[delayed]

I'd be fine with that as a counterargument if that were the counterargument such people made. I think that's a healthy debate and dialogue, where we could learn from each other. I often think the case is they say climate change is fake and that experts are lying and everyone who has a PhD is lying to you, and those ad hominem attacks often say to me someone who feels insecure about their knowledge or has some vested interest in, say, the oil industry, for example. That was more of my outburst.

With regards to whether a private company could maintain satellites (probably with government regulation and maybe subsidy), I'm open to that. I just worry sometimes that many of these decisions are made in the "Uh oh, this public knowledge might destroy my private profits, so let us get rid of the public knowledge."

> afraid of knowledge and don't want to look weak

I've come to the conclusion this is basically it, aside from corruption.

Intellectual weakness and cowardice, avoiding what you can't actually do or don't understand.

In the case of anything space related though, I'd look to corruption, trying to cut public resources to reduce competition with private equivalents, shifting money from something publicly owned to something privately profited from.

you're assuming this is because of perception of weakness, and not an explicit, decade-long aggressive effort by foreign money + US billionaires to dismantle the US government.

just happens that oil barons & Putin happen to have views that are aligned, and that Trump + his cronies are willing to play ball with the fellow travelers.

i think a decades-long aggressive effort to dismantle the US government might also be from such a place of fear of knowledge or at least, fear of others having control over their right to make profit. I guess I'm just tired of us celebrating the ones who appear strong but really are just acting out of deep fear and wish they (and us) had the courage to see it as fear and express it as such.

For those in power, those that point out the problem, become the problem.

Only if those in power don't actually feel powerful but just want to look powerful.