"A new life awaits you in the Off-World colonies. The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!" (Blade Runner)

Certainly would be useful to diversify the efforts. That way one political hiccup in one swamp town can't pause progress for decades.

A bit of an exaggeration to argue the space industry is "unfunded", when the government spends double AMZN's net income on NASA every year even now. $1.6bn is one small step for government, one giant leap for the private sector.

> And this is why getting private industry into space is what matters.

Really? that's an interesting conclusion to jump to. Maybe it would be easier to properly run the government than try to make companies that pretend to do the job of nation states?

Bezos is doing what he's doing precisely because he has the money to do it and not be beholden to profit motives. Saying "we should get private companies involved in space" comes with a HUGE asterix of "as long as they aren't beholden to profit motives".

And yes, spaceX is a thing but they're never going to turn a profit. The whole thing is a for profit company in name only.

At one point international trade was the job of nation states. I don't think it's outrageous to imagine that some large scale endeavors require enormous upfront capital and organization, but eventually become cheap enough to move to the private sector.

I agree, i thought of the old trade companies in England that were basically responsible for spreading the british empire. I still can't but think this is somehow different.

> Maybe it would be easier to properly run the government

One generation doesn't seem to be able to run government more properly than its preceding generation, so it's probably impossible to do better than we are doing.

Previous generations have done lots better; what you're seeing is the end result of a few decades of the "starve the beast" project, working its way into governments from local to the federal level.

There's now one mainstream party that wants the government to run properly, serve the people, etc., and one mainstream party that runs explicitly under the slogan of "the government isn't the solution, the government is the problem," and claims that any use of government resources for a social benefit is "socialism."

Please don't buy into the idea that government, by its nature, is dysfunctional--please look at other countries around the world to see that it is possible to have a non-corrupt, beneficent government entity that improves life for its citizens.

That's just not what we have in the US.

>Please don't buy into the idea that government, by its nature, is dysfunctional--please look at other countries around the world to see that it is possible to have a non-corrupt, beneficent government entity that improves life for its citizens.

No, it's not possible, in the US. Outside the US, yes, as you've pointed out, but it's just not possible here; there's too many internal problems to make it possible. It's like saying it's possible to have a non-corrupt, beneficient government in Afghanistan; no, it really isn't, not for many generations. The social problems there prevent it.

You have a very unrealistic image of governmental history. As mentioned a big part of the reason Nixon decided to can the space program was because he literally did not like JFK. That was in 1972. If you want to go back further in history we had a vice president and secretary of the treasury literally engage in a duel to the death over their disputes. In particular the man on the $10 bill was killed by vice president of the man on the nickel. That was in 1804. If you'd like to go in between those we dates were busy killing each other off in a Civil War.

Even looking at the present, I think many are not aware of what's happening in Europe. Systems from Scandinavia's welfare state to the UK's NHS are in increasingly bad shape with things looking to only become worse. It's a mixture of increasing migration, an aging population, in the case of healthcare systems populations becoming generally less healthful, and increasing ideological fracturing of society. These are all issues that the US has has been an unfortunate leader on. The solidity of these systems will be illustrated over the next decade or two. Suffice to say, places like Sweden are already a good distance from the country you may think you are idealizing, and a few decades from now it will likely be even further away from that ideal. The point of this is that you need to compare apples to apples. If you're still idealizing Europe in a couple of decades, I'll concede the point - but I doubt you will be.

>In particular the man on the $20 bill was killed by vice president of the man on the nickel. That was in 1804.

What the heck are you talking about? Andrew Jackson died in 1845 of old age. Jackson killed some guy in 1806 in a duel, and apparently had a hot temper and challenged others to duels, but he himself died at the old age of 78.

Edit: you're thinking of the Hamilton-Burr duel, where Alexander Hamilton (who's on the $10 bill, not 20) was killed in 1804 by Aaron Burr, VP for Jefferson.

Indeed, my mistake on the $10 vs $20. Edited that in my post now. I did not even know that Jackson also killed somebody in a duel. Quite interesting!

You could also say man on the $10 was killed by the VP of the man on the $2.