- cross-posted to:
- WorkReform@europe.pub
- cross-posted to:
- WorkReform@europe.pub
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If billionaires are the ruling class, then it’s a policy success.
I am not in a theme, but what bad in having them moving the progress by doing the space race? Maybe they are jerks, but they try to do something. Or, at least, pretend to. Can someone explain why there is so much hate towards them?
it’s noble to don’t as a nation,. paid for by tax dollars. the fact that they have this money to fritter away pretending to do something special for the species is obscene.
They should not exist.
The pendulum will swing back some day soon.
They are choosing to devote vast amounts of finite earth resources on their space man hobbies instead of using any of it to fix or improve the situation on earth, in their countries or for anyone else other than themselves. These people should be dragged out of their comfortable lives for crimes against humanity.
They have nothing to improve. Their life is great. And that’s the problem.
And when earth will inevitably be uninhabitable for humans, they will fuck off to space and let us die here.
Yea, it is.
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.
Time to bring out the soluti-honhonhon.
Either not taxed enough or there’s almost no competition in the thing they do. And in a healthy free market, there should definitely be competition in a field that nets that much profits. The logical conclusion is that something is actively preventing the competition.
that nets that much profits
that’s kinda the issue, building rockets isn’t all that profitable. they do it anyways because they believe in the vision and that it will pay off long-term, just not short-term
In a free market, competition has end results. Buisnes don’t just keep competing with one another ad infinitum. One of them eventually cant keep up and closes shop. It’s competitors expand into the space it previously filled. This process repeats until you have fewer and fewer firms that account for more and more of their sector of the economy. New business do not have resources to eke out space in an already filled niche.
Under a long enough time frame, a free market creates less competition.
Yep. People love free markets, but they really only benefit billionaires. The idea that free markets lead to a better society is bunk and should be abandoned along with every other capitalist lie.
I don’t remember that ever happening without government coercion. Can you refresh my memory?
Sorry, do you think a business failing is only possible with government coercion?
And what government coercion gave Google near monopolies on web search and video? Microsoft Windows accounts for 70% of desktop computers, did a government give them that? Whom did the government coerce for Amazon to have such domination of server hosting and online retail?
I don’t think you’ve been paying close attention to whats been happening in your lifetime.
Sorry, do you think a business failing is only possible with government coercion?
No, more like that actual monopolies are possible only by government coercion. Failure obviously doesn’t require that.
And what government coercion gave Google near monopolies on web search and video? Microsoft Windows accounts for 70% of desktop computers, did a government give them that? Whom did the government coerce for Amazon to have such domination of server hosting and online retail?
Yeah, that is true at least in the short term. Windows indeed had even larger percentages at some point, but eventually it has been chipped away by competition.
I’m not calling free markets a magic tool that always works well. Rather a tool that needs to be controlled carefully and as little as possible for the best results. For instance, making Microsoft stop bundling IE with their operating system in the 90s, I’m not sure if that decision had any effect. Then again, EU declaring that mobile operators must adhere to certain rulesets opened up the market a whole lot. So it’s not just about following the best ideology, the details of decisions have to be good as well.
You think the free market can save us from billionares. Wow. How long have you been drinking that kool aid man.
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.
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…
If you want to fix it you need a new economic system.
We could try actually free markets with no benefits to anyone. By benefits here I mean tax breaks, government contracts and subsidies for companies.
“We could try actually free markets with no benefits to anyone. By benefits here I mean tax breaks, government contracts and subsidies for companies.”
I’m far from an expert but didn’t we more or less try that during the industrial revolution? As I recall from old history books, it wasn’t so great for the majority of citizens and the economy was an actual roller coaster ride.
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.
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.
Basically like the cold war.
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.
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.
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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?
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.
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.
Seize their assets, fund NASA.
That’s how you actually make America great.
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.
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
The downvoters almost certainly didn’t even make it to the end of the comment before they clicked the down arrow and resumed scrolling. The last sentence made it 10x more obvious, imo.
I know right. This was the original story in 1993.
Um, no.
If you’ve got money to waste on doing the same space shots that they’ve been doing for the last 65 years, just with newer technology, all while people in America are hungry, and suffering from lack of health care, then we should take away everything they own, and redistribute it to the people. We can even name each distribution after the benefactor. First we’ll have the Musk distribution, then the Bezos, distribution, then the Ellison distribution, etc.
And their companies, primarily created and made profitable by government grants and tax breaks, belong to the American people, and they should be confiscated, and operated for the profit benefit of the American people. To make it fair, the billionaire, and his descendents, will always have an entry level job available, at entry level wages, but they will be treated like any other employees, and can be fired without rehiring privileges. They aren’t entitled to any special treatment, other than a guaranteed job. After that, they have to behave themselves.
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.
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.
Arent they also using public money for this mainly?
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.
Meanwhile I’m being taxed far too much
T(axed) E(nough) A(lready) Party
Axed nough lready
Are you in the Netherlands?
