Re:The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter...
by AtlasBarfed on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @11:30PM
(#26259710)
Well, IMO what you're really advocating for is massive government-initiated research and development that ISN'T outsourced as pork to contractors.
The lobbyists destroyed those types of programs.
We used to have a pipeline for PhD candidates to these government programs, but that doesn't seem to exist anymore.
Speaking of unpopular guys, Musk's Tesla and SpaceX are very much "skunkworks" companies. Maybe the US could, say, incubate more companies like that? The irrational hate of Musk reflects America's deep and strong anti-intellectual anti-nerd anti-engineering popular culture bias. Sure Musk isn't a boy scout, but the list of evil noxious business executive that are objectively worse than Musk in the last 50 years is probably about 10,000 to 20,000 longer than anything Musk has done. Possibly 100,000. Huge numbers of healthcare insurance, petroleum, defense, mining, and manufacturing executives. Microsoft and Intel's run of market manipulation and monopoly. Cable/Telephone companies sitting on their monopolies.
The 50s and 60s still had the overarching group achievement and patriotism from WWII. But our modern era has steadily fallen more and more to greed, apathy, laziness, and especially narcissism.
The lobbyists destroyed those types of programs.
We used to have a pipeline for PhD candidates to these government programs, but that doesn't seem to exist anymore.
Speaking of unpopular guys, Musk's Tesla and SpaceX are very much "skunkworks" companies. Maybe the US could, say, incubate more companies like that? The irrational hate of Musk reflects America's deep and strong anti-intellectual anti-nerd anti-engineering popular culture bias. Sure Musk isn't a boy scout, but the list of evil noxious business executive that are objectively worse than Musk in the last 50 years is probably about 10,000 to 20,000 longer than anything Musk has done. Possibly 100,000. Huge numbers of healthcare insurance, petroleum, defense, mining, and manufacturing executives. Microsoft and Intel's run of market manipulation and monopoly. Cable/Telephone companies sitting on their monopolies.
The 50s and 60s still had the overarching group achievement and patriotism from WWII. But our modern era has steadily fallen more and more to greed, apathy, laziness, and especially narcissism.