"Nazis Run Our Space Program" -- Peace Activist Bruce Gag-Me

On Fri, 4 Mar 2005 17:14:15 +0000 (UTC), (Eric
Chomko) wrote:

Thanks. I believe the point is that despite China's human rights
violations, as we see it, we grant a wavier every single year to allow
them normal trade relations, formerly nation most favored WRT trade. Huh,
I guess THAT really sends the message about our commitment to ending their
communist ways and their human rights violations.

That process ("recertification", I think it was called) ended during the Clinton
Administration. The US still does an annual report on the human rights situation
in China, but it's been "decoupled" from their MFN status.

Dale

D Schneider wrote:


Which otherwise would have fallen in the food.


Given the quality of the food (remember the "French Toast" anybody?)
dandruff and lint would be an improvement; or seasoning at the very least.

Pat

Henry Spencer wrote:
Well, of course, the US *should* have been banging its collective head on
the wall over this for some time. There was no shortage of Communists in
the world who could have been bought out -- either collectively and
openly, with things like aid deals, or individually and privately, under
the table -- for a fraction of what it cost to fight them.

There was a time when it probably wouldn't have taken much to make Ho Chi
Minh an ally rather than an enemy, if the idiots in Washington had been
able to see beyond that awful C-word and treat it as a practical problem
rather than an ideological one.

For that matter, I dimly recall a little article published at the height
of the Vietnam War, which estimated how much it would cost to *bribe*
every last man, woman, and child in North Vietnam to stop fighting. I
think it was something like two months of the war budget...

That's a nice theory but it doesn't tend to work well in
practice. The problem with bribes is ensuring that you
get your money's worth, and ensuring that the bribed
stay bought. In both cases, once they have your money
there is very little incentive for them to either do
what you asked or not to demand ever greater bribes on
a continuing basis.

An example from the present time is particular applicable.
The US has been paying many millions of dollars in foreign
aid to Egypt in attepts to keep them "on our side". Has
it worked? Not particularly well. What it has done is
set up a situation whereby if we stop paying they will
have a ready excuse, and motivation, to stop being on our
side. In effect, we have paid merely to maintain the
status quo. We have been doing this with Egypt for a
great many years and their behavior has stayed more or
less the same. In contrast, Bush's "harsher" methods
relying on a combination of the carrot and stick, rather
than the carrot alone, have brought more dramatic
changes in Egypt's behavior in a short time period than
the bribes have done over the course of decades.

A more dramatic example would be that of the Barbary
pirates. An anemy of the US from back around the turn
of the 19th century. The US agreed to pay out bribes to
the Barbary pirates in order to keep them from attacking
US shipping. The Barbary pirates learned this game very
quickly and periodically escalated their payment demands.
This eventually caused the US to get fed up and dramatically
increase the size of its young Navy. After which the
US made war against the Barbary pirates, won that war, and
proceeded to dictate terms to the pirates. They were
bothered quite a bit less by the Barbary pirates
thereafter.

In short, bribes tend to be a way to buy maintenance of
the status quo, rather than a way to change the status
quo for the better.

In article ,
Christopher M. Jones wrote:
There was a time when it probably wouldn't have taken much to make Ho Chi
Minh an ally rather than an enemy...
For that matter, I dimly recall a little article published at the height
of the Vietnam War, which estimated how much it would cost to *bribe*
every last man, woman, and child in North Vietnam to stop fighting...

That's a nice theory but it doesn't tend to work well in practice.

The "every last man, woman, and child" piece was not intended to be
entirely serious. As for the more general case, it *can* work well, but
it has to be done with some degree of skill. It's not a magic wand.

The problem with bribes is ensuring that you
get your money's worth, and ensuring that the bribed
stay bought. In both cases, once they have your money
there is very little incentive for them to either do
what you asked or not to demand ever greater bribes on
a continuing basis.

That's if you bribe them to be good boys, as opposed to paying them to do
specific things and not having unrealistic expectations about what happens
after that. You ensure that you get your money's worth by making payment
conditional on results, and by not expecting open-ended commitments in
return for one-time payments.

This is Free Market 101, just basic business sense; how is it that the US
government is so ignorant of it? (That's a rhetorical question...)

An example from the present time is particular applicable.
The US has been paying many millions of dollars in foreign
aid to Egypt in attepts to keep them "on our side". Has
it worked? Not particularly well...
...In effect, we have paid merely to maintain the
status quo.

Yes, and it worked, didn't it? If that's all you ask, that's all you get.
If you want something more, you have to make that explicit and make sure
the payment is contingent on results. Inept bribery is no more effective
than any other form of inept diplomacy.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

Christopher M. Jones wrote:


In short, bribes tend to be a way to buy maintenance of
the status quo, rather than a way to change the status
quo for the better.


Don't forget Ethelred the Unready and his plan to bribe the Vikings.
That didn't work at all well.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:
Don't forget Ethelred the Unready and his plan to bribe the Vikings.
That didn't work at all well.

Exactly. As they say: "Once you pay the Danegeld, you
will never be rid of the Dane." This is not a new
lesson.

"Chuck Stewart" wrote in message
news
On Fri, 04 Mar 2005 11:07:15 +0000, Nathan Gant wrote:
There would be plenty of radioactive debris coming back down to
propagate lots of healthy cancer cells for a few generations.

... and cap it with more assertions that do not
match up with evidence from tests simulationg
launch accident conditions and nuclear materials.

That's really been the problem, hasn't it? The doomsayers do a lot of
handwaving, and even though we have actual field data for the power of a
space shuttle explosion, and it is far below that which was necessary to
penetrate the standard RTG designs, *plus* the fact that the plutonium isn't
in powder form, but is bound up in stable ceramics, and thus *cannot* be
uniformly distributed in the atmosphere in the manner necessary to support
the claim that there's enough to cause cancer to everyone on earth, they
*still* respond to polite requests to provide plausible scenarios as to how
it would happen, along with the supporting data, with more hysterical
handwaving.

Clearly, they don't let the facts get in the way of a good fundraiser.

"Nathan Gant" wrote:

:Bruce has perfectly rational objections about launching plutonium in
:rockets.

Strike one.

:That would make a decent terrorist weapon -- blow up the Space
:Shuttle when it is a few miles in the air, with a large amount of plutonium
n board. There would be plenty of radioactive debris coming back down to
ropagate lots of healthy cancer cells for a few generations.

And precisely what do you postulate happens to the plutonium in the
explosion that would cause this effect?

--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn

Pat Flannery wrote:

:The Plutonium is encased in ceramic designed to withstand not only a
:in-flight explosion, but even a reentry, IIRC.

I think they actually had one of these things that was involved in a
fairly nasty accident.

They fished it out of the drink, cleaned it up, and used it on another
mission.

--
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to
live in the real world." -- Mary Shafer, NASA Dryden

"Nathan Gant" wrote in message
news
Jim,

I've met Bruce Gagnon and he's a very sincere, idealistic person.

Bruce has perfectly rational objections about launching plutonium in
rockets. That would make a decent terrorist weapon -- blow up the Space
Shuttle when it is a few miles in the air, with a large amount of
plutonium
on board. There would be plenty of radioactive debris coming back down to
propagate lots of healthy cancer cells for a few generations.

Tell me when you get to the rational objections.