When, in 1991 I was testifying before Congress on a grassroots-promoted bill to require NASA to procure launch services from the private sector, a NASA employee, flown in on my tax dollars while I had to pay my own way, pointed at me and said "There's the enemy."

NASA started being friendly toward private launch services only when it was apparent it could no longer play the same good-ole-boy game that had for so long presented an anti-competitive barrier to the entry of true freedom to pursue industrially reasonable launch services.

To now listen to "experts" that are designated as such by NASA telling us to pump huge amounts of money into NASA so it can turn SpaceX and others into yet another good-ole-boy network is the moral equivalent of pumping huge amounts of money into creation science.

The folks in the Ford Foundation jokingly refer to Henry Ford as "the grave spinner" because the foundation he established engages in activities, the majority of which, has Henry Ford "spinning in his grave".

The reality of these foundations, except for perhaps the Hughes foundation as a notable exception, is they are occupied by parasites who are very unlikely to do anything truly effective about other parasites such as malaria.

In any event, Bill Gates will more likely be remembered as the man who dissipated the potential Moore's Law in one of the biggest Network Externalities in history and, instead of investing his philanthropic money in correcting the tax base to be undistressed liquidation value of assets rather than economic activity, achieved whatever social status he did achieve at the expense of technological civilization.

Great Mother Government is our Purpose, oh my precious Broodmate. Have you so soon forgotten the smell of her loving pheromones?

If people can push the pause button on their hissy-fit tape loops for a few minutes and think:

State governments regulate insurance companies so there is no good reason they shouldn't prefer a requirement that builders take out insurance policies over central planning of what should or should not be allowed. Let the insurance companies pay for relocating the buildings if they charge premiums that are too low, or suffer the loss of business if the premiums they charge are too high. The only thing of interest to the State government would then be whether there was a reasonable chance of fraud going on with the insurance companies intending on closing up shop if their bets go sour.

Its the rate at which they installed new power generation capacity. Those Germans are demons.

Obviously, what is needed is a unified National Space Pogrom to assimilate all independent US space entrepreneurs into a Monster Bureaucracy.

That way, we'll have ANOTHER 40 years of no progress in space!

OK, so lets assume that the EU officials are paragons of wisdom and sanity and the French are batshit crazy.

What gives the EU the right to force sanity down the throats of the batshit crazy French?

From a 1982 essay:

The first obstacle is, of course, legal. As the knights of U.S. feudalism, corporate lawyers have a penchant for finding ways of stomping out innovation and diversity in any way possible. In the case of videotex, the attempt is to keep feudal control of information by making videotex system ownership imply liability for information transmitted over it. For example, if a libelous communication takes place, corporate lawyers for the plaintiff will bring suit against the carrier rather than the individual responsible for the communication. The rationalizations for this clearly unreasonable and contrived position are quite numerous. Without a common carrier status, the carrier will be treading on virgin ground legally and thus be unprotected by precedent. Indeed, the stakes are high enough that the competitor could easily afford to fabricate an event ideal for the purposes of such a suit. This means the first legal precedent could be in favor of holding the carrier responsible for the communications transmitted over its network, thus forcing (or giving an excuse for) the carrier to inspect, edit and censor all communications except, perhaps, simple person-to-person or "electronic mail". This, in turn, would put editorial control right back in the hands of the feudalists. Potential carriers' own lawyers are already hard at work worrying everyone about such a suit. They would like to win the battle against diversity before it begins. This is unlikely because videotex is still driven by technology and therefore by pioneers.

The question then becomes: How do we best protect against such "legal" tactics? The answer seems to be an early emphasis on secure identification of the source of communications so that there can be no question as to the individual responsible. This would preempt an attempt to hold the carrier liable. Anonymous communications, like Delphi conferencing, could even be supported as long as some individual would be willing to attach his/her name to the communication before distributing it. This would be similar, legally, to a "letters to the editor" column where a writer remains anonymous. Another measure could be to require that only individuals of legal age be allowed to author publishable communications. Yet another measure could be to require anyone who wishes to write and publish information on the network to put in writing, in an agreement separate from the standard customer agreement, that they are liable for any and all communications originating under their name on the network. This would preempt the "stolen password" excuse for holding the carrier liable.

One must bear in mind that this was back when private companies still had a shot at establishing the network effect now realized by the Internet.

Oh, so removing all barriers to exporting jobs is "trying to eliminate competition so we don't have to work so hard".

I see.

Yes, the country is going to shit.

**WHOOSH**

This is far worse than a collapse of Silicon Valley. It is no exaggeration to say that this kind of reward for little more than exploiting the network effect (one's product or service becomes more valuable the more customers it has) enjoyed by the likes of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg is sending civilization down a rat hole of uncreative rent-seeking.

If you're interested in a solution to this sh*t, try replacing all taxes with a use fee for property rights assessed by bids placed in escrow for their purchase -- and replace government by distributing the fee to adult citizens evenly with local jurisdictions responsible for organizing their citizens into militias as do the Swiss.

How about this:

Remove all barriers to exporting jobs to India in exchange for terminating immigration to the US and paying all Indians to repatriate to India.

The US got along just great before the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

INTRODUCTION

Secession is necessary to free society. Free society starts with mutual consent. Mutual consent implies the option not to consent. "Freedom From" compliments "Freedom To".

Secession is necessary to true social science: We can best discover causal laws by testing theories with controlled experiments. This is true of all science. Controlled experiments require separate experimental groups, treated according to different theories and comparing the measured results with predictions. In practice, human ecologies can form separate experimental groups only by upholding geographic boundaries that prevent cross-contamination between treatments – cross-contamination with its resulting confusion and confounding of results. We can argue how best to achieve this in practice, but the principle of giving experimental evidence priority over any amount of argument, debate, deliberation, peer review or judicial proceeding stands as more self-evident than anything in the Declaration of Independence.

In a free scientific society, an individual is subject to treatment only after giving informed consent.

These two pillars of social good -- truth and freedom -- stand upon the foundation of secession.

Tyranny of the majority, limited only by a vague laundry list of selectively enforced human rights -- the sine qua non of "liberal democracy" -- must submit to the right to secede or it violates truth and freedom, hence all social good.

SLAVERY

Getting right to the point that people need addressed whenever "secession" is uttered:

Abolition of slavery is support of individual secession.

Slaves want to secede from their "owners" just as others want to -- and do -- secede from societies they find objectionable. The difference between slavery and others turns solely on whether the individual's right to secede is realized. All who are denied secession are slaves: their consent is violated.

If men from Maine choose to support the right of secession of slaves by marching on South Carolina to kill unrepentant slave owners -- every last one of them -- those men from Maine in no way lose their own rights. Men retaining their humanity may differ over whether it is wisest to intervene in such a way – or to intervene at all. For example, should a government which is capable of raising taxes do so for the waging of war against slavery or, better for the purchase of slaves to be freed from their dependent owners? Eminent domain “taking” arguments aside, just men may, as well, differ over whether it is wisest to put down a rabid animal, or to treat it. The compromise upon which the United States was founded was flawed, perhaps fatally, by its incorporation of slave states.

Likewise, this in no way supports the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution or The Union. It supports only the 13th Amendment. Despite Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964's pretenses to the contrary, it is still a "badge of slavery" to be forced into association with others. Likewise the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 compounded this badge of slavery born of the so-called “Civil Rights Movement”.

"Freedom From" compliments "Freedom To". Just as a person's right to vote with his feet takes precedence over a State's powers, so a body politic may leave a Federation that has overstepped its bounds.

The Federal government is a creature of its constituent States and the State is a creature of its constituent People.

The Creature is subordinate to the Creator.

Lucifer and his slavery be damned.

FREEDOM

There is no true freedom without a domain upon which men may live as they choose. The key to practical freedom is that men may choose to live among others that share their ecological beliefs. Ecological beliefs include beliefs in cause and effect on human ecologies. Note, this is more profound than merely sharing territory with those “of like mind”. Beliefs about ecological cause and effect are, by definition, at the foundation of all mutually consensual human ecologies. Indeed, such beliefs are the most general definition of religion as they inform one's practice of life in society with others. It seems, then, that theocracy, in this general sense, is inescapably at the foundation of freedom as the consensual domain over which men exercise their beliefs.

And here we find the proper difference between State and Federal powers:

The States provide the diverse domains upon which free men may make a statement with their very lives – voluntarily sacrificing themselves to their strongly held convictions. Each State protects from contamination – free from ecological sin – a domain upon which free men exercise of their free moral agency. “Racism is sin.” “Miscegenation is sin.” “Pornography is sin.” “Hate speech is sin.” “Adultery is sin.” “Gay marriage is sin.” “Homophobia is sin.” “Alcohol is sin.” “Tobacco is sin.” “Marijuana is sin.” “Littering is sin.” “Spanking children is sin.” Such Statements define the State. The Federation's sole legitimate job is to ensure the practicality of secession of individuals and joining together of mutually consenting individuals on their own ecological domains.

It is only in this proper relationship between the State and the Federation that man can find both peace and freedom:

Peace through nonviolent reallocation of State boundaries as well as supporting the assortative migration of peoples, and,

Freedom through globally maximized exercise of free moral agency.

It is only in making practical this sense of “secession” that a Federation may legitimately oppose, as slave-making, the so-called “secession” of territory that denies the right of its people to secede.

The horror that some people have of territorial exclusion is not only horror of true diversity and horror of learning the truth: it is horror of “freedom from” hence horror of freedom itself. It may preen one's moral vanity to publicly display one's emotional commitment to the dogmas of the current theocratic supremacy – State posing as Federation – but it is only with practical secession as an escape from non-consensual theocracy, that there can be true freedom.

SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY

Freedom stands in parallel with truth to uphold the ultimate social good of free scientific society: Social sciences founded on controlled experimentation conducted with informed mutual consent.

The 20th century was plagued by intellectual corruption in the social sciences – corruption universalized by making its way into liberal democratic theocracies posing as Federations. Economics, social psychology, sociology, anthropology – all of the social sciences suffer from the same intellectual handicap of all theocracies: Absence of controlled experimentation to discover causation.

It is no accident that the Protestant Reformation coincided with the emergence of the scientific method. But due to the practical difficulties of redistricting and assortative migration in the Old World, the closest the Protestant Reformation came to establishing a scientific society was the so-called “Laboratory of the States” in the frontier territories of the New World. Moreover, it is no accident that the founders of that Laboratory of the States were as much men of science as men of society. That they did not completely formalize the Laboratory of the States in terms of mutually consenting social experiments with strict border controls is a monumental loss of a historic potential that may, in part, be assigned to ignorance and, in part, to the institution of slavery.

Our present condition is very different. With the increasing world-wide understanding of the scientific method and its value in technology and engineering, we are no longer in the state of ignorance from which founders of the Laboratory of the States suffered. Moreover, with the abolition of slavery during the 1800s, the excesses of the Civil Rights movement and liberal democracy's violation of popular consent with liberalized immigration laws in the 1900s, it is more apparent than ever that abolition of slavery and secession are united by “freedom from”.

Science, as a public activity involving publication and independent replication of results, increasingly recognizes the unity of informed consent and formal statements. Informed consent cannot exist without clear understanding of what is communicated – nor can science. If people subject themselves to social experiments with informed consent, there must be a formal Statement with which they are adequately informed. This Statement corresponds to the State into which they are entering, by mutual consent, with the current members of that State. In the pre-scientific society, the Statement may be thought of as the consensual theocracy's scripture. In the scientific society, the Statement may be thought of as the experimental treatment to which the State's citizens mutually, and revocably (revocation entailing emigration), consent.

As with any laboratory, cost is an important practical matter. In the present instance we must compare the cost of such a laboratory – redistricting and assortative migrations -- not only to the existing cost of nearly 100 million people each decade migrating within the United States in a forlorn flight from government imposed “diversity”, but the risk of civil wars as well as the hijacking of central government by special interests. Even ignoring the fundamental violations of truth and freedom entailed by liberal democracy, the costs of rational redistricting of territory to minimize futile migrations, to minimize public sector rent seeking and to minimize lawless conflict, are small by comparison.

Beyond such gross reductions in cost, there are nuances that must be addressed which take us into the realm of value. What is of scientific value? The answer to this cannot be divorced from the question of human values. Nor can there be a better approximation of “scientific value” than the experiments in which people are willing to invest their lives. Can we assign equal value to all human lives in the optimization of our social laboratory? If we are to achieve a universally accepted principle in support of secession, it would seem so. Upon this definition of “equality” we can found a universal value for truth in which people may live and die according to their beliefs – and in which just war may be waged for freedom. This is the only way out of the Malthusian Trap. There is the possibility that by equally valuing life, unbridled reproductive success among some groups will threaten us with the Malthusian Trap anyway. But if we fail in this, there is more than the possibility or probability, but the near certainty of billions of deaths in universal chaos if not war.

There are the remaining practical questions of natural ecology upon which the boundaries of human ecologies must be founded. There are large questions such as atmospheric and water pollution, which can encircle the biosphere violating all ecologies – questions that cannot be left to the Laboratory of the States. Here epic hypocrisies abound: Those who profess the greatest concern about, say, artificial global warming, most impose, on unwilling nations, global panmixia, while those who profess the greatest conservatism toward central powers are most liberal in their interpretation of the global warming data. No current “leaders” are sufficiently conservative toward artificial global change in the sphere of human relations let alone the biosphere. Science tells us as much about what we don't know as it does about what we know.

CONCLUSION

This essay has primarily addressed the ideology of secession and secondarily its practicality. The practice of secession as foundation of social good must be left as an exercise to the reader knowing this:

Once the ideology of secession is accepted by moral men – men with the humanity to recognize and uphold to the maximum degree practical, the free moral agency of other men – practice will follow. Not even nuclear proliferation yielding a devolution to self-defended microstates can be as powerful as a Federation of moral men who show love to their enemies, indeed the love of the sinner, by helping them find mutually consenting others with which to freely live and thereby demonstrate the consequences of their beliefs, with minimum harm to others.

In this, commitment to free moral agency and truth, is the secession from slavery to free scientific society.

http://jimbowery.blogspot.com/2009/07/secession-from-slavery-to-free.html

Kamthaka writes: "The dirty secret of H-1B is that it isn't structured to bring engineering expertise into to the US; it's structure to *export* it. It is a technology transfer program that helps US companies to move jobs overseas."

What do you have against India?

They need more H-1b workers from India. That's the solution.

TFA says:

'Today, America lacks the ability to make anything like the Heavy Press Program machines,' concludes Heffernan adding that 'The Fifty' will be supplying bulkheads through 2034 for the Joint Strike Fighter.

What sort of defenses surround this Atlantean artifact?