Democrats shopping badly.
The country’s in the very best of hands.
Category Archives: Business
Private Space Is Winning
Bob Zimmerman reports that AIAA seems to have been won over:
Historically, AIAA has not been considered a New Space organization. Its members mostly come from the older aerospace companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Since these companies have generally been hostile to the new commercial space companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic — seeing them as a dangerous and competitive threat — I would have expected an effort by AIAA to influence Congress would mean they are trying to encourage funding for Big Space projects like the Space Launch System (SLS). In the past it has been these Big Space projects that has filled the coffers of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The contracts for these project have been cost-plus, meaning that they have been able to rake in a lot of cash, whether or not they even build anything.
To my joy Mr. Shweyk’s presentation described something completely different. Instead, the AIAA is gung-ho for commercial space, and is doing everything it can to encourage Congress to come up with the money to fund the efforts of new companies like SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, Orbital Sciences, and Boeing to build new cheap cargo and manned ferrying spacecraft to low Earth orbit. The Space Launch System was not on their agenda. They had no interest in promoting it. Instead, they wanted money to go to the new efforts, so that more rockets and spaceships could be built by more companies, for less money.
For this organization, dominated as it is by the big and older aerospace companies, to push this agenda suggests to me that the culture truly has shifted, and that private space is definitely winning the political and cultural battle.
You can only defend the indefensible for so long. Remaining with the old approaches will result in a moribund industry, and people are starting to realize it.
The President’s Auto Insurance
One of the most amusingly stupid categories of spam I get is emails about how “Congress passed a bill” or “The president signed a law” resulting in lower auto insurance or (as they often idiotically say) “driving” rates. They sometimes try to tie it into current events. Here are two nutty subject lines today:
“President’s G8 Summit Meeting Yields Lower Auto Ins. For All,”
and
“Following meet with Putin, President announces lower auto ins. for all.”
Sadly, there are enough idiots out there that this probably does work. Until we come up with some cost for emailing, spam will persist.
Molecular Manufacturing And Space
There’s a review of Eric Drexler’s new book
I don’t agree with this (I assume that it’s his own opinion, not Eric’s):
APM will also make space colonization imperative, but for different reasons than for Eric Drexler’s original quest to find a solution to the impending global crisis posed by The Limits to Growth. What will the millions of people now involved in mining, manufacturing, distribution, retailing, transportation, and other services do if much less of these services will be required and most of them could be performed by robots? How will people earn a living if they can buy a desktop factory—something like a super 3D printer—and can produce most of what they need at home and no longer need to shop at Wal-Mart or Amazon? If people aren’t working and earning a good income they will no longer be able to buy stuff. Henry Ford recognized the problem and chose to pay his people well so that they could afford to buy his cars. By choosing to industrialize the Moon and colonize space, thousands and ultimately millions can be put to work earning a good income.
I think that this technology will enable space settlement, but I don’t see how in itself space settlement creates jobs, particularly for those who are becoming unemployable because they’re on the wrong side of the bell curve. That’s a big problem coming down the pike, and space isn’t a solution to it.
Hollywood
Is it going out of business?
As late as 1981, Hollywood could still muster up enough energy to care what the audience thinks and want to please it. Today, the American moviegoer is anathema, particularly now that he’s no longer buying sufficient quantities of DVDs to support the lavish lifestyle of Hollywood elites, despite following the advice of Hollywood elites who told him to stop buying DVDs.
It certainly deserves to.
ObamaCare Support
It’s in a death spiral.
Let’s hope.
I think that the two big issues in the election next year will be ObamaCare repeal (and it will be much more sharply defined without Romney muddying the issue), and government corruption.
Student Loans
When students have little hope of completing an academic program, subsidies are not just a waste of taxpayers’ money, but a waste of these young people’s time and effort at a crucial age. Too often, they drop out with a sense of failure, poor work habits, and perhaps a sizeable debt.
In an era of scarce resources, ending pure need scholarships may cause low-income students to make wiser choices about their futures. It would be far better if, instead of floundering in an academic institution, they learned a trade, entered the military, or gained work experience. If they really wish to pursue a bachelors’ degree, they can prove themselves worthy of scholarship money by taking classes at low-cost community colleges first.
Like most well-intentioned government programs, this is a disaster.
Health Insurance
Why doctors are bailing out:
As the open enrollment period for 2014 approaches, premiums on individual plans in the Obamacare exchanges for California will double, and will increase 80 percent or more in Ohio. At the end of its first decade in force, the ACA will leave more than 30 million Americans without insurance – the driving issue behind health-care reform for at least the last twenty years.
The problem with all of the health-care industry reforms has been that precise goal: expanding insurance. The widespread use of comprehensive insurance policies insulates end users in the system from price signals, especially on routine care. That eliminates competition on price as insurers use their economic weight to pre-negotiate pricing on every kind of service and product under their coverage, from blood tests to setting broken bones. Providers locked into a specific schedule of reimbursements have no reason to innovate to either lower costs or increase value, and end up having to spend money and time dealing with insurance companies for delayed payments rather than focusing on the patients seeking treatment in their clinics.
Ironically, the multiplication of mandates and other regulations in the ACA on both private insurers and government-run programs like Medicare and Medicaid have more doctors opting out of the third-party-payer system altogether. Earlier this week, CNN Money reported on the migration to cash-only services among health-care providers, driven by poor reimbursements, increasing regulation, and high overhead.
ObamaCare has taken a terrible system and made it much worse.
The Deficit Problem
No, sorry lefties, it’s not solved.
The EPA
…has four scandals going on its own right now. Another monster that has to be reined in.