Aucbvax.5985 fa.space utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!space Fri Jan 29 03:26:32 1982 SPACE Digest V2 #91 >From OTA@S1-A Fri Jan 29 03:13:45 1982 SPACE Digest Volume 2 : Issue 91 Today's Topics: Subscription Cancelling Indictments Handed Down Humanists and Technologists ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 28 January 1982 05:21-EST From: Jerry E. Pournelle Subject: Subscription Cancelling To: DIETZ at USC-ECL cc: SPACE at MIT-MC It must be extremely nice to be so very sure of being correct about so very many subjects. I wish I were. ------------------------------ Date: Thu Jan 28 18:07:36 1982 To: Space@MIT-MC From: ucbvax!mhtsa!alice!sjb@Berkeley Subject: Indictments Handed Down Source-Info: From (or Sender) name not authenticated. handed down by Grand Juries charging that they conspired to defraud the government on construction costs for the space shuttle. One company, Mayfair Construction Co., has already pleaded guilty, faces a $10,000 fine for its actions, but has reached an agreement with the Justice Department under which it won't be charged with any criminal dealings with the other two companies, Capital Communication Corp. and New World Construction Co., or with the three executives, Phillip W. Akwa, Arthur L. Boschen, and James T. White, Jr., in return for its guilty plea. Mayfair had been given four contracts totaling $13 million to build ground support for the STS program. Capital worked jointly with Mayfair, while Mayfair subcontracted New World. The defendants ``hid their profit-sharing arrangements from NASA'' and planned to inflate costs, hours, and labor to NASA. ------------------------------ Date: Mon Jan 25 23:01:28 1982 To: Space@MIT-MC From: ucbvax!decvax!watmath!pcmcgeer@Berkeley Subject: Humanists and Technologists Source-Info: From (or Sender) name not authenticated. any major social problem has ever been solved by a `humanist' or other form of social theorist. Typically, it has been engineers and hard scientists (those materialistic, crass, and soulless men) that have provided the solutions to the major social and political problems of their day. Slavery and hard, grinding, muscle labor at poverty pay, to take two classic examples from the 19th century, weren't eliminated by the wailing of philosophers but by the designs of engineers, and by the money of financiers. Admittedly, this is largely counter-intuitive. It seems unreasonable that social and political problems can magically be solved by throwing devices at them. I suspect the reason that this apparent paradox holds is that people will generally optimize their own condition subject to constraints, and the constraints are always a lack in some way or other of resources. Technology tends to free resources, thus loosening the constraints and providing a higher level of `potential' for most individuals, which they will happily take. The previous paragraph wasn't all that good an explanation of the phenomenon. The interested reader is referred to Smith[1776], Friedman[1957] `Capitalism and Freedom', or Friedman and Friedman `Free to Choose' [1979]. These references won't tell you a great deal about technology, but emphasize the failure of `humanists' or `social engineers' to do anything very productive in terms of ameliorating the human condition. One wishes that Prime Minister Trudeau could read... ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest ******************* ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.