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Perhaps many people think that socialism and communism are such toxic ideologies that any defense of them deserves to be downvoted into oblivion. I did not down
by chr1 7y ago
Perhaps many people think that socialism and communism are such toxic ideologies that any defense of them deserves to be downvoted into oblivion. I did not downvote, but being from a former communist country i agree with the sentiment as this ideologies are the ones responsible for the largest amount of deaths and misery in the last century.
Any form of government that involves central planning and large redistribution of income is going to create worse outcomes for society. This is partly the reason why things like SpaceX Amazon etc are created in US and not in Europe.
Of course some social programs as free education and free healthcare are necessary, since it is essentially a form of vc funding where it pays off to invest in many people as some of them would make enough money later in life to cover all the investment. But even here it is important to not take too large a chunk of societies resources and to keep the service itself capitalist with many competing actors.
- tehjoker 7y agoI don't want to dismiss your experience... but space is a bad example here. The USSR was far ahead of the US on basically every "first" except landing people on the moon (which was important! It just wasn't everything.). I'm skeptical of SpaceX. While they make claims about Mars, they've mainly innovated in regaining access to space (which was lost through lack of investment) and making it cheaper (in an impressive way). These aren't wholly new capabilities.
- chr1 7y agoThe fact that USSR was happy to spend enormous resources on anything weapon related in a hungry country doesn't speak about communism being better for space. The main reason USSR had its "firsts" was that by shear luck Korolev didn't die in gulag (though was very close to) and that we were more willing to risk human lives. Perhaps one of the reasons soviet moon program has failed was that in 1966 Korolev have died just 59 years old because of his time at gulag. The other reason was that until mid fifties cybernetics was considered anti-communist science and USSR never managed to recover from that and develop good computers. (This is typical with communism where utility of things is determined not by people freely choosing where to invest their money, but by government). So i can't agree that USSR being first makes space a bad example. That being said i was bringing SpaceX not as a comparison with USSR, but with the mild socialism of current day Europe which despite having more people doesn't produce the kind of innovation US does.
- mirimir 7y ago> The fact that USSR was happy to spend enormous resources on anything weapon related in a hungry country doesn't speak about communism being better for space. They were terrified by the US. For good reason, arguably. I mean, I've read that the US nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki in part as a warning shot for the Soviets. And there were discussions in the late 40s of nuking the Soviet Union, preemptively.
- chr1 7y agoGood point, i didn't mean to say that getting nuclear weapons and ways to move them was irrational. Just that space exploration was a side effect.
- mirimir 7y agoFor both sides, I agree that space exploration was a side effect of the arms race. Putting stuff in orbit was a demonstration that you could put it anywhere. Also, it was an issue of national pride. So in that sense, for the Soviets, not that different from gross whale harvest. Or wheat, nails, or whatever. But in the end, it's arguable that the arms race played a large role in destroying the Soviet Union. Its military budget was so large, relative to its GNP, that everything else fell apart.