Elon is over here dropping science bombs...

"Zerofret" (zerofret)
01/25/2015 at 23:40 • Filed to: None

...and it's making my brain hurt.

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DISCUSSION (11)

Axial > Zerofret
01/26/2015 at 00:02

Fun fact: thrust and weight measure the same type of thing.

And for a space elevator, we'd need something to use as a counterweight...probably an asteroid.

Spoon II > Zerofret
01/26/2015 at 00:08

If you really want to delve into space elevators, check this out! http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/studies/…

Racescort666 > Axial
01/26/2015 at 00:25

Although there are several proposals that use spent rocket parts or just a longer cable than necessary.

Axial > Racescort666
01/26/2015 at 00:32

Yeah, I've seen those. I consider them immensely wasteful, though. I'd rather spend the fuel to get the asteroid into orbit than the materiel to make a ball of space garbage as a counterweight that could instead be used to make more rockets/cars/whatever.

As for how much it costs in dollars, I consider dollars a renewable resource. Something's cost in dollars is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things when its cost in matter is more limiting.

For Sweden > Zerofret
01/26/2015 at 00:44

These are things everyone already knows.

DoYouEvenShift > For Sweden
01/26/2015 at 00:51

You sir have waaay too much faith in humanity.

samssun > Axial
01/26/2015 at 00:56

It doesn't make sense to say that dollars are a "renewable resource" but matter is limiting. Dollars are just a measure of people's productivity (resources, time, labor), and while people are "renewable", that's still limited and you don't own it.

When something is cost-prohibitive, whether it's because it needs a million tons of platinum or a billion man-hours of work, it's not that we just haven't printed out a zillion dollars. It's that you still have to acquire both of those things, presumably using money instead of just confiscating all metal that would've gone in any other product or enslaving a whole country to work on your project.

Axial > samssun
01/26/2015 at 02:20

Do you not own it? If you have a majority share of the money (or, more generically, wealth), and society has obligated people to require that money to survive, guess who calls the shots. And then these wealthy people and organizations start using physical force to back up that authority when the masses start getting fed up of being bullied around, and we call it government.

But you are right, money is a value of productivity. One problem: that's not how it gets used. Instead, it gets stockpiled by certain people and organizations in huge reserves where it tends to sit, requiring more money to be printed to sustain "growth". But more than that, do people even count as a resource? I say no. Why? Because without people, there is nothing to care about the rest of the resources or their value in terms of money. And when people who provide nothing physical (i.e. consulting firms) but drain more money than the guys providing those essential, physical resources, you get a services-driven economy that serves only to skew your measure of productivity to the point of being meaningless. What we get is what we see: constant inflation in a giant farce of a system where the currency becomes less and less valuable. Put another way, it becomes an increasingly less accurate measure of productivity as time goes on until an arbitrary entity decides to move the required minimum wages upward to reset.

It's an unstable system and it cannot continue. With the increasing proliferation of services-based economies, money is used to measure itself moreso than it is used to measure the real value of a physical resource. Money has become a resource unto itself and, in that way, it's worthless long-term.

samssun > Axial
01/26/2015 at 07:11

Spending on consumption doesn't create new wealth. Wealth is created when you delay current consumption in favor of capital to allow more future consumption. Keynesians (the inflationary big-govt crowd) confuse effect with cause and print money to encourage spending. This rewards debtors, punishes savers, and makes it harder and harder to invest sensibly as money's value is trashed via inflation.

Inflation doesn't just happen, and saving money doesn't cause it. Bill Gates stashing cash under a mattress, or burning every dollar, would just make your money go further. Inflation happens when government prints money to try to "stimulate" spending, and is just legalized counterfeiting.

When a massive interstellar project is unaffordable, it's because it requires resources and manpower beyond anything reasonable attainable. So you either make better tech, vastly increase productivity so the same tech is cheaper in terms of inputs, or conscript endless armies of laborers Egyptian-pyramid-style.

Axial > samssun
01/26/2015 at 16:36

You are making my case for me.

I'd like to start by defining wealth. Wealth has nothing to do with money. Wealth, in practice, is the degree to which the basic needs of human life are met. You are considered rich if you exceed the basic needs, and poor if you struggle to meet them. The only relationship wealth has to money is that some authority has ordained that we may use money to measure it.

That inflation happens because the government prints more money is exactly what I was getting at. But why do they print more money? It is, fundamentally, tied to human population growth. Because money is the established measure of wealth and because people need it to survive, everybody is trying to get as much as they can. Businesses (as individuals and as organizations) have one goal: to turn a profit. Their intent is to gather as much money as possible, and keep it with the intent of having enough to exceed basic needs. However, they save at a rate that exceeds spending (definition of profit). This takes money out of public circulation, but it doesn't take it off of the books. Because the number of people who need money is increasing but the pool of money in getting traded is decreasing, the government prints more. Ergo, constant inflation. That constant inflation, over the long run, only serves to increase the rate at which the most monetarily valued parties can increase that value while decreasing the rate at which the least valued parties do the same. It also enables this unstable system to continue.

It's an unstable system that cannot be maintained indefinitely. Eventually, you reach a point where there are too many people and businesses can't make a profit because the currency is worthless. Nature then re-asserts control over humanity, and everything it does goes toward increasing the size of the resource pool because that's where the incentives now lie.

So, when a massive interstellar project is not affordable, it's because it requires resources and manpower that people would rather spend elsewhere. That is another economic truism that I've seen used to frame your last statement. Remember that the elsewhere includes, for example, the production and purchase of: drugs, movies, music, munitions, and even other humans. All of those are, arguably, do nothing to increase the pool of available material resources, but they are still considered productive.

So that's where my "materiel over money" statement comes from. Money is, in the long run, worthless. It means nothing. Only actual raw matter means anything.

samssun > Axial
01/26/2015 at 21:52

The driving force behind inflation (too much money chasing goods) can't be something deflationary (taking money out of circulation, which no business and few people do). That's like saying there's not enough food so people try to make more and end up fat...you don't just jump from one side of the equation to the other without a conscious effort.

Inflation is neither accidental nor necessary, but a choice by those who want increased reliance on government and view an independent middle class as the enemy to some paradise they think they can create. Money doesn't have inherent good or worth, but it isn't inherently bad or worthless either.

Tied to something real and not easily produced (say gold), it's a tool that can dramatically increase productivity vs. barter. Let fraudsters and tyrants back it with debt and arbitrarily manipulate it, and you have problems. Here's an essay that made me rethink money's function:

http://capitalismmagazine.com/2002/08/franci…