Thoughts on the road, 12/13/12

Some ideas that I thought up while working yesterday:

The idea of the Trillion Dollar Coin for a Social Security Lockbox is too provocative.  Another possibility is to do it like it is done generally -- the Treasury will issue bonds and put them up for sale, the Federal Reserve then buys them in open market operations.  It would entail the use of accounting entries in the creation of money.  It wouldn't be a coin, but it would be the same doggone way they are doing it now in order to fund the government.  If you still don't like that idea, then use $100 bills printed up for that purpose.  Then deposit these bills in a vault and draw the money out for Social Security checks.

With respect to getting stuff into space on the cheap, I thought up this doozy.  Put a John Hunter type Gas gun on a plane.   After further thought, and a quick review at the link, I nixed this idea as impractical.  I figured the gas gun wouldn't be quite so doggone big.  Even a small payload takes a really big gun.  So this wouldn't fit on a plane.  Shoot, I thought that was a good idea.  Not so good after all.

Hunter's idea seems like a good one though.  It doesn't appear to be gaining much traction out there.  I saw no progress on achieving his goals.  This allows me to segue into a post that I started yesterday morning, but didn't finish.


Do you observe attempts to predict the future which miss the mark widely?  Hmm.  Is there a conspiracy to maintain the status quo?  Why haven't things improved as much as was thought?  Why aren't there colonies on Mars and flying cars and so forth? Could it be by design?  What are some possible conspiracies to keep us down at the lowest possible levels of societal development:

1. To keep Molten Salt Reactors off the market
2. To suppress Cold Fusion research
3. To refuse to fund alternatives to tokomaks--- any alternatives which would be more economical
4. To refuse to fund alternatives to big rockets in the space program
5. To maintain copyrights and other intellectual property even though doing so would be unreasonable
6. Using union violence to maintain special privileges, such as what is happening in Michigan

There may be more of these, but I think this covers a wide range of possibilities that could be transformative if even one of the above was to be adopted.