>Guru George <gurugeorge@sugarland.idiscover.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>Since I believe that only societies that discover capitalism will be
>>able to develop the requisite technology, I doubt that we will find many
>>star-roving socialist/fascist collectives - the only ones we do find
>>will be ones that stole the technology from the capitalist ones, just
>>like here on earth.
>
>GG, your email address is in the UK, so it is odd that you need reminding
>that it was fascists who made the big advances in rocketry in the middle of
>this century.
>
>Also, the Nazis were capitalists (despite the name 'National Socialists').
>They didn't steal technology from capitalist, they *were* capitalists -- and
>they developed a lot of it themselves.
>
>The collectivist aspect of the United States has a much better developed
>space program than any private industry initiative.
>
>Your future is optimistic, but not based on historical fact.
These are big subjects which I don't have time to go into just now.
I'll just say that: of course collectivists can occasionally do advanced
research, but at the cost of potential social progress that, if not made,
will lead in the long run to unrest and revolution, as happened in the
USSR; as I understand it, the Nazis had centralised control of their
economy, and their capitalism was not capitalism but mercantilism;
the collectivisation of the US space program for the sake of a
boondoggle in the 60s *set back* space research from relevant trends (
flying craft that could take off from the ground and go into orbit, like
the spy planes of the 50s were tending towards) to irrelevant trends
(staged rockets).
Guru George