So what WOULD be "real change"?

[unixronin]

Well, let's see.

• Congress could start actually representing us, instead of lining their pockets and their friends' pockets and then handing us the bill.  At least acting like they think the law applies to them as well as to us would be a good start, too.
• Maybe when they get over that difficult and painful obstacle, they could start obeying the Constitutional limits on their own authority again.
• We could stop rewarding the financial sector for behavior that would get us, as individuals, thrown in jail or homeless with our future wages garnished for the rest of our lives.
• We could even make economic plans that aren't based on pretending that infinite economic growth forever is a good idea, or even possible in a finite world.
• We could get serious about trying to make the US independent of foreign oil, instead of fighting wars to ensure our continued future access to it, and stop funding foreign governments that hate us but love our money.
• For that matter, we could get serious about renewable, non-polluting energy sources, and stop winking and talking about "clean coal" as though it's not an oxymoron.
• We could stop coming up with movie-plot threat after movie-plot threat to justify taking away our own freedom in order to stop terrorists from taking it away.
• How's this for a really wild idea:  We could, like, actually respect each other's rights and work together to defend everyone's, instead of dividing into opposing camps that each fight to restrict or destroy the other's (but how dare you even think of touching ours!).
• While we're at it, maybe we could even toss out the absurd idea that it's even possible (let alone a good idea) to eliminate all possible risks and hazards from life from the cradle to the grave.  And hey, perhaps we could even ditch the equally stupid idea that there exists some kind of natural right never to be offended (but it's OK to offend other people in the pursuit thereof, because, well, we're Good People, so if anything we do offends them, they must be Bad People, right?).
• On yeah, and that retarded "zero tolerance" shit?  Right OUT, buddy.  Zero tolerance is an excuse not to have to think or accept responsibility for anything — you can just point at the rulebook and say "Don't blame me, the policy did it!"
• You know ... this is a radical concept, but maybe we could, y'know, like, work on the idea of personal responsibility in general, instead of trying to make everything somebody else's fault or somebody else's responsibility?
• In a related vein, we could perhaps work on internalizing the idea that just because we choose to live by a particular ideology doesn't mean everyone else has to, and that we can't expect them to respect ours if we don't respect theirs.

There's a few suggestions to toss out.  Anyone else have more?

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

we have done little to no real development of the oceanic frontier on earth. And it's huge. Really huge.

I figured that's what you were referring to. We're polluting the hell out of it,though, and sweeping it clean of life, and now discussing various ways to pollute it even more out of some idea that we can use it as a dumping-ground for excess carbon dioxide. In the nineteenth century, we treated the sea as infinite, able to be exploited without limit. In the twentieth century, virtually every major oceanic fishery crashed due to overfishing.

I strongly disagree with the idea that we have more important things to think about than opening up the solar system. At it's MOST expensive, NASA cost something like a nickel a day per capita.

OK, I worded that poorly. Any serious exploitation of the solar system is going to take a long time to even get started, and it's going to cost a lot of money; and the way things are looking right now, a lot of shit is going to hit the fan before it's even really getting started — beginning with a real possibility of the entire economic structure of our society coming crashing down around our ears as it becomes more and more apparent how much of it we built on sand. Add to that the fact that most people have, frankly, lost interest in space after Apollo, and the outlook isn't good.

We are .. probably 5 or 6 years away from a good dent in resource creation from LEO, 20 from a really expansive etra-terrestrial colonization.

I disagree. Most crucially because we're still tied into the resource economics of chemical rockets. We will never accomplish any substantive large-scale ventures in space until we break free of that. Right now, it still costs thousands of dollars per pound to put payload into orbit, millions of dollars per ton, and to do any resource creation in LEO we're going to have to put thousands of tons of industrial plant up there, unless we first make serious progress on nanotechnology.

I wish it was true, but it isn't. We'd be closer if we'd finish developing NERVA, but it's politically impossible, at the very least until we repudiate some treaties.

[koyote.livejournal.com]

on the oceans- we've got a case of reinformcement in potential. Expanding into and growing ourselves in a frontier like that an easily be done hand in hand with restoring the oceans resource production. It's a case of recognizing that all input IS output and all output IS input.

i still disagree on the space expansion. It would be expensive, yes, but I think it's very doable. I really don't think I'm pointlessly optomistic, either. As with most 'expensive' things at our technological level, it's more a matter of will than actual scarcity of resources.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Here's an angle you may not have considered on the expense: Look at the carbon footprint per pound of putting payload into orbit via chemical rockets. It's staggering. I found it quoted in New Scientist a few weeks back, and at first I thought they had to have misplaced the decimal point. It was tons per pound.

If we want to get serious about doing more in space than science, we have to finish NERVA. Chemical boosters simply aren't an option on that scale.

[koyote.livejournal.com]

chemical boosters aren't a good permanent solution, no. But... oh, to use a REALLY crappy analogy, ships don't get better if no one sails.

There are also a multitude of chemical reaction possibilities. including hydro-oxy.

and there's TANSTAAFL considerations- a carbon footprint can be managed, but not ignored forever.

I don't disagree about NERVA, but i do think we need to push and push hard to start doing, or we won't ever get there.