by Leonard Zody

Created on: July 08, 2008

Why did I vote No? Since I've been around for several years I've had time to see the results of many government subsidized programs. I've yet to one that has been successful. They've passed government funds to specific individuals without ever achieving the intended goals. Since when did the agricultural subsidies do anything but make the large acreage farmer wealthy and small farmers poorer. Since when has housing subsidies advanced technology for better and more efficient home? It made a bunch of landlords richer. The solar heating subsidies of the 1970s did not advance solar heating technologies.

Government sponsored subsidy programs that lack predefined and measurable goals. This might be the reason they have all failed. Maybe we should look at how the many successful government projects that have come to be. Areas where have we achieved much success: 1) we've put humans in orbit around the earth, 2) we've put humans on the Moon, 3) we developed a shuttle craft for humans from earth to space in a re-useable transport, 4) we developed nuclear powered aircraft carriers and submarines, 5) we developed superior communications technology, 6) we developed Global Positioning technology. The list of successes is long. What is the common thread in all these? We had well defined goals for putting a human in space and putting a human on the moon. Then, we went about setting in place the plans to achieve the goals.

By now I hope you can see that I'm not against advancing technologies for alternative energies and improved energy efficiencies. I think history shows that subsidies only spend tax payer dollars and never achieve the intended goal; subsidies never have well defined outcomes.

Why would I want to use the Department of Defense and NASA to advance these technologies: 1) these two organizations already have the logistics operations in place to handle projects of this magnitude, it's not going to be a small task, and everyone is watching the costs of these organizations.

NASA and the Department of Defense are the best and most experienced organizations in the world at managing large technical projects efficiently. The DOD is probably the largest single user of fossil fuels in the world. Why not look to them for developing fuel efficient engine technologies? Improving fuel efficiency would not only reduce fuel costs, but could also reduce their logistics support requirements immensely.

The challenge of the task is complex and enormous, so why not look to the organizations that are experienced at taking on complex and enormous tasks?

If we'd have subsidized going to the moon do you really think we'd have been successful?

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