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.
If billionaires are the ruling class, then it’s a policy success.
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.
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.
You think the free market can save us from billionares. Wow. How long have you been drinking that kool aid man.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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Hereeee we areeeee…
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.
It’s not a policy failure; it’s a feature of the system. We need a different system that doesn’t allow the existence of billionaires to begin with
The existence of an “AI race” between China and the U.S., where government contracted billionaires in both countries insist that citizens accepting authoritarian surveillance, is just a patriotic duty necessary to win that race, is a policy failure.
Especially when investigative journalism uncovers in 2025 that the U.S./Silicon Valley sold China the mass surveillance system that has allegedly given them such an upper hand in this imaginary race.
2019: Trump CTO Addresses AI, Facial Recognition, Immigration, Tech Infrastructure, and More
Q:"Maintaining U.S. leadership in AI might have costs in terms of individuals and society. What costs should individuals and society bear to maintain leadership?”
A:“I don’t view the world that way. Our companies big and small do not hesitate to talk about the values that underpin their technology. [That is] markedly different from the way our adversaries think. The alternatives are so dire [that we] need to push efforts to bake the values that we hold dear into this technology.”…“A patchwork of regulation of technology is not beneficial for the country. We want to avoid that. Facial recognition has important roles—for example, finding lost or displaced children. There are use cases, but they need to be underpinned by values.”
The baked in “values” of the men telling you not to worry about regulations:
2025: Palantir CEO Says a Surveillance State Is Preferable to China Winning the AI Race
$999,999,999 is just fine though!
Stop focusing on an arbitrary figure and start focusing on a real progressive income tax with no loopholes or workarounds.
“Billionaire” is a sound bite to focus attention. Publicizing “An improved progressive taxation rate” isn’t as marketable.
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.
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
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.
nor that they give a rat’s ass about sustainability, humanity, earth etc like some of them like Elon claims
Jesus all commies.
Now you guys have a problem with innovation.
Leftists are the first to laud innovation when it benefits regular people. This is just a dick measuring contest by some asshats, financed by stealing billions of dollars from their workers.
You do realize that NASA has a fixed budget for the science missions they can run right? Amd you do realize that when the launch costs for their satellites are 50x lower, that means they can run more science missions more often?
We all hate Musk, but it’s fucking insane to look at the equivalent of the first airplane company that could land a plane and didn’t just destroy it after every flight, and say ‘thats just a dick measuring contest, how could that be useful?’
Capitalism can create innovation, but capitalism is not necessary for it. The very same innovation could have happened if the state spent a fraction of this money on R&D, without all the insane Terraform Mars T-shirts and 3 companies wasting resources to do pretty much exactly the same thing three times. Sadly the american government is not an effective redistributor of wealth, and any NASA budget comes with a million (dumb) strings attached, like spending it on certain projects that benefit the state senator who voted for it.
Also, I don’t know where you get that 50x number, SpaceX lowered the launch cost maybe by about 3-4x compared to contemporary chinese rockets.
Capitalism can create innovation, but capitalism is not necessary for it. The very same innovation could have happened if the state spent a fraction of this money on R&D, without all the insane Terraform Mars T-shirts and 3 companies wasting resources to do pretty much exactly the same thing three times. Sadly the american government is not an effective redistributor of wealth, and any NASA budget comes with a million (dumb) strings attached, like spending it on certain projects that benefit the state senator who voted for it.
In this situation, the state LITERALLY spent more money developing the SLS rocket, and it is going to be a colossal failure and waste of money compared to the rockets that can be reused.
Three companies trying to produce the same thing is not a waste, it’s literally the defining feature of capitalism and why every government, including the Chinese Communist government, still uses capitalist systems. Multiple entities competing to do the same thing gives you more variety and diversity, and hedges your bets in case one of them is wrong or corrupted by flawed people in it.
Also, I don’t know where you get that 50x number, SpaceX lowered the launch cost maybe by about 3-4x compared to contemporary chinese rockets.
Compared to SLS, the literal state funded alternative.
Can you explain to me, in your own words, what you believe a “commie” is?
Belief that government can do better or some rich people innovating is a bad thing.
Right. Try reading a book.
Said the commie
Oh no, anything but that
Half the innovation and tech you use today is because of development by research councils that are government funded, military tech (government funded) or open source projects that were forked in some way shape or form.
Developed by private players not government, if you give civil servants the money they will burn it up.
Hahahahahahaha Jesus christ
Wow god you are special.
No, you with thinking.
There, same amount of information given.
Governments can innovate, and indeed can do so more efficiently than corporations, since they do not need profits.
I assume you’re reading this on the Internet, if you need an example.
