January 2012

Continuing Irrational Risk Aversion by NASA

by Rand Simberg on October 11, 2011 · 14 comments

in Features, Space

Post image for Continuing Irrational Risk Aversion by NASA

About a month ago, I discussed the potential consequences of NASA’s extreme aversion to loss of crew. Over at NASA Space Flight, there’s a detailed discussion of the risks of de-crewing the ISS, a course that the agency is considering if the next Soyuz flight, scheduled for next month, doesn’t go well:

Numerous other risks are presented by operating the ISS without any crews, since no crews would be aboard to deal with any issues that may arise, such as vital hardware replacements in the event of a failure.

Perhaps the most serious risk would be a loss of attitude control by the ISS, since it could potentially lead to a complete loss of the station. While a string of failures would be needed for such a situation to occur, a loss of attitude control could cause the ISS to enter a tumble, which would prevent future spacecraft from docking to the ISS, and also preclude ISS reboosts from occurring.

Communications between the ground and the ISS could also be lost since the ISS’ antennas would not be able to maintain a lock on orbiting satellites or ground stations. This situation would mean that the ISS would slowly lose altitude and eventually enter into an uncontrolled re-entry, possibly endangering populations below.

The nation has invested over a hundred billion dollars in this facility, which is international (the Europeans, Japanese and Russians are partners). Whether it is worth the investment to date is unclear, but it is a sunk cost. The question is, what is it worth going forward? Whatever it is, the space agency is taking the position that it is not worth the risk of a human life. This is, to put it as gently as possible, insane.

Whenever a test pilot gets into a new airplane, he is risking his life in the service of developing a new technology. No one would ever consider not doing a test flight because a pilot might be lost, and that’s for an airplane program that might have cost a few million, not tens of billions. We risk soldiers’ lives every day in our wars overseas, and few rational people say that we shouldn’t go to war simply because soldiers might be killed. In a ship or a submarine, the crew are expected to sacrifice themselves to save the ship (e.g., by sealing themselves into a flooding compartment to prevent the whole vessel from being inundated), should it become necessary. Yet we are willing to risk the loss of a hundred-billion-dollar space station that was decades in the building (and create a hazard to the uninvolved on the ground), to not risk the lives of three astronauts, who knew the job was dangerous when they took it?

[click to continue…]

Today’s Links: October 12, 2011

by Nicole Ciandella on October 11, 2011

in Odds & Ends

OPINION

ANNIE LOWREY: “Why Small Businesses Aren’t Innovative”
“The stereotype of the small-businessperson as a start-up innovator is pervasive. But it’s not true, according to a new study. Scupper the image of Mark Zuckerberg handcrafting a new service to revolutionize how we socialize and adding thousands of jobs to the economy. Replace it with the image of a gas-station owner, servicing a crowded market, happy to be able to make his kid’s soccer games without a boss breathing down his neck, and more wary of innovation than eager for it. In a new paper, ‘What Do Small Businesses Do?,’ Erik Hurst and Benjamin Wild Pugsley of the University of Chicago says innovative whizzes and small-business owners are very different breeds. For politicians and policymakers eager to bolster job creation and foster American competitiveness, Hurst and Pugsley’s analysis could have important ramifications.”

RICHARD EPSTEIN: “Cafornia’s Kaftkaesque Rent Control Laws”
“New York is not the only economically failing state that treats rent control as the road to salvation for its financially pressed citizens. California matches it stride for stride. In the California setting, the focal point is mobile homes. The 2010 decision in Guggenheim v. City of Goleta upheld a municipal ordinance that allows the tenant to hunker down in perpetuity so long as he or she agrees to cover the landlord’s increased costs, narrowly conceived. That gap between lease value and rental value sets in motion a set of procedural gimmicks, making it virtually impossible to give that landowner a fair shot at challenging these oppressive regulations, given the rigged rules now in place. ”

NICOLE GELINAS: “Apples and Oranges: Steve Jobs Was  Real Capitalist, as the Wall Street Protestors Seem to Understand”
“When word of Jobs’s death got out to the Occupy Wall Street protest in Lower Manhattan, where some protesters have used Apple’s products to disseminate their message, “the typing stopped.” It would be easy to say that Occupy Wall Street’s grief over Jobs’s death is a sign of the movement’s hypocrisy. In their first official statement, didn’t the protesters say that they stand with people ‘who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world’? And aren’t they demonstrating against the ’1 percent’ of the population to which Jobs belonged? But the protesters’ affection for Jobs isn’t necessarily a sign of bad faith or ignorance. Rather, it could be a healthy discernment, however poorly articulated. The point is not that Jobs was ‘this different, quiet billionaire,’ as one protester put it, but that he lived by the rules through which free-market capitalism should work.”

[click to continue…]

Alcohol Regulation Roundup: October 7, 2011

by Michelle Minton on October 7, 2011

in Features, Nanny State, Personal Liberty

Post image for Alcohol Regulation Roundup: October 7, 2011

National:

A Supreme Court decision is being heralded as potentially liberating the advertising market for tobacco and alcohol as it expands first amendment protections on all types of commercial speech. Eugene Volokh analyzed the Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc. decision and it’s implications on whether or not commercial advertising may be generally restricted on the grounds that it might persuade people to do something that the government thinks is bad.

Also in National news, the neo-prohibitionist group “Alcohol Justice,” (formerly known as the Marin Institute) is taking aim at Facebook. The group claims that Diageo, makers of popular drinks such as Guinness, have struck a “youth oriented” advertising campaign with the social media site and they are demanding that the Federal Communications Commission step in.

Georgia: One of the last few states to overturn its statewide ban on Sunday sales will soon give each district a chance to vote on whether to keep the ban or open up Sunday liquor sales.  Georgian towns will vote on the referendum on November 8.

Massachusetts:  In September, Attorney General Martha Coakley announced approval for proposed ballot questions in the 2012 election, including a proposal to end the ban on grocery store beer and wine sales. Also approved were questions about legalizing medical marijuana and repealing the state’s health care law.

[click to continue…]

Today’s Links: October 7, 2011

by Nicole Ciandella on October 7, 2011

in Odds & Ends

OPINION

JEFFREY A. TUCKER: “Steve Jobs and the Beautification of Capitalism”
“What made Jobs’s tenure at Apple great is that he wedded profits with aesthetic loveliness. Not every businessperson can or should do this. Even the entrepreneurs who provided the masses with tacky things are just as deserving of our admiration and praise, for they too do their part to lift us all out of the poverty and squalor that is the state of nature. And aside from the prettiness of certain products or the elegance of the smartphone, there is another overarching beauty that we find in the market: a lovely, orderly, productive global matrix of cooperative exchange that leads to human flourishing for everyone, even in the absence of a global dictator. This is as beautiful a system as any product Steve Jobs ever made.”

ERIC SCHMIDT: “Eric Schmidt on Steve Jobs”
“I should tell you this story. We’re in a meeting at NeXT, before Steve went back to Apple. I’ve got my chief scientist. After the meeting, we leave and try to unravel the argument to figure out where Steve was wrong—because he was obviously wrong. And we couldn’t do it. We’re standing in the parking lot. He sees us from his office, and he comes back out to argue with us some more. It was over a technical issue involving Objective C, a computer language. Why he would care about this was beyond me. I’ve never seen that kind of passion.”

BRIAN PALMER: “Did Dropping Acid Make Steve Jobs More Creative?”
“Apple founder and tech visionary Steve Jobs died on Wednesday. Jobs was heavily influenced by 1960s counterculture, and once told a reporter that taking LSD was ‘one of the two or three most important things‘ he did in his life. Can LSD really make you more creative? Possibly. Psychology researchers conducted a lot of studies in the 1950s and ‘60s on the relationship between psychedelic drugs and creativity. Their methodology was inconsistent, though, and the results were somewhat scattered”

[click to continue…]

At Long Last, Congress Will Vote on Three Trade Pacts that Unions have Held Up

by Fran Smith on October 7, 2011

in Agenda for Congress, International, Labor, Trade

At long last both the House and the Senate are scheduled to vote on the three free trade agreements (FTAs) that have languished for more than four years. Votes on the trade pacts are scheduled for  next Wednesday and will be linked to votes on Trade Adjustment Assistance — a condition that President Obama and Democratic leaders had demanded.

Although there appears to be bipartisan support, the AFL-CIO is still opposed to all of the pending FTAs and brought hundreds of union members to Capitol Hill to tell their congressional cohorts to vote against all three pacts. Their particular focus is on the U.S.-Colombia FTA, even though they demanded — and got — an Action Plan for Colombia to take specific and onerous steps to ostensibly protect union workers in that country.

As CEI has written, trade unions have been largely responsible for holding up the trade pacts, even though the agreements are expected to create many thousands of new jobs. Obviously, appeasing unions by giving in to their demands hasn’t worked.

One can only hope that they won’t have the clout to influence enough Democrats to vote against the pacts.

CEI Weekly: Congress Should Start Quantifying Federal Regulation

by Nicole Ciandella on October 7, 2011

in Odds & Ends

CEI Weekly is a compilation of articles and blog posts from CEI’s fellows and associates sent out via e-mail every Friday. Also included in the weekly newsletter is a brief description of CEI’s weekly podcast and a feature on a major CEI breakthrough made during the week. To sign up for CEI Weekly, go to http://cei.org/newsletters.

CEI Weekly

October 7, 2011

>>Featured Story

CEI has released a new Issue Analysis by Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews: “The Other National Debt Crisis: How and Why Congress Must Quantify Federal Regulation.” Crews argues that the federal government must start holding itself truly accountable for the costs it is forcing on struggling American businesses if the nation is to pull itself out of its current economic slump. Read the full Issue Analysis here.

[click to continue…]

CEI Podcast for October 6, 2011: How to Deregulate the Economy

by Ryan Young on October 6, 2011 · 1 comment

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Podcast, Regulation

Have a listen here.

Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews is author of the new CEI study, “The Other National Debt Crisis: How and Why Congress Must Quantify Regulation.” He discusses a few of his many ideas for deregulating the economy, including a regulatory budget, improved cost analysis, and lowering the threshold of “economically significant” regulations from $100 million to $25 million. This would require OMB to review more than the roughly 5 percent of new rules that it currently analyzes. The other 95 percent should not slip through the cracks.

Today’s Links: October 6, 2011

by Nicole Ciandella on October 6, 2011

in Odds & Ends

OPINION

NATIONAL REVIEW EDITORIAL: “Truth in Budgeting”
“As Americans struggle to balance their checkbooks in the real world, lawmakers in Washington continue to apply postmodern accounting tricks to mask their out-of-control spending habits. New legislation introduced by Sens. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, and Olympia Snowe (R., Maine) would help to tamp down some of these shenanigans.”

DIANA FURCHTGOTT-ROTH: “DOE Hasn’t Learned Its Solyndra Lessons”
“Some might think the Energy Department learned from the September Solyndra bankruptcy, in which taxpayers have a $528 million exposure. Surely September would have been a good time to halt the Energy Department’s loan guarantee program and understand why this program has become the poster child for crony capitalism.”

MATT WELCH: “Jonathan Chait’s Latest Libertarian Fever Dream”
“Yesterday, I wrote a blog post about howNew York Magazine political writer Jonathan Chait (late of The New Republic) is looking on the bright side of potential “fear of extremism and mob violence” in the Occupy Wall Street protests (which, as far as I can tell, haven’t really featured anything like either). He has written a long response (decorated by a glamourpuss shot of Nick Gillespie!) that you can read here. ”

[click to continue…]

The EDA Elimination Act: To Terminate the Economic Development Administration

by David Bier on October 6, 2011

in Economy, Employment, Stimulus to Nowhere

Yesterday Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo introduced the “EDA Elimination Act,” a bill that would remove funding for the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration. The agency represents all of the failed policies that the federal government has used to promote economic growth since President Johnson’s Great Society. As Rep. Pompeo wrote in his press release, “At its core, the EDA behaves as a wealth redistribution program… The EDA simply picks ‘winners and losers’ by region, by industry, and by community.”

Last week, Iain Murray and I issued our call in the Washington Times to end the EDA.  Our article detailed how the EDA fails to create economic growth and wastes public dollars:

The agency’s largest grant ever, for $35 million, went to build a convention center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 2010…. The Cedar Rapids project rapidly became a money pit, but the EDA kept paying for the digging. Project costs were estimated originally at $67 million, but in less than a year, they increased by $8.6 million. Rather than acknowledge a mistake in funding it, the EDA keeps funneling taxpayer dollars into the project. A year after the original $35 million grant, the EDA responded to the increased costs with another $2.9 million grant. The city’s own projections show the center  losing almost $1.3 million by its fifth year.

When Heywood Sanders, an expert on convention-center economics, pointed out to a local paper that convention centers are economic losers, the city’s project manager was blasé. “It will lose money. He’s absolutely right,” he said. “We know that. The city knows that. The question is, how do you minimize the loss?” The city easily could have avoided the losses by not entering the failing convention-center industry. Instead, the city can treat the losses as incidental as long as it is receiving tens of millions of dollars from the federal government. That kind of money provides too strong an incentive to push forward projects that make no economic sense.

The EDA claims it is “guided by the basic principle that communities must be empowered to develop and implement their own economic development and revitalization strategies.” But its grants and interventions undermine this goal. In order to be able to claim that its projects have leveraged large amounts of public and private investment, the agency often encourages municipalities to create special development taxes to qualify for EDA matching grants.

Pueblo, Colo., for instance, was granted an Economic Adjustment Strategies award for raising $88 million to meet an EDA matching grant. In the Cedar Rapids case, a sales-tax increase to pay for the center was rejected by voters, but city planners went ahead with the project after the EDA intervened.

Meddling in local affairs that leads to tax increases and greater government spending will not create real economic development. Policymakers need to end their addiction to spending taxpayer money and admit they have a problem. A good first step would be to end the Economic Development Administration.

Today’s Links: October 5, 2011

by Nicole Ciandella on October 5, 2011 · 1 comment

in Odds & Ends

OPINION

KONSTANTIN KAKAES: “Some Crazy (And Not So Crazy) Ideas For Sending a Spacesehip to Another Solar System”
“Space is about to be opened up to private industry in a fundamentally new way. If industry lives up to the hopes of those assembled in Orlando, maybe the fastest human beings in history will soon be traveling toward something instead of back to Earth, like the Apollo 10 crew.”

WASHINGTON IDEAS FORUM: The Atlantic (Livestream and Archive)

[click to continue…]

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →