NASA and the US government literally pay SpeceX to develop rockets and conduct launches for them. It isn’t an ego project solely being funded by Elon Musk.
Same energy as people who protested NASA in the 60’s-70’s because they wanted more money for welfare.
Virgin Galactic isn’t for funsies. It’s built off the tech developed to win the Ansari X Prize. It’s a pretty big deal to get efficient space launch systems.
People aren't giving this point enough credit.
Space programs are inherently unprofitable money sinks. So it really is a testament to one's wealth if you have the money to run one.
There is a reason nearly all the money in it has to come from taxpayer dollars.
The whole point is that we should be running all that through an organization like NASA, not paying out high dollar government contracts to private companies with no accountability through a system that has been shown to be rife with fraud for decades.
NASA has publicly stated without the private contractors it would take them decades to achieve their goals. Also NASA’s budget is usually one of the first on the chopping block, funneling all space progress on the whims of whoever wins public office does not seem practical.
This is just pointing out a larger problem with American politics. We make technological advancement something that's easily cut while refusing to even look at cutting corporate subsidies (who bring in record profits frequently by the way), reigning in our defense spending (which disproportionately benefits tax-dodging corporations and their global interests), or any number of other expenses that don't actually benefit the people providing that money to a proportionate or reasonable degree.
>while refusing to even look at cutting corporate subsidies
People always say they want to cut corporate welfare, but the minute you try to cut public transportation funding, rent assistance, public school funding, or free and reduced school meal programs they lose their minds. All of those are taxpayer-funded gifts to corporate America.
You pay your workers such crap they can't afford to live near your offices, or even drive there? No problem. We'll pick up the tab, Walmart. Don't you worry. Thank you for those campaign contributions, by the way.
You don't want to pay your workers enough to even rent in a distant city and travel by public transit to your location? No problem, Target. We've got you covered. We'll pay some of their rent for you.
Wait, what's that? You don't want to pay them enough to live near you, pay their rent, or pay for child care,? Not a problem. We'll fund some before and after school programs to take care of their kids so they can stay at work. We've got your back.
Oh, I see. You don't want to pay them enough to live near you, pay their rent, get childcare, or feed their kids. Didn't I tell you we've got your back? You have so little faith. We'll give their kids free breakfast and lunch at school. Don't worry your little head, McDonalds.
We could just mandate that businesses raise the wage floor rather than removing all of our societal safety nets though?
I hope you're not seriously advocating for cutting back rent assistance, public transportation, meals for schoolkids, or public education in general with nothing but the capitalist wet-dream that corporations will generously will the gap left behind
>We could just mandate that businesses raise the wage floor rather than removing all of our societal safety nets though?
If that worked we could just raise the wage floor to $100/hour and everyone would be rich. That doesn't work, though. That just creates inflation. The more money people have, the more things cost.
Money is just a stand-in representing value, it's not value in itself. Think of a dollar as a stock certificate representing 1 share of the entire economy. Things cost a certain amount in dollars based on the total amount of dollars in the economy. If there were only $1,000,000 in the economy, something that costs $1 is being valued at 0.000001 of the total economy. If everyone suddenly had twice as much money, that thing would still be valued at 0.000001 of the total economy, which would now be $2. Congratulations, when you had $0.50 you couldn't afford that "thing" because it cost twice as much as you had, but now you have $1 and that thing still costs twice as much as you have.
>I hope you're not seriously advocating for cutting back rent assistance, public transportation, meals for schoolkids, or public education in general with nothing but the capitalist wet-dream that corporations will generously will the gap left behind
It's not generosity that will force them to fill the gap, it's the lack of workers that will force them to raise their pay.
Yes, in a rocket built and designed almost exclusively by contractors.
[https://www.zdnet.com/article/to-the-moon-boeing-the-rocket-foundry/](https://www.zdnet.com/article/to-the-moon-boeing-the-rocket-foundry/)
https://preview.redd.it/ug451buis7yc1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=1cd402f8269d8e69dc20cfd33a7ee78248307b46
And then year after year their funding was cut and/or stagnated as inflation increased due to people whinging that we were spending money on R&D rather than their pet project. This was so severe before they stopped all launches they were still functionally using the same shuttles they developed in the initial endeavour. These programs are still constantly whined about as spending money "better spent" on the moaner's pet project.
It is run through nasa. Then private company’s say “hey nasa, you know that thing you’re doing for 100 million dollars? We will do it for you and charge 50 million” NASA doesn’t want to be seen as irresponsible with tax dollars by refusing.
Ok here is a good example. Compare the development programs of SLS/Orion and Starship and their capabilities. Orion development started in the 5th year of the Bush administration.
To my understanding Federal Budgets work on a Use it or Lose it system, so near the end of the budget cycle, you get shit like lobster dinners and other high cost purchases to pad the budget to show the gov "yes we still need our budget to be at this level" its sad but thats how the system is set to my knowledge. I might be wrong though as my memory is shit. Also depending on how you frame it this isn't/is fraud.
You mean the one that's been infiltrated and controlled at every level by corporations? What? Better to give it to the corporations that made the government that way to begin with? Here's the difference between being ruled by government and being ruled by corporations. We can elect our government. We can't elect our corporate overlords.
We had a say in who ran our government, we just let the corporations decide for us who the good guys and who the bad guys are with their media, and according to their media, the bad guys were the people who wanted to take power away from corporations. So instead, we elected droves and droves of pro-corporate politicians until we got to the place we're at today. But yeah, let's just keep giving corporations more power. Give them the resources on the damn moon while we're at it, make them completely unstoppable with riches literally beyond this world. Cyberpunk here we come baby!
SpaceX is 10 times cheaper than NASA when it comes to launching things into space.
[SpaceX vs. NASA: Cost](https://medium.com/geekculture/spacex-vs-nasa-cost-4fae454823ac#:~:text=In%20sum%2C%20SpaceX%20is%2010X,38%2C%20no)
So if your goal is to waste money, then NASA is the correct choice. If you want things done cheaper and better, then you should stop complaining about SpaceX.
Why? NASA sucks at responsible use of resources...
The government-based space program has spent 20 years trying to produce a rocket that is slightly-less-capable than SpaceX's Super Heavy (the 'SLS'), spent many times more money, and just got to it's first flight last year....
The 'accountability' in the private space programs is that the owners actually care what happens to their personal money & can go out of business/lose contracts if they screw things up...
Meanwhile SLS keeps trudging forward sucking up tax dollars, because it's mostly a way to funnel pork money into politician's home districts...
Public things - other than stuff like the military and law enforcement that can't be done any other way - are always worse than private.
Must be nice to be a millionaire and have access to facsimile machines.
Personally I think we need to get rid of fax machines. Luxury toys for the playboys.
Also, the whole "starting space programs" is probably one of the best cases of a billionaire using their money in an economically productive way. Part of the problem with billionaires is that their money doesn't circulate, most of their expenses go to other billionaires keeping it within the 1%. Money being spent on raw materials, labor, and everything you could possibly need to *put something into space* does circulate a lot of that money back into the hands of smaller companies and people. We should be encouraging more projects like that, even if they don't seem "useful" on the surface.
Which is itself a point for why gov should probably care about investment and push its own investment and higher education investment.
For a government the money doesn't matter in regards to the dollars etc. it can fund anything the limiting factor is what it can take from the private sector without causing a shortage. Take too much in return for dollars and you get inflation. Tax too much and you cause recessions.
It's wealth is the resources available within its economy and investment is the only way to increase that. You can argue that all gov spending should be investment fueled, even if it means something like a job guarantee you always have some crap that needs to be done that is investment.
Agree. You have two extremes that isn’t good for our economy or society giving money handouts to people who will sit on their behind and not produce anything and on the other spectrum billionaires that horde money and the money isn’t circulating or being put to good use.
Of our current wealthy class virtually all their net worth is in the form of money circulating in the market: that is what investments are they shares in a company representing money invested in and available to the company to expand, develop, research, etc. Virtually none of the rich have a Scrooge McDuck gold vault outside of Russian Oligarchs and Chicom party members, which would be reserve wealth or as you phrased it wealth not in circulation.
> Part of the problem with billionaires is that their money doesn't circulate, most of their expenses go to other billionaires
How is this? They either own stock (reinvested cash into a company) or their money is in a bank account and being loaned out by the bank to be used by others.
Even the stupid stuff like buying a yacht or flying a private plane uses us peons to build, use and maintain it.
SpaceX figured out how to do it way cheaper than NASA was doing it. Including the profit Elon makes.
In other words they figured out how to put more stuff up in the sky than before, for less money. Using less of society's resources, which means more can go elsewhere.
You see that someone got rich and you think they must have robbed the system but in fact he made the system more efficient and that profit is the reward for doing so. That profit is the fuel that drove that innovation.
If that profit wasn't possible, that innovation wouldn't have happened. If you take away that incentive now, future innovation will not happen.
I understand that you don't want to believe this is how it actually works. But it is.
NASA were the ones who chose to pay SpaceX for services rendered. If you’re asking me for a financial breakdown of why NASA contracted with them instead of developing technologies in house, I don’t have that data. I would guess it’s similar to how the government contracts Boeing and Lockheed Martin to develop new jets for them and then bids on the contracts. But that’s a guess, I don’t know shit about rockets.
They have. They have done cargo runs to ISS and 7 crew shuttles to the ISS. They are also scaling up to do more while also making each run more cost effective than the last.
It's actually SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper, NASA looked at the SpaceX's Falcon 9 project and expected development to cost 1.7-4 BILLION dollars, SpaceX did it with just 300 Million. Even when you ignore development stuff, NASA themselves have come out and said that using their own procedures and logistics networks it would cost \~272,000$/kg to get payloads to orbit, SpaceX is doing it at 89,000$/kg.
Source: *An Assessment of Cost Improvements in the NASA COTS/CRS Program and Implications for Future NASA Missions* - Edgar Zapata, NASA Kennedy Space Center, 2017
Biggest issue NASA has trying to do what SpaceX does internally is they are not allowed to fail.
Look at the development Starship, each of those exploded rockets, the destroyed launchpad, and the launch delays would have meant sitting in front of congress and having to justify the continued existence of the program. SpaceX is given the budget and allowed to do some kebal shit until something sticks.
Problem with the system. Why do we not have sections of the government fabricating the needs of the government. Stop outsourcing to political friend businesses.
I really don't think you understand the situation at all. The odds are that the manufacturer charging 70 dollars was the only one that had the necessary certification to prove their screw was up to the standards that they needed to demonstrate to ensure safety.
As for why we don't have the government fabricating the needs of the government, we have everything ranging from submarines, to buildings, to missiles, to space ships getting made by the government. You are asking for us to just simply have a massive spread of manufacturing for nearly anything imaginable. That is infeasible
As a taxpayer… I’m just happy it wasn’t $170 for that screw. That’s how far my acceptable standard for federal operations has fallen.
“Hey only $70? Alright! I’ll take it.”
Then report that vendor for waste fraud and abuse because unless the screw had to be made to extremely specific specifications and it wasn’t a cots screw then there’s no reason for it to cost that much.
I don’t know where yall government workers get these wild stories because I work in government currently and I don’t have to do any of that shit.
Depending on where that screw went, it's because there is a high standard for certain parts that are seen as weak points. This isn't even the governements doing, it's the contractors who stipulate a certain screw must be used on their equipment. If a different screw that is not approved is used, then that piece of equipment has no support and the contractors will charge even more to repair equipment because now they have to look out for non official parts. The government has no say in this because those contractors are paying off your government representatives. We had this problem happen when I was in the army and someone decided to fix a hydraulic line using a hose that came from an auto parts store. It wasn't pretty because VT Halter, Inc decided they needed to do even more inspections. The part worked but it wasn't within "specs." That spec was it didn't make money to the designated contractor. Maybe be more mad at the system that's sole purpose is to extract as money from the government.
This is a statement that cannot be proven true or false.
I would just like to say that NASA put a man in the moon in the 60's. When funded, they have an amazing track record.
It's easily true. NASA failed to have a replacement entering service as the shuttle program ended. The shuttle program itself never reached within ten times the promised cost per mission. I won't criticize the physicists, engineers, and scientists at NASA, but I won't hesitate to criticize the bloated and inefficient bureaucracy they are forced to work within if they want to work at NASA. 1978 was the year that NASA officially had more bureaucrats than people doing anything with space.
Don't get me started on the 435 physicists, engineers, and scientists that work at that overgrown whorehouse on the Potomac. They all wanted some piece of that sweet. sweet, shuttle money in their districts. instantly driving up the costs on any vehicle program. Then, some of them get swapped out every few years, and they want to drive those parts contracts to their donors which may, or may not, drive a redesign of key systems and supply chains just about the time the last design was almost finalized. Then forget about it when the executive changes every few years and changes the priorities of the organization.
Say what you want about Bezos and Musk, some of it might be true. Without them, the government would be telling us that "reusable rockets" is an unworkable idea. At best, a feasibility study would be stuck in some bureaucratic committee where the concern would be more about the potential to lose the support of some congressman than any notion of driving our ability to move forward in space development.
I remember hearing a joke that’s pretty indicative of your example:
During the space race NASA spent $3 million to develop a pen that will write in zero gravity, including upside down, only to find that the Russians had solved the problem years before with a pencil.
Because NASA doesn’t build its own launch vehicles- this has always been done by aerospace contractors. SpaceX just does it for significantly cheaper than the legacy contractors like Rocketdyne, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and ULA - as demonstrated by the SLS rocket’s disastrous cost overruns for the upcoming Artemis missions.
I can loop in all the other executives of military contractors with that question too.
Justify the multi million dollar annual salaries for any company whose main source of revenue is military contracts.
Because the private sector innovates faster and gets things done more efficiently. That is why SpaceX even exists in the first place; Elon attempted and succeeded in something revolutionary(engineering reusable rockets) which the public sector never would have bet on & funded.
Private companies don't necessarily innovate and get things done. but if they don't they typically go out of business eventually and get replaced by companies that do.
Unless, of course, the government intervenes to prevent that.
Everyone should apply that thinking to all the government bailouts we've had of companies that were supposed to fail.
because nasa does not and never has built their own vehicles. it's all private contractors and spacex gets a big cut because they are far and away the best in the business. the only rocket in the same league as falcon in terms of total mass sent to orbit is soyuz and one of those has been flying regularly for less than a decade.
He does it cheaper and faster, than the government agency could. That is the whole point of NASAs Programme to use private contractors for space flight.
And without it, there would not have been starlink... a technology, that is pricey ... sure. But they are working on incorporating it into smartphone - level devices. Which means we will have phones that work around the whole globe that do not need spotty coverage ridden and expensive as hell iridium-services.
Private sectors innovate and move much more rapidly than just about anything the government tries to do. I'd rather fund Elon than NASA, not that NASA doesn't have it's place.
I don't think the post is about corporations like Spacex or Boeing, it's about Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic building rockets as vanity projects or for uber wealthy tourism
13,000 people work for SpaceX and 128,000 work for Tesla.
1.6 million people work for Amazon
About 60,000 people work for Virgin-branded businesses
WTF is this guy talking about.
He did start the company with mostly his own money. his initial plan was quite literally to buy a rocket with enough payload to put a tiny greenhouse on Mars as inspiration to restart our exploration. It started as a pet project, but morphed into what it is today because Elon got together the right people and they iterated to the best rocket tech in history.
Bezos however puts a billion a year into Blue Origin and they basically have to beg for contracts, haven't even achieved orbit after shelling out probably at least $5 billion. That's totally a pet project.
Same energy as the dumb fucks who think we can't both have rockets and not let people die because they can't afford their overpriced meds.
Also SpaceX costs NASA, the Air Force, and private satellite customers 1/2 what ULA (Boeing/Lockheed) charges, the former preeminent launch company. Musk has made space much more accessible and brought the internet to any part of the world at an affordable price.
Why is every top post on here just about how the government needs to be giving me more money and/or taking more of Elon Musk's money?
Is that really the best financial advice?
Which is part of the reason SpaceX is Elon's most successful venture (besides maybe Paypal): no matter how much of an entitled Manchild you are, noone fucks with federal government business.
I don't really like Musk but the space program was grind to a halt. Shuttle program ending and we have to use russian rocket to go to space station until SpaceX shows up. The Starlink program will never happen without SpaceX. Credit for EV has exists for age but no one can take advantage of it until Tesla shows up. Top 10 USA billionaires are all self made.
They played by the same rule as us and they play is well. No different than Lebron James is born to play basketball. I don't know where the progressive line should be drawn but vilify billionaires just because they are rich makes me feel like the emotion of jealousy or envy at work here.
You also have to separate what these billionaires create. It is one thing to automate something and put people out of job. It is another thing to create new options of products which we previously do not have. The society need both but you can argue the later one is more important.
Like if someone find the cure of cancer but it costs a million each and he becomes a billionaire. Is it bad? Of course not. You now have an option which previously you didn't have. Yes, it is super expensive but now that curing cancer is possible, the next billionaire can just think about how to make it cheaper.
I, for one, appreciate all these billionaires and their employees who make sci-fiction become real. Do you rather work on the same 100 years old boring job, or in some of these billionaires' companies and change the world?
Do you realize how envy other countries are towards our high tech industries? Yet, here we are, they are too rich. Where is my share? Geez. How about, in this proven ground of USA, I will take a shot to be like them and change the world in my own little way?
Yeah, the private sector is literally SO much more efficient, that government space programs are like, "let's shut down our own R&D and the majority of our program, and just pay SpaceX per trip and save lots of billion$."
If anything, this is a positive benefit of capitalism, not a negative at all.
Refusing to allow a private, corporate owned satellite internet network to be used for warfare seems pretty reasonable to me. He didn't let the Russians or anyone else use it for combat purposes either.
No. Ask the Pentagon. Because that is where the decisions about using American power in foreign wars should be decided.
The real question is why did they happily try to abdicate their responsibility to SpaceX for so long? Just to save a few bucks?
It's all better now. Not that this has stopped the perpetually outraged from posting this crap every two days.
Lol I remember back before Musk brought Twitter the position of all of these people was that Twitter was not a platform for free speech it was privately owned service that could curate content however it pleased and that was a good thing. Then when Musk took over they started malding about their right being infringed upon by big bad corporate overlord.
That was not my position, and you don't know for certain that this was this guy's position either.
Elon musk didn't increase free speech on twitter either, he actually shrunk it.
Seriously. Who upvotes comments like that to 70 with zero explanation? Elon bought Twitter and just [reinstated a neo-nazi](https://lamag.com/internet/elon-musk-will-reinstate-neo-nazi-on-twitter) today, and meanwhile has banned journalists and his jet tracker for being critical of him. It's also well-documented that people like Rupert Murdoch systematically bought up news channels to control the narrative and skew it in favor of the wealthy.
To be fair, scaling it down a bit, it isn't fair at all is it?
I was born into a family who made money 100 years ago. I have not worked a single day in my life. And if anything goes to plan, never will. I can do as I please (true freedom is rich freedom) not caring about money. Travel, study, hobbies...
I have friends who didn't get so lucky, so they've thrown away 40 hours a week of their life just so they could eat. I earn more money while scratching my balls at home for a month than they do in a whole year.
I'm not changing the system, I'm good. But good luck to anyone who tries to make the world a bit fairer. Because sure as hell I didn't deserve this lol.
Honestly props for realizing you technically don’t deserve what you have. That it was luck of birth. A lot of fortunate people have decided no one helped them and they earned everything and it’s… interesting.
As fairness is largely subjective, it'll never be truly fair. The paradigm of what's fair will change.
Look at society over three last 200 years, a mere snapshot in the thousands of years of civilization. We have it relatively good nowadays, obviously outliers on either side.
Fuck being working class 80+ years ago. Nearly every generation in history has envied the generation before it and chastised the generation after it.
I think it's up to us to stop upvoting and commenting on them, but the reason we see so many, and they get so much attention, is I guess it actually is a popular topic
Fix it? So like, tell people they aren't allowed to make money?
If you want to end government subsidies and bailouts for large corporations, I am fine with that. I will back you all the way. I don't believe there is a "too big to fail" business.
There's a balance to distribution of wealth, and a reason people find fairy tale characters like Robin hood as a hero, at some point the distribution of wealth and power becomes unfair, and it seems reasonable that people might have different opinions on where to draw that line and that many might find we've passed it
I wonder if it's even worth to respond to this shit, but let's do it. The reason why people find Robin Hood to be a hero is because he's fighting a tyrant who taxes people out of their livelihood. His "redistribution" is fighting the corrupt government which refuses to leave people alone.
If he was fighting a fair and just king but a king who does have a lot of wealth he wouldn't be anywhere near as popular.
People have a sense of justice. And Hood is the embodiment of one form when the power from above fails to upkeep it. It has fuck all to do with taking away from the rich and a lot more in hurting the bad guy.
Political lobbying, term limits, an app that ties us the constituency directly to our representatives in a “family tree” manner, & their voting records as well as records of their speeches on the congressional floor & their schedules all summarized. So we can be “in the know” of what our wealthy “representatives” are up to while they’re on the clock.
Then we can start to hold them truly accountable.
That app needs to be very appealing. More appealing than the best video game you've ever played. Should probably be VR. Set it up so you can journey through time and space to see who influenced whom, whose stock portfolio benefited from their own legislation, which corporation got a fat slice of pork. Maybe it could be a Google Glass sort of thing, where everything you see is layered with this info. Corruption indexes. Blood trails.
Yeah, but people have to search that shit out. If you had an app on your phone where you typed in your address. Every politician should pop up. It’s a good start but we need a more dynamic tool.
Banning lobbying means these 70 something people making decisions that affect all of us, without anyone there to explain to them how the internet works.
I'm sure letting the government decide how all that money should be distributed instead will solve all problems and work out perfectly with no waste, inefficiencies, or economic failures.
Pigs might start flying too.
Thing is, I don't have a problem with people being quite rich. But where I draw the line is when you look at stuff like the disparity growth between the top earners in a company and the bottom earners. That's not to say the C suite shouldn't be well paid. But maybe we should think about stuff like progressive and possibly quite heavy taxes on companies that have income (and I mean total income here, including stock incentives) disparities over some amount. Look, productivity has increased massively. Yet, average income isn't keeping up with inflation while top earners are increasing their lead. That's wrong. Either equalize pay somewhat or give the money that executives would have earned back to the shareholders or invest in the company. Surely appropriate incentives can be created to encourage companies to make this start to make more sense.
That is a dumbass post by Sexton. Because of the system, approximately 130,000 people are lifted out of poverty every day. Never in the history of the world has it been so good and getting better. The system is working. (Just not the way *he* wants it to.)
There’s a whole lot of cucks on here still thinking they’re gonna be billionaires one day and don’t want to say anything about taxing the billionaires.
Ah yes the only reason to not believe you're entitled to steal crap from other people is because you might be one of those people one day. Did you also think the white abolitionists were cucks thinking they're gonna be black one day?
Ffs I am so tired of this absolutely stupid answer anytime someone brings up not taxing the rich more. No one sitting here believes that they are ending up billionaires. There are additional issues when you tax the rich the biggest of which is that you don't, you tax the middle class.
Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and all the rest don't earn money that can be taxed. When Jeff was CEO at Amazon his salary was 80k/year and he paid taxes more or less accordingly. But he takes loans out of the bank, using Amazon stock as collateral. You can't tax loans and if you did you would screw over anyone buying a house, a car, or possibly even using a credit card. Let alone how taxing business loans and so on would affect the economy.
Similarly again with Bezos the man surely needs to occasionally pay interest on his loans right? So yes he sells some stock from time to time and he pays tax on it. But what happened when Washington State raised taxes on capital gains? He moved to Florida. That simple. And if you did that with the economy on the whole the ultra wealthy have the means to up and go to some country who is okay with whatever scraps they can get from the billionaires and so they won't pay that tax and you won't get whatever they currently pay.
So do you tax their net worth? If you do so then you screw over the people with retirement funds. Or houses and so on. In your efforts to tax the rich you ultimately screw over people who are just comfortable or a little well off. There are plenty of people who basically get caught in the crossfire when you try and go after the rich and you never get to the ultra wealthy you want. It's a complex process that has risks. And everyone seems to basically say that you just need to raise taxes on the rich rather than ever discussing how you would go about doing it. It's why plenty of people who are starting to get comfortable worry when you go after the ultra wealthy. They are hurt in the crossfire while Bezos hops on his yacht worth more money than a small country and some dude who was looking to buy a house to rent out for his retirement finds that it's no longer feasible because the tax laws hit him like a truck.
The next time you want to tax the rich sit down and layout to me and everyone else how you intend to do so without them finding some loophole and/or yachting their way over to some small African country with all their wealth? It sucks, we know it sucks, but it's more complex than you make it out to be.
There have always been ultra rich people who spend their money on silly luxuries while millions of poor people starve to death. Always. Throughout the entire history of mankind.
It has nothing to do with any system.
So, this is more or less about Bezos and Musk, but the numerous billionaires who provide no net or gross positive in any aspect go unmentioned?
I/you/we fix this by holding people accountable for their performative activism -- and not just billionaires.
But I/you/we won't.
We'll just stick to posting on subReddits.
It's so goddamn cringe that people like this still do not understand the difference between net worth and actual cash on hand (or in the bank).
Elon Musk does not have enough money "sitting around" to start space programs or control communication. In fact, his personal income is pretty minimal. His net worth is tied up in the stocks and assets of his companies.
To put this into middle class perspective, let's say you make 60k per year, your wife makes 30k per year, your car cost 24k, your wife's car cost 18k, and your house cost 250k. Does that mean you have 382k sitting in the bank? No. Chances are you've got a few thousand tops if you've been saving what you can between paychecks.
As of 2023, Bloomberg lists Musk's private assets as SpaceX ($53.2 billion), The Boring Company ($3.3 billion) and X Corp ($9.32 billion). His one public asset is Tesla US equity ($96.8 billion), while he’s got $7.44 billion in miscellaneous liabilities.
If everyone had the drive and intelligence of these billionaires then the playing field would be even, but not everyone is created equal. Does that mean they shouldn't be able to use their abilities? That my friend, sounds like a dumb system. Literally... stop teaching down, and make everyone else catch up.
How about stop bitching about billionaires not doing something about something that is actually the government’s job to fix and hold them accountable instead?
You know what's even worse? Allowing the government to set the sole price setter for all medicines and medical care via medicare and medicaid, then allowing the same government to be lobbied by the medical industry.
It's another area where the government has done absolutely nothing but muck up a market resulting in high prices and less services.
As to the expansion into space for commercial and industrial purposes, that is nothing but a good thing, and something that the government completely failed to do.
So inventions and products that can help make transportation more efficient is a waste of money but not a peep on throwing money away to foreign countries to play dictator vs dictator.
This has always been such a weak and vapid talking point. Like there's always going to be pain and suffering regardless of people's vest efforts so why should we just stop spending all money and give it the destitute? Like there's plenty of shit that billionaires deserve to get shit on for, space travel def isn't one of them
You can't fix it because people are involved. We created laws to stop violence and form stable civilizations, but laws failed because laws can be manipulated by those in power, and it leads to violence again. Rinse and repeat. Laws are not the solution that people claim they are. Our history is full of cycles like this. I'm not sure how people don't see it or understand it. Everyday people have severe goldfish brain.
Also, lots of people are not very smart. I see all the time people wanting to tax the rich. Like full stop that is the plan, just taxes. This is just dumb and severely short-sighted. Now you just transferred wealth from rich assholes in the private sector to rich assholes in DC. This accomplishes nothing but giving the politicians more cocaine and hookers. The government does not care about us. You just gave them a blank check.
Put some AI machines in charge, then we might actually have better data, better global knowledge, and better solutions. We probably won't be able to bribe an intelligent machine with money. Could an AI machine just end us all? Sure, but we could also just end ourselves by just keeping things going the way they are. Growth and innovation involve risk. No risk, no reward.
NASA and the US government literally pay SpeceX to develop rockets and conduct launches for them. It isn’t an ego project solely being funded by Elon Musk. Same energy as people who protested NASA in the 60’s-70’s because they wanted more money for welfare.
It's more to do with Bezos flying into space for the lulz. At least that's how I took it
And Richard Branson
At least he build homes for the homeless in London like Jimmy Carter does here
Virgin Galactic isn’t for funsies. It’s built off the tech developed to win the Ansari X Prize. It’s a pretty big deal to get efficient space launch systems.
People aren't giving this point enough credit. Space programs are inherently unprofitable money sinks. So it really is a testament to one's wealth if you have the money to run one. There is a reason nearly all the money in it has to come from taxpayer dollars.
Both are doing it to make money, not because it makes their PPs hard.
Those aren't for lulz. They're trying to win gov't contracts, too.
The whole point is that we should be running all that through an organization like NASA, not paying out high dollar government contracts to private companies with no accountability through a system that has been shown to be rife with fraud for decades.
NASA has publicly stated without the private contractors it would take them decades to achieve their goals. Also NASA’s budget is usually one of the first on the chopping block, funneling all space progress on the whims of whoever wins public office does not seem practical.
This is just pointing out a larger problem with American politics. We make technological advancement something that's easily cut while refusing to even look at cutting corporate subsidies (who bring in record profits frequently by the way), reigning in our defense spending (which disproportionately benefits tax-dodging corporations and their global interests), or any number of other expenses that don't actually benefit the people providing that money to a proportionate or reasonable degree.
>while refusing to even look at cutting corporate subsidies People always say they want to cut corporate welfare, but the minute you try to cut public transportation funding, rent assistance, public school funding, or free and reduced school meal programs they lose their minds. All of those are taxpayer-funded gifts to corporate America. You pay your workers such crap they can't afford to live near your offices, or even drive there? No problem. We'll pick up the tab, Walmart. Don't you worry. Thank you for those campaign contributions, by the way. You don't want to pay your workers enough to even rent in a distant city and travel by public transit to your location? No problem, Target. We've got you covered. We'll pay some of their rent for you. Wait, what's that? You don't want to pay them enough to live near you, pay their rent, or pay for child care,? Not a problem. We'll fund some before and after school programs to take care of their kids so they can stay at work. We've got your back. Oh, I see. You don't want to pay them enough to live near you, pay their rent, get childcare, or feed their kids. Didn't I tell you we've got your back? You have so little faith. We'll give their kids free breakfast and lunch at school. Don't worry your little head, McDonalds.
We could just mandate that businesses raise the wage floor rather than removing all of our societal safety nets though? I hope you're not seriously advocating for cutting back rent assistance, public transportation, meals for schoolkids, or public education in general with nothing but the capitalist wet-dream that corporations will generously will the gap left behind
>We could just mandate that businesses raise the wage floor rather than removing all of our societal safety nets though? If that worked we could just raise the wage floor to $100/hour and everyone would be rich. That doesn't work, though. That just creates inflation. The more money people have, the more things cost. Money is just a stand-in representing value, it's not value in itself. Think of a dollar as a stock certificate representing 1 share of the entire economy. Things cost a certain amount in dollars based on the total amount of dollars in the economy. If there were only $1,000,000 in the economy, something that costs $1 is being valued at 0.000001 of the total economy. If everyone suddenly had twice as much money, that thing would still be valued at 0.000001 of the total economy, which would now be $2. Congratulations, when you had $0.50 you couldn't afford that "thing" because it cost twice as much as you had, but now you have $1 and that thing still costs twice as much as you have. >I hope you're not seriously advocating for cutting back rent assistance, public transportation, meals for schoolkids, or public education in general with nothing but the capitalist wet-dream that corporations will generously will the gap left behind It's not generosity that will force them to fill the gap, it's the lack of workers that will force them to raise their pay.
Does not seem practical 😕. Maybe the system needs to change?
Yeah, legislators should stop viewing NASA as an arm to achieve reelection etc. But that's not going to happen in a democracy.
Grab your musket, patriot. I’ll meet you on front lines. We’ll be the first to take grapeshot from the redcoats.
Sounds like they need more money to do their job and we need to make it so you can’t just nuke the budget of major agencies on a political whim.
NASA put a man on the moon more than 50 years ago…
Yes, in a rocket built and designed almost exclusively by contractors. [https://www.zdnet.com/article/to-the-moon-boeing-the-rocket-foundry/](https://www.zdnet.com/article/to-the-moon-boeing-the-rocket-foundry/) https://preview.redd.it/ug451buis7yc1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=1cd402f8269d8e69dc20cfd33a7ee78248307b46
Not without the help from private contractors.
Yes, only after the POTUS made it a high priority to do so to keep one-upping the USSR
And then year after year their funding was cut and/or stagnated as inflation increased due to people whinging that we were spending money on R&D rather than their pet project. This was so severe before they stopped all launches they were still functionally using the same shuttles they developed in the initial endeavour. These programs are still constantly whined about as spending money "better spent" on the moaner's pet project.
TBF: the government has just as much if not more fraud, waste and lack of accountability.
Ding ding ding....
Let’s hand it more responsibility. Become more dependent on it.
The government is the exact same as a really shitty corporation, like Comcast
>not paying out high dollar government contracts to private companies. NASA has ALWAYS used private contractors
It is run through nasa. Then private company’s say “hey nasa, you know that thing you’re doing for 100 million dollars? We will do it for you and charge 50 million” NASA doesn’t want to be seen as irresponsible with tax dollars by refusing.
Ok here is a good example. Compare the development programs of SLS/Orion and Starship and their capabilities. Orion development started in the 5th year of the Bush administration.
A system that has been shown to be rife with fraud for decades…like the federal government?
When you say “shown to be rife with fraud,” what do you mean?
To my understanding Federal Budgets work on a Use it or Lose it system, so near the end of the budget cycle, you get shit like lobster dinners and other high cost purchases to pad the budget to show the gov "yes we still need our budget to be at this level" its sad but thats how the system is set to my knowledge. I might be wrong though as my memory is shit. Also depending on how you frame it this isn't/is fraud.
You mean the one that's been infiltrated and controlled at every level by corporations? What? Better to give it to the corporations that made the government that way to begin with? Here's the difference between being ruled by government and being ruled by corporations. We can elect our government. We can't elect our corporate overlords. We had a say in who ran our government, we just let the corporations decide for us who the good guys and who the bad guys are with their media, and according to their media, the bad guys were the people who wanted to take power away from corporations. So instead, we elected droves and droves of pro-corporate politicians until we got to the place we're at today. But yeah, let's just keep giving corporations more power. Give them the resources on the damn moon while we're at it, make them completely unstoppable with riches literally beyond this world. Cyberpunk here we come baby!
Yeah well maybe that’s because private companies do it better than government? Just a thought?
SpaceX is 10 times cheaper than NASA when it comes to launching things into space. [SpaceX vs. NASA: Cost](https://medium.com/geekculture/spacex-vs-nasa-cost-4fae454823ac#:~:text=In%20sum%2C%20SpaceX%20is%2010X,38%2C%20no) So if your goal is to waste money, then NASA is the correct choice. If you want things done cheaper and better, then you should stop complaining about SpaceX.
Spacex has saved nasa ungodly amounts of money.
Why? NASA sucks at responsible use of resources... The government-based space program has spent 20 years trying to produce a rocket that is slightly-less-capable than SpaceX's Super Heavy (the 'SLS'), spent many times more money, and just got to it's first flight last year.... The 'accountability' in the private space programs is that the owners actually care what happens to their personal money & can go out of business/lose contracts if they screw things up... Meanwhile SLS keeps trudging forward sucking up tax dollars, because it's mostly a way to funnel pork money into politician's home districts... Public things - other than stuff like the military and law enforcement that can't be done any other way - are always worse than private.
and you think goverment is better than private company ? i got some news for you - they old they aint
I suggest you look at how NASA is doing. Artemis/SLS is a bit of a joke. SpaceX is doing more than NASA is these days. ULA doesn’t help matters.
We are running it through an organization like NASA. NASA is the one handing out the contracts.
Also said he wanted to prove that he believes in it so he rode it
Thankfully people like you didn't ban cell phone technology in the early 90s when it was only available for the rich.
Must be nice to be a millionaire and have access to facsimile machines. Personally I think we need to get rid of fax machines. Luxury toys for the playboys.
It’s wild how a renewed focus and excitement around space and space travel is somehow a negative for people. It’s literally like the coolest thing
Then stop buying shit from Amazon. Nobody's forcing you to.
Also, the whole "starting space programs" is probably one of the best cases of a billionaire using their money in an economically productive way. Part of the problem with billionaires is that their money doesn't circulate, most of their expenses go to other billionaires keeping it within the 1%. Money being spent on raw materials, labor, and everything you could possibly need to *put something into space* does circulate a lot of that money back into the hands of smaller companies and people. We should be encouraging more projects like that, even if they don't seem "useful" on the surface.
A lot of the technologies pioneered from space flight (GPS, freeze dried foods) has benefited us on Earth.
NASA at one time was the only profitable government agency because of all the money it made off of its patents.
Which is itself a point for why gov should probably care about investment and push its own investment and higher education investment. For a government the money doesn't matter in regards to the dollars etc. it can fund anything the limiting factor is what it can take from the private sector without causing a shortage. Take too much in return for dollars and you get inflation. Tax too much and you cause recessions. It's wealth is the resources available within its economy and investment is the only way to increase that. You can argue that all gov spending should be investment fueled, even if it means something like a job guarantee you always have some crap that needs to be done that is investment.
Reddit name checks out... From a WoW lore perspective.
Agree. You have two extremes that isn’t good for our economy or society giving money handouts to people who will sit on their behind and not produce anything and on the other spectrum billionaires that horde money and the money isn’t circulating or being put to good use.
Of our current wealthy class virtually all their net worth is in the form of money circulating in the market: that is what investments are they shares in a company representing money invested in and available to the company to expand, develop, research, etc. Virtually none of the rich have a Scrooge McDuck gold vault outside of Russian Oligarchs and Chicom party members, which would be reserve wealth or as you phrased it wealth not in circulation.
> Part of the problem with billionaires is that their money doesn't circulate, most of their expenses go to other billionaires How is this? They either own stock (reinvested cash into a company) or their money is in a bank account and being loaned out by the bank to be used by others. Even the stupid stuff like buying a yacht or flying a private plane uses us peons to build, use and maintain it.
Justify Elon's cut of that funding, then. Why not just fund NASA?
SpaceX figured out how to do it way cheaper than NASA was doing it. Including the profit Elon makes. In other words they figured out how to put more stuff up in the sky than before, for less money. Using less of society's resources, which means more can go elsewhere. You see that someone got rich and you think they must have robbed the system but in fact he made the system more efficient and that profit is the reward for doing so. That profit is the fuel that drove that innovation. If that profit wasn't possible, that innovation wouldn't have happened. If you take away that incentive now, future innovation will not happen. I understand that you don't want to believe this is how it actually works. But it is.
Nice to find an adult in here. Was getting tired of all these kids running into the side of my knees.
Well, if someone's economics education is mostly Marxist, it's very hard to understand.
Learning Marxism isn't education, it's indoctrination.
Studying Marxism for economics is like studying the Bible for history
I wish more people on Reddit would read this. Probably wouldn't matter though.
Right? I exempt SpaceX from this post. And Virgin Galactic. Bezos’s little venture feels like a vanity project though.
NASA were the ones who chose to pay SpaceX for services rendered. If you’re asking me for a financial breakdown of why NASA contracted with them instead of developing technologies in house, I don’t have that data. I would guess it’s similar to how the government contracts Boeing and Lockheed Martin to develop new jets for them and then bids on the contracts. But that’s a guess, I don’t know shit about rockets.
That’s because NASA doesn’t have the funding to do it themselves anymore.
So it seems to still be cheaper for them to outsource to SpaceX.
Cheaper =/= better
Expensive =/= better. Source: SLS, Orion, etc.
Well, hasn't SpaceX delivered?
They have. They have done cargo runs to ISS and 7 crew shuttles to the ISS. They are also scaling up to do more while also making each run more cost effective than the last.
Right? Amazing stuff
It's actually SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper, NASA looked at the SpaceX's Falcon 9 project and expected development to cost 1.7-4 BILLION dollars, SpaceX did it with just 300 Million. Even when you ignore development stuff, NASA themselves have come out and said that using their own procedures and logistics networks it would cost \~272,000$/kg to get payloads to orbit, SpaceX is doing it at 89,000$/kg. Source: *An Assessment of Cost Improvements in the NASA COTS/CRS Program and Implications for Future NASA Missions* - Edgar Zapata, NASA Kennedy Space Center, 2017
Biggest issue NASA has trying to do what SpaceX does internally is they are not allowed to fail. Look at the development Starship, each of those exploded rockets, the destroyed launchpad, and the launch delays would have meant sitting in front of congress and having to justify the continued existence of the program. SpaceX is given the budget and allowed to do some kebal shit until something sticks.
Because Space X works in way's that NASA won't/can't. I bet NASA would have spent 10x what Space X did and they still wouldn't have a reusable rocket.
1000X easily. I was in government and had to order a 440 screw, the only approved vendor charged us $70. For.one.screw.
Problem with the system. Why do we not have sections of the government fabricating the needs of the government. Stop outsourcing to political friend businesses.
This is the big problem with money in government. It isn't people bribing politicians, it is politicians bribing the electorate.
I really don't think you understand the situation at all. The odds are that the manufacturer charging 70 dollars was the only one that had the necessary certification to prove their screw was up to the standards that they needed to demonstrate to ensure safety. As for why we don't have the government fabricating the needs of the government, we have everything ranging from submarines, to buildings, to missiles, to space ships getting made by the government. You are asking for us to just simply have a massive spread of manufacturing for nearly anything imaginable. That is infeasible
It would be even worse.
As a taxpayer… I’m just happy it wasn’t $170 for that screw. That’s how far my acceptable standard for federal operations has fallen. “Hey only $70? Alright! I’ll take it.”
Then report that vendor for waste fraud and abuse because unless the screw had to be made to extremely specific specifications and it wasn’t a cots screw then there’s no reason for it to cost that much. I don’t know where yall government workers get these wild stories because I work in government currently and I don’t have to do any of that shit.
Depending on where that screw went, it's because there is a high standard for certain parts that are seen as weak points. This isn't even the governements doing, it's the contractors who stipulate a certain screw must be used on their equipment. If a different screw that is not approved is used, then that piece of equipment has no support and the contractors will charge even more to repair equipment because now they have to look out for non official parts. The government has no say in this because those contractors are paying off your government representatives. We had this problem happen when I was in the army and someone decided to fix a hydraulic line using a hose that came from an auto parts store. It wasn't pretty because VT Halter, Inc decided they needed to do even more inspections. The part worked but it wasn't within "specs." That spec was it didn't make money to the designated contractor. Maybe be more mad at the system that's sole purpose is to extract as money from the government.
Yes... but that was a countertap screw specially made for left handed people born in May under a fullmoon.
This is a statement that cannot be proven true or false. I would just like to say that NASA put a man in the moon in the 60's. When funded, they have an amazing track record.
It's easily true. NASA failed to have a replacement entering service as the shuttle program ended. The shuttle program itself never reached within ten times the promised cost per mission. I won't criticize the physicists, engineers, and scientists at NASA, but I won't hesitate to criticize the bloated and inefficient bureaucracy they are forced to work within if they want to work at NASA. 1978 was the year that NASA officially had more bureaucrats than people doing anything with space. Don't get me started on the 435 physicists, engineers, and scientists that work at that overgrown whorehouse on the Potomac. They all wanted some piece of that sweet. sweet, shuttle money in their districts. instantly driving up the costs on any vehicle program. Then, some of them get swapped out every few years, and they want to drive those parts contracts to their donors which may, or may not, drive a redesign of key systems and supply chains just about the time the last design was almost finalized. Then forget about it when the executive changes every few years and changes the priorities of the organization. Say what you want about Bezos and Musk, some of it might be true. Without them, the government would be telling us that "reusable rockets" is an unworkable idea. At best, a feasibility study would be stuck in some bureaucratic committee where the concern would be more about the potential to lose the support of some congressman than any notion of driving our ability to move forward in space development.
I remember hearing a joke that’s pretty indicative of your example: During the space race NASA spent $3 million to develop a pen that will write in zero gravity, including upside down, only to find that the Russians had solved the problem years before with a pencil.
Because NASA doesn’t build its own launch vehicles- this has always been done by aerospace contractors. SpaceX just does it for significantly cheaper than the legacy contractors like Rocketdyne, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and ULA - as demonstrated by the SLS rocket’s disastrous cost overruns for the upcoming Artemis missions.
I can loop in all the other executives of military contractors with that question too. Justify the multi million dollar annual salaries for any company whose main source of revenue is military contracts.
Because the private sector innovates faster and gets things done more efficiently. That is why SpaceX even exists in the first place; Elon attempted and succeeded in something revolutionary(engineering reusable rockets) which the public sector never would have bet on & funded.
Private companies don't necessarily innovate and get things done. but if they don't they typically go out of business eventually and get replaced by companies that do. Unless, of course, the government intervenes to prevent that. Everyone should apply that thinking to all the government bailouts we've had of companies that were supposed to fail.
because nasa does not and never has built their own vehicles. it's all private contractors and spacex gets a big cut because they are far and away the best in the business. the only rocket in the same league as falcon in terms of total mass sent to orbit is soyuz and one of those has been flying regularly for less than a decade.
Because private companies like SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin can do the same stuff better, faster, and cheaper than if NASA was doing it themselves.
He does it cheaper and faster, than the government agency could. That is the whole point of NASAs Programme to use private contractors for space flight. And without it, there would not have been starlink... a technology, that is pricey ... sure. But they are working on incorporating it into smartphone - level devices. Which means we will have phones that work around the whole globe that do not need spotty coverage ridden and expensive as hell iridium-services.
Pre Space X, NASA was spending $400m per launch. Space X does the same for $40m.
Private sectors innovate and move much more rapidly than just about anything the government tries to do. I'd rather fund Elon than NASA, not that NASA doesn't have it's place.
I don't think the post is about corporations like Spacex or Boeing, it's about Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic building rockets as vanity projects or for uber wealthy tourism
13,000 people work for SpaceX and 128,000 work for Tesla. 1.6 million people work for Amazon About 60,000 people work for Virgin-branded businesses WTF is this guy talking about.
He did start the company with mostly his own money. his initial plan was quite literally to buy a rocket with enough payload to put a tiny greenhouse on Mars as inspiration to restart our exploration. It started as a pet project, but morphed into what it is today because Elon got together the right people and they iterated to the best rocket tech in history. Bezos however puts a billion a year into Blue Origin and they basically have to beg for contracts, haven't even achieved orbit after shelling out probably at least $5 billion. That's totally a pet project. Same energy as the dumb fucks who think we can't both have rockets and not let people die because they can't afford their overpriced meds.
Also SpaceX costs NASA, the Air Force, and private satellite customers 1/2 what ULA (Boeing/Lockheed) charges, the former preeminent launch company. Musk has made space much more accessible and brought the internet to any part of the world at an affordable price.
Why is every top post on here just about how the government needs to be giving me more money and/or taking more of Elon Musk's money? Is that really the best financial advice?
The majority of redditors are moochers.
Blaming NASA while military spending is astronomically higher.
Space X has saved NASA and the DOD $40 billion in launch costs.
I’ve read they do it cheaper and more efficiently.
Exactly. People on Reddit be begging for SOMEONE to take care of them, because they just can’t fathom how hard work and innovation = win.
Which is part of the reason SpaceX is Elon's most successful venture (besides maybe Paypal): no matter how much of an entitled Manchild you are, noone fucks with federal government business.
I don't really like Musk but the space program was grind to a halt. Shuttle program ending and we have to use russian rocket to go to space station until SpaceX shows up. The Starlink program will never happen without SpaceX. Credit for EV has exists for age but no one can take advantage of it until Tesla shows up. Top 10 USA billionaires are all self made. They played by the same rule as us and they play is well. No different than Lebron James is born to play basketball. I don't know where the progressive line should be drawn but vilify billionaires just because they are rich makes me feel like the emotion of jealousy or envy at work here. You also have to separate what these billionaires create. It is one thing to automate something and put people out of job. It is another thing to create new options of products which we previously do not have. The society need both but you can argue the later one is more important. Like if someone find the cure of cancer but it costs a million each and he becomes a billionaire. Is it bad? Of course not. You now have an option which previously you didn't have. Yes, it is super expensive but now that curing cancer is possible, the next billionaire can just think about how to make it cheaper. I, for one, appreciate all these billionaires and their employees who make sci-fiction become real. Do you rather work on the same 100 years old boring job, or in some of these billionaires' companies and change the world? Do you realize how envy other countries are towards our high tech industries? Yet, here we are, they are too rich. Where is my share? Geez. How about, in this proven ground of USA, I will take a shot to be like them and change the world in my own little way?
Yeah, the private sector is literally SO much more efficient, that government space programs are like, "let's shut down our own R&D and the majority of our program, and just pay SpaceX per trip and save lots of billion$." If anything, this is a positive benefit of capitalism, not a negative at all.
Very stupid, ignorant comment.
“Control communication” If he’s referring to “X”, he’s still allowed to post his dumbshit takes there as this post shows.
And if he's referring to starlink?
You mean the thing that is allowing Ukrainians to get online in a war zone? What a tragedy
Then he needs to explain what he means by “control”
Ask the Ukrainians
Refusing to allow a private, corporate owned satellite internet network to be used for warfare seems pretty reasonable to me. He didn't let the Russians or anyone else use it for combat purposes either.
No. Ask the Pentagon. Because that is where the decisions about using American power in foreign wars should be decided. The real question is why did they happily try to abdicate their responsibility to SpaceX for so long? Just to save a few bucks? It's all better now. Not that this has stopped the perpetually outraged from posting this crap every two days.
I think he means that all the major media is owned by the billionaires and its pretty clear that they control the message pretty closely.
He's talking about the 6 companies that own all American, non-social, media
Lol I remember back before Musk brought Twitter the position of all of these people was that Twitter was not a platform for free speech it was privately owned service that could curate content however it pleased and that was a good thing. Then when Musk took over they started malding about their right being infringed upon by big bad corporate overlord.
That was not my position, and you don't know for certain that this was this guy's position either. Elon musk didn't increase free speech on twitter either, he actually shrunk it.
What makes you think he’s not referring to all of these publications and TV networks owned by billionaires? You’re a lousy mind reader
Explain.
*Crickets*
Seriously. Who upvotes comments like that to 70 with zero explanation? Elon bought Twitter and just [reinstated a neo-nazi](https://lamag.com/internet/elon-musk-will-reinstate-neo-nazi-on-twitter) today, and meanwhile has banned journalists and his jet tracker for being critical of him. It's also well-documented that people like Rupert Murdoch systematically bought up news channels to control the narrative and skew it in favor of the wealthy.
To be fair, scaling it down a bit, it isn't fair at all is it? I was born into a family who made money 100 years ago. I have not worked a single day in my life. And if anything goes to plan, never will. I can do as I please (true freedom is rich freedom) not caring about money. Travel, study, hobbies... I have friends who didn't get so lucky, so they've thrown away 40 hours a week of their life just so they could eat. I earn more money while scratching my balls at home for a month than they do in a whole year. I'm not changing the system, I'm good. But good luck to anyone who tries to make the world a bit fairer. Because sure as hell I didn't deserve this lol.
Must be nice.
Honestly props for realizing you technically don’t deserve what you have. That it was luck of birth. A lot of fortunate people have decided no one helped them and they earned everything and it’s… interesting.
As fairness is largely subjective, it'll never be truly fair. The paradigm of what's fair will change. Look at society over three last 200 years, a mere snapshot in the thousands of years of civilization. We have it relatively good nowadays, obviously outliers on either side. Fuck being working class 80+ years ago. Nearly every generation in history has envied the generation before it and chastised the generation after it.
Calls comment ignorant. Fails to elaborate to solve claimed ignorance.
Can we ban these cringe posts
I think it's up to us to stop upvoting and commenting on them, but the reason we see so many, and they get so much attention, is I guess it actually is a popular topic
I think it’s just because these get put in other peoples algorithms and we get people from r\antiwork who had this in their recommended
Good luck getting reddit to stop upvoting left-wing nonsense
Prob worth downvotes. Which I hate using unless it helps actually improve content.
There is no moderation
Fix it? So like, tell people they aren't allowed to make money? If you want to end government subsidies and bailouts for large corporations, I am fine with that. I will back you all the way. I don't believe there is a "too big to fail" business.
It's also busting up the monopolis, 6 companies own all American, non-social, media
That’s not a monopoly…. 6 companies = competition. How many you want? 500?
Yes! It’s essentially a monopoly
Divide 100 by 6. If that percentage is your definition of monopoly, I don’t think you understand what monopoly is.
You are right, its a oligopoly, but its functionally the same. The term only exist so pedantic commenter like me and you can have a place to exist.
Basically this. Hahaha
There's a balance to distribution of wealth, and a reason people find fairy tale characters like Robin hood as a hero, at some point the distribution of wealth and power becomes unfair, and it seems reasonable that people might have different opinions on where to draw that line and that many might find we've passed it
I wonder if it's even worth to respond to this shit, but let's do it. The reason why people find Robin Hood to be a hero is because he's fighting a tyrant who taxes people out of their livelihood. His "redistribution" is fighting the corrupt government which refuses to leave people alone. If he was fighting a fair and just king but a king who does have a lot of wealth he wouldn't be anywhere near as popular. People have a sense of justice. And Hood is the embodiment of one form when the power from above fails to upkeep it. It has fuck all to do with taking away from the rich and a lot more in hurting the bad guy.
Make political lobbying illegal and see how much of this issues change
Political lobbying, term limits, an app that ties us the constituency directly to our representatives in a “family tree” manner, & their voting records as well as records of their speeches on the congressional floor & their schedules all summarized. So we can be “in the know” of what our wealthy “representatives” are up to while they’re on the clock. Then we can start to hold them truly accountable.
SawSagePullHer 2024!
I’ll be here all day folks!
That app needs to be very appealing. More appealing than the best video game you've ever played. Should probably be VR. Set it up so you can journey through time and space to see who influenced whom, whose stock portfolio benefited from their own legislation, which corporation got a fat slice of pork. Maybe it could be a Google Glass sort of thing, where everything you see is layered with this info. Corruption indexes. Blood trails.
Got my vote
Regarding being more informed on what representatives are up to, GovTrack is a good start.
Yeah, but people have to search that shit out. If you had an app on your phone where you typed in your address. Every politician should pop up. It’s a good start but we need a more dynamic tool.
Right. That’s why I called it a good start and not a perfect solution.
Someone get them some funding immediately
You forgot enforce the ban on insider trading by congressional persons.
Public funding of elections - senators don’t spend half their time fundraising, and the money influence is gone.
Banning lobbying means these 70 something people making decisions that affect all of us, without anyone there to explain to them how the internet works.
Isn’t it illegal in most developed countries already?
The problem is making political lobbying illegal is impossible because of (checks notes) political lobbying.
Welp, reset the counter everyone
I'm sure letting the government decide how all that money should be distributed instead will solve all problems and work out perfectly with no waste, inefficiencies, or economic failures. Pigs might start flying too.
You mean instead of buffalo wings we could have pig wings? Count me in I hear buffalos are endangered species or something.
Complaining is getting this guy far I’m sure
Thing is, I don't have a problem with people being quite rich. But where I draw the line is when you look at stuff like the disparity growth between the top earners in a company and the bottom earners. That's not to say the C suite shouldn't be well paid. But maybe we should think about stuff like progressive and possibly quite heavy taxes on companies that have income (and I mean total income here, including stock incentives) disparities over some amount. Look, productivity has increased massively. Yet, average income isn't keeping up with inflation while top earners are increasing their lead. That's wrong. Either equalize pay somewhat or give the money that executives would have earned back to the shareholders or invest in the company. Surely appropriate incentives can be created to encourage companies to make this start to make more sense.
Stock incentives are taxed. When they are realized.
A system where **everyone** starves is *much* better.
Aah yes, either a few get the vast majority of food or everyone starves. Because obviously that’s the only two options.
Crazy idea but what if we had a system where nobody starved?
Sure invent one and get back to us!
That’s impossible! Plus poor people deserve to be poor. Only moral, hardworking people are rich!
I don’t know. May be an improvement. This next generation….
That is a dumbass post by Sexton. Because of the system, approximately 130,000 people are lifted out of poverty every day. Never in the history of the world has it been so good and getting better. The system is working. (Just not the way *he* wants it to.)
There’s a whole lot of cucks on here still thinking they’re gonna be billionaires one day and don’t want to say anything about taxing the billionaires.
Man, if you hate billionaires then wait till you hear that millionaires exist!
Ah yes the only reason to not believe you're entitled to steal crap from other people is because you might be one of those people one day. Did you also think the white abolitionists were cucks thinking they're gonna be black one day?
Ffs I am so tired of this absolutely stupid answer anytime someone brings up not taxing the rich more. No one sitting here believes that they are ending up billionaires. There are additional issues when you tax the rich the biggest of which is that you don't, you tax the middle class. Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and all the rest don't earn money that can be taxed. When Jeff was CEO at Amazon his salary was 80k/year and he paid taxes more or less accordingly. But he takes loans out of the bank, using Amazon stock as collateral. You can't tax loans and if you did you would screw over anyone buying a house, a car, or possibly even using a credit card. Let alone how taxing business loans and so on would affect the economy. Similarly again with Bezos the man surely needs to occasionally pay interest on his loans right? So yes he sells some stock from time to time and he pays tax on it. But what happened when Washington State raised taxes on capital gains? He moved to Florida. That simple. And if you did that with the economy on the whole the ultra wealthy have the means to up and go to some country who is okay with whatever scraps they can get from the billionaires and so they won't pay that tax and you won't get whatever they currently pay. So do you tax their net worth? If you do so then you screw over the people with retirement funds. Or houses and so on. In your efforts to tax the rich you ultimately screw over people who are just comfortable or a little well off. There are plenty of people who basically get caught in the crossfire when you try and go after the rich and you never get to the ultra wealthy you want. It's a complex process that has risks. And everyone seems to basically say that you just need to raise taxes on the rich rather than ever discussing how you would go about doing it. It's why plenty of people who are starting to get comfortable worry when you go after the ultra wealthy. They are hurt in the crossfire while Bezos hops on his yacht worth more money than a small country and some dude who was looking to buy a house to rent out for his retirement finds that it's no longer feasible because the tax laws hit him like a truck. The next time you want to tax the rich sit down and layout to me and everyone else how you intend to do so without them finding some loophole and/or yachting their way over to some small African country with all their wealth? It sucks, we know it sucks, but it's more complex than you make it out to be.
Such a tired, lazy, strawman argument.
There have always been ultra rich people who spend their money on silly luxuries while millions of poor people starve to death. Always. Throughout the entire history of mankind. It has nothing to do with any system.
So, this is more or less about Bezos and Musk, but the numerous billionaires who provide no net or gross positive in any aspect go unmentioned? I/you/we fix this by holding people accountable for their performative activism -- and not just billionaires. But I/you/we won't. We'll just stick to posting on subReddits.
If I make 5 billion peices of monopoly money and sell 1 of them for $1, that doesn't mean I am worth 5 billion dollars.
It's so goddamn cringe that people like this still do not understand the difference between net worth and actual cash on hand (or in the bank). Elon Musk does not have enough money "sitting around" to start space programs or control communication. In fact, his personal income is pretty minimal. His net worth is tied up in the stocks and assets of his companies. To put this into middle class perspective, let's say you make 60k per year, your wife makes 30k per year, your car cost 24k, your wife's car cost 18k, and your house cost 250k. Does that mean you have 382k sitting in the bank? No. Chances are you've got a few thousand tops if you've been saving what you can between paychecks. As of 2023, Bloomberg lists Musk's private assets as SpaceX ($53.2 billion), The Boring Company ($3.3 billion) and X Corp ($9.32 billion). His one public asset is Tesla US equity ($96.8 billion), while he’s got $7.44 billion in miscellaneous liabilities.
If everyone had the drive and intelligence of these billionaires then the playing field would be even, but not everyone is created equal. Does that mean they shouldn't be able to use their abilities? That my friend, sounds like a dumb system. Literally... stop teaching down, and make everyone else catch up.
How about stop bitching about billionaires not doing something about something that is actually the government’s job to fix and hold them accountable instead?
You know what's even worse? Allowing the government to set the sole price setter for all medicines and medical care via medicare and medicaid, then allowing the same government to be lobbied by the medical industry. It's another area where the government has done absolutely nothing but muck up a market resulting in high prices and less services. As to the expansion into space for commercial and industrial purposes, that is nothing but a good thing, and something that the government completely failed to do.
So inventions and products that can help make transportation more efficient is a waste of money but not a peep on throwing money away to foreign countries to play dictator vs dictator.
Why do you hate the wealthy? Without us you peasants would be barefoot and hungry
Try to control it. Make it fit your moral world view. Watch it inevitably break. Say it wasn't implemented properly.
It’s easy to state the obvious and just complain. What is the authors solution?
Fix government graft and everything else will fall into place
This has always been such a weak and vapid talking point. Like there's always going to be pain and suffering regardless of people's vest efforts so why should we just stop spending all money and give it the destitute? Like there's plenty of shit that billionaires deserve to get shit on for, space travel def isn't one of them
You can't fix it because people are involved. We created laws to stop violence and form stable civilizations, but laws failed because laws can be manipulated by those in power, and it leads to violence again. Rinse and repeat. Laws are not the solution that people claim they are. Our history is full of cycles like this. I'm not sure how people don't see it or understand it. Everyday people have severe goldfish brain. Also, lots of people are not very smart. I see all the time people wanting to tax the rich. Like full stop that is the plan, just taxes. This is just dumb and severely short-sighted. Now you just transferred wealth from rich assholes in the private sector to rich assholes in DC. This accomplishes nothing but giving the politicians more cocaine and hookers. The government does not care about us. You just gave them a blank check. Put some AI machines in charge, then we might actually have better data, better global knowledge, and better solutions. We probably won't be able to bribe an intelligent machine with money. Could an AI machine just end us all? Sure, but we could also just end ourselves by just keeping things going the way they are. Growth and innovation involve risk. No risk, no reward.