How exactly could we have space exploration/moon landings without government?

All laws, even the Constitution, were based on assumptions. The Bill of Rights was based on the assumption the Federal Government would be like every other central government in history. Counterfeit laws were passed based on the assumption counterfeiters would exist. Murder laws exist on the assumption murders would occur. What the fuck are you talking about?

Counterfeit laws are not based on assumptions. They punish when (not before!) the law is broken. "Apples and oranges" anyways on "removal of rights" laws vs. tax mandates.

With state-sanctioned science under the guise of NASA or military necessity, it is based on assumptions because it assumes that the program will provide innovation useful to taxpayers. This is one of my biggest gripes with coercive taxation. You pay in to NASA, Social Security, and Medicare, but that doesn't mean you will receive the assumed benefits. Thus, I believe that it should be done through charity, if at all. Because there aren't necessarily benefits, there is no justification to steal the money of others. (This is where it becomes very difficult for me to argue myself out of anarchism/voluntaryism, BTW.)

To take the argument in an admittedly arbitrary direction, the fifth amendment of the Constitution asserts that " ... private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation". When benefits are assumed but taxes are taken absolutely, there is not always "just compensation". Thus, having the government pay to possibly discover technology beneficial to taxpayers is inherently unconstitutional because just compensation isn't necessarily there. Even if there IS a scientific breakthrough, it doesn't necessarily help people. Hell -- it's probably a new form of weapon to kill us (if inclined) so long as the military's doing the research.


IMO, the most "ethical" evil the government could do in terms of "Federal Science" is to have people pay directly to a department which has scientists working to discover technologies beneficial to all taxpayers (or as many as possible).
 
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Nope, do I need to dumb it down for you?

Here, let me make it quite simple for YOU. Please feel free to fund the next moon mission if you feel it is worth it. Please feel free to donate to any other government programs you find worthwhile.

Please do not threaten to put me in a cage or get your stooges to commit violence on me if I choose not to give my money towards these projects.

Also please do not fool yourself into thinking that because you have government men commit this violence for you, you are not morally responsible for the violence and theft they commit, that you support.

You do not need to sit here and convince me that these projects are worthwhile while your men are taking my money by force. You need to stop your stooges from stealing my money, then we'll talk. Perhaps then I will support your programs voluntarily, perhaps not. But when I am being mugged, I am not convinced if the mugger tells me I should be quite happy with the arrangement, because my money will be used well.
 
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All those gunpoint donations were worth it, I have benefited from space exploration.


--BTW, does anyone know if the Large Hadron Collider is privately funded or not?
 
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Here, let me make it quite simple for YOU. Please feel free to fund the next moon mission if you feel it is worth it. Please feel free to donate to any other government programs you find worthwhile.

Please do not threaten to put me in a cage or get your stooges to commit violence on me if I choose not to give my money towards these projects.

Also please do not fool yourself into thinking that because you have government men commit this violence for you, you are not morally responsible for the violence and theft they commit, that you support.

You do not need to sit here and convince me that these projects are worthwhile while your men are taking my money by force. You need to stop your stooges from stealing my money, then we'll talk. Perhaps then I will support your programs voluntarily, perhaps not. But when I am being mugged, I am not convinced if the mugger tells me I should be quite happy with the arrangement, because my money will be used well.

The thing is, I can't donate money to the government because it's taking enough from me already. I think you're all assuming I'm a statist and I support extravagant military budgets---ironic since you're the ones saying we cannot assume anything. Remember I'm a member of Ron Paul Forums and am not trolling, so I'd hope that at least would speak for something. I am for limited government, and was only curious as to how the private industry would or even could perform such things as space travel without precedent technology provided by the government. I think if we didn't have space travel via government, the private sector would never have developed similar means to do a very limited exploration today. In fact, I would doubt any of us in our lifetime would see privatized space travel--which is the distant future (you think humans will be landlocked on this planet forever?) --if we had no government mandating NASA.

I would gladly donate money if we didn't have an income tax for space travel. The problem is now the level of space travel seems negligible so I probably wouldn't pour my money into the project unless we were going to Mars or doing something more productive than casual explorations of space. Can I expect you to fund the project? No I cannot, so go ahead and move to Liechtenstein where you'll have a utopian tax haven.

I have no problem with taxation as neither did the Founders. Sorry, but I'll support Jeffersonian policies before I'll adhere to Rothbardian theories of anarchism. No Founders that I knew of supported anarchy. Wasn't it Thomas Paine, perhaps one of the more radical of the revolutionaries, who said Government was a "necessary evil"?? So I guess if you believe Rothbard is brighter than Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, and Thomas Paine, then I'm sorry I wasted my time replying. It's because we live in a world where government must exist (Move to Somalia if anarchism is the way--last week over 1,000 people watched a 13 year old teenager get stoned to death because she was raped and that was considered adultery--there's your utopia of anarchism) that we must pay taxes.

If government is not to exist, as I mentioned earlier, then fly to Somalia--oh wait you can't because the warlords there, which are nothing more than private individuals existing in an anarchy state, have threatened to shoot down any and all aircraft flying into the airports of Somalia. So you go find a way to get there, live there for a day if you could even avoid being shot at, and tell me how your opinion of Government changes.

If government is to exist, then it is the fate of us all that we pay some sort of taxes to fund it even if we disagree with a certain policy that others advocate. That is why you elect representatives that believe in your beliefs. Even Ron Paul mentioned this point when debating Huckabee.

I think many of you are lost. This is Ron Paul Forums. Perhaps you didn't take notice that he was running to re-instate the Constitution as being a document to be respected and followed. Many of you are advocating no taxation as it would support policies you don't. How is government to exist on a national level to provide for the provisions of the Constitution if we cannot tax?? Must you agree with everything for it to be a valid tax?? Funny and ironic...this is called "Groupthink" if I remember correctly. We only have policies everyone agrees with--good luck finding a country or government where that could happen. So you're advocating anarchy, which is just as retarded as advocating universal health care.

Again, move away from the theoretical models of Rothbard and Rockwell, and move to Somalia for a day. Tell me the fruits of anarchy. Tell me the evils of Government.
 
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I think many of you are lost.

Thinking for ourselves instead of believing in something merely because someone we like does as well and then hiding behind the intellectual weight of that person is not being lost, it is being conscious.
 
I have no problem with taxation as neither did the Founders. Sorry, but I'll support Jeffersonian policies before I'll adhere to Rothbardian theories of anarchism. No Founders that I knew of supported anarchy. Wasn't it Thomas Paine, perhaps one of the more radical of the revolutionaries, who said Government was a "necessary evil"?? So I guess if you believe Rothbard is brighter than Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, and Thomas Paine, then I'm sorry I wasted my time replying.

lol I'm just going to selectively reply to this appeal to authority.

Yeah, I personally don't think its that far out at all to say Rothbard and Rockwell are more intelligent than most of the founding fathers you listed. Granted the more intelligent man does not necessarily have to be the most correct man... And the two do have far more lessons in history to learn from available to them than the founding fathers did.

I think many of you are lost. This is Ron Paul Forums. Perhaps you didn't take notice that he was running to re-instate the Constitution as being a document to be respected and followed.

We're united behind Ron Paul's message in that we all agree that government should be radically reduced in size and scope...
 
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It's cool that we can discuss this here. I've gone through many of my core principals and reevaluated them while reading this thread. It would be nice if we could return politics to a forum where open discussion and evaluating basic principles happened.
 
Airplanes were not created by the federal government. They were created by individuals. Cars were not created by the federal government either.

If space travel were necessary or helpful in anyway, individuals would work on it. Remember, NASA is a group of scientists not a group of government hailing morons. If putting a man on the moon could possibly have benefits, then investors would pour money into it. That's the way the free market works.

As for Somalia, you are an idiot. Somalia is an Islamic theocracy run by idiots for idiots. Our founders weren't retards who thought blowing themselves up would result in 79 virgins. Somalia is a shithole because of its pathetic people.

The Soviet Union had a great space program. It some ways it was much better than the US's space program! Go to Russia and try to start up the Soviet Union again if you want an awesome space program!
 
And even if it didn't happen, thats no reason to force people at gunpoint to fund space exploration. How fucked up is that?
 
It will happen when it needs to happen. Period.

Well, unless government gets involved.

But what if the sun goes out and people didn't think it was important enough to fund space exploration?!

See, our enlightened representatives are far-sighted enough to prepare for this! People - ... well, people are stupid. Just look at November 4th.

I can only hope we elect Reptilians in 2010.
 
lol I'm just going to selectively reply to this appeal to authority.

Yeah, I personally don't think its that far out at all to say Rothbard and Rockwell are more intelligent than most of the founding fathers you listed. Granted the more intelligent man does not necessarily have to be the most correct man... And the two do have far more lessons in history to learn from available to them than the founding fathers did.



We're united behind Ron Paul's message in that we all agree that government should be radically reduced in size and scope...

Nahh...are you kidding me?? Rockwell and Rothbard were and are economists with some philosophy. The Founders?? Look at what most of their abilities were--they were Renaissance men with expertise in many fields, and most of them were all individually like that. Many were fluent in multiple languages as well, not that being unilingual is a bad thing.

Rockwell and Rothbard are/were pretty well informed on economic and monetary history. The Founders? Well, to give an example, James Madison locked himself for weeks in his house prior to the Constitutional Convention to study Roman and Greek Law. Most of the Founders, at least the well known ones that I have referred to, knew more about history and law than anyone today. It's quite astonishing how people like Adams, Jefferson, and Madison were all educated on economic understanding with very little to go off of considering the first book on economics was written in 1776 by Adam Smith, they all knew law just as good as, perhaps even better, than our Supreme Court justices, and their understanding of history was better than anything I've read by Rockwell or Rothbard. In fact after reading Rothbard's criticism of the K-wave supercycle theory, I question exactly his historical reasoning.

To compare Rockwell or Rothbard with Jefferson or Adams, or to even suggest they're more intelligent, is pretty radical and offensive--not to mention very mind boggling. It's clear you've read very little of Adams and Jefferson, but a lot of Rockwell and Rothbard. Considering Jefferson was a botanist, philosopher, historian, architect, statesman, archaeologist, paleontologist, author, and inventor, and that Adams was many of those in addition to being a lawyer, I really question YOUR reasoning as to say Rothbard and Rockwell are brighter men than Jefferson and Adams were. Unbelievable! Can you name the professions of Rothbard and Rockwell? Historians, philosophers, and economists...hardly anything comparable to the Founders. But of course, you read very little into them and more into the dogmatic views of the anarchists. Move to Somalia and test their theories out if they're so bright. Then again, anarchists never cease to amaze me how they make up more and more excuses than anything. I suppose Somalia would be excused as a bad model by Rothbard and Rockwell...just as frustrating debating folks like you as it is debating Communists saying communism has never been tried because it actually failed several times historically.

Just excuse piled on top of excuse. I look at the real world, not theory, and I find the theorists do nothing less than make excuses to keep their utopian vision preserved. The Founders looked at history and modeled America after many examples of it. Rothbard and Rockwell, when they deviate from their historical references and advocate universal voluntarism and no government, are suggesting mere theory. If you want your life to be an experiment testing out anarchy, then it will be a very short and miserable one.
 
Imagine how much further we could have been in the exploration of space and technology if NASA never existed?

There is an argument that could be made that innovation would have been further along had all space exploration been left to the unregulated desires of dreamers with money and purpose.

I'm not sure what could have been. Not sure if it would have been better or worse, but the minute that NASA was created it completely changed the playing field for private space exploration and invention.


Enjoy.
 
Which enumerated power in the Constitution gives the federal government the right to steal my money and use it to play in outer space?
 
Which enumerated power in the Constitution gives the federal government the right to steal my money and use it to play in outer space?

The only possible loophole that I can imagine would be the national defense aspect.
 
I'm anxious in being enlightened for this topic. I understand some quasi-space travel is going on privately, costing millions for individuals to take part in it, but how exactly would space travel work under privatization?? I mean, it's been almost 40 years since the government subsidized human landing on the moon...it's 2008 and we're just starting to get billionaires to fly a couple miles outside of our atmosphere. Who knows how long it will take for the private sector to adopt space travel to be as popular as going to Europe or Australia for vacation, but it seems as if it's very, very far off. Wasn't NASA a good thing??

Well, satellites are necessary for modern technical needs. These companies would get off their butt and innovate space once it was profitable to do so. If the people want space travel, let them amend the constitution.
 
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