Category Archives: Economics

Business, Economics, Space, Technology and Society

Molecular Manufacturing And Space

22 Comments

There’s a review of Eric Drexler’s new book over at The Space Review today.

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.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

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.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Student Loans

6 Comments

…subsidize waste:

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.

Business, Economics, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Health Insurance

66 Comments

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.

Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Space Science

National Space Policy

17 Comments

A “Values-Based Approach“? The question is — what are the values? I think he’s got it wrong:

Discovery is why a nation should go to space. It is what inspires all of humanity. It has been NASA’s only use of human spaceflight in the post-Apollo era that has returned value that is highly regarded by nearly all people in developed countries with free access to information. The synergy that once existed between human-assisted and robotic space exploration in the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) program is a blueprint for sustained deep space human-assisted exploration that can stoke the nation’s competitiveness in science, technology, and math toward realization of long-term financial and physical security.

That’s an opinion, not a fact. I would expect a scientist to think that science is the reason for human spaceflight, but most people don’t agree with him (or have even given it much thought). If it’s not for the purpose of developing and settling space, the amount of money we’re spending on it is unjustifiable.