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The problem with the "spend it here" argument is that there is plenty of money to be spent here. Nobody wants to. How many trillions are spent on war? On corpo
by mabbo 6y ago
The problem with the "spend it here" argument is that there is plenty of money to be spent here. Nobody wants to.
How many trillions are spent on war? On corporate subsidies and kickbacks on everything else? How much money is wasted in so many other stupid things? We have a GDP rising at a faster rate than our populations and have for decades. We don't spend the that extra money helping people. We could, but we don't.
And then people look to NASA and SpaceX and say "Look at all that waste".
Meanwhile, this money is going to go to providing low-cost internet all over America (and then the rest of the world). It's going to provide a real, tangible benefit to people at a lower cost than the alternatives.
- bumby 6y agoI addressed this in a different comment, but the distinction is one of immediacy of existential threat. The DoD funding is framed in this context (and 60 years ago, NASA's as well - when it was almost 10x the fraction of GDP that it is today). If people think there is an existential threat to their way of life, it's hard to convince them to take from that pocket to fund something more fanciful and likely only relevant generations away (if ever). That's the insidious part of the military boogeyman...and SpaceX probably knows this as well since they garner defense contracts too.