What is this “religious method” you speak of?
Where did hospital come from? How many social welfare organizations have religious affiliations?
People for the Ethical Treatment of Atoms.
It’s the OTHER Peta.
Billy, your problem is that you’re ignorant to the ways of the electron. Its effects are everywhere around you. Electrons are everywhere, you simply have to look for them.
Have you ever really tried to look for an electron, Billy?
So you’re willing to bet on the private sector, eh?
When did NASA reach the moon, 1969? What about the “private sector”?
Looks like you lost that bet.
Nationally funded programs brought us microwaves and lasers… things used heavily in national defense.
You willing to bet the security of your country on the private sector?
That’s a bet I don’t want us to lose.
You’re failing to see the effects of what more resources in the private sector would have done. Since the government took resources from the private sector, the private sector was not able to compete with the government. Therefore, yes, the government won.
With what our government now says is national security… you don’t make a very convincing argument.
The scientific method tries to track observable phenomena, and then draw conclusions from those observations. Human subjectivity is the troublesome element, because our abilities to observe and draw conclusions are constrained by our culture, our experiences, even our language.
For instance, we may generally agree that 1 + 1 does not equal 10. But that’s because we’re so accustomed to seeing numbers only within the context of a number system that’s based on 10. In the binary system, when the only two digits available are 1 and 0, then 1 + 1 = 10. So the “truth” of the mathematical equation is irrevocably associated with the set of assumptions we apply to it.
I don’t submit blindly to scientific authority. But I think that scientists tend to have less of a political agenda in their work than do those who work in organized religion. I often disagree with the agendas that appear in both religious and scientific work, but sometimes agree with them. I generally dislike any sort of evangelistic tendencies by religious groups (of any stripe), but believe that many of the efforts of such organizations to help the plight of, for instance, the poor have made tremendous contributions to the world.
Karl Marx, a man who was remarkably smart but whose ideas were often transformed badly into practice, once said that we make our own history, but we do so in conditions not of our making. Complaints about scientists who are compromised by working on research funded by big corporations, or pursuing a “fashionable” trend, should be seen fully in context, when possible. University faculty are under tremendous pressure to publish in their fields, and they get more attention (from their colleagues, and from those in private industry who may be potential funders) from in-vogue areas. But they’re operating under the conditions endemic to the scientific community, which is often happening in the context of universities that want big names to help improve their reputations, and so on it goes. My campus sure went to lots of trouble to publicize the fact that one of our faculty was on a research team that was awarded a Nobel prize. So there’s corruption inherent in any institutional system, but to assume that a system could occur in which such elements weren’t present is pretty naive.
re: going to the Moon:
Is it possible the private sector could have gotten us to the moon by 1969? I suppose, but it would have been a billion-to-one shot. A huge number of private companies would have had to work together and share all their resources (their un-tax money). I don’t see this being likely.
In that bit of history, government did something that private industry could not have managed. Even if General Motors (and Ford and Chrysler) teamed up with Boeing (and Grummann and Lockheed) and all the smaller companies like Aerojet, they would have had to break themselves to afford all the research. Collectively, they would have said the same thing: “So once we’ve gotten to the Moon, how do we make back our investment?” and instead designed a more affordable Concorde.
So it was you that nailed those 95 theses to the univerity’s Science Department’s door; thereby starting the great debate between prima scientia and sola scientia.
You’re missing the point. The point isn’t whether they would have made it to the moon or not, 'cause as you said, so what. The point is whether the resources, which the government took away from the private sector for this project, would have been used more efficiently to create new sciences, technologies and such. Obviously, it’s not going to be the same sciences and new technologies, but would the outcome make us wealthier as a society? With the same resources available, would the government, who you claimed operated this without regard to expense, be more or less efficient than the private sector as a whole that operate with regard to expense?
As a society it would not make us wealthier because the wealth would lie in the hands of the few.
Beyond that generation of wealth is not the only goal that matters.
All of your free market/private sector principals only apply if money is all that matters and money is not all that matters so your arguments do not apply.
That’s what happens in a fascist state and/or communist state, yes. In John Foss’ example, he mentioned that the private sector would be less able to take us to the moon because the resources are too dispersed. Whereas, with the government claiming the wealth (ie. putting it in the hands of the few), it was possible.
In a free market, everyone has wealth. Yes there are differences in the amount, but everyone has the ability to use their current wealth to expand their wealth for the benefit of themselves.
You’re erroneously defining wealth as “money”.
I said wealth, not money. Wealth is an english term that means the same as well-being. A society’s well-being is the result of the abundance of the things they need and want. An abundance of resources provides for such and therefore the most efficient use of available resources at a given time provides for greater abundance in the future, and therefore greater well-being (or wealth).
In a free market, efficiency is ultimately what matters, and in government, coercion is what matters.
But you’re going by the idea of free market on paper, but the idea of government in reality.
So if you’re going to go by the ideals of free market as they only exist on paper and not in reality you also need to give government the benefit of the doubt and think of it in the ideal form as well.
I’d sooner put my faith in a government that at least is supposed to ahve my interests at stake than in private companies that I know don’t have my interest at stake.
One piece at a time:
I didn’t miss your point, I flew over it from Earth orbit and discarded it as irrelevant. The taxes are going to be there, or this country isn’t, so I’m not concerned with what-ifs about zero taxes. And I do like Ron Paul, my favorite candidate on the Republican side.
You missed my point. Those resources might have been used more efficiently, but would not have produced the same result. Without the rush to the moon, many of those sciences might not yet have gotten off the ground. The medical telemetry alone, that was developed to monitor the astronauts, would have meant the difference between life and death of unknown thousands of people between 1969 and now. Ask them about efficiency.
The point is that private industry, on its own, would never have gotten us to the moon. Maybe we can test your theory on Mars, if we live long enough for someone to get there. 
Yes the government operated without expense in the race to the moon. This was not a deliberate attempt to be wasteful, but a situation where time was of the political essence. The space race caused the Soviet Union to also spend incredible amounts of money and may have been the beginning of the end for them, as they later spent themselves out of “business” in the arms race.
Off topic, but wouldn’t it be nice if there were some rush to cure breast cancer, or other diseases… Either by the govt or private sector.
Instead, they’re abusing atoms by smashing them, picking on the smallest.
If you have a government that allows free markets to work and they follow the rule of law, then government works. But yes, government in reality, as we see today in the US, does not work, even on paper. It doesn’t work, because it ignores “human action”.
But if you know that the government has violated your interests, you’d change your mind. You may want to read the Declaration of Independence to see why governments are instituted and compare the government we have today to the one call out against in there.
You also seem to have a similar thinking to most socialists, where they point at the problems that are happening today with capitalism and claim therefore that there are problems in free markets. But what we have is corporatism (aka. fascism), not free markets.
The choice isn’t between having faith in government and having faith in private companies, the choice is to have faith in your ability to make choices for yourself. That is human action.
Obviously.
Yes, the outcome is different. Maybe instead we would have solved some other things that meant the difference between life and death for many more people. The
If we disregard the new technology and discoveries involved, what does getting us to the moon or to mars get us?
I can’t help but notice there seems to be two distinctly separate threads going on here.
Isn’t this thread about submitting blindly to authority? 
Just say no. (but who am i to tell you that)
Yes it would but I’m not going to hold my breath. Whod’ve thought our government would suddenly get so interested in going to the Moon after Sputnik?
Hopefully we can learn more about that pipsqueak. I want him to power my next car…
That is PRECISELY the question that would have kept private industry from ever attempting it in the first place.
Directly, it gets us very little. If it did, how come nobody’s been back since 1973? Indirectly, the list is endless. If we ignore the technology and other learnings, the one big thing is the human milestone we acheived. This race now knows it is capable of doing such things; of escaping the confines of this one world. If we can do that, surely we can do other seemingly impossible things.
Kind of like the human race learning to ride a unicycle. And like any unicyclist, we’ll always know we can do it if we’re willing to commit to it.