I certainly see what you mean. But look at it a bit differently.

In Tennessee, you could (until recently) only hold one retail liquor license and you had to be a resident of that county. This led to a proliferation of Mom & Pop liquor stores which often catered to particular tastes (cult wines, whiskey heavy, whatever). The result kept out big retailers such as Total Wine, etc. but kept the money local. These laws have been this way for many, many years. I am not commenting on the wisdom of such rules, only explaining them.

Now it changes. The big retailers come in and undercut all the Mom & Pop stores because that's what they do. The Mom & Pop stores can't really sell out because the value of their investment (the license) has drastically been reduced.

Now before you say "that's the market," - it's not. It is the government who set up a scheme and forced at gunpoint everyone to play by certain rules. Then they abruptly change the rules.

It is wildly unfair and that's why the small retailers scream their heads off. I feel like Ron Swanson on another antigovernmental rant.

That's really interesting, I hadn't thought about that. Opening banking to poor people opens the potential for credit to poor people, allowing them to invest in capital purchases. And thus build wealth.

I'm sure someone, somehow will turn this into a scam. But at least there's a good idea in there somewhere.

Yes, this.

My brother works with (not at) NASA. Many of these projects lose funding not because of scientific merit, but rather because the project is not proceeding as planned.
They review regularly to try to prevent throwing good money after bad.

How would we provide security for a bunch of these units spread over the country?

They seems like a nice way for miscreants to have a dirty bomb at they're disposal.

I can only speak for medical research, but the quality of the research is quite poor. Quality did not equal quality.

"we are likely to see clocks begin to open up previously-impossible measurements"

Could you elaborate?

I will admit a strong libertarian bias to this situation, but you really do have a good point. What happens when a single company or small group of companies control a significant chunk of access? Well, this is what it looks like.

I'm not sure of the best answer, but I can guarantee that our (or any, really) government will absolutely screw it up worse. I just hate that the big tech companies will largely have it coming when they do.

Well, I can't much argue with this point. However, maybe if people can get worked up about this spying, we can get worked up about our own government's spying. Here's to the hope, anyway.

My brother works in the aerospace industry for basically all the current players at one time or another. His take is complicated and nuanced to be sure but I can sum it up for you.

In the aftermath of the Challenger and Columbia vehicle losses the culture changed in NASA. They went from a goal oriented agency to a deeply, deeply risk averse one. Of course, space flight is a dangerous and unforgiving business, but this was much deeper than that. Managers were rewarded for making sure nothing bad ever happened. As they rose through the ranks, all the progress essentially ceased as no one would EVER put there neck on the line. Think passing around "TPS reports" as a management style (please get the reference) and you will have a good idea about what I'm talking about.

The reason SpaceX has succeeded so far is really because Elon Musk has a singular vision and is relentless in his pursuit of it. Now this presents its own set of problems as well (that is another and very lengthy discussion). But it has put us back in space. Oddly enough, President Obama takes some credit as well with the push toward a contract based setup rather than everything being done by the government. Which is kind of atypical for someone of his political persuasion of statism (at least in my mind).

I do not mean Elon Musk did it all by himself. He has (and has had) a very talented group of engineers around him who have made that rocket fly (and land!). Just that his goals are the driving force behind the effort (and frequently a source of much turmoil internally).

The problem now is one of scale. Building a rocket to throw stuff in space is hard, really hard. Doing it over and over again on a timeline is shockingly more difficult. This is the next major challenge to all the players.

I'm not so sure about it being a shame. There are finite resources in any organization whether it be governmental or private. And that is in terms of money and personnel. Who's to say what the best use of resources is? Numbers? What scares the largest number of people the most? A disease you or someone in your family has?

I mean diabetes and heart disease will kill many, many more people this year than COVID. If the Gates Foundation can take a load off others and help make a vaccine, then more power to them!

If you are speaking from a capability point of view, then you are entirely correct. But the parent was talking about the layers of regulations that hamstring data sharing in medicine.

All that hullabaloo the parent mentioned is real and my staff spends hours each day fooling around with it. Oh yes, and it is the law too (at least in the US).

You are certainly correct, but the use of fax in the healthcare industry has more to do with another huge painful thing that the government does to us: unintended consequences.

HIPPA laws greatly restrict the use of electronic distribution of patient records. Thus, we fax everything. Again, to your point, reality is not optional.

Well, kinda. Actually that number is the percentage where HPV dna is discovered in the specimen. But HPV is an ubiquitous virus, so the percentage as a causative agent may not really be that high (nuns in their 90s have tested positive - they can't all be having regular sex). We don't really know why some people get cancer and others don't. Clearly, there are other risk factors as well.

I'm all for vaccination (including this one), but as a public health discussion the HPV vaccine may not give the results that we are expecting. Remember, life is about trade-offs and the question is not whether something works at all, but rather about how well and at what cost. Money being a limited resource and all that. Think about the mammogram studies from 10-15 years ago.

Oddly enough, sometimes it is just cheaper to clean up the mess later (from a macro view - it still sucks for the individual).

I could go on and on, but hopefully I made the point.

I don't think so. They may just be looking a different things and a "higher order" theory is needed to reconcile them. My example would be the wave vs. particle nature of light. They are both correct sort of, and both false, sort of.

No, it is not unreasonable, just bad policy. What is important is that all people voting have a stake in the outcome. What this means practically is that you have something to lose as well as gain. I would posit that 48% of people paying no Federal income tax is just such a problem.