You must log in or register to comment.
deleted by creator
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.
If there was a space race then you can guarantee that elon would want it out of the country.
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.
I say we put them all in a rocket and shoot them into space…
That’s it. Problem solved.
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.
Oh, I read the OC idea as a symptom cure. It’s not as good as curing the cause, but symptoms need to be addressed too.
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.
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.
That’s kinda expensive. Just put then in a field and strap some explosives on them, same net effect without wasting millions of taxpayer money.
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.
I’m absolutely pro taxing billionaires. But this has been like that forever and they fill an ingesting financing nieche with their dick measuring contest of a space race. Somebody financed all the expeditions to the north pole for example. They finance exploration and science ands engineering that the public is not willing to, but personally in glad somebody does. Also industry brings arguably far less politics and other inefficiencies with it that public funding does. Look at how the NASA budget is cut every few years and how their funding is mostly squandered overfeeding some States industry so their senators get to keep their constituency happy. I’m not saying I particularly love that there are people getting richer by the second while doing fuck all, but I love that they have a hobby that arguably benefits humanity long term.
Damn, get off that billionaire dick and explain how that helps humanity when we are dealing with fascism, starving children and climate change. These fuckers aren’t financing shit. Elon gets government contracts. Like how wrong can you be?
Well last time when we had space race we got: gps, medical innovations, lighter materials, knowledge about weather helping things like hurricane predictions, better fuel, new methods to preserve food, cordless tools, memoryfoam.
I dont know how those helped humanity at all? Like insulin pumps? What a fucking waste, right? /s
I much rather have the billionare competing with rockets than that they compete with yachs.
Best thing would be if they payd taxes too in same relation to normal people
The last space race was a government funded effort, not personal projects meant to enrich and entertain rich people who view morality as a defect. These projects aren’t meant to advance science and research, and humanity’s well-being is the last thing they give a shit about.
You’re either not being serious or you aren’t smart enough to understand anything below headline-level detail.
Dont be a moron. Last space race was not some humanitarian deed from goverments. It was just a one front of the cold war.
Do you really thing that any progress there is going to happen in robotics or anything else wont be commerialized and after some time normalised?
Do you really think biggest capitalists in the world would not try to capitalize on every single innovation they might get on doing there.
You are doubting other peoples inteligence when you dont seem to have any clue how world works. I guess its just easier to think everybody is one dimensional cartoon villain.
I have no love for Bezos or Musk, and they definedly are not saints, or even care about normal people, but they are not going to just sit on some breaktrough technology if they can sell it.
medical innovations
In the past ~30 years (I haven’t read older data) no drug research in US was privately founded. They all consume massive government grants for it. The “cost” the big pharma is so loud about is manufacturing and treatment testing. But the actual research is founded by your taxpayers.
I mean technologies like imaging improvements used to scan moon made CT and MRI taking better images, Robotics tech that has pushed prostetic limbs and robotic surgery foward, remote diagnostics has taken leaps because, well ISS is pretty remote place.
imaging improvements used to scan moon
But that wasn’t privately owned company but public institution though?
Yeah. It also was american program, but every country benefits from it today. Scientific break troughs tend to get out there.
I’m sorry, what are you trying to argue here? I’m genuinely confused?
Pretty much any engineering problem will, if solved, create some amount of transferrable advancement that will help humanity in other areas. It’s why technological progress is so connected to war. It’s not like they’re taking money from their feeding children fund and spending it on dick measuring contests in space; the problem is that they had no intention of feeding starving children in the first place.
90% should be the minimum after 1 million a year
I’d go for 99% after 5 bil
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.
I’d go for 200% after 5 bil, because their wealth needs to be lowered.
Billionaires shouldn’t exist at all
Log tax rate.
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.
Meanwhile I’m being taxed far too much
T(axed) E(nough) A(lready) Party
Axed nough lready
Many people are aggressive here towards rich, but what will happen to you if you become rich suddenly? Now you are not so eager to loose your money, don’t you? The sins of greed and pride visit every one. And only a few resist them. Just think about it. And I am not advocating for the rich, but saying to look from their perspective.
You’re just outing yourself as a piece of garbage. I would pay my fucking employees, and if I somehow did it myself ethically it would be winning a lottery and I would share it amongst my friends and family.
I already do stuff like this. I own a sports car and I fight for pedestrianizing our streets, including the main one near where I live. I ride public transit and take the bike share service to get places. A guy once asked me to sign a petition to get rid of paid parking and I told him that I literally do not care and that it’s only fair that I personally pay to park my personal vehicle on publically funded infrastructure given how many people on that street don’t own cars and still have to pay for them.
You’re just an asshole who has already been visited by the sins of greed and pride and you’re just pissy that you don’t have the resources to act on those feelings. Be a better person, and quit this projecting bullshit; I don’t want any part of it.
If I become a billionaire, Lemmings would be right to break out the French cutlery and bibs.
I have no problem with the rich. In fact I love them! I’d love to have as many rich as possible.
Unfortunately, that means, the gold hoarding dragon monsters we have currently at the top needs to go.
Temporarily embarrassed millionaire energy here.
We understand their perspective alright. The concept of a millionaire or billionaire is simply disgusting because it is clear they use the power their wealth offers them to get out of paying their fair share while simultaneously needlessly exploiting us even further and in some cases meddling in politics or media so as to delude us into thinking: this is normal or – in your case – won’t someone empathize with the billionaire?
If I became rich suddenly, I would spend it on improving life for rural Americans.
You’re projecting and assuming everyone else is a corrupt scumbag like you.
Lol, you do realize that Starlink is literally the first time that most rural Americans have had reliable high speed internet right?
Wrong.
Power of all forms corrupts, but that doesn’t mean tyrants have a point when they disappear dissenters. Fuck the rich’s perspective, not because I’m above being a rich asshole (maybe I am, maybe I’m not, who knows) but because even if I was it wouldn’t justify hoarding my wealth at the expense of 99.9% of the population.
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.
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
-
The state must discipline and tax the capitalists constantly.
-
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.
-
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.
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
