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In a last-minute decision, White House decides not to terminate NASA employees

arstechnica.com

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Re: In a last-minute decision, White House decides not to terminate NASA employees

#11

Post by jfengel »

thrance wrote: post #5

Real, actual workers have their livelihood endangered by out-of-touch billionaires going back and forth on serious economic policies hastily carried on made up grounds of "cutting waste" and "anti-wokeness" while keeping the lion share of the economy for themselves. This enrages me, and I can't comprehend how anyone needing a wage to live can side with them. Don't they understand that Trump, Musk and cie's interests…

It is out of touch billionaires, but it's also a vast swath of misinformed non-billionaires who seem convinced that the only thing they need to know about government is that it's bad.

They're the ones who put the out of touch billionaires in charge, and they remain thrilled. Even when people don't get fired, they like the way the randomness keeps everyone else terrified.

Re: In a last-minute decision, White House decides not to terminate NASA employees

#12

Post by staplers »

jfengel wrote: post #11
thrance wrote: post #5

Real, actual workers have their livelihood endangered by out-of-touch billionaires going back and forth on serious economic policies hastily carried on made up grounds of "cutting waste" and "anti-wokeness" while keeping the lion share of the economy for themselves. This enrages me, and I can't comprehend how anyone needing a wage to live can side with them. Don't they understand that Trump, Musk and cie's interests…

It is out of touch billionaires, but it's also a vast swath of misinformed non-billionaires who seem convinced that the only thing they need to know about government is that it's bad. They're the ones who put the out of touch billionaires in charge, and they remain thrilled. Even when people don't get fired, they like the way the randomness keeps everyone else terrified.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Tsar,_bad_Boyars

Re: In a last-minute decision, White House decides not to terminate NASA employees

#13

Post by [deleted] »

staplers wrote: post #12
jfengel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is out of touch billionaires, but it's also a vast swath of misinformed non-billionaires who seem convinced that the only thing they need to know about government is that it's bad. They're the ones who put the out of touch billionaires in charge, and they remain thrilled. Even when people don't get fired, they like the way the randomness keeps everyone else terrified.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Tsar,_bad_Boyars

[deleted]

Re: In a last-minute decision, White House decides not to terminate NASA employees

#14

Post by patagurbon »

smitty1e wrote: post #10

The sad news about chemotherapy is that it blows away good tissue with the bad. Which may or may not be an admonishment to embrace cancer.

The great thing about everything that isn't cancer is we don't need to throw babies out with bath water

Re: In a last-minute decision, White House decides not to terminate NASA employees

#15

Post by pineaux »

sega_sai wrote: post #8

I am sure Elon's apologists will find the reason to say why this is the best way to "reduce waste", "reform", "optimise".

Its the new doublethink. Destroying is "making great", messing up is cleaning up, taking by force is "buying".

Re: In a last-minute decision, White House decides not to terminate NASA employees

#16

Post by voidhorse »

jfengel wrote: post #11
thrance wrote: post #5

Real, actual workers have their livelihood endangered by out-of-touch billionaires going back and forth on serious economic policies hastily carried on made up grounds of "cutting waste" and "anti-wokeness" while keeping the lion share of the economy for themselves. This enrages me, and I can't comprehend how anyone needing a wage to live can side with them. Don't they understand that Trump, Musk and cie's interests…

It is out of touch billionaires, but it's also a vast swath of misinformed non-billionaires who seem convinced that the only thing they need to know about government is that it's bad. They're the ones who put the out of touch billionaires in charge, and they remain thrilled. Even when people don't get fired, they like the way the randomness keeps everyone else terrified.

It's not really surprising when both parties continue to promulgate the lie that "hard work" and "intelligence" correlate with wealth, when in reality, luck and legacy correlate much more strongly, meanwhile the top 10% of households in the USA hold 67% of the wealth while the bottom earners have to make due with a measly 2.5%.

This leads all those people into thinking the government must not work (because it is unable to curb the insane uneven distribution of wealth, which they don't see but feel the direct side effects of) simultaneously thinking mr. big businessman must be able to fix it, because the standard narratives tell everyone to do nothing but worship such people because wealth = smart = good, right? .

Re: In a last-minute decision, White House decides not to terminate NASA employees

#18

Post by skissane »

jfengel wrote: post #7
jeffbee wrote: post #3

If I was a big fan of flying around in a private jet, rocket guys are the last guys I would turn into enemies.

NASA aren't rocket guys. They hire people like him to build rockets. They make satellites and do science. If they decide not to hire him he'll fire more people until they do. They manage space policy so it probably still isn't a good idea to piss them off. The enemies he's making at FAA aren't a good idea, either, but he can just fire them as well.

> NASA aren't rocket guys.

This isn’t true. NASA engineers own the design and engineering of the SLS rocket. No doubt some of the detailed engineering work is given to contractors, as is the manufacturing, but NASA’s “rocket guys” own the overall design. (And of course a lot of the big picture was dictated by Congress-still, there’s a lot of engineering decisions left in the middle between what Congress dictates and what is left up to the contractors.)

NASA has continually had rocket engineers going back to not long after its founding, when Wernher von Braun and his team transferred over from the US Army - through Mercury and Gemini, to Apollo’s Saturn V, the Space Shuttle, the abortive Constellation program, and now SLS. Part of the argument that SLS supporters make for not canceling it is that it gives NASA’s rocket engineers work to do and helps keep that knowledge in-house

NASA’s engineers also provide technical advice to commercial launch vehicle and engine vendors such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, ULA, etc, and they also have an important role to play in NASA’s verification of the commercial vendors’ technical analyses to demonstrate their launch vehicles are safe and reliable. But double-checking the work of someone else isn’t the same thing as owning your own launch vehicle design. Now, personally, I don’t agree with the argument-it isn’t worth spending billions for NASA to retain their own “full service” rocket engineering skill base when the commercial skill base in that area is now just as good, arguably even better - but that’s the argument they make

Re: In a last-minute decision, White House decides not to terminate NASA employees

#19

Post by [deleted] »

thrance wrote: post #5

Real, actual workers have their livelihood endangered by out-of-touch billionaires going back and forth on serious economic policies hastily carried on made up grounds of "cutting waste" and "anti-wokeness" while keeping the lion share of the economy for themselves. This enrages me, and I can't comprehend how anyone needing a wage to live can side with them. Don't they understand that Trump, Musk and cie's interests…

[deleted]

Re: In a last-minute decision, White House decides not to terminate NASA employees

#20

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

thrance wrote: post #5

Real, actual workers have their livelihood endangered by out-of-touch billionaires going back and forth on serious economic policies hastily carried on made up grounds of "cutting waste" and "anti-wokeness" while keeping the lion share of the economy for themselves. This enrages me, and I can't comprehend how anyone needing a wage to live can side with them. Don't they understand that Trump, Musk and cie's interests…

Reagan explained it all to everyone more than 40 years ago. Let the rich get even richer, more breadcrumbs fall from their tables, which means more for everyone.

I mean, how are you even going to have a job if the billionaires are all out business?

The problem was that the Laffer curve had a vague ring of truth to it (enabled by the lack of any labels on the axes), and millions of Americans have bought into the bullshit it has implied for decades now.

"If they do better, we do better". It sounds so simple, so lovely, so true. But it's a lie.

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