631–640 of 879 posts
All the critics lobbing cynicism against Bezos, Branson, and Musk saying, in essence, that their money is better spent here at home reminds me of a wonderful scene from The West Wing when one character asks why we have to go to Mars: "'Cause it's next. For we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill, and we saw fire. And we crossed the ocean, and we pioneered the West, and we took to the sky. The history of…
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SpaceX has already done that, in less time, and took humans to the ISS.
Yes, blue origin was founded in 2000 and spacex founded in 2002. Blue origin landed it's first rocket in 2005. It was a tiny rocket and a tiny flight and purely for testing. SpaceX landed it's first rocket in 2015. It was an orbital flight delivering real value. Would it have made sense for SpaceX to stop because blue origin already flew a reusable rocket?
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> Neither Bezos or Branson achieved orbital velocities, which is the minimum bar for doing useful things related to space. Well, ICBMs are very useful, and only require sub-orbital velocities, though I don't necessarily want Bezos or Branson to get those.
Do ICBMs have any practical uses besides delivering explosives?
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I vehemently disagree. Handing out cash to the poor isn’t fixing the problem. It will make matters worse (inflation). It’s almost unbelievable that investing in education and apprenticeship is considered a negative thing but giving straight up cash from Billionaires is popular. Homelessness and poverty needs to be tackled by getting these people jobs.
Hopefully a few hundred peer reviewed papers might change your mind. https://www.givedirectly.org/research-on-cash-transfers/
All the critics lobbing cynicism against Bezos, Branson, and Musk saying, in essence, that their money is better spent here at home reminds me of a wonderful scene from The West Wing when one character asks why we have to go to Mars: "'Cause it's next. For we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill, and we saw fire. And we crossed the ocean, and we pioneered the West, and we took to the sky. The history of…
this is like saying a book store on every corner should replace libraries.
shitty equivelence,
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> They made billions from excellent businesses Bezos is not 1 million times more productive than other human beings. He just managed to create a system that exploits people in a massive scale. That's not what I call excellent business.
> Bezos is not 1 million times more productive Bezos has unambiguously produced 1m times more than what most humans have.
I'm glad billionaires like Bezos exist. They can choose to fund grand visions when people who need votes either don't, or they do and the funding gets cut after the next election. This is one of the ways China is able to execute long term strategy better than the west, they can maintain focus. We're not able to do that without a significant necessity (winning a cold war). Get over your jealousy of the billionaires. S…
That lucky, smart, hard working, genetically gifted, handsome, strong, virile, well-endowed, wrinkle-free, and blessed by all the gods billionaire would still be able to go to space and give mindblowing amounts of cash to anyone they want even with 1/10th the wealth they have now.
Otherwise, society is going to reach a breaking point as it always has and will again. But that's just life.
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Would the internet have been invented if not for military interests? Innovation, especially massive leaps, is born from necessity and drive, not "let's improve our technology".
This reads like a truism that one is simply expected to accept. Yet we could just as well cite the Wright Brothers as an example of people innovating for no other reason than a desire to improve technology: > In 1896, the newspapers were filled with accounts of flying machines. Wilbur and Orville noticed that all these primitive aircraft lacked suitable controls. They began to wonder how a pilot might balance an airc…
Even in the link you posted, it mentioned that immediately after creating a viable flying machine, the Wright brothers approached militaries worldwide trying to sell it to them.
Basic science and pure math research do exist, and I'm sure loads of people push for advances in tech without any eye towards profit or power, but basically any real-world product or system was engineered with a specific goal in mind.
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You are 100% right. A million people can own $1000 in a corporation, or 1 person can own $1,000,000,000. The company has the same capital but wealth is distributed differently. Even if we needed big corporations, we still do not need billionaires.
Countries without billionaires are mired in poverty. Billionaires can make high risk investments. A million people won't.