- cross-posted to:
- WorkReform@europe.pub
- cross-posted to:
- WorkReform@europe.pub
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Yup. Public contracts, grants, and subsidies that could be funding federal agencies are being pocketed by these sex pests.
Public contracts are not the same things as grants and subsidies. They are contracts for services to be rendered, and SpaceX quite frankly won them handily by being fundamentally better and cheaper then the competition.
And most of their funding has come from private investment, and by building and running the Falcon 9 which is by far the cheapest and most reliable way for anyone to get stuff into space at the moment.
You can hate Musk without being blind to the fact that SpaceX is legitimately doing things no one has ever done before with rocketry. The SLS is a traditional rocket that was designed by NASA and built by contractors and it literally costs orders of magnitude more to fly, has never actually flown yet, and at most could fly twice a year. Public ownership is not a magic bullet that makes everything instantly better.
They’ve been allowed to game the system to hoard way more wealth than any single person should have been able to. They were supposed to pay their employees more, charge less to their customers or if all fails pay more taxes. But they didn’t do any of that.
If this was a video game that would be called an “exploit that breaks the gameplay experience for everyone else” and it would have been solved in a patch. But to remain in the same analogy, they are buddies with the game developers so they’re allowed to do anything they want. The only difference is that everyone in the country is forced to play this broken game as it is.
I’ve played fallout for more than 2 decades. How the fuck are we diving face first into every sci-fi dystopia at the same time? Like, there’s hints of star wars, dune, fallout, 1984, the outer worlds, hunger games, Idiocracy etc. I’m hoping cyberpunk 2077 shows up and gives a sliver of a chance.
Because those things were based on the real world and we are very bad at learning from the ever-growing list of mistakes we can’t stop making.
Cyberpunk 2077 is not a good world and does not have a good ending. That world is a horrid, capitalist dystopia. Maybe you should watch Edgerunners if you still can’t figure it out from the game.
The point was that as bad as cyberpunk’s future is, I’m fairly certain ours will be worse in 52 years. At least in their timeline there’s a resistance.
I suppose so? But there are things we can do right now that give us far more than a sliver of a chance. Unfortunately those things are “boring” and not as fashionable, like doing actual research and trusting real experts so it’s rough out there.
The main reason is because people are stupid and get taken advantage of accordingly.
Every time you saw a moron say “they’re a business and they need to make money!” you saw someone lowering their standards to make a rich person richer.
Musk does not do a space race. Not on his money, at least.
Instead, he does it on US taxpayer money, with billion-dollar contracts to get people to Mars by 2025 and other timelines like that. The government employee who approved one of the largest contracts to SpaceX quickly quit working for the government and now works… at SpaceX.
So you tell me, is Elon in a space race, or are the US taxpayers in a race to fund the billionaire?
Honestly, the space race part of it isn’t concerning to me at all. The fact that it’s between billionaire-backed companies is several policy failures, though.
NASA has traditionally relied heavily on defense/space contractors. The space shuttle was built by Rockwell International (which was eventually acquired by Boeing).
The Saturn V rocket that took people to the moon was manufactured by Boeing, Douglas (which became part of McDonnell Douglas, which was acquired by Boeing), and North American (which got acquired by Rockwell, which was acquired by Boeing).
But through consolidation in the American aerospace industry, the bloated behemoth that is modern Boeing has serious issues holding it back. And so the rise of new competition against Boeing is generally a good thing!
Except the only companies that were started up to compete with Boeing were funded largely as ego projects by billionaires who made so much money in other fields that they have excess billions to throw around.
NASA’s new approach to contracting is fine, too: basically promising prizes to companies that hit milestones, which put the risk (and potential reward) on the private companies. Then, once SpaceX did demonstrate feasibility, NASA switched to fixed price contracts for a lot of the programs and did save a ton of money compared to previous cost-plus contract pricing. It’s unclear whether other space companies can deliver services at prices competitive with SpaceX, but their attempts at least force SpaceX to bid lower prices.
Ideally, we would’ve retained a competitive aerospace industry in the past few decades, and a bunch of companies would be competing with each other to continue delivering space services to NASA and other space agencies (and private sector customers that might want satellite stuff). And these companies would be big corporate entities where the major shareholders aren’t exactly household names (like Boeing today).
The way Bezos and Musk became billionaires would be a problem even if they didn’t try to go to space. The way they’re trying to go to space doesn’t really move the needle much, in my opinion.
the thing is that NASA did indeed try to build reusable spaceships themselves back in 1968 with the space shuttle. the thing is: they didn’t make it. their space shuttle sucked and cost more than non-reusable rockets. Then some 30 years later SpaceX came along and somehow did the impossible, which is to build reusable rockets that are actually cheaper than the previous, non-reusable rockets. So, that’s a big step forward. As a consequence, NASA started paying SpaceX for the fine product they were making that they tried to make themselves previously but failed.
No one should have enough money to purchase entire branches of government. Musk could give every member of congress 10 million and still be a billionarie many times over. That kind of wealth is not compatible with democracy.
These assholes get taxed 1-2% on their total wealth increases per year - and even that gets offset with their loopholes - meanwhile the average people pay anywhere between 30-50% of just their income (and that doesn’t account for other taxes like VAT, property, vehicle and road taxes, and so on).
And not only that, but if you taxed them at 99% they’d still have silly amounts of money and ungodly financial security while even 20% off a poor person being paid by a less rich local business is just hurting the both of them. Taxes are a good thing but like you say they are horrendously unbalanced.
Seize their assets, fund NASA.
That’s how you actually make America great.
National space programs suck. We need a united international space push. Something overseen by… Let’s call it the Union Aerospace Corporation. When earth science and tech is combined who knows what they can do on distant research bases set up in places like Mars. Maybe even open portals to transfer matter and energy across vast distances.
You would think more people on Lemmy would recognize a Doom reference. I’ve never played any Doom game but that was enough for me to go “That’s Doom right?” and confirm with a quick search
I know right. This was the original story in 1993.
Um, no.
the thing is that NASA did indeed try to build reusable spaceships themselves back in 1968 with the space shuttle. the thing is: they didn’t make it. their space shuttle sucked and cost more than non-reusable rockets. Then some 30 years later SpaceX came along and somehow did the impossible, which is to build reusable rockets that are actually cheaper than the previous, non-reusable rockets. So, that’s a big step forward. As a consequence, NASA started paying SpaceX for the fine product they were making that they tried to make themselves previously but failed.
90% should be the minimum after 1 million a year
I’d go for 99% after 5 bil
Billionaires shouldn’t exist at all
There should be a wealth cap much lower than that. Perhaps 10 mil. Enough to live comfortably for life but not enought to have enormous power over politics.
It’s not a policy failure at all. It’s a systemic feature. Capitalism is dog eat dog until only one dog remains. If you want to fix it you need a new economic system.
I think capitalism can work depending on two things
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The state must discipline and tax the capitalists constantly.
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There is a competing system that capitalism has to outperform.
No, what actually ends up happening is the capitalists constantly pressure and influence the state to not tax them and not discipline them. It’s hard for the state to say “no” to that kind of money.
It’s especially hard for the state to say no because the state is run by the capitalists themselves. They are the same people.
There is a competing system that capitalism has to outperform.
That’s an interesting thought. Still trying to wrap my mind around how it might work.
Public services.
E.g A well funded and not abused USPS.
Let them compete with that instead of crippling USPS in favor of the private options.
Edit: In Canada we had Air Canada, which was then sold off and privatized. We shouldn’t have done that.
Basically like the cold war.
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Thr government is supposed to enforce regulations in a capitalistic market like ours.
Amazon should have been torn a new asshole for some of the anti competitive things they’ve done for example, which would have maybe prevented or at least slowed what happened.
Google should have been broken up ages ago
And so on.
The rules and regulations are there, it’s just become so corrupt they aren’t being enforced.
Hereeee we areeeee…
It’s a clear sign the government isn’t, itself, spending enough on spaceflight and associated R&D.
Turning our next generation of economic and military supremacy over to the dipshit horn dogs that tanked retail sales and fucked up the post office seems like a huge mistake.
Both can be true
I think we just need to send them into space… Forcibly. Permanently.
That’s what they want. We can’t eat the rich if we can’t reach the rich.
I wouldn’t want to eat deep-freeze-dried meat anyway.
I say we put them all in a rocket and shoot them into space…
That’s it. Problem solved.
Subs are cheaper
Anchor and chains in 20m waters is much cheaper.
Ancher and chain?! In this economy! A .22 round is about ¢28
I mean at that rate stoning is free, but I don’t wanna stoop to taliban. Maybe French had the right idea.
Ya gravity and a blade sharpener is a good rate for upkeep.
Especially if you don’t plan to bring them back.
Yeah… no. First other, no less greedy people will inherit their wealth, second capitalism guarantees the concentration of wealth to absurd degrees. “Kill all billionaires” is surprisingly not a good solution to the problem of billionaires.
We can build more rockets…
I say we put them all in a rocket and shoot them into space…
you’re not gonna believe this but that’s actually what they’re trying to do.
Win win
The fact that there are billionaires is the sign that they’re not being taxed enough.
Massive infrastructure / R&D projects like a space race is actually one of the more productive ways that billionaires could use their money.
it isn’t. it is an intended best case scenario for those invested. capitalism rewards trickery and thievery. excess wealth is part of its system dependent on class hierarchies. it was millionaires before billionaires and now we’re about to have our first trillionaire. for fucks sake.
