Kicking the Dead End Kids Out of the Cradle
Unemployment for young Americans is now over 52%! Bad government policies such as minimum wage and "living wage" are inflating an already bad employment problem.
What will you do with all the unemployed young people who should be learning good work practices, and building a nest egg for their future lives? How many will turn to gangs, drugs, crime, welfare, and other wastes of youthful potential?
The answer is to kick the dead end kids out of the cradle. Give them a challenge that provides a chance for a real payday at the end. Stop pampering and sheltering the young ones to death, and teach them the meaning of challenge and risk / benefit.
Western culture has drifted into a socialist quagmire of central planning and top-down regulation. Maximise security, minimise risk and individual initiative. In the end, you have a stagnant cesspool of wasted life potential. There is no future under the stifling universal controls of ubiquitous government. There is only the strangulation of hope and dreams.
Everyone needs to hold the image of a vibrant future in their minds -- but the young are in particular need of an expansive and exciting future. Government controls, restrictions, regulations, taxes, mandates, and creeping bureaucracy are drowning the hope for that exciting future under an ocean of debt, red tape, and prohibition.
Perhaps the singularity will save us? The Singularity Summit is being held in NYC on October 3,4, 2009. Or perhaps those who want to be free can join seasteads, and sail away into freedom on the open sea? The Seasteading Institute is holding their annual conference in San Francisco today, tomorrow, and Wednesday.
But to cure the modern malaise of the west, possibilities that are truly exciting and boundless are called for. Nothing is quite as boundless as the universe. That is the proper goal of anyone who wants a free future. For the masses of unemployed youth, consider space enterprise as a form of Outward Bound on steroids, where the participants could easily end up as millionaires or better at a very early age.
Space is risky, so some will die. But then they are already dying of gang violence, drunk driving, drug overdoses, and other forms of pointless risk taking, where the rewards are non-existent. Humans -- particularly young humans -- need some risk. But the risk needs to be accompanied by significant potential benefit.
Even before the current economic depression, we were raising crops of dead-end kids. We just didn't know it. Dead end education, child-raising, popular culture, all have led to dead end kids. Now that unemployment has mushroomed to historic proportions, we are starting to see what we have done. But those on top -- government officials and functionaries most responsible for the decay and rot -- they are not admitting a thing. They are too tied into corrupt lobbies that are getting wealthy from the murder of our children's futures.
We need to bypass these corrupt obstructionists, but it will not be easy. It is time for some creative ideas. But in order to think creatively to solve problems, it helps to understand the ultimate goal. Arriving at that understanding may take some time. Fortunately, new media has arrived to allow a bypass of mainstream (skank) media. Stay tuned.
...millions of Americans are staring at the likelihood that their lifetime earning potential will be diminished and, combined with the predicted slow economic recovery, their transition into productive members of society could be put on hold for an extended period of time.Since Social Security relies upon a steady supply of FICA tax payments from young workers to keep the sinking old age pension afloat, it is not just the young unemployed who will be punished by foolish and corrupt government leaders.
And worse, without a clear economic recovery plan aimed at creating entry-level jobs, the odds of many of these young adults -- aged 16 to 24, excluding students -- getting a job and moving out of their parents' houses are long. Young workers have been among the hardest hit during the current recession -- in which a total of 9.5 million jobs have been lost. _Post
What will you do with all the unemployed young people who should be learning good work practices, and building a nest egg for their future lives? How many will turn to gangs, drugs, crime, welfare, and other wastes of youthful potential?
The answer is to kick the dead end kids out of the cradle. Give them a challenge that provides a chance for a real payday at the end. Stop pampering and sheltering the young ones to death, and teach them the meaning of challenge and risk / benefit.
Western culture has drifted into a socialist quagmire of central planning and top-down regulation. Maximise security, minimise risk and individual initiative. In the end, you have a stagnant cesspool of wasted life potential. There is no future under the stifling universal controls of ubiquitous government. There is only the strangulation of hope and dreams.
Everyone needs to hold the image of a vibrant future in their minds -- but the young are in particular need of an expansive and exciting future. Government controls, restrictions, regulations, taxes, mandates, and creeping bureaucracy are drowning the hope for that exciting future under an ocean of debt, red tape, and prohibition.
Perhaps the singularity will save us? The Singularity Summit is being held in NYC on October 3,4, 2009. Or perhaps those who want to be free can join seasteads, and sail away into freedom on the open sea? The Seasteading Institute is holding their annual conference in San Francisco today, tomorrow, and Wednesday.
But to cure the modern malaise of the west, possibilities that are truly exciting and boundless are called for. Nothing is quite as boundless as the universe. That is the proper goal of anyone who wants a free future. For the masses of unemployed youth, consider space enterprise as a form of Outward Bound on steroids, where the participants could easily end up as millionaires or better at a very early age.
Space is risky, so some will die. But then they are already dying of gang violence, drunk driving, drug overdoses, and other forms of pointless risk taking, where the rewards are non-existent. Humans -- particularly young humans -- need some risk. But the risk needs to be accompanied by significant potential benefit.
Even before the current economic depression, we were raising crops of dead-end kids. We just didn't know it. Dead end education, child-raising, popular culture, all have led to dead end kids. Now that unemployment has mushroomed to historic proportions, we are starting to see what we have done. But those on top -- government officials and functionaries most responsible for the decay and rot -- they are not admitting a thing. They are too tied into corrupt lobbies that are getting wealthy from the murder of our children's futures.
We need to bypass these corrupt obstructionists, but it will not be easy. It is time for some creative ideas. But in order to think creatively to solve problems, it helps to understand the ultimate goal. Arriving at that understanding may take some time. Fortunately, new media has arrived to allow a bypass of mainstream (skank) media. Stay tuned.
Labels: Psychological neoteny, space travel
posted by al fin at 9:00 am
6 Comments:
Space is going to take some time in coming, due to the high cost of space launch. The recent wave of start-ups (like Space-X) are encouraging. However, it will take 2 decades or more for space launch to become cheap enough to allow for meaningful space industry to emerge.
However, there is a wild card that could change this dramatically for the better. That is the work of Woodward and March in the development of what they are calling Mach Lorentz Thrusters. I'm sure you've read the hubub on NextBigFuture and the Polywell talk site.
Right. Mach reactionless drive. It will be great for long distance space travel if it works. It remains unproven.
Electromagnetic space launch for non-living cargo will make a huge difference -- just using off the shelf components. It's an engineering challenge, the science is proven.
Just having a way to put a lot of useful mass into orbit cheaply will change the equation in important ways.
Old ideas such as solar sails remain to be tested and perfected. Laser launch should also become practical once in space, for many purposes.
If we are reasonable about the thing then of course we will wait another 20 years or 50 years or 200 years until all the ducks are in a row.
Perhaps it is time to get a bit unreasonable.
That's my point. Space transportation can be considered using the growth of air transport as a model. Development of improved capabilities and reduced costs tend to occur incrementally as markets develop. It took 50 years to go from bi-planes to the 707. I see space technology following a similar development path.
We're about at that 50 year mark though, Kurt. Unless you think it'll follow a different curve.
You also didn't have governments establishing a monopoly on developing airplanes and related infrastructure. Correct me if I'm wrong, but a sarcastic 99% of space work is being done by governments, and regulations inhibit private development. This will be a much harder environment to achieve the same curve.
Ironically, this might be one place educational dinosaurs can help. Every state has a sizeable university, some more than one. A few letters/phone calls from eager students and professors could lead to a bipartisan bill freeing up private industry's(and the university programs') ability to work in the field.
When the government's perverse incentives make it riskier to do something than to do nothing, most respond by doing nothing. I think there is some of that going on now. Business is afraid to do anything because government is so capricious that if you aren't one of the favored few, then you can expect punitive taxes. Even if the taxes aren't in place at first, the gov't blood hounds stand at the ready to sniff out productivity institute new ones to ensure those who contributed nothing to producing it get their "fair share". It is the reverse of "The Little Red Hen" story in which those who didn't help, didn't eat.
Loren, we're not even close to that 50 year mark. We're not even at the equivalent level of the Ford Tri-motor. We're still in the bi-plane age because practical commercial launch systems (at least for people) have never been developed. In one sense, we're not even at the level of the bi-plane because at least they did not throw the plane away after each flight.
I am really down on the space industry. Not because I don't think its possible, but because its all been dominated by government agencies such as NASA and their contractors. I used to be in L-5 Society. Even in the 80's we saw NASA as the problem. We got the launch service purchase act through in 1990 (despite opposition from assholes like Gore). We wanted to get another bill through that would have effectively dismantled NASA, but no congressman would consider it.
If Ed Musk's company is successful (and I think it will be), we will be at the stage that the airline industry was in the late 10's or early 20's. His success will encourage others to enter the market and the resulting competition and market growth will push the development of better launch systems and drive down prices. Since this occurs in lockstep, this will occur over a period of several decades such that we will get the 707 of space around 2040 or so.
At least this is how I see it developing using other industries as a model.
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