[ben_w]

Is the problem inequality or rather poverty? Because those are not the same thing.

What we've done in space has absolutely helped with poverty. It makes weather forecasts possible, which helps even the poorest farmers.

This can happen at the same time a handful of people become obscenely wealthy from it.

Though in Musk's case, I suspect the wealth is a bubble which will pop before he can cash out more than 8% of it.

[lapcat]

> Is the problem inequality or rather poverty? Because those are not the same thing.

According to the OP, inequality: "Regardless of whether this particular mission is perfectly planned, this is precisely the kind of thing that will help humanity outgrow the dark age of war, inequality and climate mismanagement."

> What we've done in space has absolutely helped with poverty. It makes weather forecasts possible, which helps even the poorest farmers.

Are you talking about manned Moon missions or unmanned Earth-orbiting satellites? To use your own words, those are not the same thing.

In any case, poverty is a policy decision, a refusal to redistribute the wealth.

[remarkEon]

This is a policy decision insofar as the policy isn’t to liquidate entire groups of people over class and status resentment. “Just redistribute the wealth bro, it’ll work this time bro I swear let’s just do a redistribution”.

[lapcat]

> “Just redistribute the wealth bro, it’ll work this time bro I swear let’s just do a redistribution”.

Bro, have you considered that NASA, the topic of this submission, is government redistribution of wealth via taxes?

[remarkEon]

Yeah, the difference is that NASA is cool, and lighting money on fire for utopian and inevitably corrupt money transfer schemes is not.

Hope that helps.

[ben_w]

NASA may be cool, but the main reason SpaceX was able to undercut old launch providers was all the I Can't Believe It's Not Corruption of pork barrel spending by those old launch providers.

So SpaceX made space cheaper, was good value for the US taxpayer, and was also a money transfer scheme from the government to him. (Worse with Tesla, but this isn't about Musk just SpaceX).

That said, now there's questions about if Musk is corrupt with all those US government ties that result in suspicious direct pressure on non-US governments, including with Starlink which even if theoretically separate to SpaceX is obviously functionally inseparable at present.

[TeMPOraL]

> NASA may be cool, but the main reason SpaceX was able to undercut old launch providers was all the I Can't Believe It's Not Corruption of pork barrel spending by those old launch providers.

FWIW, SpaceX did literally what NASA paid them to. It might be no one dared to hope that the Commercial Space budget will turn out so spectacularly effective at disrupting legacy structures of corruption, but the point of the exercise was still to pay private players like SpaceX to make access to space cheaper, and they absolutely delivered on that. This wasn't a competition between public and private interests, it was a successful cooperation.

> So SpaceX made space cheaper, was good value for the US taxpayer, and was also a money transfer scheme from the government to him.

Obviously paying someone to do something is a money transfer, and if the payer is the government and recipient a private organization, it is a transfer of money from government to private interests. Same happens every time a federal employee buys a coffee on their way to work.

[lapcat]

> Hope that helps.

It doesn't.

I think that helping the less fortunate is cool, and launching people to the Moon is lighting money on fire for utopian and inevitably corrupt money transfer schemes.

[remarkEon]

Well you’re in luck because we spend 4-5x the NASA budget on things like SNAP alone. Still not enough? Too bad!

[ben_w]

> “Just redistribute the wealth bro, it’ll work this time bro I swear let’s just do a redistribution

Literally 100% of taxes work like this, it happens every monthly paycheck.