Revival of Energia

John Savard wrote:
On 12 Jan 2004 10:16:41 -0800, (Patrick Underwood)
wrote, in part:

It is clear that the Moon/Mars program is going to be international,
with Russia playing a role. Assigning the heavy lifting job to the
Russians would provide a major boost for their economy and national
prestige

Trouble is, if the American taxpayers are paying for the program, they
will expect the jobs to stay at home. And since every penny spent on
imports has to be earned by the sale of exports, and we can't
(although I admit the U.S. has tried) force people to buy our
products, the response to an increase in imports is to throw people
out of work until they can't afford imported products, when tariffs
are not permitted by treaties such as the WTO.

If Russia could get rid of organized crime - instead, there are
suspicions it has friends in high places in government - or at least
reduce it to the dull roar it is in the U.S., one can't ask more of
Russia than we do - making it stronger might be less of a dangerous
thing.

Unfortunately, Russia getting rid of organised crime or its presence
in all levels of their police and internal security forces (never
mind local industry / governemt) - or really even seriously reducing
it - would probably take at least another, if not couple of such,
complete overthrow of the system.

Take any really rotten latin american state and multiply it by 10. And
then scale it up to be Russia-sized.


John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++