Havoc, for all I understand your post and what you’re getting at I’d like to point out something that is an increasingly painful thing to see coming from the US.
Socialism isn’t necessarily a bad thing; capitalism doesn’t work as it just lets the rich get richer and the poor get the picture. It’s time to wise up to REAL WORLD politics rather than still continuing this hatred for socialism and communism caused by MCcArthyist witch hunts and the fear and panic of an empire big enough to slaughter the US.
(and yes, the former Soviet Union could totally have destroyed the US, just take a look at Tsar Bomba if you don’t believe me, the US had nothing close to this weapon that knocked Stalin off his chair from 110km away, a couple of these things would have annihilated the US power within only a few minutes).
Increasingly in the UK we’re seeing complete morons in the US screaming about how free health care is communist and communism is bad. Wise up for crying out loud! Just because these people are afraid of something they don’t understand doesn’t mean anyone should continue feeding this fear. Socialist objectives are very egalitarian, favouring economic equality where the top 1% don’t own 90% of the wealth. From the wikipedia page verbatim;
Socialism refers to various theories of economic organization advocating public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with an egalitarian method of compensation. Contrary to popular belief, socialism is not a political system; it is an economic system distinct from capitalism.
Socialists mainly share the belief that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital and derives its wealth through exploitation, creates an unequal society, does not provide equal opportunities for everyone to maximize their potentialities and does not utilize technology and resources to their maximum potential nor in the interests of the public.
Is that such a bad thing? Seriously, start thinking about other people, and not the size of your bank balance.
P.S. This isn’t directed at your political views Havoc, as I don’t know what your stance on socialism is. Personally I’d prefer a socialist society to a capitalist one any day, especially as I come from a working class background in a country that has over my life become increasingly capitalist.
Update: I forgot to mention something that’s quite important to understanding how implementation of socialism works; the extra money required to run a socialist society does not come out of YOUR pocket. The money comes from increases in capital gains taxes, corporation taxes etc… The whole point of socialism is distribution of wealth, not making individuals poorer by increasing income tax.
Update: Moron, a definition: “Idiot, someone of sub normal intelligence”, I think this adequately describes the people I’m talking about, uneducated people publicised on the BBC News who see communism as evil without even knowing the difference between communism and totalitarianism… Not that the US isn’t _TOTALLY_ under the control of corporations, I mean that seems to me to be totalitarianism of a different form… Hopefully Obama will change that, as it seems he is willing to take the risk of assassination (by corporations who do not like his new ideas) over protecting the freedom and liberty of the US population.
The richest country in the world is Norway. That’s because Norway has the world’s highest standard of living (and also the highest average IQ). Norway has no national debt. Norway saves money for future generations. THAT is the living proof that the U.S. and it’s liberalism is full of shit. In fact the U.S. is a “third world uncivilized” country compared to Europe because there are so many poor and uneducated people there.
@Joe: LOL, really good points dude. The US treasury is in debt up to it’s eyeballs to a private bank.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UASS1qFAIQ8
^^ Morons *shakes head*
Tsar Bomba is a very dubious example of Soviet military power, particularly if you’re arguing that it demonstrates military superiority over the United States. While it is true that it was very powerful, it it also true that the Soviets lacked the ability to deliver it to overseas targets (like the United States). Tsar Bomba was created entirely for the purpose of propaganda, a purpose for which it is apparently still being used.
There’s one other comment that needs to be made regarding additional government funded health care (or anything else): nice or not, the US government does not have the money to do this. The annual deficit is $2T, the debt is over $11T, and there are at least $30-40T in additional unfunded entitlement obligations on the way. Adding additional government spending will not fix this, it will make it worse.
@mschaef: The Russians put a man in space before the US, I think they could send a missile 4-5 thousand miles quite easily.
It’s a massive misconception to say that this thing was an undeliverable weapon, one which has been brought up before with me.
Remember the Russians have soyuz rockets which have an enormous in atmosphere range. The maiden flight of which was 5 years after this bomb was built.
I think because they didn’t have a viable delivery system for the bomb when they tested it doesn’t mean they didn’t develop one, in fact the purpose of both tsar bomba and the soyuz were striking fear into the US but not just as a propaganda weapon, but as the biggest threat to the US.
The US’s largest H.Bomb was Ivy Mike, 22 Mega-tonnes and the US nuclear research groups couldn’t figure out how to make it bigger. Technologically speaking the only thing the US had over the Russians was semiconductors. Which admittedly were crucial to reliable mass produced gyro’s for missiles.
Also you’ve got to remember that there’s a great number of warheads on the tsunami class subs – the biggest submarines ever built. As the Russians were put under so much pressure to best the US in weapons tech, they did it as a means of survival, and by any means necessary. Essentially the US bullied Russia into beating them, and proceeded to economically destroy Russia by creating the iron curtain and isolating them.
@mschaef, your finances are a fallacy too, you just assume the economics of the current situation won’t change, but it most certainly will.
@Karl Lattimer: There’s a pretty big weight difference between Soyuz and Tsar Bomba. Soyuz weighed around 5,800 Kg, while the weapon weighed around 20,000Kg. The capacity of the Soyuz rocket was only 6,450Kg, so I don’t think it would scale up to 20,000Kg. There are rockets that would do it (Energia and Saturn V come to mind), but they either came much later or were not Russian. (If I’m missing a Tsar Bomba era Russian rocket with a ~20,000KG capacity, please let me know what it is, I’d be interested to hear more. All of my numbers came off of Wikipedia.)
Regarding the sophistication of the Tsar Bomba development program, it was a 4 month long rush job to detonate a large bomb for show during a communist party meeting. US weapons development tended to be more conservative with timelines, the US had scaled up to 22MT, and given that the switch was already under way to missle-based weapons, it’s unclear whether or not the US lack of a 50/100MT weapon is due to the inability to create such a device or the decision not to. I don’t have a cite that explicitly supports my point of view, so unless you have one, this is just assumption vs. assumption. Again, I’d be interested to hear more.
@Karl: I don’t doubt that the economics will change, I primarily question the form that change will take.
The first order effect of universal health care is inarguably positive: a healther and hopefully more productive population. However, the switch to more centrally planned allocation of resources is not without risks. If the central planning could be done with fairness, wisdom, and foresight, it might work, but human nature just isn’t that good. If we’re worried about the impact of lobbyists on congress, the impact of lobbyists on a planning committee is scary to contemplate. Combine that with the fact that it’s much easier for the government to decide to spend more than less, and there are huge opportunities for downside. The debts I list above are an example of what our existing entitlement programs have already done, and I fail to see how this one will be different.
@Karl: “Essentially the US bullied Russia into beating them,”
If the US was able to bully its way into a victory over Russia, this seems to argue against your point of view that Russia was capable of destroying the US. Were that true, one would think Russia would have avoided defeat. I’m not sure I follow your reasoning here.
@mschaef: You’re quoting the maximum weight in order to put a soyuz spacecraft in orbit, not the maximum weight the missile itself can carry.
Putting an object in orbit is very different to sending an in atmosphere missile, to put something in orbit reaching escape velocity is required, but as escape velocity isn’t necessary for an in atmosphere launch and attack scenario your numbers are essentially built on your misunderstanding of rocket physics. The largest expenditure of fuel in a space rocket is getting to and sustaining escape velocity, that is breaking free of earths gravity. 11km/s is around the figure for earth, most warheads are fit for transportation at approximately 4,000mph THAT’s a BIG difference, 4,000mph is a benchmark based on the fastest possible jet aircraft being roughly half it’s speed (or at least during the cold war) that makes the missile impossible to intercept, which is all you really care about from a sender’s point of view.
Wikipedia doesn’t have any information regarding soyuz put to the use of sending a missile in atmosphere, chances are russia hasn’t released those specs. You go hunt them down though if you don’t believe me…
So if the soyuz can put a 6,500kg object in orbit, it can sure as hell send something bigger in the atmosphere, and within earths gravity. Why do you think a plane could carry the damn thing?
this book might help you understand what I’m getting at;
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Physics-Dummies-Steve-Holzner-Ph-D/dp/0764554336/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253122357&sr=8-8
before you quote wikipedia make sure you actually understand the context in which the specs are written.
wrt the lack of a US bomb comparable to tsar bomba, the problem with the US design of tapered cylinders of lithium-6 deuteride proved a hard limit for the size of their weapons. Russia used a different design with a theoretical maximum of 165MT.
It may have been a rush job, but that’s because the USSR wanted to terrify the US as quickly as possible, and of course russian nuclear physicists were far more talented than the *cough* GERMAN ones the US had employed.
comment #9 the debt’s you’ve listed are because your country spent so much on a war with iraq and afghanistan not because of your poor existing medicare system. You can hardly blame the US national debt on a piss poor healthcare system when you look at the last 60years of continuous conflict.
in reply to comment #10, you’ve obviously misread. The US used economic bullying techniques, and trade embargos to bully russia, russia retaliated with a far more powerful and terrifying weapons program.
Quoting out of context doesn’t help you get your point across.
Fyi, speed comparisons brought into the same units;
11 (kilometres / second) = 24 606.2992 mph
That’s pretty fast… No wonder it’ll only get 6,500kg into orbit.
@Karl: “the debt’s you’ve listed are because your country spent so much on a war with iraq and afghanistan”
The national debt was $4-5T before the most recent invasions of Iraq and Afghanastan. Most of the current $2T of annual deficit is related to economic stimulus programs established in the last year. This is evident from the fact that the deficit was ~$0.5T in FY2008 and ~$2.0T in FY2009. Note that the wars were being prosecuted in both years, so assigning the entire deficit of both years to the war effort seems ill-founded to me.
Similarly, the $30T (I’ve seen as high as $60-70T) of underfunded Medicare and Social Security obligations similarly have no relationship to any of our military conflicts. What this number does have bearing on is the potential cost of government run social programs, and our apparant inability to constrain them.
@Karl: “Wikipedia doesn’t have any information regarding soyuz put to the use of sending a missile in atmosphere, chances are russia hasn’t released those specs. You go hunt them down though if you don’t believe me…”
I did try to do this before my initial post, and couldn’t find anything. The closest I’ve been able to find since then is this discussion of the Titan-II missle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-25C_Titan_II
This puts payload to Low Earth Orbit at 3,600Kg, and payload to a suborbital 10,000Kg trajectory at 3,700Kg. Assuming Soyuz scales similarly, that gives a missile payload of 6,630Kg, which is still well short of the 20,000Kg required to launch Tsar Bomba. Between the size of the margin of error and the fact that physical law should be roughly the same for Titan II and Soyuz, it seems reasonable to believe that there was no missle capabiilty for delivering Tsar Bomba.
@Karl: “The US used economic bullying techniques, and trade embargos to bully russia,…”
How was the US able to do this if Russia was capable of defending itself against such threats?
@Karl: “russian nuclear physicists were far more talented than the *cough* GERMAN ones the US had employed.”
The people that are willing to work with a country or person say a lot about the nature of that country or person. Quoting Sakharov, the leader of the Tsar Bomba effort: “If we don’t make this thing, we’ll be sent to railroad construction.”, I can see why German physicists would be less willing to work under those kind of conditions.
@mschaef: I believe that the wikipedia specs are not accurate in this regard and cannot be used to support your arguments. When you compare the size and fuel volume of a titan 2 with a soyuz (roughly twice the fuel capcacity of titan 2) it seems improbable that they can be close to correct. This is hardly surprising for something built by wikifiddlers, so I’m no longer going to entertain that side of the debate. There’s definitely something wrong here, so I’m not going to keep arguing… That and you’re boring the shit out of me.
Also, you should realise that the germans involved in the US space program were essentially political prisoners, they were given immunity from prosecution in Nuremberg in return for contributing to the US space and weapons program. If these guys had refused to work, they’d have ended up in jail or worse (they were after all mass murderers). Don’t start thinking your government is a white hatted cowboy vs. a black hatted evil russia. It wasn’t like that at all, both sides were just as bad as each other in this regard.
Now please stfu. I’m tired and I’m busy.
@Karl: Here’s the information on the R-7 Missile (the ICBM counterpart to the Soyuz launch vehicle):
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/r7.html
~5,500Kg payload
@Karl: “Now please stfu.”
Fair enough. I’m not sure where this conversation can go if you keep discounting the references I present, without presenting anything similar that backs up your own point of view. I’d love to see some, because I might learn a lot (as would others, I’m sure).
Dude, you’re starting to feel like a cockroach in my brain.
So if you want to know how to shift 20,000kg on a soyuz here’s how;
You take out 15,000kg of the fuel. There’s around 280,000kg of fuel required to get it into space.
END OF ARGUMENT!
End??? Noooooo.
I want to point one more thing out. A universal healthcare system may be sustainable in other countries. I’m no against those other countries. I think in the US however it’s doomed to fail. Our political and cultural ethos is just not built for it. We *are* a selfish individualistic nation. Any such program would be immediately compromised by lobbyists and individuals seeking personal gain.
It’s a set of values which are ingrained into our national identity.
I think these things make a healthcare system in the style many people want simply a poor idea.
Most people in the US that I know seriously do not mind people being on the hook for their own circumstances. If that means those people die or go bankrupt, then many people I know consider it those people’s faults for not setting up their situation better.
There’s lots we can argue about on how to fix the current system though. There’s lots that can be done. The current system doesn’t have much competition among insurers or doctors, for instance. That could be restored.