Phi for All

Guarantee is far too strong though, wouldn't you agree? Otherwise, you're saying there's something inherent in profit that drives innovation, and I really don't think you can defend that. What stops a publicly-funded and operated program from being just as clever as the private contractors? Point of fact, a munitions designer who doesn't have to worry about making his shareholders rich could actually come up with something equally effective and ridiculously cheap. In the capitalistic approach, something like that would have to be subsidized to make it interesting for the private contractors. Don't you think there's a way for a .gov program to stay competitive technology-wise without concerns over making anyone rich? In the US, there's so much pushback against attempts to block private interests from public works that folks make the assumption that only money can motivate.

Gently pointing out that this is what I was talking about. You're about to start a second page of this thread, and you're talking about everything EXCEPT your supportive evidence. I wasn't trying to dismiss you or ridicule you. I was predicting your behavior based on evidence I've observed.

Personally, I don't think it's that hard to use both tools in the same economy, but we need to stay away from the idea of mixing them together in the same approach. I like your use of "calibrating", rather than the "blending" strategy we use in the US. I think we've made the mistake of "blending" capitalistic goals with socialistic ones, instead of using both but keeping them separate. We used to use public road crews, paid for by state and local governments, to build and maintain our roads. Then we chose to blend some capitalistic opportunities in, supposedly as a cost-cutting measure, and hired private companies to help out. It definitely didn't end up cutting costs to the taxpayers, quite the opposite, but it made the .gov look smaller, and that appeases the right (or "conservatives" as they're known, the ones who don't like overspending and praise common sense values). We should build and maintain roads for everyone, using ONLY public funding every step of the way, for every bit of it (because infrastructure). And we should use ONLY private funding to build the cars the People use to drive those roads. Same thing with the oil & gas the People use, private funding ONLY (because market). The military though, there's the rub. Can our military make its own equipment, and remove the capitalistic stigma of the military industrial complex? With such a large budget and scope of operations, there's no way private manufacturing paid by public funding can offer savings over an operation that's run completely using public workers unconcerned with turning a profit. That may not be true with some major expenses like jets and aircraft carriers, but for munitions wouldn't it would be smarter to pay .gov workers to make .gov weapons to defend We the People? It's socialistic when the firefighter saves your house, and it's capitalistic when the insurance company denies your claim. Just sayin'.

This is one of the reasons I resent the term. Blanket generalizations are all you're going to get from anyone using an -ism to argue about specific issues. Are there any countries with no public roads, where you pay a toll every time you drive? No public sidewalks? What happens with capitalistic endeavors when the public/state doesn't own the airports and seaports? One of my parameters for socialistic practices is that they're a bottom-up approach to the economy. The exact opposite of Reagan's Trickle-down theory, which we've basically been doing since right after the Eisenhower administration. Instead of giving public support and aid to the folks who already have all the money, a bottom-up approach would beef up the economy based on the people who actually spend their money instead of sitting on it. And I'd like to tie that to the military by pointing out that having a publicly-funded military is supposed to remove greed from the equation of professionally arming your citizenry. The more private, capitalistic entities you have involved, the more you need to question whether you're defending your shores or just killing humans for profit. Of course, if that were true, you'd expect to see a lot of bloat and unnecessary spending stemming from using unlimited growth business models on a public institution. Such a military would be enormous, far out of proportion to the rest of the world's forces.

"Experiment" has a more precise definition in science, and what you call a "mind experiment" doesn't fit. What you're doing is stringing some things you've experienced together with some things you've read (but perhaps not fully understood? easy to do these days), and then filling in the gaps with stuff you made up. It can't help but make perfect sense to you. Except... I'm perfectly capable of deciding that, today at least, it's not worth getting angry about. I did this just yesterday. I told my mind not to get mad and I became calm. Two days before that, I ranted at someone being selfish about merging. It wasn't me they cut off, so I really had no reason to be angry, but it felt good to let that out. Experiments need consistent results.

People have been doing that to me my whole life, and it seems to work. I understand LOTS of things now. Science is based on our best current explanation for various phenomena. Golly, you had the time to write that all out. You could have at least TRIED to explain your idea instead. Quick to assume?! I'm waiting for evidence, and I've assumed NOTHING. I don't know what your claim is, so how could I assume anything about it? What is it you think you've said "exactly what it is"? That's the part I'm waiting for. What we're looking for in a science discussion is a compelling argument, something to make us think you might be onto something. I rightly assume that if you had one, you'd make it RIGHT AWAY, right there in your opening post. Instead, you've got a lot of hand-waving and no substance, and excuses about why you can't support your idea right now. Kudos for not spelling truth with a capital T in the title, though. I COULD accept it if you explained it in a compelling, reasoned way. That's how science works. There are no answers, just theory, and theory is the most solid, trustworthy explanation you can get, constantly updated when new evidence compels us to improve our knowledge. So where is that evidence?

It's still just an opinion without evidence. Well that won't work here at all. You need to use evidence and reason to persuade people to trust what you're claiming. We aren't going to except it (which means make an exception for it), and we aren't going to accept it (which means believing it) without analyzing the evidence. Historically, we've found that if a person actually has supportive evidence for their extraordinary claims, they lead with it. It would be in your OP because it would be startling enough to make people think you were on to something. Most people, including you it seems, just claim to have it but never get around to presenting it. If you can only persuade people who have to start out believing you, you aren't doing science.

Wow, video cherry-picking, pretty dishonest if you ask me. I thought this thread was about how crazy it is that Delaware has more businesses incorporated there than people living there.

I wasn't arguing that public education stops becoming socialistic when influenced by the profit concerns of the capitalistic elements, just that the basic function of public education is often negatively influenced by those elements. The focus on testing was widely seen by professional educators as an investment opportunity for private elements rather than a way to improve the quality of education. If you design a system to favor profit, and then apply it to a system that's supposed to benefit the public, you're at least changing how the system's success is measured. And there's also the problem with applying profit growth models to systems where growth is necessarily limited (only so many children in the district, only so much any child can learn, only so much land to build schools on). Private contractors need continual growth for their products and services, and that's often at odds with public strategies.

I used to know.

I thought your argument was more that mixing private with public approaches doesn't alter the basic structure of the public model, because I agree that the schools don't become agents of capitalism. But I do think the basic function of the public approach to education changes when the priorities are skewed to favor private contractors. As an example, I would cite the No Child Left Behind program, and the changes it brought to Texas schools because of the focus on testing, and the focus on buying Neil Bush's private company's guide to NCLB testing. That was more than just profiting from government contracts. The public education process changed to make it more profitable for private contractors, not to better educate the population.

It's still capitalistic then, since they still turn a profit on generics. The only thing that's different is they backed out marketing costs, since the generic goes by a different name. IOW, the profit could be just as much or EVEN MORE on generics since you aren't paying to advertise them. I'm not so sure about unionized labor being socialistic. They're really just negotiating collectively for better conditions in a privately owned company. OTOH, I suppose better wages is different than more profit, and that's my best gauge for capitalism, the focus on profit. The unions are trying to push for the company to put their worker's well-being ahead of other concerns, so perhaps you're right, they're bargaining collectively to be considered as important as they can be when compared to turning a profit.

Absolutely not. Can't you see that there are times when turning a profit is a great thing? And can't you also see that there are times when something else may be more important? If we build a public library or a public swimming pool, the wealthy probably won't use them because they have their own private ones, but it would definitely be a socialistic activity. And again, you could argue that the wealthy benefit from these things as well because a citizenry that's happy and well-educated benefits the society from the bottom to the top. We have too many businesses that benefit from public ownership in an unreasonable way. Prisons are something we should take responsibility for as a public, rather than hiring private contractors who profit from putting bodies in cells. Again, the emphasis on profit changed the basic structure of prisons in the US, unless you think we're such a horribly criminal society that we're justified in housing 1 in 4 prisoners on the whole planet.

I think once you rank profit above anything else you're trying to do, you've turned it into capitalism. Maybe not "all capitalism", but I've often used the socialistic mentality Germany uses wrt maintaining its roads to show the difference between what they do and what the US does. Germany uses private contractors, but they MUST abide by the restrictions set for them, and if you repair a stretch of German roadway, you have to fix any potholes that happen in the next 10 years on your own dime. In the US, however, the emphasis on public contracts is on the private contractor. Their profit is more important, so fixing potholes is something they charge us for, along with repaving the roads unnecessarily every other year. I think capitalistic practices DO change the basic structure of our socialistic programs. It changes the emphasis when we cater to private interests, instead of forcing private interests to cater to the structure of socialism. Don't you think we would have approached education differently if not for the heavy influence of the private publishing industry? I think we've held onto textbooks a bit too long, sort of like our love affair with oil & gas. I don't think it HAS to be this way. I think we should be able to lay out the design of classroom furniture with student's comfort in mind, and then ask for bids to make them. I think that's the way we used to do it. From what I hear now, the schools are shopping from private catalogs these days, from manufacturers who design desks to maximize their profit. It may be a subtle difference in some cases, but I still feel the basic structure of what we want changes when it's required to turn a profit above all else.

It's possible to have a system where socialistic endeavors aren't influenced as much by capitalistic requirements. Our schools used to have lunch personnel that were paid to operate the kitchens that were built into the schools. Now they mostly have contracts with private foodservice companies, and savings are being questioned, as well as poor but popular food choices: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2011/12/5/1042460/- I think mixing socialistic programs with capitalistic requirements makes it all capitalism.

Yeah? Tell your creator this is the Politics section, and the atoms in my ass are his only if he wants to kiss them. I'm being as broad as words like Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism allow. You asked us to define the terms, and I gave it a try. Have a nice day.

This is easy to see with education, where it's obvious that more knowledge is always better for a society as a whole, but it's a bit murky with the military. I suppose one could argue that without our defense measures, nobody's private dealings are safe, nothing you own is really yours if we can be invaded. Perhaps your observation shows that the military may be a socialistic operation, but it's benefits have been perverted and the taxpayers aren't getting what they contributed towards. I'm not using it as a definition of socialism so much as a reason why the military is socialistic. We the People pay for it, We can elect representatives who can change it and shape it the way we want it. I can't do that with something owned by another entity. So the military was socialistic when we had the draft? Choice is the difference?!

I think I'm part owner of the US military if my elected representatives can affect the choice of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and thus change the way the military operates using my tax dollars. I don't think ownership is determined by who benefits most from the goods or services.

Capitalistic = privately owned (including publicly-traded corporations). Socialistic = publicly owned (by the citizens of the democracy). Communistic = State owned. I pay for my own vehicle and home, but the sidewalks and roads around my home are paid for with public funds. The Tennessee Valley Authority is a federally-owned and operated utility, a corporation owned by the State (not the state of Tennessee, but the Fed, making this communistic). They provide power at cost, don't spend a dime of taxpayer funds, and most folks in that area LOVE the savings. It took a long time to develop (it's a New Deal era program), it's in a hard-to-manage area that doesn't entice private investors, and it's a great example of a socialistic or communistic choice being the right tool for the right job.

The military operates on a publicly-owned model where profit isn't the focus (or even within their purview), and it's authority is also derived from the public since the POTUS appoints the Chair of the JCS. I really hate referring to examples as -isms though. It seems very fallacious and slippery slopey to assume embracing smart public ownership of a specific program is going to make us treat everything that way. If we want a smart mix of ownership, we have to stop creating false dilemmas with -isms. The military is a great example of a socialistic program, how's that? It was the perfect example when they did their own housekeeping. It's also an example of a socialistic program that's been co-opted and corrupted by capitalistic elements. While they aren't concerned with profit, they can be used as a tool for profit.

I have some ideas about your campaign....

! Moderator Note And you're now free to post elsewhere. We forgive a LOT, but willful ignorance of the rules on civility makes you a hindrance to discussing science. We don't want to keep you from finding your new forum, and wish you the very best of luck in all you do.

! Moderator Note We attack ideas here, not people. You need to stop this now. So far it seems like you're just attacking those who disagree with you. And Dr Swanson works about 10 miles away from USPTO HQ. He knows his patents, and his physics. One more chance to discuss this topic civilly, meaningfully, or else it's closed. Your objections are silly. Why can't you answer questions?

! Moderator Note We don't delete topics. And it's only useless if you continue to ignore the questions that have already been posed based on the link to the book. Why aren't those discussable in a meaningful way? If you're only here to promote the book, then you're not here in good faith, and you're breaking several rules. If you're here to discuss the ideas in the book, then please start with the comments others have already made.

They mention it because "explosion" is an accurate way to describe what was detected. What's NOT accurate is to describe it that way in relation to the BB, because the BB was an expansion from a previously hot, dense state, NOT an explosion. Does that make sense?