The Iran war is going to cost us at least $200 billion dollars and you’re over here complaining about NASA spending?

just keep reminding yourself who was on those files... in case you forget it over the war

Don't forget but don't hold it too dearly, clearly US society as a whole doesn't give a f*ck about pedophiles, thats the message I see consistently now. Still not comprehending how can any sane half-decent parent think and act like that (or just any decent human for that matter), but here we are and these are facts.

Files? You mean Epstein? You have the wrong target there and you are playing into your enemy’s game.

Iran? An immigrant might get free healthcare, or a trans person might not have a horrible day today. Have you ever considered that?

what about ism

Add to that more than $300 billion that the US has given to Israel as "aid". And as a thanks, a lost war with Iran with global economic implications.

https://www.cfr.org/articles/us-aid-israel-four-charts

Everything should be voluntary philantrhopy! It seems like the ideal state if people are willing to do the pro-social thing by their own volition.

Is it better if your child does their homework because they freely choose to, or is it better that they do it because you will beat them with a belt?

I'm sure if we just cut taxes a little more, our modern-day robber barons will choose to use their money to fix things on their own instead of building doomsday bunkers and buying superyachts.

it will start to trickle down any moment now!

That trickling down? It's them pissing all over us.

It is trickling down, always has been! The emperor IS wearing beautiful clothes, also!

Do you understand what ideal means? Would you rather have the government do something then people do it?

The idea used to be that they were the same.

In practice, the government only represents the most sociopathic people.

Every day that passes this seems to become more true. I don't believe this must be true. I don't believe it was always true.. but gosh have we taken some turns..

The government is about forcing people to do things they dont want to. If something isnt against peoples wishes, you dont need the government to do it.

But people are not voluntarily philanthropists.

There's a reason we had to introduce work regulations so you don't have children working 13 hours shifts in coal mines.

It's way better if my children study by themselves, but if left to their own devises they'll just watch cartoons all day.

(Not advocating for belting kids, just saying there's a gap between utopia and reality)

> There's a reason we had to introduce work regulations so you don't have children working 13 hours shifts in coal mines.

Coincidentally, the regulations appeared when it was no longer profitable to employ children. If you don't believe that, just imagine what jobs kids could do in your workplace. I can't think of any.

Coal mining today is done with industrial machines.

The laws slightly pre-date todays offices.

People who are voluntary philanthropists tend not to amass fortunes.

But philanthropy does exist. The question is if that is better than tax funding.

It is interesting how reactionary people are to the topic.

It’s 500m spend without guaranteed success.

Yeah, so was building moon rockets.

Looking at how Blue Origin is doing, it seems that that's still true.

I don't think anyone (not insane) actually doubted we could reach the moon, they were just unsure how much money it'd take per launch, and if it'd ever be worth it. Because we had already reached orbit, "add more fuel" is essentially a guaranteed success, if infinite money is allowed - at worst you do it in multiple launches and join up the parts in space. 2, 10, 1000, it'll eventually succeed, there's no reason to believe it wouldn't.

Reaching another star? Definitely more expensive, but entirely feasible if we all got our shit together and decided it was going to happen.

Medical stuff though? Humans are complicated, and there are practically no guaranteed routes, regardless of money (currently).

Well, don't forget the Soviets gave up in the end with their N1 rocket.

Yet the chance of saving human lives en masse and permanently advancing knowledge of our own bodies should be more important than ticking a checkbox of walking on the moon and then shelving whole thing for good (that comes from person who loves astronomy etc but there are simply way more important matters in society).

We iteratively succeeded against AIDS ffs, that looked like impossible mission in 80s and 90s, we just threw more science and research on the problem. Your arguments are not that good

That's not a reason. That's an anecdote, a post selected and cherry picked example. Is this truly how you'd allocate resources?

A more correct way to use reason is to look at all possible things that have been proposed that cost $500m, and see how those turn out in general. Then possibly weight using expert knowledge about this particular problem and the possible benefits. Then consider what the opportunity cost is, i.e., what you give up by spending $500m here instead of something else.

Trite armchair rebuttals are not convincing.

Other people getting assistance too don't take away anything from your friend at all. If you want to be angry, be angry about your government spending trillions for the military and billionaires, not about the weakest parts of society.

It doesn't "take away", but if your employer paid you $x and you were struggling, and then they gave the same $x or more to people hanging out in the parking lot, you would probably see that as a personal insult.

That's a bit disingenuous, though; for that analogy to work, it would be the employer paying you, with a tenure of 40 years, the same shit salary as the new hire. And I get how frustrating that may feel, but it's still not the new hire's fault, but your boss's.

Bottom line, both of you are getting a shit salary while the C-Suite and their investor friends rake in a multiple of your annual salary every month.

That's not a good analogy because you had to work and contribute to get your SS, while the new illegal has money spent on him for basically breaking the law and sneaking into the country over overstaying his visa.

Social Security is the number 1 line item accounting for over 22% of the federal budget.

For now. Expect that to be overtaken by debt servicing in the not too distant future.

remind me how successful the Iran war was

What makes you think they will succeed?

Yep. I don't see 500 million being even close to enough to develop broad-spectrum preventatives that would be easy enough and safe enough to administer, to get over 67% of the population to take them.

And you're talking about the spending of a single country, but the success of a plan like this improves the lives of everyone globally. So if drugs were developed by a world-wide fund where every country chips in a percentage of their GDP or whatever, then it would be even more affordable.

It's strange how much we've normalized everyone being sick for weeks every year, even though the total cost is enormous

There are already people dying of malnutrition, preventable disease, etc. in the third world. Half a billion dollars could do a lot of good there, instead of going towards a pipe dream to make sure people never have to miss work for the flu again.

> I'm much more keen on never getting sick than prepping for Mars.

Never getting sick is an enabler to reaching the goal. And the goal is..?

Enabling the pursuit of happiness for the less advantaged would be a start.