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SilasBarta comments on Politicians stymie human colonization of space to save make-work jobs - Less Wrong
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I know you touched on this, but: since the beginning, the space program has existed due to make-work deals. To get the original legislation approved, they had to buy off legislators in various districts. (Why do you think the major centers are in Texas and Florida, two of the states mentioned?) To this day, the problem persists in that NASA can't switch to metric because of the numerous English-oriented workshops scattered across the country that they've locked themselves into buying from
But, to paraphrase a point EY made a while back: yes, it sucks that politicians control technologies they couldn't invent, but then, don't engineers get funding they couldn't secure on their own?
Also, I completely agree about the stupidity of complaining about an improvement in inefficiency just because it requires people to take different jobs. But what makes it particularly irksome for me is how adamant the same people are about propping up those jobs rather than simply getting some kind of adjustment compensation.
In other words, I would have a lot more understanding if the traditional argument were, "Yeah, this will be an improvement in efficiency, but could we maybe also include some funding to help with readjustment for all the workers this would cut off?" Instead, the usual demand is not only that we should appease existing beneficiaries, but that we should do that specifically by persisting ad infinitum in paying them to do the same worthless jobs.
It's one thing to say, "yes, we'll support your mentally retarded brother". It's quite another to say "... and we'll do it by making customers endure his ineptness too!"
And I've never understood this mentality. I don't feel entitled to perpetual demand for the kind of labor my employer provides, and I'd feel completely rotten about encouraging such waste just so I can keep exactly the same job. Where do people come up with this worldview?
Go back a generation and the concept of life-long careers was much more common. I think it's that social expectations for Boomers and earlier was that they would have a particular career for life, and many from those generations feel affronted at the thought of having to give up on their existing career. Effectively they feel they've suffered a breach of the social contract.
But aren't the Boomers at the end of their careers now? It seems it would have to be a problem with a later cohort for this to be a major issue now.
The ones in politics aren't at the end of their careers, that means that legislatures as a body will be more likely to consider making people change jobs to be unthinkable than the average person.
You are right though, over the next decade or so, this hypothesis would predict that demand for job security will fall over the next 10-20 years as the Boomers retire.
The first time I read this I thought "right on!" but then rereading it I'm not actually sure what it means. Can you expand on what you mean?
Ok. I thought something approximately like that but wasn't sure if this was due to an illusion of transparency. Spending time on LW may just be making me too paranoid about that.
I thought Florida was closer to the equator than most of the US, which decreases the energy needed to achieve orbit. I've often wondered if this is significant; if so, then why can't we launch from some friendly equatorial country?
The Europeans do.
French Guyana is not a European-friendly equatorial country, it's an overseas region of France and therefore, the EU.
That's the correct reason for Florida. As I understand it, no equatorial country was considered stable and friendly enough to put the infrastructure there. And the US would have to then regularly transport a lot of equipment and personnel there. In contrast, putting mission control in Texas really was about politics. In particular, LBJ was from Texas. And while he was actually a fan of the space program (in some ways more so than Kennedy), he still wanted his home state to get something out of it.