Excellent Point...

Wei brings up a great point that I've been doing a lot of research on the last few days, having been sick and able to spend some extra YouTube time.

I've been watching a lot of Newt Gingrich speeches lately and he gives some of the greatest methods by which our country can achieve goals like high mileage cars: prizes. Giving money away to people for the sake of it only makes people want more money and stifles progress. People are greedy and will exploit such subsidies. However, look at the Ansari X-Prize, a prize to be the first private venture to get a craft in low earth orbit and back to Earth in a reusable shell. It took almost 10 years and $100 million of private money. The prize was only $10 million, however, the technologies developed along the way by Scaled Composites and the other teams will surely outstrip the cost of construction. (Side Note: How much does it take NASA to get a shuttle into space? :) There are now a number of X Prizes (including the Automotive X PRIZE) which shows that people want progress and they understand the government will not be the ones to help them. Govrenment representatives are being bought off by special intrest groups and the American machine suffers. As in the early 1900s, the political bosses controlled Washington and local governments with bribes and kickbacks, donations and slush funds create political machines that dictate the direction of Washington these days. Let me be clear though, Big Business is good for America. They contribute hugely to society and our country as a whole. The current political laws and people's willingness to let their representatives be corrupted by these groups are the problem. But I digress....

I hope they eventually wake up and offer incentives like the X Prize to advance our technologies and inspire budding entrepreneurs in years to come. How many different advances could we offer in the way of energy alone with ideas like nuclear fusion reactors (Polywells, for example) or microwave solar collectors in Earth orbit for unlimited supplies of energy.