Comment by hersko 2 days ago
Thank goodness for billionaires.
There's a good case to be made that if it weren't for the likes of Musk and Bezos we'd still be stuck with the likes of ULA.
They are literally pulling us into the future and i'm all for it.
No indeed, it is not a zero-sum game, billionaires like Musk and Bezos have more money than Scrooge McDuck [0], the cartoon version of Greed. While their share of the global wealth is increasing by each year
"The richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population, reveals a new Oxfam report today." Jan 16, 2023 [1]
[0] https://www.benzinga.com/news/21/11/23829868/elon-musk-is-ev... [1] https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/richest-1-bag-nearly...
So? I don't think you are really making an argument. $42 trillion created, and by those same accounting rules they got the share that they created. There net worth is just the stock value x number of shares they have. Their wealth is directly correlated by how much value the market thinks their companies are worth.
This is not a problem for me.
I would disagree with some of your reasoning. Workers created the wealth, and by workers I mean everyone from delivery people, software developers, managers etc.
However, due to political decisions most if not all of that wealth is shared among people at the upper levels of the hierarchy, and third party investors.
It might not feel as a problem to you, but increasing inequality has negative consequences for society as a whole. It is well documented that more unequal societies have a higher prevalence of violence and theft, which might have direct consequences for you or your environment.
The sums spent on this are trivial to governments. California HSR costs much more than bringing a rocket to life. The annual cost of dialysis to the American government is many times what SpaceX or Blue Origin costs.
Any number of nations' governments could do this in a wealth perspective. And none have.
They have a lot more money than private companies. California HSR alone costs ten times or more than the Starship program. Annually, the American government spends some three or four times as much as the Starship program on dialysis for 0.2% of the population. Money is in abundance for a government.
There are billionaires all over the world who haven’t built successful space companies. The key ingredient is the government funding which has made the US space industry possible, such as building the launch pads, subsidizing hundreds of companies which build specialized parts, creating the GPS network required to track launches, etc.
Maybe thank the taxpayers instead?
I guess it would presuppose some solidarity with the workers at Amazon
At a glance: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/12/study-amazon-workers-serious...
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-10-25/pain-exhau...
Billionaires simply cannot exist without exploitation somewhere (though most often throughout the system that enriched them.)
This isn't even controversial.
Many simply choose to think it's acceptable, even preferable, through whatever twisted justifications.
It actually is a feature of capitalism. Envy can blind though.