It kind of speaks to a billionaire pissing contest though over true helpful innovation

All 3 of these companies were founded roughly the same time, 2004 or so. Space X is now the NASA go-to for actual space missions that go to actual space and link up with the international space station etc. Truely remarkable research and innovation by Musk and Co.

While on the other hand you’ve got these two clowns in Bezos and Branson spending the same amount of time to simply reach the edge of space, privately funding and not collaborating for any goal other than privatized, for profit “space” travel

For the future of mankind and the innovation which comes from getting to space, I’d assume you need to actually GO to space? Lol

Just think of how absurd the term “For profit, privatized space travel” sounds lol

How is this in any way innovative? Yuri Gagarin went to space and did an orbit 60 years ago. Aren't these guys just spending shitloads of money reinventing the wheel here? I can't imagine trying to brag about achieving less than a Soviet-built tin can did 6 decades ago.

Yeah I don't see what the big deal is here, didn't we go to the moon in the late 60s? Who gives a fuck about a billionaire joyride thats "really high up"?

One was state funded the others are private. Virgin and Blue origin are about space travel for tourists. Russia was selling rides into space for around 20 mill US in 2012. These are going to cost significantly less.

I disagree in that not all "innovation" comes in the form of doing something truly new. When Tesla came out with their first EV for $110K in 2009, its not like they were inventing the concept of EV either. The innovation here is in making space tourism a commercially viable product. Right now, its projected to cost $250K per person. Bring that cost down significantly over the years and I bet a lot of people would be interested in exploring space (hopefully a lot further into space then).

Haven't posted a while because I thought I was getting too extreme with my right-leaning thoughts and from personal experiences with people near me in my life, I thought to take a break and really think it through. The last few days, something happened and I decided to come out of a posting hiatus.

Coming from a family of business people, I find the idea of capitalism fascinating and it is in my opinion (pre-break at least), the way to motivate a person forward. After spending much of the break reading about BLM, human right movement and more, I came to a conclusion that neither extreme really works.

Capitalism would always mean a concentration of resources in the hand of a few, because at its core, it's about always using resources at hand to improve the condition.

Socialism at its extreme doesn't work either. California now has people just taking stuff and walking out of store because anything less than $950 is considered a minor misdemeanor and the accused would get an equivalent of a traffic ticket.

And here the thing that hit me hard. Just 2 days ago, a childhood friend of mine got shot and died, while the robbers were trying to rob the cash he had with him. This was in Argentina, where even if the person who did this were caught, the police said unless we can establish a premeditated plan to kill him, the person would be out in a few months because the motive was to rob my friend, which is also a minor crime there.

This piece of shit killed my friend, leaving his wife and 2 small kids devastated and their life would never be the same... all because the law was written in a way that there is too little consequence if they were caught.

This same reason "there is a little consequence" is the same way why capitalism is broken too. The benefit that they have by hoarding all the resources far outweigh the cost (social, financial... etc) of not doing it.

So, what am I proposing here? I propose strict laws against crime of any kind. This is to protect those who are trying to make a living the right way. And to get the big corporations to actually pay attention to what they are doing because there are severe consequences for their screwup. Second, I think there should be an incentive for those with resources to spend. Billionaires are welcome to exist, as long as they are spending their share to the society.

A regular folk spend 90% of their income on necessities while saving the rest as accumulation for wealth. A billionaire, with all the trip to space and megayachts, probably only spend 10% of their income on the economy. This is unfair. Instead, we should promote spending. Make taxation in a way that welcomes spending and tax heavily on remainder. Bezos probably makes a few billion every year (without actually altering his holding of AMZN shares). He should spend (pre-tax) almost all of it while putting little as wealth preservation. The same should go for anyone (person or corp) with a net asset of 50MM+. You either spend it or lose it.

- Thinks Socialism means recklessly decriminalizing theft and murder.

- Goes on to promote the solution is to tax the rich - which is literally, Socialism :lol

Good to have you back man otherwise, did you ever find that dictionary of yours?

I don’t think socialism as such. But the way democrats and many of the countries, including Argentina are getting socialism wrong.

Socialism is about those who are more capable carry those who are less so. However, it does not mean we should make those less fortunate any less responsible. The way they are writing the law is doing exactly that; Those less fortunate, whether willingly or not, should be taken lighter.

That should not be the case. Everyone should bear the same exact responsibility to our society. Riches should not be allowed to continue to hoard wealth, just the same way those who have less should not be allowed to bear less responsibility.

Congrats, after actually thinking about things for a while you became a Socialist

:fuckthatshit: I became less righty, not stupid.

No you are literally advocating for socialism.. That doesn't make you stupid, it just means you are being more considerate with your politics.

I don't know how, but America somehow turned socialism into a dirty word. Communism too, although that is more expected. Although in theory it makes sense, in practice it has been used in awful ways. So has capitalism, and is to this day, but for some reason that's automatically good, but communism is automatically bad.

^ decades of Cold War propaganda probably had a lot to do with it.

While that's true, what they're working to innovate is something that doesn't seem beneficial to the world. All this concern about climate change but now we want to burn tons and tons of rocket fuel for joy rides?

:suspicious:

yeah... and the same can be said about the wright brothers flying over a field.

or the first car ever made.

you do know the only reason we aren't conquering space is because it costs a lot.

these guys are gonna make it cheaper, and more effective, and then down the line, we will be space conquering.

governments never got a person past the moon because they couldn't. it costs too fucking much and the risk is too high.


the pros of individuals with so much money and power is they can laser focus and shoot as far as they can with little bureaucracy standing in their way in one lifetime.

if you gave the same amount of money to the government or spread it out to the common people, the result would be... nothing. you couldn't even measure it. yeah maybe some people would have more food on the plate, for what? for how long? what's that really gonna fix? it just perpetuates things.

like giving a bum a dollar. that's really gonna change his life. lol.

what would really happen is some people would get more food on the plate, some new tv's and eventually over time that money would still fall into the hands of the rich because that's how money works.

im certainly not at the top of the pyramid, but i have a chance. that chance is good enough for me.

I would rather live in a system with a chance of that, than no chance at all.

Yes let's "conquer space" while burning the planet to the ground FailFish

Well at least it’s a solution to the created problems, could be worse? :alone:

Lets just ban all vacation travel. Who needs to go on a cruise ship anyways.

Fat and old white people need love too

I always thought it was funny when people talk about moving to and "terraforming" Mars. Like Mars is only slightly less habitable than Earth will be in 50 years.. Why not work on "terraforming" Earth? Or at least try to prevent it from becoming Mars?

Well no, because the plane and car didn't exist then. Those were actual firsts in uncharted territory. Technology far beyond what Branson and Bezos are doing has existed for decades. They are just reinventing the wheel here. If you want to build a better plane you start with the current tech and more forward from that. You don't build a Wright-style glider and then brag about gliding across a field.

NASA could've done it ages ago if the US gov't didn't cut their funding like mad so they can blow up kids in the desert instead.

Except again, they aren't doing anything new or useful here and they're wasting even more effort running parallel to each other.

That's not really true.

The reason why we were able to make it to the moon in the first place is essentially socialism. Large amounts of taxpayer dollars were diverted to fund NASA as a large percentage of GDP. It shows that when government puts money behind something and consolidates, things get done. This is how the mass boom in infrastructure (highways, bridges, housing, NASA, etc) were able to be achieved in the 60's.

It's the rampant race to the bottom in terms of cutting taxes which has resulted in this atrophy in terms of getting things done. Look at the below, and see the rapid decline of allocated GDP to NASA, this is why we're now relying on private companies, and billionaires like Musk and Bezos to get to space.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA