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It seems that ther is very little CO2 on Mars, and a lot of water. According to space.com, this means that we can have oceans, but no terraforming of an atmosphere! I would hope that this is not the case, but if there's no CO2 to work with, is an atmosphere that allows a temperate and breathable Mars possible?
Or valid interpretations of what you said. You love to pick at things I never said, don't distort things to slag me.
But that's where governments come in. Under any system, this will occur, if there is no law to prevent it.
For employers to get away with sweatshop labor, there has to be a large surplus of available labor, or an industry consensus to allow the conditions. Otherwise, SuperCorp can say, come here, I'll offer you more money for your work! He will attract more workers, who will work harder, because they are paid more (it is an economic principle that people who feel more appreciated work harder), so you increase productivity. The companies you speak of often make huge profits anyway.
For example, for I believe about a production cost of $5 a shoe, Nike sells the shoes for $75+. A little increase in conditions/wages won't hurt.
In fact, Vietnamese labor wages have increased substantially, without government intervention. This is because the market disapproved of Nike's, Reebok's, and Adidas's actions, and showed its disapproval by boycotting products. Thus, the market can exert its influence on labor practices. Granted, these laborers deserve more money, and better conditions, but the system, as Adam Smith had said, improves as productivity improves and labor becomes aware.
Has North Korea been rational with the United States? They've shot test missiles towards the US. The US could certainly massacre North Korea, yet they did it anyway. And besides, a few nuclear missiles would make an advance by China impossible. What could China do? Send nukes back? What about South Korea?
I am just showing a possibility-not something I think could happen. But the presence of an untrustworthy, nuclear weapon-possessing country in that region is destabilizing. China has not complained about our presence in South Korea.
According to the Center for Defence Infromation, http://www.cdi.org/products/almanac0102.pdf, the UK and France together have 96 warships and 111 support ships. The US has 200 warships and 200 support ships. NATO has a total of 660 warships and 858 support ships.
That sounds like less than "hundreds" to me.
I don't know if they're technically "Arab" but Egypt and Libya could probably reach Europe with missiles.
Why would North Korea launch a missile at China? China could easily defeat North Korea.
If they were going to lose a war anyway, why not?
Japan's military is supposedly designed for "defense", but then again so is America's military... which hasn't stopped us from participating in at least 193 military interventions since WWII.
The difference is, their military is restricted to this role by treaties that they signed-ours is not. But apparently, as shown by a few nations recently, treaties are only as good as the money you can get by breaking them.
At least Bush got Putin's consent before stepping out of the ABM treaty, and didn't demand money to adhere to it.
Investment will slow down, I think, as the market matures. It won't need so much foreign investment, and growth will naturally level off, which will lower the return on investments. So the investment may be less risky, but it is also probably less rewarding.
The problem I see, is that everybody uses economic of other countries to laugh at the US. Economic competition is a good thing! I hope the EU and China can compete with the US. I also hope that by the time China catches up to, and perhaps surpasses the US, it will not be regarded as a catastrophe, but as a maturation of the global economy.
Africa has a real problem, however. The Sahara Desert may soon ecompass most of Africa. It's a shame, what those Phoenicians did to the continent. On that note, a few nuclear reactors could provide water (or desalinization) to irrigate those deserts, to try to stem or reverse the spread of the desert.
Sorry, you're right:
A competitor couldn't and doesn't do that for the most part.
That's simply not true. Hell, just step into a high school! Kids will work where there's the highest pay, easiest hours, and best benefits. The same applies to the mature business world ("I'm going to get another $10/hour there, sorry, but if you can't afford a raise, I'm going to have to take it").
Yes, the executives get the most money. Who should get more money, the founder and owner of the company, or the labor it employs? One is replaceable, one is imperative (without Bill Gates, where would Microsoft be? A software engineer may be replaceed, but Bill Gates?). Also, you don't want to give fat bonuses to people who might leave the next week, after having looked for a more lucrative job, and stayed for the money.
The Yom Kippur war? Historically, the Arab nations have teamed up on Israel-if you go back into history, and objectively analyze it, Israel has never launched a pre-emptive war.
Iraq attacking Kuwait? Iran vs. Iraq? Pakistan and India standoff?
I'm not saying that we necessarily stop intervention-what I'm saying is the presence of our military allows Europeans to focus less on maintaining their own military. Another Germany can spring up at any time.
hundreds of British and French ships led by aircraft carriers? Even if we ignore the fact that Arab countries don't have missiles capable of reaching Europe, the Britain and France could respond to a chemical weapon attack with submarine-launched nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles that would destroy all of the Arab's major population centers. And in case you haven?t noticed, Japan is remilitarizing. They are the #3 military spender in the world, behind only the US and Russia. In addition, Japan is an island, and their military capability is quite sufficient to prevent China's small navy from being too much of a threat. The truth is, our allies are much stronger than our potential enemies, and most of them would remain quite safe without our military.
Wow, lot's of fallacies there. Erm, they do have nuclear weapons capable of reaching Europe, and Britain and France combined don't have "hundreds" of warships-we don't even have that many.
Second, North Korea only has to launch a nuclear missle at china, and it could take out a city. No need for an invasion. China can overrun Japan...no number of Japanese could stop such a close Chinese military. And, in case you don't know, Japan can't do anything with that military-by virtue of the WW2 peace treaty, it is strictly defenseive, and limited.
Arab nations don't have missiles that could reach Europe, hah, good one!
oh, and I wouldn't say European military technologies "rival" America's, the only European equipment on par with ours is the planes we sell them.
Josh, that's simply not true. Step into the business world. And monopolies can be broken-Coca-Cola is an example.
Bill-yes, I know how they operate. I also know that wages are continually increasing, as are conditions. Someday, these cheap third-world labor sources will have wages not far below our own.
the result is that other companies have to employ the same tactics in order to remain competitive- it leads to a spiral downwards, not up.
Aha! Or the opposite could be true, a competitor could offer $0.50 per hour more, better conditions, and more benefits. They could attract the better workers. Competition also applies in reverse-companies must cater to workers to retain the best labor.
But I agree, sweat shop-type conditions are in no way acceptable. I was responding to the question as asked, without emotional input-strictly logically. Obviously, morally, I am opposed to these conditions.
Well, the illegal immigrants choose to leave their country, and in many cases the sweat shops are better conditions. In no way am I condoning sweatshops-but the immigrants are free to leave, if they wish.
Do you know how much of that is simply maintenance? How much of that is actual manpower? I would doubt they have anything capable of defending themselves from an invasion.
And then we have South Korea, and Japan (which is only allowed a tiny, defensive force, which is why we have troops in the region), and other countries.
I would chose diplomacy over any other. Who cares if Russia may have invaded Germany? At least then, perhaps, Isreal may not have been created, since the German Jews wouldn't have been relocated by the US. You know, perhaps I would have rather had that bit of history pan out.
WHAT? There were no German Jews left, for one thing, or very few. Second, I wouldn't be here. Third, Soviet rule over Germany was brutal, perhaps you should look into it. East Germany ended up decades behind West Germany by the time the country was reunited.
And that bit of history might have seen Stalin take all the land that Hitler took, along with his own country of Russia.
Ah, so much better,
And you throw the FUD word at me. In this time, it's fashionable to take all credit away from America for anything.
Saying that Europe has to worry about being invaded by Arab countries is a little like saying that the US should worry about being invaded by Canada.
Except that America's military is huge compared to Canada's. And we gave them most of their capabilities. Arab nations have a good number of missiles, planes, tanks, and troops to deploy. A border is meaningless if your military is matched against someone who won't shy from using WMDs. .
Oh, and Josh, without the American economy's stability, the European economy would collapse. America continues to do for Europe, even economically, now. They rely on our economy much more than vice versa.
Who needs plastic, when one day we might have nanotubes to do the job :laugh:
but seriously, plastic facilities could utilize biomass to produce plastic.
another comment-I think people are more willing to terraform Mars, which can have a breathable atmosphere in the next century if we get there within the next few decades, and which is pretty sure to have oceans of water that aren't too hard to tap. People can see Mars as another Earth far more readily, easily, and quickly, than Venus, which will surely require more effort to terraform.
I haven't seen Germany ask us to stop giving them Patriot missles.
Fine, then let's pull out. They don't want us, they can have fun raising their own military. While we're at it, let's establish true equality in the UN, and have a parity in terms of forces committed to UN operations. Whoops, can't have that-half of Europe has no military!
Actually, our presence in Western Europe after World War 2 probably saved West Germany, and much of Western Europe, from a Soviet land invasion. Without American presence there, nothing could have stopped a Soviet invasion.
And if you had to choose between America and China, who would you choose? A brutal dictatorship or a government that allows freedom?
No, the only people who really benefit from our military, is the US itself, since millions of civilians work for the military in one way or another. Cutting it back would be exactly like cutting back any other bureaucratic crap we have. Europe depends on our military very very little.
That's REALLY wishful thinking. Our trade partners need our military just as much as the US does. Don't be so naive Josh. How many troops have come from European nations in UN operations lately? Germany doesn't have a military, France...I'll leave that be, Blair does whatever America says, and Russia, up until recently, couldn't pay its own workers. There's nobody in Europe who has any means of self-defense should the Arab nations choose to invade, or China, for that matter. We are really the only thing that can ensure Europe's security, since World War 2.
I made a mistake! Yes, I admit it!
Using NERVA, you get 60% fuel mass, 20% structural mass, and 20% payload mass to orbit. Thusly:
125,000 kg launch mass gets you 25,000 kg to orbit (shuttle equivalent) as payload.
600,000 kg launch mass gets you 120 tonnes to orbit as payload. I choose 600,000 kg because it can be launched off an airstrip.
2 million kg launch mass (shuttle equivalent) gets you 400-500 tonnes to orbit as payload.
These numbers represent a 16 fold increase in efficiency over the shuttle. A number of options have been discussed at space.com in my thread, including using the reactor to crack water into more fuel, among other things.
And that investment is because people see a stablized, secure investment in China as it becomes more and more of a free market. Capitlization might be the best thing China has done in many years.
Well, yes and no. I think that the U.S. is more of a technological leader than ever before, it's just economically that other nations are catching up. And look who is catching up-china, another capitalist nation! But it is somewhat ironic that people are pointing to China catching up as a sign of the U.S.'s stagnation-they have 2 billion people! We have 300 million! They should outproduce us!
But I don't think war affects the average person. The average MIT scholar is still developing a new fuel cell, the Princeton nanoengineer is still researching nanotubes, and so on.
War brings the world down, yes, but for the US, I don't think that it has as much of an impact as it is made out to, except in terms of our national debt, which is, don't get me wrong, nothing to laugh at. But the average person no longer cares about Afghanistan, and the Iraq issue will probably be a dinner table memory by 2005, barring another big terrorist hit.
NTRs can be designed so that there is no nuclear explosion, and very little radiation. If we base everything on the shuttle, sure, let's base our computer comparisons on kommodore's. Oh, wait, you mean we've advanced technologically?
The Shuttle isn't the pinnacle of human capability-thirty years of technological advance and ideas have passed, and I would highly doubt that we can't build anything better, that is more safe.
And who determines how much time? Going back to the drawing board has been NASA's specialty-no, its time to do, and i think we have what it takes to develop a reliable, safe system.
besides, a nuclear SSTO wouldn't necessarily create a nuclear explosion if it failed.
Designing things well can avert disaster, clark. It seems like you're trying to justify keeping ourselves on Earth indefinitely.
clark, Earth is a haven for life! Of course we could give a scientific society information! Cataloging all of Earth's species until they can determine our origins would be quite a daunting, if not exciting, thing indeed.
What if our alien friends have been mapping Earth with more advanced equipment than we've mapped Mars with? Our experience shows that, even with Earth technology, you don't need humans to determine such details as soil composition, geology, and so on.
And what if Earth is not so unique, and our planet is just one of, say, a dozen that they've encountered like it.
But getting into space is a far cry from cheap, and not so routine.
You know, getting to the New World in the 1600s wasn't cheap and routine, but it was done anyway-at a far greater risk to more lives. Now, ocean travel is cheap, and air travel is cheap, and routine as well. If we hadn't bridged the oceans, where would we be now? How can you design a system to withstand an environment that you haven't observed, because you perpetually say: "We need it to be safer and cheaper."
Unfortunately, it has no more than that. We have nuclear technology that would make designing an SSTO entirely possible, and Mars exploration possible, and reliably safe as well.
Come on, clark, it's obvious that we have the means, it's just whether or not we choose to apply it.