of bunny inspectors.

There are certainly matters that Washington does better than state and local government, but the automatic assumption that a federal bureaucracy will do a better job of developing and enforcing policies on everything from vaccinations to raising rabbits does not seem wise to me.

The fact that your friend did not seek out and get the vaccine and then developed cervical cancer does not settle the question of individual rights vs. public rights in the case of a non-casually transmitted disease. I am far more comfortable about a federal mandate for smallpox vaccination than I am about mandatory vaccinations for STD’s; indeed, while I am willing to contribute to help those who cannot afford vaccinations against STD, I am not at all certain that I am obliged to force anyone to be given the shots. I certainly find nothing in the Constitution that gives such powers to Congress. To the states, yes; and of course to Congress as governor of the District of Columbia; but for Congress to say that a girl in San Francisco must have a vaccination against cervical cancer before she reaches the age of sexual activity seems a bit far out.

It may well be that you are more qualified to determine what are and are not key government services for Memphis and Vicksburg, but I would not make the same claim for myself.

News note

Jerry,

In a report on this year’s Forbes 400 on the ABC news network at 1300 ET today, the report noted that the cumulative wealth of the Forbes 400, at $1.5 trillion, was "about what President Obama wants to get from increased taxes on millionaires over the next ten years." [Take that as a close paraphrase; the wording may not be exact.]

One could also note that it is less than months of an Obama deficit.

If the Government confiscates it…well, taking that much cash out of the system is going to significantly devalue the other assets. For example, of all of Buffets holdings in Berkshire Hathaway were sold, the stock price would probably drop between 50 and 75%; so instead of $1.5 trillion, the government has maybe $1 trillion left as cash. And then what do we do when we run out of that cash.

J

Socialism is great until you run out of other people’s money. Rule of law often seems heartless and unfair. But if the goal is to equalize incomes, I would rather confiscate the money from people like Niven and drop it from airplanes for random pickup than take it to give to those who hired the tax collectors. This is not about fairness. It is about maintaining the 7% exponential growth of government.

Re: Discrepancy of Wealth

I returned to your Sept 19th post on discrepancy of wealth and re-read it when Glenn Reynolds linked to it. One thing that always strikes me, when I read about calls from super-wealthy individuals for higher taxes, is that the tax vehicle they generally have in mind is the income tax. Bearing in mind that a good working definition of "income" is "new money," how altruistic is it, really, for holders of established wealth, such as Warren Buffet, to advocate a confiscatory tax on new money?

BigLeeH

Lee Haslup

The notion is that those who are successful must in fairness contribute to the welfare of those who tried and failed, and also to those who never tried at all. That’s fairness.

Obama Calls It: Said his presidency would result in ‘rise of oceans beginning to slow’ — And By 2011, Sea Level Drops!

http://www.climatedepot.com/a/12910/Planet-Healer-Obama-Calls-It-In-2008-he-declared-his-presidency-would-result-in-the-rise-of-the-oceans-beginning-to-slow–And-By-2011-Sea-Level-Drops

Planet Healer Obama Calls It: In 2008, he declared his presidency would result in ‘the rise of the oceans beginning to slow’ — And By 2011, Sea Level Drops!

Obama ‘presided over what some scientists are terming an ‘historic decline" in global sea levels’ — ‘Obama should declare ‘mission accomplished’ and take credit!’

President Barack Obama can take a bow. As Obama struggles with poor polling numbers, persistent high unemployment, the possibly of a primary challenge within his own party and a stagnant economy saddled with massive deficits and debts, one area where he can claim success is his prediction that he would slow sea level rise.

Stupid FBI/cop tricks

"Police kick in door in confusion over suicide kit.

The FBI message to police about the purchase of the gear failed to mention it was bought _seven months ago_."

http://www.registerguard.com/web/newslocalnews/26910049-41/kit-police-suicide-springfield-fbi.html.csp

We are appalled but hardly surprised.

Btw, the purchaser was a _reporter for the local fish wrapper_ doing an article on suicide – seven months ago!

The reporter thanked the cops for their concern. Of course. How touching.

I feel safer already.

Alan touched on an important point; the point seems deserving of a response. Alan wrote: "most people have their minds set and interpret anything to fit what they want to believe".

https://jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=2110 This is true, and

this is normal in the untrained mind.

If you direct your web browser to CIA.gov and look for Psychology of Intelligence Analysis — https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-

the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-

monographs/psychology-of-intelligence-analysis/PsychofIntelNew.pdf –

– you will learn that this is how people tend to interpret new data. People trained in critical thinking and basic analysis do not — or tend not — to do this when applying the principles learned in critical thought or analysis.

This publication would — were I Emperor — be required reading before middle school. Read it now; understand it later would be my attitude and refreshment would occur as often as necessary to ensure that citizens are — mostly — critical thinkers. I realize we cannot take care of all the stray dogs…

What we experience in 2011 seems to me the result of the "act of war" described in the 1983 report for the President, which you posted some time back.

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2010/Q2/view619.html More cynically, I might say — in intelligence parlance — we see the effect of "useful idiots". "Act of war" may not have been far from

the truth. But who prosecutes this war and why?

As an aside, I would — sincerely — thank CIA for making the foregoing publication public. This publication had a profound impact on my life; I read it while traveling some years back and again in college as a course book. Thank you to the personnel at

CIA who still care for our country and our society.

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

History of Arab/Israeli conflict in less than 12 minutes

Encounter Books presents an 11 minute 37 second video describing the

history of the 90 years of Arab/Israeli conflict. It’s interesting just

how many times Israel has offered to give or actually given the so-called

Palestinian Arab Muslims very good deals only to have the Arabs turn it

down. The brevity of the video drives this home remarkably well.

Debunking the Palestine Lie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7ByJb7QQ9U

{^_^}

The amazing shipping container: How it changed the world,

Jerry

“The amazing shipping container: How it changed the world.” An interesting proposition: “The [shipping] container has made geographic distance almost irrelevant in determining the terms of trade.”

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2011/09/19/keith_tatlinger_shipping_container_inventor_dies/

“ . . . trade barriers are the combination of such tariffs and laws with transport costs. And transport costs have been falling so far and so fast that even if tariffs had doubled, tripled, the total trade barriers would still have fallen. We saw this same thing happen in the 19th century with the invention of steam-powered ships. Around and after the Civil War, US import tariffs doubled in many cases: yet trade kept going up and up as the reductions in shipping costs were even larger than those increases in formal trade barriers. The shipping container has done this again over the past 50 years: there is almost no level of legal or tax trade protection that could have stopped foreign goods getting ever cheaper as the costs of hauling things from country to country fell ever lower.”

“Tantlinger didn’t invent the shipping container, didn’t build the whole international system, but he did come up with the one little refinement that made the system we have today possible. The Sir Tim Berners-Lee of the physical shipping world if you like.”

As I said. Interesting.

Ed

VDH optimism

I just read Victor Davis Hanson’s latest at Pajamas Media and he is coming across more upbeat and optimistic than he has in a long time. For a lot of the same reasons, I’m beginning to feel that way too.

http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/the-great-obama-catharsis/2/

The opening paragraph is the essence of it, but the meat of the column supports this and leads to a strong case for optimism.

"Barack Obama has done the United States a great, though unforeseen, favor. He has brought to light, as no one else could, many of the pernicious assumptions of our culture from the last half-century. He turned theory and “what ifs” into fact for all America to see, experience, and, yes, suffer through."

I have never subscribed to the despair that so many libertarians and conservatives have over the past couple of years. I do, however, worry about whether we can undo the cultural impacts. After all, some significant portion of our population is now dependent on bread (EIC, WIC, food stamps, Medicaid, etc) and circuses. This same group of people also, to all appearances, not only cannot get gainful employment, but do not need to. After all, we have now made unemployment benefits perpetual for all intents and purposes. I struggle to see how this is really different from the old perpetual welfare that we got rid of in the 90’s. Structurally, it looks like about 25% of our population is in the bread and circuses mode.

How long before we distinguish between "citizens" and "taxpayers"?

I am optimistic that the educated middle class American is going through a great awakening that will make socialism anathema politically for a generation or more. Unfortunately, we have a structural cultural problem with the bread & circuses portion of our society and how we will deal with that. Many of them no longer seem to have much belief that they can work their way to success with that American combination of hard work, motivation and education. And what happens, then, when we take away their bread and they can no longer afford their circuses? The ancient Roman Republic knew, of course, but that answer appears to be lost in the dimness of 2000 years of history.

Eric Cowperthwaite

We can hope. The 2012 election offers a chance to turn back and forsake our foolish ways – or to continue to sow the wind. The issues are clear, rule of law vs. fairness.

NASA Scientists

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/meet-the-%E2%80%98treycycle%E2%80%99-the-fast-%E2%80%98street-legal%E2%80%99-3-wheeler-created-by-laid-off-nasa-workers/?treycycle?-the-fast-?street-legal?-3-wheeler-created-by-laid-off-nasa-workers/

Roger Miller

"except where is our Hansen Enterprises?"

SpaceX

"The price of a standard flight on a Falcon 9 rocket is $54 million…..

The average price of a full-up NASA Dragon cargo mission to the International Space Station is $133 million including inflation, or roughly $115m in today’s dollars, and we have a firm, fixed price contract with NASA for 12 missions. This price includes the costs of the Falcon 9 launch, the Dragon spacecraft, all operations, maintenance and overhead, and all of the work required to integrate with the Space Station. If there are cost overruns, SpaceX will cover the difference. (This concept may be foreign to some traditional government space contractors ….

The total company expenditures since being founded in 2002 through the 2010 fiscal year were less than $800 million, which includes all the development costs for the Falcon 1, Falcon 9 and Dragon. ….

The Falcon 9 launch vehicle was developed from a blank sheet to first launch in four and half years for just over $300 million. The Falcon 9/Dragon system, with the addition of a launch escape system, seats and upgraded life support, can carry seven astronauts to orbit, more than double the capacity of the Russian Soyuz, but at less than a third of the price per seat.

SpaceX has been profitable every year since 2007, despite dramatic employee growth and major infrastructure and operations investments. We have over 40 flights on manifest representing over $3 billion in revenues.

….SpaceX intends to make far more dramatic reductions in price in the long term when full launch vehicle reusability is achieved. We will not be satisfied with our progress until we have achieved this long sought goal of the space industry.

For the first time in more than three decades, America last year began taking back international market-share in commercial satellite launch.

–Elon–"

http://www.spacex.com/usa.php

He has also promised the equivalent of a 737in orbit by 2013

Neil Craig

Laurie Jo Hansen and Aeneas Mackenzie do not seem to be present in this universe. Perhaps in another. But those were good stories.

Liberty and Fairness View 20110921

By Jerry Pournelle | Sep 21, 2011 - 11:02 am | Updated: September 21, 2011 - 11:02 am | View

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View 693 Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Information theory tells us that the more probable the event, the less information is conveyed by a message saying the event took place. That is, the more predictable the message, the less information it has in it. On that theory the news this week has had a fairly low information value.

It has not been without excitement. The White House has decided to let Obama be Obama, and he is hard at work at delivering the message of class warfare. Predictably it is put forth as a plea for ‘fairness.’ It isn’t fair that Warren Buffet’s secretary pays income tax at a higher rate than Warren Buffet does. It isn’t fair that the rich have corporate jets and mansions and yachts while people have no jobs, and great numbers of people are in poverty. It isn’t fair, because the rich aren’t paying their fair share, and something must be done about it. One thing we can do about it is to pass the American Jobs Act now, right now, just as soon as the White House gets around to submitting the 150+ page Bill to the Congress. For now just understand that it’s a Good Thing, and We Need It Now. Let’s chant.

This morning things changed a little, at least for me. The President told the UN that the US will not approve the Palestinian bid for UN membership. While that was the most probable event, it wasn’t certain. US policy regarding Israel needs to be reconsidered in the light of events in Egypt. Just what is the US commitment to Israel, and under what circumstances will we commit the Legions? What is our official view of the new settlements now that Israel has abandoned the “build a security barrier and leave them alone behind it”? Israel can’t do that now. The Gaza experiment showed that pulling the settlements out and handing the territory over to the Palestinians did not bring peace. Most Israelis want some kind of peace. No one can be quite certain what most Palestinians want, but it’s pretty clear what their governments want.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military must be regretting the return of the Suez and Sinai to Egypt in exchange for mutual recognition and a peace treaty. That peace was kept for a long time, but it appears to be in question now as Egypt gets closer to civil war, and the street mobs clearly demand renewed hostility to Israel. How influential the street movement will be in the government of Egypt is not certain. The Egyptian military sees their general on a gurney in a cage, which is not an inspiring sight for the career members of the ruling council. Former President Mubarak is accused of suppressing the street movement – the street movement that assaulted Lara Logan and sacked the Israeli Embassy, and which seems to be demanding war. It’s not clear what the war would be for, since Egypt got all its territory back in the Peace treaty. Now imagine yourself as a Major in command of a force defending the Israeli Embassy in Egypt, and keep in mind the picture of the President of Egypt in a cage on trial for ordering the troops to disperse a mob.

Insure the Blessings of liberty vs. Promote the general Welfare

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

At the time this was adopted it was never contemplated that these goals were in conflict. It was assumed that liberty was the best way to promote the general welfare, and once there was general welfare – that is, that the nation was faring well – the specifics would be taken care of by local government, by churches and lodges and civic organizations.

In this upcoming election, “fairness” is pitted against liberty, and “fairness” is, presumably, what is meant by general welfare. Of course it could be said that simply pooling all resources and allocating to each according to need, from each according to resources and ability, would be the most fair policy of all.

Make no mistake, substitution of fairness for liberty is the end of the Constitution of 1787.

From Wikipedia

The Deficit Control Act of 1985 provided the first legal definition of baseline. For the most part, the act defined the baseline in conformity with previous usage. If appropriations had not been enacted for the upcoming fiscal year, the baseline was to assume the previous year’s level without any adjustment for inflation. In 1987, however, the Congress amended the definition of the baseline so that discretionary appropriations would be adjusted to keep pace with inflation. Other technical changes to the definition of the baseline were enacted in 1990, 1993, and 1997.

Baseline budget projections increasingly became the subject of political debate and controversy during the late 1980s and early 1990s, and more recently during the 2011 debt limit debate. Some critics contend that baseline projections create a bias in favor of spending by assuming that federal spending keeps pace with inflation and other factors driving the growth of entitlement programs. Changes that merely slow the growth of federal spending programs have often been described as cuts in spending, when in reality they are actually reductions in the rate of spending growth.

There have been attempts to eliminate the baseline budget concept and replace it with zero based budgeting, which is the opposite of baseline budgeting. Zero based budgeting requires that all spending must be re-justified each year or it will be eliminated from the budget regardless of previous spending levels.

The result as been that proposing a mere 3% increase in school lunch programs is described as cutting the school lunch program budget and, more wildly, as gutting the program and a war on the poor.

A zero-growth budget is now considered a drastic cut, and of course will be opposed by public service employee associations.

Taxes; will there ever be an England again? Keyhole! Mail 20110919

By Jerry Pournelle | Sep 20, 2011 - 12:01 am | Updated: September 21, 2011 - 11:01 am | Mail

Comments Off

Mail 693 Monday, September 19, 2011

Jerry,

You often say despair is a sin;

BUT I do get frustrated; reading of President Obama’s newest bids for headlines, I did a Google about “rich paying taxes”; isn’t envy also a sin?

The current taxation system is so complicated and convoluted, rife with social engineering and sweetheart deals. I consider taxes to be a any money that is paid to the government, income tax, property tax, use taxes, estate tax, gasoline and auto registration taxes—seems to me like I pay taxes again and again on the same money I earn.

A value added tax or a use tax seems the most ‘fair’ to me as what I consider a libertarian, why should ‘fair’ mean take away from the successful to fund entitlements? Why should farmers be paid subsidies? Unfortunately it is not easy to make changes to a system that is already in place –[reminds me of a line from ‘Mote In God’s Eye’]

All I see is political grandstanding and divisiveness; most people have their minds set and interpret anything to fit what they want to believe. Surely it’s easy to believe the ‘Rich’ are rich because of an unfair system, not anything they did or didn’t do.

Some of your fiction seems incredibly prophetic; so much in ‘Exile and Glory’ rings true—except where is our Hansen Enterprises?

Take care

Alan

President Obama is open about it now. There are no property rights. There is only “fairness”; the Constitution means nothing, liberty is not important; we must be ‘fair’ and that means that those who now pay most of the taxes already now get to pay even more because the government must continue to grow at 7% exponential. Forever.

Letter from England

We’re going to Canterbury Cathedral this weekend–a friend is becoming an archdeacon there.

Police attempting to use Official Secrets Act to force journalists to reveal sources. http://preview.tinyurl.com/3p6pg4c http://preview.tinyurl.com/6bfcfp7

The General Medical Council considers monitoring of doctors’ private religious beliefs http://preview.tinyurl.com/6ad2kqe

UK will miss legally binding climate targets. http://preview.tinyurl.com/6jbwozd

Evidence dark matter theories may be wrong. http://preview.tinyurl.com/6yac7k3

It’s more complex than we thought: http://preview.tinyurl.com/3bh37uk

What does this say about undergraduate STEM education in the UK, where most programs are even weaker than North American programs? http://preview.tinyurl.com/68gnc9h

Contact time is valued. http://preview.tinyurl.com/65me2fr

This article questions why more PhDs are trained than are needed to cover academic needs. I think I understand why, at least in the UK. Here, there is no advanced post-graduate training, and the first degree is–at most universities–equivalent to a North American associates degree. The only way to produce the people with advanced training needed by a modern economy is via an apprenticeship–the PhD. <http://preview.tinyurl.com/5v2ldns>

—

Harry Erwin, PhD

"If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to be a horrible warning." (Catherine Aird)

Subj: Rocket fuels

Your contributor h lynn keith at

https://jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=2050 got a little carried away in his mostly-appropriate tirade.

In particular, the Draco thrusters of the SpaceX Dragon capsule use "monomethyl hydrazine as a fuel and nitrogen tetroxide as an oxidizer – the same orbital maneuvering propellants used by the Space Shuttle.

These storable propellants have very long on-orbit lifetimes, providing the option for the Dragon spacecraft to remain berthed at the ISS for a year or more, ready to serve as an emergency ‘lifeboat’ if necessary."

http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20081209

I’d not want to try to store LOX for any great length of time on orbit without a nice, heavy, energy-sucking refrigeration unit to re-condense it as it boiled off. I also wonder about the mass and reliability issues associated with the ignition system I’d need if I used non-hypergolics for maneuvering thrusters.

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

I probably should have commented on that, but I really hate hydrazine. Yes, hydrazine and red fuming nitric acid work reliably and predictably, and they’re stable over a wide range of temperatures, but lordy those are horrible liquids. I suppose I should just get used to it, because I don’t really have a better idea.

Subj: KH-9 declassified

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/09/19/declassified-us-spy-satellites-reveal-rare-look-at-secret-cold-war-space/

Hoo Hah! Now we can talk about it.

Gamers Crush Scientists in only Three Weeks

Jerry,

Three weeks for a major scientific breakthrough that had eluded solution previously

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

<http://scienceblog.com/47894/gamers-succeed-where-scientists-fail/>

"Gamers succeed where scientists fail

September 18, 2011

Gamers have solved the structure of a retrovirus enzyme whose configuration had stumped scientists for more than a decade. The gamers achieved their discovery by playing Foldit, an online game that allows players to collaborate and compete in predicting the structure of protein molecules.

After scientists repeatedly failed to piece together the structure of a protein-cutting enzyme from an AIDS-like virus, they called in the Foldit players. The scientists challenged the gamers to produce an accurate model of the enzyme. They did it in only three weeks…."

Heh!

good stuff

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/generals-dilemma-training-us-reserves-once-wars-end

Cheap energy = prosperity!

Drill here, DRILL NOW!

David Couvillon

Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Retired.; Former Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq; Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time; Distinguished Expert, TV remote control; Chef de Hot Dog Excellance; Avoider of Yard Work

When we get the Legions home we will still need them. Thanks.

Subject: Time lapse flyover of the earth

600 photos taken from the international space station are strung together to create a time-lapse flyover of Earth.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2011/09/19/vo-nasa-space-station-flyover.cnn?&hpt=hp_c2

Tracy Walters