By just being what it is, doing what it does: metastasizing and expanding; strangling creativity and innovation; introducing unneccessary and exorbitant costs through bureaucracy, overregulation, and outright corruption.
Government is needed for some things, a necessary evil for certain strictly-defined functions. But it never stops grabbing for more, and therefore must be constantly monitored and reined in. Like any other noxious weed, if it is allowed to flourish unrestrained the garden will eventually become overrun, and will soon perish.
Meanwhile, the private sector leads the way.
This week, American astronauts returned to earth. Their trip to the space station was the first manned launch from the U.S. in 10 years.
By NASA? No. Of course, not.
This space flight happened because the government was not in charge.
An Obama administration committee had concluded that launching such a vehicle would take 12 years and cost $36 billion.
But this rocket was finished in half that time — for less than $1 billion (1/36th the predicted cost).
Meanwhile, NASA has become just another hapless, bloated bureaucracy, pathetically incapable of performing its own core mission, slowly fading into a sad irrelevance. Stossel’s closer:
The private sector always comes up with ways to do things that politicians cannot imagine.
The government didn’t invent affordable cars, airplanes, iPhones, etc. It took competing entrepreneurs, pursuing profit, to nurture them into the good things we have now.
Get rid of government monopolies.
For-profit competition brings us the best things in life.
Amazing how, in a nation supposedly founded on those very ideals, we keep having to relearn that basic truth over and over again, innit?
Those astronauts have not yet safely landed. They were indeed successfully launched, but the return is scheduled for this weekend. And like other aviation activities, takeoff and landing tend to be the most hazardous portions of a flight.
Scheduled for Sunday, but weather dependent.
Too bad you had to link to, and quote, that sanctimonious gasbag Stossel.
I despise that self-righteous little prick.
As I’ve written about again and again, NASA isn’t about space flight except almost by accident. NASA is a jobs program. They produced (I kid you not) a braille book about the last solar eclipse.
Should books be done in braille?
Yes.
Should NASA ever, ever, ever do one?
No. Not ever.
NASA is a jobs program. (And I had Apollo PJ’s when I was a kid.)