Why do a non profit?

Someone asked me that and I guess I'd better have a good answer to that.  In my younger days, I would just do it if the idea came to me, but as I have gotten older, I have become a little more cautious about jumping into things.  No big rush here to decide.  But the tendency is always there, so I have to watch it.

There isn't much advantage to me personally.  If more people read this, it may be a way to get more audience.  But that doesn't necessarily translate into a profitable situation ( aside from the nonprofit's activities).  So for me, maybe not so much.

Whatever advantage that may result from this may come to everyone, not to one person in particular.  You may be thinking, this is awfully grandiose.  What makes you so sure that this is so good that it will benefit everyone?  The answer to that is that there is no incentive for anyone in particular to do it.  Just look at my case here.  Why do it if there's no profit in it?  From the economic perspective, there isn't one that can be predicted in such a way as to be able to reliably benefit one person or a group of persons.  The advantage, which I am attempting to gain, is by having the unorganized masses act in their own behalf, as opposed to being acted upon, which is the normal case.  In politics, the incentive is for a small interested minority to get the government to favor its interests, which do not necessarily coincide with the interests of the whole.  Hence, worthwhile projects that could benefit everybody do not get done, but the opposite occurs.  This is what I believe is plaguing us today in general, and in particular- to energy and space exploration.

I've covered these topics before, so I won't repeat it all again.  To put it succinctly, the government isn't interested in these projects in any serious way that will benefit everyone because there is no definite constituency for them, but the reverse.  There's no enough profit to save on energy, but more profit on letting oil prices go through the roof.  Same for energy.  The people don't get mad, they just keep on paying, and paying, and paying.  When it comes to space, the government already had the means to go to Mars in the late sixties.  The Saturn V could have done the job.  A nuclear upper stage was in an advanced stage of development.  I would venture that if the Russians beat us to the Moon, then the government was fully committed to taking the space race to Mars.  Once we beat the Russians to the Moon, it was all over.  Now, the entire space program is just a jobs program.  The government really wasn't there to "benefit mankind", regardless of the rhetoric to the contrary.  The government was there to serve a narrow constituency.

The problem is:  how do you get people who are not interested in this to pay attention and do something about it?  People are too apathetic, or they are too trusting.  One might ask, if it was so good, why isn't anyone doing anything about it?  The answer is that it really is good, but not for the people who are running the show.  Therefore, they won't do it.  But the people who will benefit from it either don't care about it, which is either from ignorance or worse, or they have some childlike innocence that these government types are really there to help them.  In short, if the people insist upon acting like sheep, the government is all too willing to feed upon them like ravenous wolves.

I can't make people care about stuff they should care about.  I can write about it.  I can talk about it.  But I can't do anybody's thinking for them.  If people are foolish enough to let others do that for them, they pretty much deserve what they will get.  There is just so much that you can do.