





Elon Musk and the Falcon 9 [Source: Discovery]










SpaceX Dragon Crew Vehicle [Source: SpaceX]





Sources: SpaceX, CBS News

Comments     Threshold


RE: What?
By NobleKain on 3/20/2012 2:08:30 PM , Rating: 2
While I agree with Ringold's response to you, I even think it's beyond the actual point.

Jedi2155 never once stated he was against REGULATION. However, his post implicitly is referring to ADMINISTRATION.

Government, virtually by definition, EXISTS to regulate; so while there's often issue taken with becoming overzealous with their power, or creating frivolous, destructive regulation (there needs to be a balance and a light hand), the point remains that regulation - in its purest of intentions - is not an argument.

Administration, on the other hand, should not be in the hands of government. It's a perversion of what Government is intended to do. For starters, there's a complete and utter conflict of interest when the one's creating the rules are also direct benefactors of the rules they create. In short, a government that gets in the game for themselves is essentially a Free Enterprise, but with a stacked hand against the competition, and zero source of accountability.

The Private Sector as administrators will always win, because there's an innate source of accountability in the form of the consumers right to choose -- assuming that competition exists. Regulation is intended to protect the existence of competition, and shouldn't go beyond that.

Once the Government becomes competition, it destroys the Economic ecosystem.

But I digress... Jedi is right: there's an assumption that the Government, as administrators, will perform the job more efficiently, safely, and with more integrity than their Private Sector counterparts. It's simply foolish to think so. I think the assumption about government may stem from the fact that the government is created to protect our interests with regulation, and therefore will do so in the administration of our programs. Instead, all it does is create an environment for greedy/power-hungry people to exploit with no accountability. (Incidentally, this also gives a loop-hole to those that are greedy in the Private Sector to exploit as well, because now they can simply get an "inside-man" who's making the rules)

RE: What?
By Paj on 3/22/2012 8:38:34 AM , Rating: 2
The Private Sector as administrators will always win, because there's an innate source of accountability in the form of the consumers right to choose -- assuming that competition exists. Regulation is intended to protect the existence of competition, and shouldn't go beyond that. Once the Government becomes competition, it destroys the Economic ecosystem.

That's an amazingly simplistic viewpoint. Do you think the residents of Bhopal had the right to choose the loss of life and health that resulted from the union Carbide gas leak in 1984?

Guess why this happened? Amongst other things, the plant was subject to lax regulation, and critical systems were allowed to degenerate.

But of course, let's not forget the poor Union Carbide executives that would have had their annual profits curbed by the need to maintain their deadly chemical factory in some sort of viable state. Clearly this line of socialist thinking is dangerous - companies should be protected against such nonsense, and should be able to operate with as little regulation as possible so they can continue their Noble Work of making obscene amounts of money, no matter what the cost.

Regulation exists to protect people and society from the excesses of capitalism and greed. It creates and maintains standards for products and services, prevents monopolies, protects consumers from fraud, and protects excessive environmental degradation.

RE: What?
By Ringold on 3/23/2012 5:26:12 PM , Rating: 2
I'd argue that while that's valid, there's also valid reasons to try to stop perpetual growth in government. It's slow to evolve to new technology, market conditions, and dangers.

You mention Bhopal, in India. Good country to take as an example. It's "license Raj" strangled the country nearly to death, and still does. Why has IT taken a commanding lead in modernizing its economy? The government was too slow to regulate it, and it'd already taken off practically by the time the regulators understood what was going on. The rest of the economy, though, is still mired in red tape and corruption endemic in that way of doing business/government.

Then there's the other dark side of over-powering government: history seems to suggest its always a path to abuse and corruption. However many died in Bhopal, Bolshevik's killed more.

