SpaceX gets almost $900 million in federal subsidies to deliver broadband to rural America https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/08/tech/spacex-starlink-subsidie...
SpaceX just won $885 million in federal subsidies to expand Starlink, Elon Musk's satellite-internet project https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/spacex-just-won-do...
In addition to that SpaceX is government contractor.
SpaceX and Blue Origin are the next Boeing/Lockheed. Government gives them both money to R&D so that they don't have just one innovative supplier.
Tesla is a great example of government project. Tesla has received $3-4 billion in subsidies.
edit:
SpaceX has received other direct subsidies. NASA has given seed money and development funding for Dragon, Falcon 9, engines and demonstration launches ($248M at least) https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/453605main_Commercial_Space_Minutes...
It's important to note that SpaceX is different from most space-related government contractor in that they mostly sell a packaged service, whereas other contractors before it had development contracts. Boeing / ULA etc were paid to develop launchers, SpaceX sells launches. (I know that SpaceX benefited from subsidies towards achieving that, but their competitors did not achieve that or even tried.)
The key difference is that they are not (entirely) incentivized on sucking on the subsidies teats. That the US government pays them to provide a public service makes them more akin to any utility than to typical government contractors.
I think this is the same way as Boeing and others get their money for development.
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, New Horizons, Starliner crew capsule ... basically all NASA and DoD launches come from ULA.
People are engaged in heated normative[1] discussion with little or no facts. I am not. Even saying Tesla is a great example of a government project does not mean it's good or bad. Just a great example.
I just wanted to add some facts to the discussion. Not enough, but some. I think it would be great to find out the total indirect and direct subsidies these companies receive, but I could not find it.
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1: Normativity is the phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good or desirable or permissible and others as bad or undesirable or impermissible.
$3-4 billion = 3 weeks of federal food stamps spending
I know which I think is the better government expenditure
We're in a "Give a man a fish/teach a man to fish" type hypothetical now.
A hand out is bailing out failing auto makers, forgiving debt arbitrarily, etc, etc.
They’re also not very good at spending money on consumer goods when they don’t have any, which Amazon absolutely needs. (Tesla needs a lot of people above average income, given their cheapest offering).
And these two giants aren’t the only places people can work. (Not enough by itself, but still a massive improvement compared to the situation leading to the French Revolution).
Super-rich as a class exists because we let them exist, but there is a reason we let them exist… and a reason we have things like the SEC and FTC to stomp on them if/when they get out of line.
Surely not. Starving people are desperate people, and desperate people are always dangerous.
Fed People with most of their basic needs met and a few luxuries make the least effective revolutionaries since they have little to gain and are terrified of losing the little they have.
Edit: before anyone suggests food shortages in DDR, based on what I saw in the DDR museum the shortages were of fancy food like coffee rather than staples like bread and potatoes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_food_riots
https://www.history.com/news/bread-french-revolution-marie-a...
https://slate.com/technology/2014/04/food-riots-and-revoluti...
History. Read it.
> but there is a reason we let them exist
Please, do tell.
One revolution in that list (France). One government resigning (Japan). One major change of policy (Egypt).
Most of the rest end in some variant of “and then lots of rioters died when the authorities put them down”.
> Please, do tell.
Because we tried these two ideas, and while both had good points, one of them turned out to be less wrong than the other:
Illuminating. Thanks.
This is true, but their visible presence and the risk of joining them often motivates the people in slightly better circumstances to become the most effective ones; the starving masses usually aren't the effective revolutionaries, but their presence often accompanies revolution for that reason.
This is clearly historically incorrect.
> Super-rich as a class exists because we let them exist, but there is a reason we let them exist…
What reason is that? They exist because they are powerful, thus hard to topple. That the SEC and FTC are so ineffective (and ridiculously small pieces of the puzzle) is evidence of that.
> What reason is that?
How long do you have?
https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs in particular from 13:30 onwards, though the whole thing and the follow up video are both worth watching.
“and” is pulling a lot of weight in your sentence, given I’ve not made a claim about general human rights on this thread.
Also? “Common cause” is very different from “has a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding”, which I consider important in this context.
https://www.amazon.com/French-Revolution-Enlightenment-Tyran...
Also, cf Japanese rice warehouses in early Tokyo and why they exist.
I mean, it might be, but as I’m not even claiming to be a domain expert I have to (argument from authority fallacy notwithstanding) rely on the author biographies as a proxy for how much they know.
Now, would you like to give me a brief summary of how, biologically speaking, you recon being malnourished fails to put a bunch of revolutionaries at a relative disadvantage to a non-malnourished bunch of revolutionaries?
> Now, would you like to give me a brief summary of how, biologically speaking, you recon being malnourished fails to put a bunch of revolutionaries at a relative disadvantage to a non-malnourished bunch of revolutionaries?
People revolt because they have nothing left to lose, not because it’s strategically a good idea. “Biologically” speaking when you outnumber your foe 100 to 1, you have at least an advantage in numbers, but again that’s not why people revolt.
They can't "rise up" from the couch, do you really think they are going to "rise up" and start a revolution?
(Regions visited: Central and North California, I-80 highway between SF and Salt Lake City, New York-Newark conurbation, Boston-Providence area)
Being too fat/lazy to “rise up from the couch” is an ignorant stereotype.
There's no guarantee that taxpayers money would be used for a better endeavor if it was used otherwise.
And the very definition of better endeavor is pretty shaky in any case.
So one can debate on whether optimal resource allocation is done by the government or private individuals, but it is not 'surely' better to have the government allocate the resources.
Will there be any element of cheap subsidised access to space in return for the government's investment?
Or is it exactly what it seems to be - a no-strings handout?
As for better endeavours - perhaps you're underestimating the economic utility of a single payer health care system which wouldn't bankrupt 500,000 individuals a year. (For example.)