Guest Post: Space Exploration

Guest post by Jacob

The debate over whether space should be primarily explored via the private sector or with governmental control has long raged on between advocates of space settlement.

Advocates of a government led initiative argue that the private sector couldn’t raise the necessary capital to fund this big ticket item, because space development has high upfront costs and low long-term returns. On the other hand, advocates of a private initiative say that even if the government were to magically give NASA all the financial support it requires (something it’s beenhistorically bad at), NASA is too “risk averse” to get the job done. In other words, the government isn’t willing to send astronauts into space without decades of arguably superfluous testing, something the private sector would bypass. Some argue that selling property rights on extraterrestrial bodies would be sufficient to spark a commercial space race because of the potential profit available to private corporations.

This debate has recently become more intense after a large space exploration company called SpaceX launched the first privately owned capsule to the International Space Station. In my opinion, this act has arguably tilted the scales of the debate in favor of those supporting the private sector. While NASA spends $50 million every year paying Russia to ferry US astronauts to the ISS, entrepreneur Elon Musk (founder of paypal and SpaceX) is building rockets that will do the same job. Michael Lopez-Alegria said that the launch of Dragon (the name of the craft) is “the spark that will ignite a flourishing commercial spaceflight marketplace.” For now, this is simply SpaceX fulfilling its contract with NASA to ferry goods and eventually people to the ISS, but with more major privately owned space companies than airlines, it seems likely that the commercial space race will soon take off, possibly getting us to NASA’s ultimate destinations of Asteroids and/or Mars.

Utilitarianism and the Values Auction

In English class recently, we had an activity in which were given a sheet with 20 causes or goals and told to divide $100,000 among the goals according to how much we valued them. The items ranged from global (an end to hunger worldwide, global nuclear disarmament) to national (legal gay marriage, an end to abortion) to personal (lifelong health, happy marriage). One of the primary things I struggled with was the seeming disconnect between the personal goals and the broader societal ones. In reality, most of us highly value education, health, and other things that advance our own quality of life. But given the auction's forced choice between helping ourselves and helping others, was such an emphasis ethical?
This dilemma is part of what makes this webcomic intriguing: while Superman gets a great deal of personal satisfaction out of his traditional role, and his actions certainly help more people than would doing nothing, the economists brainstorm menial tasks that, while less fulfilling, can harness Superman's powers much more efficiently and help many more people. Once Superman is aware of these alternatives, he knows that his satisfaction with saving people directly carries an opportunity cost in terms of the billions he could have saved less directly. This is not unlike the situation we faced with the values auction: while spending the money on personal things didn't preclude any of us from helping those causes as well, the money traded off directly among causes. Does this mean that choosing to help ourselves in such situations is always unethical?
This blog post argues that, for consequentialists at least, the answer is yes: when faced with the opportunity to do greater good, or even to acquire the power to do greater good, the consequentialist is morally obligated to accept. Given the heavy burden that these scenarios place on their "superheroes," at the superheroes' own expense, this seems like it may be a strong argument against consequentialism in general.

Kony 2012

Last week, Invisible Children, a non-profit group that focuses on raising awareness of Joseph Kony, the Lord's Resistance Army and their activities in central Africa, released a video called "Kony 2012," launching a campaign to "make Kony famous" in order to stop him. The video quickly went viral, spreading through Facebook, Twitter and other social media. The backlash came almost as quickly, with critics accusing Invisible Children of oversimplifying a complex issue.

The first critical article I read was this one, which pointed out a number of flaws in the video, such as its emphasis on Uganda when Kony has, for the most part, moved into other countries on Uganda's borders. The article also called the video overly simplistic, contending that raising awareness without providing a deeper understanding of the complex situation in central Africa was counterproductive.

The Foreign Policy article led me to this post, which raised additional questions about the Kony 2012 campaign, questioning its ability to motivate action beyond online sharing of the video and criticizing the paternalistic implications of the video's focus on the need for Americans to solve the problems of Africa.

Invisible Children and its supporters have pushed back against these criticisms, arguing that raising awareness is a prerequisite to productive action of any kind, and that raising awareness will necessarily involve a certain degree of simplification. The Q&A page on the Invisible Children site articulates some of these arguments, and presents a more nuanced account of the LRA's past and current activities and its own efforts to help. While I think this clarification helps Invisible Children's case, I'm still not convinced they've adequately answered some questions - such as their ability to translate Internet enthusiasm into real action. For me, these questions will play a major role in whether the organization can make a positive difference.

Debating the GOP Debates

This year's GOP presidential primary has been interesting for many reasons, but one of the most striking is the large number of presidential debates. With 20 debates to date, this primary has already surpassed the 14 debates held in the 2008 GOP primary and is on pace to outnumber the 23 debates in that year's Democratic primary (which lasted until June). In addition to controversies raised within the debates, their sheer number has itself generated controversy. Supporters argue that maximizing the number of debates is ideal in order to fully inform voters about the different candidates; opponents complain that an excessive number of debates runs the risk of creating "debate fatigue," undermining both the quality of the debates and their value to voters.
My initial impression has been that there are too many debates - I certainly don't have time to watch all of them, and can't really even keep up with the soundbites from key moments in each debate. As I've read more, though, I've been somewhat persuaded by the pro-debate arguments: even if individual voters aren't benefiting from each one of the extremely frequent debates, each debate creates the possibility that additional voters will tune in and become more informed about the election. South Carolina's rapid pivot in favor of Newt Gingrich in the week preceding its primary demonstrates the dramatic effect such new information can have on an election.
That said, I'm inclined to think that the debates will soon reach a point of diminishing returns. It seems unlikely that the candidates have much new to say at this point, and I'm not sure that anyone who's ignored the last 20 debates will suddenly take an interest around number 25. However, given the benefits of the debates for the TV stations that hold them, and the perceived opportunities for candidates like Gingrich, I doubt that the pace will slow any time soon.

Germany's past and present (New historicism)

As I've learned about Germany in Social Studies this year, I've been struck by the profound impact that the memory of Nazi rule has had on the country. The Holocaust and World War II still cast a shadow over many aspects of German politics and culture, with effects ranging from an aversion to flag-waving and other displays of patriotism, to a reluctance to pursue a more assertive role in Europe.The Germans' views of Nazism have been unfavorable throughout their history, but over time these views and Germany's current situation have influenced each other in different ways.
The overwhelming German attitudes toward Nazism seem to have been shame and the determination never to let such atrocities occur again. This accounts for the nation's reluctance to engage in flag-waving or any other expression of national pride - these kinds of patriotic imagery have been tainted by association with Hitler. The second article I linked to above also argues that it can account for some of Germany's behavior during the Eurozone crisis. Germany's history has fostered apprehension both domestically and throughout Europe at the prospect of a stronger Germany taking the lead, with the result that Germany has been hesitant to do so.
The reason this is so interesting is that, very recently, some of these attitudes seem to have started to shift. As Europe's largest and most fiscally sound economy, Germany has had some degree of leadership thrust upon it, regardless of whether it wants to assume that role or not. Meanwhile, articles like this one suggest that patriotism and symbols of national pride are also becoming acceptable. These changes are probably linked, with Germany's increased international prominence providing an additional rationale for patriotism. While I mentioned above that this isn't really a fundamental change in how a historical event is viewed - Germans have consistently agreed about the evil of Nazism - it shows that more subtle shifts are also possible. Changing circumstances have prompted Germans to revise their understanding of the meaning of their nation's past and its implications for the present.

Third Parties, Ideology and Pragmatism

Over winter break, my family was talking about politics and Congress and someone raised the possibility of a centrist third party, one that would break the partisan deadlock in Congress by proposing pragmatic, centrist solutions to pressing issues. They weren't alone in this proposal - this letter writer makes a similar argument, saying such a party would not have to be "constrained by ideology" or beholden to special interests. While this sounds like a good idea in theory - it's hard to oppose the party of pragmatic solutions - I'm not convinced that it would work in practice.

My main objection to this sort of third party is one of the supposed advantages: its lack of ideology. Without any overarching principles or philosophy, how will members of this party choose which policies to support? Economic policies, for example, are (ideally) driven by a particular economic theory - Obama's stimulus relied on the Keynesian idea that government intervention is necessary to stabilize the economy, while GOP proposals like tax cuts and deregulation draw on supply-side economics, which focus on reducing the barriers to free enterprise. Pragmatism just means embracing the policies that work, but without some sort of guiding philosophy how can we know which policies those are?

The moderates already in Congress illustrate this problem. To continue the focus on economic policy, Obama's stimulus bill passed because three moderate GOP senators - Snowe, Collins and Specter - supported it in exchange for the removal of what Collins called $110 billion of "unnecessary spending." A moderate third party would probably forge frequent deals of this sort with the other, ideological parties. The problem is that, from a policy standpoint, the deal didn't make any sense. The underlying idea of stimulus is that during a recession, consumers and businesses are reluctant to spend, so government needs to borrow/tax and then spend money in order to get the economy moving. If this idea is sound, then that $110 billion wasn't "unnecessary" at all - it would have made a further valuable contribution to the recovery, on top of the additional stimulus. On the other hand, if the GOP is right, then the government is just worse than the private sector at allocating resources productively. In that case, the 3 senators voted in favor of $827 billion in "unnecessary spending."

In other words, they helped push the country toward a compromise that nobody thought would work - conservatives because it was a massive government intervention in the economy, and liberals because it was a half-measure downsized for no good reason. I'm not sure why proponents of a third party think a larger group of moderates would do any better.

The Gatsby trial

Instead of finding another current debate in the news, I decided to focus in this post on a fictional debate we've been reading about and discussing in class. In Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, the author stages a trial for the book The Great Gatsby in her college literature course, hoping to demonstrate the book's merit to students who have reacted to it with hostility.

The prosecution is led by Mr. Nyazi, a student who staunchly supports the Islamic regime in Iran. Nyazi has several objections to Gatsby: first, that it promotes decadent western values in what he sees as a "cultural rape" of the Islamic Republic. Nyazi is particularly offended by what he sees as the book's promotion of adultery. Nyazi also abhors Gatsby's character, portraying his attempts to "earn money by illegal means and...buy the love of a married woman" as the embodiment of an immoral American dream.

Zarrin, a moderate student not associated with any of the class's political factions, leads the defense of Gatsby. Zarrin turns Nyazi's critique of the book on its head, contending that, far from promoting the decadent lifestyle that horrified Nyazi, Fitzgerald's novel is a crushing condemnation of the dishonesty and carelessness of America's rich.

Of the two sides, I found Zarrin's more compelling - we read Gatsby last year, and it certainly did not portray the rich favorably. But Nafisi's point - when briefly given the chance to comment - changed the way I thought about the Gatsby debate: "You don't read Gatsby to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are." For Nafisi, the whole question of Fitzgerald's agenda and the "moral of the story" is beside the point - the goal of literature is not to provide a powerful argument in favor of a particular agenda, but to force readers to think about and deepen their understanding of the issues discussed.

This is obviously a criticism of Nyazi's search for western decadence in Gatsby, but I think it undermines Zarrin's argument as well: the question of whether the book is pro- or anti-rich is more or less irrelevant. The book's merit is not based on whether it took the right stance on important issues, but whether it provided a powerful and insightful exploration of those issues.