Expanisonist, outward-looking societies that dare to dream usually do better than societies that look at their navels. Colonizing the Solar System gives young people a reason to dream and achieve in a way no amount of banking or social working will or can. Children need a future, not just a job. In a very real sense, the real solutions to our drug and education and lack-of-opportunity problems all lie “out there” as much or more than they lie down here. Some Democrats (most notably Lyndon Johnson) once understood that. We need to re-discover it if we are to survive as a political force in the American context.

— Donald

Do keep in mind that, probably unlike most or all of the people on this list, I live in an inner city, albeit a relatively wealthy one. I see around me every day the results of extremely unwise drug use. I also see the results of this stupid “war” waged by wealthy suburbanites who have no understanidng of the problem or of what it is that leads large numbers of decidedly non-wealthy people to get wrapped up in it.

If we want to “solve” the drug problem, we should be spending money on housing, education, and especially providing decent, exciting, future-oriented careers for young people, especially poor young people. Which brings us back to the subject of this list. Which would we rather have: kids dreaming about exploring the Solar System and having a realistic opportunity to make money doing that, or children with a dead-end, no-win choice of starving on the streats or selling drugs (or, if you are very wise and lucky, being a lawyer or a financial analyst or a banker tasked to figure out better ways to fleese the middle class and poor — to my great shame, I was once despirate enough to work for a credit card company and, I kid you not, that was exactly the attitude of senior management). As it is, I really do believe that much of the money spent even on truly dangerous drugs is badly deployed. Give people a better choice they can believe is achievable, and most of them will not choose drugs.

— Donald

You should listen William Berger on this point. You talked about the war on drugs as if the whole thing was jailing pot smokers. In fact, enforcing all of the drug laws is less than half of it, and within that effort, only a small fraction is for marijuana. The big money in the war on drugs goes to cocaine, heroin, and alcohol, and not only for prosecuting drug use, but also for crimes committed while intoxicated.

Personally I agree that they spend too much money on jailing addicts, and not enough on detox. But it is not true that the whole war on drugs is just an invented problem, or that they just prey on the innocent. The war on drugs has its own problems and solutions and has nothing to do with NASA.

Hello, Greg,

Taking that number at your word, it actually strikes me as an astonishing fact. For the amount we waste on this, we are successfully sending clockwork probes throughout the Solar System; successfully maintaining a large base in orbit (whatever you or I may believe about its usefulness or lack thereof); operating a first-generation space plane (dito); operating the first large semi-permanent space observatory; flying tons of science and applications satellites; and beginning a major new project to return people to deep space. I believe my rant was fully justified!

— Donald

This is a typical false analogy, similar to the one used to discuss the “war on poverty” as a waste. The critics commonly claim that _ALL_ of the money spent on the “war on drugs,” or _ALL_ of the money spent on the “war on poverty” has been wasted because, well, the war hasn’t been “won” yet, ignoring the simple fact that nobody ever really claims that these things will be completely eradicated, only reduced. So the issue is what is the best way to reduce them.

Claiming that these programs are completely pointless is a dumb way of looking at it–overly simplistic, incongruous, and block-headed. Flip the issue over on its head–it is hard to argue that if _none_ of that money had been spent that things would be infinitely better. Certainly at least some of the money was spent effectively. Bad guys are in jail, for instance, because of money spent on the “war on drugs.”

Where did you get this silly idea?

Lots of people complain about it all the time, including those who support it whole-heartedly but think that the focus needs to be shifted or priorities changed. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that people who disagree with you are morons _OR_ unthinking automatons.

Mike, I wholly agree. I, too, have never used an illegal drug. (Well, I smoked a cigarette when I was circa twelve, but the best thing my dearly departed Father ever did for me was make me smoke the rest of that cigarette. I’ve never smoked a puff of anything in the intervening three decades, and my current ideas of powerful drugs are tea and red wine.)

We could hardly do more good for our nation than by taking every penny the WoD wastes jailing essentially innocent people who have smoked and traded a drug no more dangerous than entirely legal tobacco and alcohal, package that money, and literally throw it at the moon. At the very least, we’d provide a very big market for the commercial launch induatry.

— Donald

In turn, any mention of tax savings or deficit reduction leads to the “drop in the bucket” argument, that NASA is not much compared to the federal budget or the entire US economy. However, this is also a strained comparison. Since the US is capitalist, the federal government cannot lay claim to the entire economy, only to about 20%. Moreover, most of that 20% is not command spending, but, in effect, negative taxation. Certainly that is what Social Security and Medicare are. Negative and positive taxation together make income redistribution, and that is also controversial, but it is not the same thing as NASA. When the government redistributes income, it changes which private citizens spend money, but it does not much change what they spend money on. By contrast NASA spends money on things that would not exist otherwise, like the space station and the Hubble telescope.

Only about a quarter or a third of the federal budget is command spending. Much of it — for example counterterrorism — is considered necessary for the country, even if the private sector would not replace it. NASA could be as much as 5% of truly optional command spending by the federal government, depending on what you consider optional and what you consider command spending. It is not the lion’s share of anything, but it is not a drop in the bucket of that sector of the US economy by any means.