[rockemsockem]

Afaik Tesla is not a government contractor, so your compensation comment is moot.

Where we see waste in government is in big, entrenched, dinosaurs where competition is very difficult and/or limited. What we need is a little more free market capitalism in those areas. Greed is not the driver of waste imo, incompetence is a far bigger contributor.

If you'd like to make tangible arguments instead of vaguely ranting against capitalism then I'm all ears.

Edit: also the multi-billion dollar compensation package was in stock, so it didn't actually waste any money

Edit 2: by the way you're still dodging my original legitimate question about what the government has ever actually built without private contractors. There are real answers to that question and if you are such a big proponent of the government building things themselves maybe you should know something about them.

[bumby]

It may be important to note that SpaceX and Tesla finances are likely intertwined. This is a common dynamic among Musk’s companies. So while Tesla is not a contractor, its finances do affect government contractor risk. Tesla stock has been the main collateral for Musk at the same time he engages in start-ups and I don’t think that is coincidence.

[trust_bt_verify]

Two edits and you hand waved away the point about CEO compensation? oof. Governments and private businesses have the same problems since they are both made up of imperfect humans. The government has the great oversight mechanism that private businesses don’t which is called voting, which is why I think it takes the cake here.

I never said that the government should never use private contractors (always need janitorial services), but when tax dollars are being used to fund technology and research, the government should never cede ownership of those outputs to private business.