Category Archives: Economics

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

A Libertarian Hangs Out On Wall Street

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A front-line report from Tim Carney:

While much of the occupiers’ anger at the “banksters” was typical talk about “greed,” the gripes almost always included something about undue influence. Anthony Hassan, an out-of-work construction worker from Norfolk, Va., sounded a common note, pointing out that bailed-out banks “take some of the money we’ve given them, and they hire lobbyists.” An organic farmer who traveled down from Vermont who called himself Mack (and would not give me his full name) said “we’re at a point where the people with the most money have the most influence.”

They’re right. It does undermine our democracy and harm our economy when hiring a former Senate majority leader, for instance, can be the best investment a company ever makes. Wealthy special interests do dictate policy too much, regardless of which party is in power. I don’t know who made the sign under which I slept Sunday night, but I agreed with its thrust: “Separation of Business & State.” The back read “I can’t afford a lobbyist.”

My agreement with these folks went no further, however, than a common diagnosis of the problem. Their proposed solutions — more campaign finance restrictions and curbs on the freedom of firms to lobby — showed disregard for the freedom of speech. They also don’t seem to understand that getting government more involved in the economy always gets business more involved in government. Outside the small minority of Ron Paul supporters at the park, none of the occupiers saw smaller government as the answer to cronyism and corporatism.

Hard for people who want handouts to be for smaller government. In that, they are diametrically opposed to the Tea Party.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

A Shocking Development

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NASA has been fibbing to Congress about the SLS and propellant depots.

Bottom lines:

NEA Mission Observations – Mixed Fleet

* Costs $10s of billions less through 2030 over alternate HLLV/SEP-based architecture approaches
– Only $10B more than all Falcon Heavy approach
* Fits within conservative exploration budget through 2030 with extended ISS and budget cuts while allowing 3-4 NEA missions
* Breaking costs into smaller, less-monolithic amounts allows great flexibility in meeting smaller and changing budget profiles
* Allows first mission to NEA in 2024, potentially several years earlier than HLLV/SEP-based approaches, meeting President’s deadline and actual availability of NEA 2008EV5
* Launch capacity not much of an issue with two suppliers
– Availability risk also improved
* Use of two CLVs, similar to COTS, should reduce cost and risk through competition
* Integration of large CPS stage with multiple vehicles could reduce commonality and add complexity

Lunar Mission Observations -RP Depot/CPS

* Costs $10s of billions less through 2030 over alternate HLLV/SEP-based architecture approaches
– Only $2B more than LO2/LH2 Depot approach
* Fits within conservative exploration budget through 2030 with extended ISS and budget cuts while allowing 4-8 lunar missions
* Breaking costs into smaller, less-monolithic amounts allows great flexibility in meeting smaller and changing budget profiles
* Allows first lunar mission to in 2024, potentially several years earlier than HLLV-based approaches
* Launch capacity does not appear to be a major issue
* Dependence on a single CLV and provider likely unacceptable
* Integration of large CPS stage with small-diameter Falcon easier due to smaller stage size
* Integration of lunar lander on Falcon limits design options
* RP-based depot/CPS provides slightly higher LCC for lunar missions with lower risk

Just as I and others have been saying for years. But it doesn’t “save or create” the jobs in the right places.

[Update mid morning]

I’m looking through the briefing now. They have an interesting design reference mission to an asteroid that appears to use solar electric propulsion to get the departure propellant out to EML-1. If you look at the sandpile for the reference HEFT DRM-1, on chart 10, you can see how much the budget would be reduced if you forgo the development of the HLLV. It looks like about a third of the total, and doesn’t get you to the asteroid until eighteen years from now. Going with the depot approach saves tens of billions and accelerates the mission by half a decade.

For the lunar mission, they don’t do it they way I would — they have a LEO depot, and then do it Apollo style from there. I’d put a depot at EML-1, and send the lander up separately on a slow boat, to minimize the high-impulse delta vee necessary for the trip. Ideally, you’d have multiple depots and reusable space systems throughout the architecture. But the way they’ve done it gets the cost down to sixty billion through 2030 (presumably current-year dollars), with a lunar landing in 2024l with another mission every two years. So by my count, we get four lunar missions at a cost of fifteen billion each. Still very expensive, but a lot cheaper than with the SLS, and sooner. If you use Delta IV-H instead of Falcon Heavy, the price goes to $75B. Most likely one would use a mixed fleet for resiliency.

These architectures look an awful lot like the kinds we did at Boeing seven years ago for CE&I, that Mike Griffin never even looked at. All of their cost assumptions appear to be very conservative. And they probably don’t take into account the fact that you’d launch the hardware dry, which reduces structural weight.

[Update a few minutes later]

Wow. The cost comparison charts are devastating. In Chart 48, the heavy architecture is over twice as much in DDT&E as any of the others. If Dana was chairman, this would be the subject of a hearing, but he’s not, so it won’t be. But he can certainly issue a press release. I’m assuming that this is the briefing that he was asking for last month.

[Early afternoon update]

In finishing the briefing, I see that they have a lot of trade studies planned, and they haven’t done the risk comparison with the HLLV approach. The latter surely has to consider that anything that’s only flown once every couple years is intrinsically less reliable, because there’s no way to get the processing team in a rhythm. The SLS is such a monumentally bad idea that it could only have come from Congress.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

California’s Slow Suicide

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…continues:

When the dust settled on Gov. Jerry Brown’s first legislative session in nearly three decades, no group had won more than organized labor, which heralded its largest string of victories in nearly a decade.

At the urging of the food workers’ union, Brown agreed to crack down on the use of automated checkout machines in grocery stores. At firefighters’ request, he approved new restrictions on local governments seeking to void union contracts. He guaranteed wages for workers in public libraries that are privatized — a bill sponsored by another labor group.

Those unions and others helped bankroll Brown’s campaign last year.

Just a coincidence, I’m sure.

What does “crack down on the use of automated checkout machines” mean? Outlaw them? All the groceries have them now. This is luddism, pure and simple.

[Update a few minutes later]

Plus, he’s not only taken away open carry, but established a state registry for long guns. Guess I know what state I’m not going to be buying any guns in. I wonder if this will survive a court challenge?

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

Should Liberals Be Skeptical?

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…of Occupy Wall Street?

…it is just not the protesters’ apparent allergy to capitalism and suspicion of normal democratic politics that should raise concerns. It is also their temperament. The protests have made a big deal of the fact that they arrive at their decisions through a deliberative process. But all their talk of “general assemblies” and “communiqués” and “consensus” has an air of group-think about it that is, or should be, troubling to liberals. “We speak as one,” Occupy Wall Street stated in its first communiqué, from September 19. “All of our decisions, from our choices to march on Wall Street to our decision to camp at One Liberty Plaza were decided through a consensus process by the group, for the group.” The air of group-think is only heightened by a technique called the “human microphone” that has become something of a signature for the protesters. When someone speaks, he or she pauses every few words and the crowd repeats what the person has just said in unison. The idea was apparently logistical—to project speeches across a wide area—but the effect when captured on video is genuinely creepy.

True liberals certainly should be. But most people who call themselves that these days aren’t. And of course, it’s hard to take very seriously anyone who thinks that Dodd-Frank is “the best liberal hope for improving democratically regulated capitalism.”

[Update a while later]

The Wall Street protesters have been sold a bill of goods:

The narrative that came out of these events—largely propagated by government officials and accepted by a credulous media—was that the private sector’s greed and risk-taking caused the financial crisis and the government’s policies were not responsible. This narrative stimulated the punitive Dodd-Frank Act—fittingly named after Congress’s two key supporters of the government’s destructive housing policies. It also gave us the occupiers of Wall Street.

We have to take back the narrative.