Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you can get away with the share buybacks and other self enrichment, with no accountability mechanisms, this is a natural outcome based on who is in charge of these companies. But, if we were to have made these workers government employees to pay them the desired wages (and cut out the management and shareholder middlemen) as well as “pay, train, retrain”, we would have been laughed at as promoting government waste…
> if we were to have made these workers government employees The problem is monopoly. Spacefaring isn’t exactly the type of work that attracts the safe and secure job for life types. (Most folks I know at SpaceX would have chosen another career if the only option were a public job at public pay with public promotion limits.)
Sure, but we aren't talking about hiring astronauts (who ironically do tend to spend their entire career in government because it's the only place to get the thrills they want from fighter pilot to space).
We're talking about quality professional welders. Stereotyping them into one bucket would be silly, but I think it's fair to assume there are a large number of welders who wouldn't mind a guaranteed, high paying job with a guaranteed retirement package.
Extend that to like 90% of the jobs required to make a spaceship...