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If you look closer you'll see that this rockets are key to billions of people living on other planets, to cheaper internet, to better telescopes, to satellites controlling weather.
Ultimately this is an important step towards a future with healthcare providing thousands of years of life, and unlimited housing space.
Well, US spends 1.5 trillion on social security and only 20 billion on NASA, so "present" is kind of overrepresented. Redirecting that little bit so that a few more people can live without working, or can get expensive treatment to live a few more years is stupid, not inspiring.
We live in the present, so I'd expect it to be overrepresented. I expect most people don't give their kids more money than they spend on themselves, for instance.
Your second sentence showcases some wildly negative biases. I suspect we could probably save money by improving the efficiency of our social programs and end up with even more to spend on scientific advancement.
Historically most people used to spend for children and grandchildren significantly more that on themselves. The current situation when people go to other countries and then say we do not have money for more than one child is abnormal, and can't go on very long.
I agree that there are many better ways to organize social programs, e.g. replace all of them with negative tax, when some percentage of all tax collected past year is divided equally between all citizens of any age.
Sure well organized society is very impressive, e.g. invention of capitalism and private ownership is the greatest invention ever made, but the point i was trying to make is that it is only a foundation for really exciting stuff like science spaceships, immortality.
This attitude that because one thing is bad we should ignore everything else is an incredibly small idea. Yes, we have a professional class of rent seeking middlemen that have captured the American healthcare industry. That sucks. We also have the industrial and technological power to do cool stuff. Let's do both things. Fix our problems and advance our technology.
To be fair, the same people benefiting from large government subsidies to develop private space travel are the same one(s) that actively gutted social programs and entire government agencies that provide value to the general population.
NASA is cool and undergoing massive defunding. Education is already under-funded and now under attack. Science is being actively squashed and replaced with religion yet somehow, you think space travel will become more likely?
There is a very strange, obvious, and bizarre reality gap between "We're going to Mars" and "...and we'll start by destroying decades of science funding and public education."
No one rational can possibly believe this is supposed to be a serious strategy, surely?
But what we can't have is affordable housing and healthcare without private actors effectively involved in value creation. As has been demonstrated over and over again.
Sure, so perhaps you can enlighten me rather than make a cryptic single-sentence post. When have companies as entities of commerce been abolished, and what did the results look like? What's more, has this ever happened in a society when every large "bad actor" company is expressly a multinational concern?
Seems to me that whatever might have happened 90-500 years ago is of no modern relevance, for good or ill, and that what the author of the article alludes to is a foolish and indeed childish criticism.
Is there? They are already a few rungs up from illegal criminals. Not much further to get to anyone since these are approved visa holders. Im just waiting for them to declare all Californians as non-citizens at this point.
>That would be doing Californians a favor tbh. Then we'd have an excuse to leave this rotten union.
I know this is just frustrated anger, but it does no good. Our union has survived more than one braindead administration before. We fought a war killing hundreds of thousands to save it for god's sake. We dealt with Zachary Tyler and Andrew Johnson and Grover Cleveland. We'll get past this moron and be stronger for it, just watch.
One of the two major worldviews (ideologies) says the market is fully valued. One says it's severely undervalued. Nobody is capable of considering that their world view is wrong and they're living in a fantasy. The next 12 months will be fascinating and (for some) extremely satisfying.
Sabine is european, we kinda have some experience with alternatives to capitalism here, so... Yeah. That's not a valid criticism, on anyone. Just because you get points online for saying capitalism bad doesn't mean it's not the best out of everything we've tried so far...
I ... Uh... That's not what capitalism means. Sorry. We have plenty of capitalist countries w/ great healthcare, and social programs. Capitalism means "free market" + rules. If you're unhappy about something, fix that, don't throw the baby with the water.
I love that the two replies to this post are "capitalism isn't actually when wealth concentration" and "fascism actually isn't when right wing authoritarians take control by demonizing ethnic groups and imposing austerity".
Maybe because what you call "Fascism" isn´t Fascism and, as far as i know, nobody wants to gut our (varied) social programs, but we are just conscious that in some cases, said programs are failing, unsustainable due to resources misallocation and/or grossly mismanaged.
Having a slightly more dynamic entrepreneurial scene, where one is allowed to fail for instance, would be nice.
In my view, the way forward and the example to follow is Switzerland, not the US.
My Hossenfelder experience was: "Oh nice, somebody is getting kind of famous for calling out string theory for being probably hogwash" followed (years later) by "Why is YouTube recommending this dumb clickbait by... Sabine Hossenfelder?! to me?"
Completely agree. There was a similar report published last year, lots of fluff, seemingly tailor made to scare retail investors. FT's quality has really taken a hit in recent years. It's sad to see them publishing nonsense like this.
