NASA freezes Starliner missions

That took long enough. Insane that the gov was entirely silent after this week's starship launch as well...

Even though I'm not an elon fan, pretending to not notice for political reasons (not to mention the insane halving of launches at Vandenberg AFB) is completely insane and damaging to our country.

I wish I had any idea on how to deal with the Elon situation. I genuinely believe SpaceX wouldn't be achieving nearly what it is without him, but he's obviously also going way off the deep end these days and it's uncomfortable to watch one man with that much power getting increasingly unhinged.

It's something I constantly wonder about, I strongly believe we should be taxing the absolute shit out of people and working hard to flatten society, but I also worry that we need insane people in power sometimes to get stuff done. Starship (hell, even F9) is an astonishing achievement and there's zero chance that innovation would be possible anywhere except SpaceX or another entity with very strong leadership (Valve or Steve Jobs' Apple if they made rockets)

> I strongly believe we should be taxing the absolute shit out of people and working hard to flatten society.

I'm very curious about this mentality.. Do you beleive that meritocracy leads to better outcomes? Why do you think that the government is better positioned to allocate resources than the people who made the money?

If Elon would have been "Taxed the absolute shit out of" after his sell of Zip 2, he wouldn't have founded paypal. too much tax on the paypal sell, he couldn't invest in Tesla or start SpaceX.

> Do you beleive that meritocracy leads to better outcomes?

Do you believe that being rich implies merit? I would argue most exceptionally wealthy people are likely to be at or above average intelligence, but the unifying element is luck. Being in the right place at the right time with the right amount of money, and knowing the right people to bring it together.

Very few people have the means to even try to build SpaceX, so it’s hard to say how the average person measures up.

> Why do you think that the government is better positioned to allocate resources than the people who made the money?

I don’t, but I do think letting private citizens fling around “space program” quantities of money is going to end poorly. The state depends on the monopoly on violence to function, and every day we move closer to that monopoly only existing because rich private citizens choose to allow it.

Building a Rods From God platform is not out of Elons reach. I don’t think he would do it, but the potential is concerning to say the least. It would be better to reign that in before it becomes a problem than to wait until it is a problem.

Yes, as a minority immigrant to the US, meritocracy is what got me here. Idk why americans are so obsessed with this air headed topic.