[FRIAM] So much for U.S. competitiveness

Sat Feb 8 12:29:40 EST 2025

I think our new executive branch (from lofty DJT to lowly Elno, or 
vice-versa) are working hard to do the periodic extraction of the 
built-up/latent "wealth" of the commons.  I feel like (despite voting 
for the bastard once) Reagan's trickle-down nonsensery was a weaker 
version but also a template (not to mention Gilded age Robber 
Barons).    Why invest anything in the commons when you can just raid it 
and then withdraw when everyone figures out what you have done and wait 
for those with a bit more foresight to refill the silos of knowledge and 
capability to raid again?

My shoot-from-hip judgement of Elno-the-Magnificent is that he hisself 
has done this.  He came into the EV and Space Launch world at a time 
when a great deal of the tech was in place and all he had to do 
(understating) was reconfigure it boldly.  As someone recently pointed 
out, he can launch 95 rockets which blow up to figure out how to get the 
96th one to do very well what the other 95 were trying to do while NASA 
gets shut down for a year if they launch even a single rocket that blows 
up....   a different kind of technical debt?

Trump's moonshot vaccine development program was pretty much the same... 
the pieces were in place and he got to take credit for something which 
was "easy" (and then dismiss the need/value for vaccines out of the 
other side of his mouth) and is now about to raid the research budget 
for medicine in general (to give Elno and company tax breaks?).

The current inertia of renewables also gives him room to pull all 
support back, redirect it to more aggressive fossil fuel development and 
while destroying the biosphere (some more) gets even more bang for his 
buck because wind/solar/hydro/geo are all supporting a voracious energy 
demand which his fossil aggressiveness will cash in on (Jevons Paradox).

On 2/8/25 2:50 AM, Santafe wrote:
> Would be interesting to see a list of various categories of science 
> funding per capita or per GDP for countries around the world.  Situate 
> the prospective US in this list.  Will our society be like that of 
> Kazakhstan?  Or maybe like Uganda?  Probably well below Uruguay or 
> Argentina or Chile.
>
> Want a direct visual image that can be delivered, about the style of 
> day-to-day life that the mob is requesting for itself.
>
>
>> On Feb 7, 2025, at 22:34, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com> wrote:
>>
>> https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/02/new-nih-policy-will-slash-support-money-to-research-universities/
>> https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/02/white-house-budget-proposal-could-shatter-the-national-science-foundation/
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