The costs for the shuttle program were pretty much fixed per year at $5B. The refurbishment of the SRB's and ET's were pretty cheap. If the Air Force didn't bail on the Shuttle a realistic flight rate would be once a month with 4 orbiters which would be about $400m per flight. With the existing infrastructure of 3 OPS's, 3 Bays in the VAB, Two Pads, 3 MLP's and 2 Crawlers you could have added another orbiter at about $1B to ramp up the rate. Also the infrastructure at Vandenburg was nearly finished and that could have upped the launch rate even more.

After the loss of Challenger the Air Force bailed on the Shuttle and instead created and flew the Titan IV at the cost of about $400 m per flight. If that money was kept with the Shuttle program the costs per flight could have been even cheaper.

The costs weren't due to technical problems with the Shuttle but politics.

You may be able to make a profit but you just won't get monopoly profits. Just like before recordings actors and singers earned money from live performances. if you want to make movies you have to keep them under your control in a theater, insert ads or product placements, fund through crowd sourcing, or try to come up with digital distribution easy enough that people will pay instead of copying. There are plenty of ways to make money creating content without monopoly.

There is already Economic incentives to create. You just won't have a small group of people get incredibly wealthy without a monopoly. Just like every other monopoly.

Property is scarce and property rights are consistent and non-contradictory. Ideas are not scarce. They can be freely reproduced without loss. Monopolies in ideas cannot be consistent and contradict property rights by giving others claim to your property.

The real underlying flaw with Intellectual Monopoly laws like Copyright and Patents is they violate property rights. Someone that creates a movie now has a legal claim on my hard drive. They can show up at my house and use violence against me if I arrange the magnetic patterns on a disc I own in a particular way. The same with patents. They can use force against me when all I have done is arrange materials I own in a certain pattern. These laws violate my property rights.

Your only argument is that monopolies can get rich is correct. When you can use force on peaceful people to make them pay you then you tend to get wealthy. Not a big shock there.

Basic Income is a type of guaranteed monthly income provided by tax payers to all citizens. It would be an alternative to the current welfare system.

What do you mean? If someone's labor is not worth the minimum wage they will just remain unemployed. That is not good for them or the economy.

That is not how an economy works. You actually need to produce things. Just increasing the money supply without increasing production will cause inflation as more money chases the same goods.

Because some people's labor is not worth the minimum wage. Let the businesses pay them what they are worth. A basic income can maintain a minimum standard of living without penalizing work. This way once you get the first job and increase your skills you can earn more. Cutting off the bottom rungs of the economic ladder isn't the answer.

We did. I have tuff stuff eraser pens. The kids still use the ones on pencils until they are gone.

I have 3 kids in school. In reality you only need a couple of pencils but LOTS of erasers. We have about 200 pencils with the erasers missing.

You are only looking at who is hurt by deflation not the benefits. This is why Central Banking is so dangerous. It picks winners and losers for every action it takes.

Deflation hurts those:
in debt just like inflation hurts savers.
with houses but helps those looking to buy a house.

An economy needs savings to grow. Going into debt when there isn't actual savings (producing more than is consumed) cannot lead to sustainable growth but only malinvestment bubbles and crashes.

There is no such thing as a deflationary spiral. The economy always adjusts to whatever the money supply is. It just depends which industries were overvalued. Japan is suffering from stagflation where the Central Bank refuses to let deflation happen.

I agree that few economists think deflation is desirable which is why we are in such a mess right now.

Saving is required for sustainable growth.

Deflation is not bad in general. Just for those in debt. It's great for savers.

Inflation is an increase in money supply. In a free market money would be provided by the market. Precious metals, IOU's, American Express travelers cheques, bitcoins, etc. Human choices would determine what the supply of money would be. For instance if the price for precious metals rose in relation to other goods you would have price deflation. You could buy more goods with less gold. If it became profitable to mine for gold than people would do so which would increase the supply reducing the price and reducing inflation.

So there is no optimal value of inflation. Central banks inflate because it benefits them, the politicians, and those that get to spend the money first.