- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
You must log in or # to comment.
I disagree.
-
You already have a government space agency. Maybe give them more funding so they don’t have to rely on space-x to get their stuff into orbit?
-
There’s a national telecom network already in place. It at least has the potential to be faster and more reliable, if it isn’t already… At least compared to low earth orbit satellite coverage.
There’s no good reason to continue providing Elon or his companies with any government handouts. Pull that funding and give it to… I dunno, students who have more debt than homeowners with a mortgage… NASA… Literally anything that helps people?
-
A lot of people are calling this a bailout for Elon, but in reality it would be a seizure. Elon doesn’t want to let go of Starlink and the US likely wouldn’t pay him what it’s worth to take it over.
What people seem to be missing is the precedent this would set. It’s all well and good when we empower the office of the president to seize a private company we don’t like, but after we give them that power what’s to stop them from seizing other businesses?
XYZ company refuses to get rid of their DEI policy because the shareholders voted to keep it? Well now the orange man can seize it.
Let’s not forget that previously it took 2/3rd majority to confirm presidential appointments, but the Senate under Obama decided to change that rule to 50% to get past Republican objections. The result of this is all these shit appointments Trump has passed with 51% of the Senate, none of them would have gotten by if the Democrats hadn’t made a precedent for changing the rules.
What people seem to be missing is the precedent this would set. It’s all well and good when we empower the office of the president to seize a private company we don’t like, but after we give them that power what’s to stop them from seizing other businesses?
XYZ company refuses to get rid of their DEI policy because the shareholders voted to keep it? Well now the orange man can seize it.
The problem they don’t see is that once a precedent is set, also the other party can do it. What you point out is valid also like “XYZ company refuses to establish a DEI policy because the shareholders voted agains ? Well not the democratic president can seize it”.
Let’s not forget that previously it took 2/3rd majority to confirm presidential appointments, but the Senate under Obama decided to change that rule to 50% to get past Republican objections. The result of this is all these shit appointments Trump has passed with 51% of the Senate, none of them would have gotten by if the Democrats hadn’t made a precedent for changing the rules.
Tipical case of not looking beyond one’s nose
I am not saying that I don’t agree with you. But this country is still not even close to considering nationalizing its own telecommunication infrastructure. Much less a privately held space company and a service of communication satellites. A large chunk of America believes that a for-profit business model for every good and service possible in life is the best course of action.
Yes it’s the right long term goal, but the US is nowhere near ready for strong nationalised enterprises, they would just stop getting funding and die. There is a requirement for strong, positive minded government and a shared understanding of the benefits of having nationalised societal services before it can work.
Starlink should be globalized. A planet only needs one low-altitude orbiting communications network. Better to standardize the technology and platform and let them contribute to one system than to have a dozen identical competing systems crashing into each other and fucking things up for everyone.
There is no such thing as something being “globalized” The UN for instance is a debating club where the majority of the seats represent individual dictators who dominate but do not speak for their countries citizens.
The idea of 50 countries collectively providing 0% of the funds should determine the mission is somewhat laughable. Also no country on earth has a process by which foreign dictators can seize or direct a company run out of their nation.
Ah. My Kessler syndrome is acting up again.
You have NASA FFS. Just fund it.
NASA is too beholden to politics… You can’t do 7 year builds and missions when the Senate flips every 4 years and has to kill everything the other side did on principle that it has a D or R attached to it. Everything is political.
<.< Legitimate question, what was the last thing each party killed that was put in place by the other party?
It is usually due to “budget cuts” as the easiest way to kill a project is to defend it.
Juno Jupiter flyby
Maven mission to mars
New horizons kbo flyby
Terra mission-earth science satellite
Aqua mission -earth science satellite
DSCOVR
SLS-which may actually be a bad program but is a good example of the political issues with NASA vs senate.
Juno Jupiter flyby
But Juno went to Jupiter?
These programs require continuous funding. The probe went to Jupiter. The scientist and listening stations back on earth still have to run to receive the data.
You could always just fund the space agency you already have, instead of funneling money to a foreign billionaire.
No this the one time I’m with the commies. Nationalize that shit. Like you said it’s all taxpayer money anyway. A little bit of Wall Street speculation, but who gives a fuck about those people
it’s all taxpayer money anyway
Good point.
NASA was always there and they couldn’t achieve what SpaceX has while simultaneously having a lot more capital to do so. I’m sorry but if there’s any proof that private sector’s self interest is a better driver of innovation than common interest SpaceX is it. This is a terrible idea that sounds like a good idea if you do not understand how good Musk was and is at cutting costs. That’s his actual real skill in business and is well documented. Doesn’t make him less of a prick but you also cannot downplay what he has achieved with this company.
You mean the NASA who landed people on the moon?
So let’s assume you aren’t a moon landing denier and use that as a baseline, NASA is clearly capable of things given the right circumstances and budget.
SpaceX benefited from his reputation and money, because they sure as shit didn’t benefit from his technical acumen.
Business wise he is successful because he’s rich and influential and that works to mitigate how shitty he is at actually running an organisation, that doesn’t mean he has skills as a business person that means he has money and influence, in his case originally from the mine, then from buying and bullying his was in to businesses that were technologically sound and boosting them with his money.
You could make an argument he’s a relatively good investor, but he’s an actively bad CEO.
They landed people on the moon and then did fuck all for decades.
When Musk started SpaceX he was not well known yet, SpaceX came before Tesla.
He was able to get into the businesses he has because he was rich yes, but you can find many accounts of engineers that worked under him speak of how good he was at finding ways to cut unnecessary costs.
He’s not a technical genius that’s for sure. But he has been a good CEO for SpaceX. Terrible one for Tesla though, mostly because he bought into his own myth and became a drug addict. But I refuse to simply wave away his achievements simply because I don’t like him. I can not like someone and still acknowledge they have done something good.
They landed people on the moon and then did fuck all for decades.
Indeed, all i was saying is that they were capable given budget and circumstances.
That budget and direction comes from the government.
When Musk started SpaceX he was not well known yet, SpaceX came before Tesla.
I will admit, i thought spacex was just another company he bought his way in to, like tesla, seems i was mistaken about that.
He was able to get into the businesses he has because he was rich yes, but you can find many accounts of engineers that worked under him speak of how good he was at finding ways to cut unnecessary costs.
And you can equally find many accounts of having to distract him from the day to day operations because he’s unreliable , unpredictable and chaotic (none of those meant in a good way).
He’s also known for buying good press and using litigation to silence people.
He’s not a technical genius that’s for sure. But he has been a good CEO for SpaceX.
I doubt this, but that could just be bias, i don’t have any actual evidence of the long term impact of him as CEO.
Recently though, he’s provably been significantly more of a liability than a benefit, even if just from a PR and public sentiment point of view.
But I refuse to simply wave away his achievements simply because I don’t like him. I can not like someone and still acknowledge they have done something good.
Indeed, i push back on the myth that he’s some self made tony stark genius, but it isn’t like he’s not achieved anything.
I would personally attribute most of that to neptoism, wealth, luck and opportunity, but that doesn’t remove the achievement itself.
deleted by creator
The agency that landed people on the moon so long ago most of the people involved have died if old age, and the event will soon pass out of living memory?
The one where when they let a single rocket explode, one time, rocked the nation, because their record was so close to flawless?
The one that constantly gives us new sources for scientific data?
Yeah fuck them. They never made a dick rocket.
I’m sorry… dick rocket? Your issue with SpaceX is that the rockets are… rocket shaped?
Like everything else notwithstanding, physics dictates the shapes of these things. That is why they all look rather… dick-ish
Yes im coming out against dick rockets here.
this the one time I’m with the commies
Are you against universal and free healthcare, education and retirement? Are you against improving worker rights, paid holidays, sick leave, guaranteed housing and guaranteed employment? Are you against unionisation of workplaces and collective worker decisions mattering in business? Are you against heavy regulation against climate change and pollution of the environment? Are you against anti-racism, feminism, anti-fascism and the redistribution of wealth from the richest to the poorest? I’m sure you have a lot more common ground with us commies than you think
No I’m also with the commies on single payer health care and super high tax brackets for the rich. I do hate me a fascism, infact I hate all authoritarians.
I’m clearly for the workers rights we have fought for and established in this country. And while I can acknowledge the communist impact in these achievements, I would not go ahead and give you guys full credit nor say that these are policies that are specific to you. Most of this stuff is just center/left social welfare and human rights. Commies are the ones that like to do purity tests and isolate anyone that doesn’t agree with 100% of your policy points.
Pretty big jumps from liberal to leftist to self proclaimed communist ideas on how these ideas and policies look, so yes we agree on general principles and concepts. But we certainly don’t agree on how to bring them about.
Also, every single self-proclaimed communist is on the suspect list because you guys did a lot of campaigning against Joe Biden to help Donald Trump get elected so I’m just saying I don’t really fuck with you guys anymore. That’s my new purity test. Did you support Joe Biden and Kamala during the most important election in American history?
super high tax brackets for the rich
I’m a communist and I believe in the expropriation of their capital to eliminate super-richness, not in their taxation.
workers rights we have fought for and established in this country
Your country (the US judging by the comment) has miserable worker rights, as a western-European. Worker rights are bad here, but the US takes the cake.
I would not go ahead and give you guys full credit nor say that these are policies that are specific to you. Most of this stuff is just center/left social welfare and human rights
I’m not so sure. The legal abolition of homelessness and unemployment is far from being a centre/left welfare measure, as evidenced by the fact that the only countries that have achieved this are communist ones such as Cuba or the Soviet Union.
we certainly don’t agree on how to bring them about
We don’t agree on how to bring them about because the liberal method of bringing them about is proven ineffective in every single instance of liberal democracy. Worker rights and welfare are systematically being eroded in essentially all liberal democracies for the past 3-4 decades, home ownership rates decrease, unemployment increases, retirement age gets delayed (Denmark just rose it to 70 years e.g.), education and healthcare budgets get gutted, infrastructure crumbles, real wages diminish for the majority of the population, and little action is taken against climate change. There were only advancements in worker rights in Europe (and less so in the USA) because of the fear of communist revolution in the past century, hence the complete lack of progress and actual degradation of rights and democracy with the rise of the far right all over the Western World.
I’m not USian so I didn’t support any of your genocidal candidates. Funny how you talked of purity tests earlier in your comment and come up with that later. But as an outsider: the US liberal obsession with blaming the election loss on the progressives and not on, you know, the politicians enacting genocide and not doing anything about improving the living conditions of people in the US while in government seems pretty weird. If the Democrats can’t bring themselves to even remotely appear more appealing than LITERAL DONALD TRUMP to the average voter, what the fuck are they doing?
*in theory
Most of those things I mentioned are/were a material reality in socialist countries such as Cuba or the Soviet Union, except for climate change and pollution and some things regarding feminism and homosexuality due to moral shortcomings of 20th century thought.
A tankie says what?
Yes, I’m a tankie, you got me. How about you address the actual argument though? In the 1970s Soviet Union there was:
Guaranteed employment, free education to the highest level, free healthcare for everyone, guaranteed housing for everyone and the abolition of homelessness, 45h working week, retirement with guaranteed pension at 61 for men and at 55 for women, paid holiday and sick leave, highest unionisation population in the world, more female engineers inside the Soviet Union than in the rest of the world combined, lowest level of wealth inequality in the history of the region, subsidised and affordable basics like energy access or public transit… The list goes on and on.
How about you try to refute any of these individual claims I made instead of dismissing the actual historical reality just because you dislike my political views? Spoiler alert: you won’t find reliable sources contradicting any of my claims and I can provide sources to all of it because I actually know what I’m talking about.
No thanks.
deleted by creator
Has anyone considered funding NASA?
They made rockets that didn’t explode with duct tape and a TI-83 calculator.
Shouldn’t be incompatible with nationalizing SpaceX and Starlink. Just give it all to NASA, actually.
If that was actually their expenditure I don’t think they’d have their budget cut.
Yeah I mean the tax payers have literally already paid for all of both SpaceX and Starlink. The public paid for it, the public should own it.
They’re just following in the footsteps of Comcast. The FCC gave SpaceX/Starlink $885.5 million to provide rural broadband after they gave Comcast over $1 billion less than 5 years ago to do the same thing. Starlink actually works out there from what I understand, so I guess that’s something.
Hang on a minute, equivalents of SpaceX and Starlink could have naturally grown out of NASA, it was the obvious place for them to come from but NASA did not show that innovation and nationalisation of them might dilute their abilities. For clarity I am not suggesting the innovation came from Musk, he has no science or engineering, his talents are grifting, showmanship and taking credit for other people’s work, he is a natural figurehead though and seemed quite clear thinking until he lost his mind.
NASA has had it’s funding cut year after year for decades. It’s far easier to innovate when you have money to back up the r&d and testing.
I wasnt discussing underlying cause, whatever the reason for stifled innovation in some fields possibly evident in NASA it is likely preferable not to pull independent labs into NASA that are having success in these areas.
Arrest Musk on violation of controlled substances acts, file immigration violation charges, invalidate his ownership shares due to securities fraud, as he falsified education and naturalization forms.
Or just emminent domain the shit. The Law is just made up right now.
If not Musk should be forced from his roles in these companies. You cannot be a defense contractor and do ketamine.
how can you trust a board that trusts such incompetence, for DOD projects no less?
failure up and down.
Don’t buy into the grifts. Dismantle them.
Quite ironic from people constantly accusing their political adversaries to be communists…
imagine how many more rockets we could reuse if the NASA subdivision formerly known as SpaceX did literally any of the standard, rigorous fault-checks.
