On top of that is that the billionaires are using their money to fly to space, instead of really changing the world for better, which they clearly good do. At the same time there is a significant portion of our community that idiolises these people and acts as if they are in fact changing the world for better.
are these space programs really profitable for the billionaires in question? i was under the impression that they were sinking their time and money into them too, as more of a hobby than a money-maker
They aren't. We have currently two billionaire hobby space programs. One is a pure hobby and doesn't do actual space yet (suborbital hops != orbit). The other one exists solely to open Mars for regular access and eventual colonization, in the process also opening up near-Earth space for general exploration and exploitation. If it succeeds, it'll create an unprecedented amount of lasting value for humanity in general.
Really, complaining about billionaire space is one of the dumbest part of the current zeitgeist.
> largely redistributing wealth from the commons to rich billionaires
Which means that you are saying that Musk is getting taxpayer money from SpaceX. This clearly isn't the case, he's sinking his own money into it too
Well, yes, they're a real company providing real services and getting paid in exchange.
Anyway, whether the contracts are private or government is off-topic (if it was, I'd point out that the government is getting a really good deal here, which is a very rare case in large-scale government spending). The point is, all that money isn't being funneled to line Musk's pockets, it's being reinvested straight into "let's go to Mars" R&D program.
The other company I reference have not made a commercially viable rocket that will get you into orbit.
Something that was tried in Sweden in the eighties was Employee Funds [0]. In short, tax the companies and use the money to buy stock in the same. Put the stock in funds controlled by the employees, which, in practice meant the unions. I think the original proposal was meant as a way to softly introduce a true socialist society, where the means of production (the capital) eventually would be completely owned by the workers.
The funds were never particularly popular outside the big labour union. Even the ruling Social Democrats that implemented the solution did it reluctantly after pressure from the unions. The funds was scrapped in the early nineties.
I would be pretty pissed if my compensation was being tied up in the risk of 1 company like that.
So far the least corrupt method is a low cost broad market index fund. There are fewer people in the chain of decision making, hence less agency risk. Passive index funds do the job better than human investors with lower probabilities of corruption.
Anyway, I’m not arguing for the solution. I just brought it up as I think it’s an interesting historical footnote. Even the finance minister of the ruling party that introduced them famously wrote a poem that goes something like (in fine translation by google)
The wage earners' funds are fucking crap,
now we've dumped them all the way here.
Then they should be filled with every union bigwig
who supported us so strongly in our struggle.
Now we do not have to go more rounds,
until the whole of Sweden is full of funds.
Yes wealth inequality is probably one of the biggest issues of our generation. Yes it is probably unethical that people are able to amass such huge fortunes particularly in some examples less reflective of the current crop of tech billionaires through tax loopholes and the fact that if you have money its easier to get more money. Yes musk is a billionaire but almost all of his assets are tied up in company stock, so like how do you go about redistributing that? Also, why is the meme that if we still have world hunger we shouldn’t have a space program back again? As though the world isn’t large enough for us collectively to pursue more than one avenue of progress at once.