It's not a moral obligation at all. Corporations don't have morals because they're not alive. The people running them certainly do however. It turns out that people who work in the space industry happen to like space and don't want to ruin the view of it. Elon Musk allegedly specifically tells investors that invest that if they're expecting to get a return on their investment anytime soon to not invest.
> I extremely dislike this moral code and Milton Friedman and its second order effects on our society. But that's the frame of mind most people who go through US MBA are indoctrined with.
What are you even talking about. SpaceX isn't run by MBAs. It's run by engineers.
My personal opinion is that industries self-regulate well as long as they are not given obscene incentives for narrow near-term profit at the expense of the long term. Luckily SpaceX is not a public company so they have no need to worry about the near term.
I extremely dislike this moral code and Milton Friedman and its second order effects on our society. But that's the frame of mind most people who go through US MBA are indoctrined with.
Regarding Musk, he has proven to have this Randian Hero mentality. He might care about astronomy, and he might just think, who gives a f*CK we're going to Mars.
That's why democracy is important, it reduces the variance of impact these bigger than life type personalities can induce.
I think it's crazy a single person can decide for.all of us how the future will look like.