Oh, John Carmack, no

ok

My brother is serving 4 years in jail right now for a burglary he claims he didn’t commit, but he’s already at two strikes in California and took a deal rather than go to trial.
In all seriousness, I’m sorry to hear that. It’s one of my top irrational fears in life.

Well, in all honesty, the best thing for my brother is probably a life sentence. It at least keeps him out of trouble (for the most part). He’s borderline schizophrenic and severely manic a lot of the time. Even when his mania is subdued a bit, he’s completely obnoxious and I don’t feel safe around him (or when he’s driving). It’s not like those other two strikes are for nothing.

Edit: Anyway, end of thread derail, and sorry to lure you in again. I know you absolutely hate responding to me. =P

I wish that this had been posted a couple of days ago. I was just reminding students that people tend to vote based on what would be in their own best interests rather than taking a utilitarian approach (the view we are currently studying). This would have made a nice case study, but the test is upon us.

Since when?

Did you also explain to them that a lot of people have no fucking clue what’s best for them?
They’re not just egoists… they’re stupid egoists.

Uh. Healthcare John, Healthcare.
Also NASA took 10 years from creation to a man on the Moon. Johngaltmadillo Airspace will enter its 10th year having crashed a few meccano lander mockups, only just 40 years later.

This. And they have short memories. And even smart people can be really stupid about this stuff. Case in point: Mr. Carmack.

It amazes me how often people will vote for short term gain at the cost of long term benefits.

In America, we do that in grades K-12. I believe Robert is a university professor.

Of course, getting to Apollo 11 cost the taxpayer something in the neighborhood of $130 billion in 2010 dollars. It also killed three astronauts. And it involved thousands of companies and almost half a million people. It was also managed, essentially, as if it were a military operation.

Armadillo has done pretty well for what started as a part-time hobby and a few million dollars from Carmack. It’s evolved into an actual business: they even have picked up some contract work for NASA.

I hate it when people draw faulty comparisons like this. The moon shot was a hell of a thing to accomplish, but it took twelve years and the force of an entire nation behind it, and we would never manage it today (among other things, the godawful tin can that we launched those guys in probably presents an untenable risk to life and limb). Citing Carmack’s failure to successfully fly to the moon overlooks a lot of things. If you’re going to criticize the guy - and it’s not a hard position to criticize - at least be fair about it. Armadillo isn’t even primarily interested in traveling to other planetary bodies (though he should be - there’s resources out the ass up there) - I believe that you’re looking at a couple of entries that the company made in the X Prize Cup, at which they did relatively well (2nd place finish in either 2008 or 2009, which comes with a $500,000 prize), considering their size and budget. Their primary goal is pretty much the same as Virgin - they want to build a launch vehicle that can perform commercial space flight for people who are simultaneously stupid enough to think that being in space inside of a box and looking at stuff for a few hours is at all significant and rich enough to afford themselves the opportunity.

I’m challenged as to what in the hell Carmack thought to achieve here, regardless. There are no real libertarians up for election pretty much anywhere in the United States as viable candidates - so he’s got no chance of seeing his philosophy actually forwarded in any reasonable way (the conservatives we’re seeing this election cycle are only interested in cutting entitlements, which are something that need to be reined in if we intend to not go bankrupt in the next fifty years, but hardly constitute a solution to any existing problem) - and I can think of at least three other public figures who can (and frequently do) argue the case better than him. He’s got an understanding of politics and how bureaucracies function that is simplistic at best, and I don’t see people lining up to hear him read his grocery list like they do with Will Wright for some reason.

This is one of those WTF moments for me. A guy who’s good at a thing and pretty well respected for it is basically volunteering to lose an argument that he’s not even well-prepared to have. I’m pretty sure I could beat him in an argument, judging from his initial statements, and I kind of agree with some of his sentiments.

That’s the whole point. If it’s about actually going to the real Moon up there Uncle Sam effectively takes you to the Moon no matter the cost. Armadillo lets John play with rockets and maybe make a dollar on the side, not much more.
Pay or die healthcare also works great for John. He gets sick, he buys himself a hospital or something. But it’s not only about one John isn’t it?

The gall! Parasites!

Far more than play. They passed that point a long time ago. I’m not sure what your point is either, Apollo is trivial compared to the complexity of the modern US healthcare system. You seem to have no point other than to want to point and sneer in a subject matter you don’t appear to have much knowledge of.

The point is that the profit driven private enterprise can’t seem to do some things that .gov can do. Pointing and saying that .gov does them inefficiently isn’t much help when there’s no real decent alternative.
Of course you can say that going to the Moon was wrong and a waste and healthcare for all is a commie pipedream but enough people wanted Apollo to happen and enough countries have decent public healthcare that works.
Maybe John has no point other than to point and sneer to a public sector that he hasn’t much knowledge of.

tf? We know he has experience in for-profit. Someone just pointed out he has done govt contracts. I have very little doubt that he’s been involved in charity/non-profit as well.

Conclusion: Carmack’s opinion is worth more.

Except of course, there are many countries with private healthcare systems that work, just with a more homogenized set of government regulations and a much smaller geographic and population base. I would agree that expecting the healthcare system of a country to work without any governmental involvement is a ludicrous fantasy. However, I do not think that it requires the government to literally run the whole show.

In this day and age, if a multi-billionaire wanted to spend $10 billion and go to the moon, they probably could. None of them want to go badly enough to spend that much money, however. It’s also worth adding that it has really only been in the past 10-15 years that the federal government has been willing to allow private space activity for anything but a handful of commercial applications. Profit motive or no profit motive, you simply wouldn’t have been allowed.

Carmack has to deal with federal regulatory oversight from several different agencies for his Armadillo pursuits. On top of that they’ve gotten to the point where he has to worry about what they release as part of their technical blogging about running afoul of ITAR, which is a whole other giant can of worms. And various state government regulations in two states. You may attack his desires as wishful thinking, but I suspect there are only a handful of posters in this forum who have as much hands-on experience with dealing with the federal government as an external private actor in highly regulated fields.

Worth more than what? Because he’s good at math he’s good at politics? He wasn’t really a biz guy at either company was he? and even then running a company and running a government are two very different things, something he doesn’t seem to understand.

but it grinds the money tho

I guess we disagree on his credibility? Please continue to go after him because you don’t like what he says and summarily dismiss it, though.

Kurdel: baby why you say such hurtful things

I have no doubt of his genius as a programmer and rocket scientist. But being good at one thing doesn’t always translate to another. I’d give him more weight if what he posted on his site was actually insightful instead of short-sighted. Sue me for actually reading what he wrote instead of going all fanboi on him because he’s famous and smart?

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