this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
484 points (97.8% liked)

Asklemmy

43340 readers
2067 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I've definitely turned into the paranoid nutcase within my friend group in recent years, I hate that everything is "smart" nowadays requiring an app/internet connection & account, just to do basic things that didn't require any of that before.

What's some things currently making you ramble like an old man?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] -5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If you weren't so utterly braindead, you'd understand that if the cost to bring tourists up to space drops, that drops the cost to bring more scientists and equipment up to space as well which would lead to a massive growth in discoveries.

Except that you are so caught up in your tiny little world of hate, that you can't possibly expand it enough to understand that things cost money, and thus reducing what things cost, makes it that much better for institutions like NASA. One of the single biggest concerns of setting up a new space telescope or sending a rocket to a comet or a trip to Mars is money. It isn't the only concern, but it is a massive one. Driving down those costs by increasing a launch schedule, trying out reusable rockets and investing a bunch to allow space tourism, helps everything space-related.

You're not smart enough to come back here and admit how wrong you were.

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Obviously things cost money, you patronising jackass, but pining all your hopes on CEOs and the ultra-wealthy to cut in to their own profit margins for the sake of humanity makes you more braindead than I am. It's scientific innovation that drives discovery, cost reduction, and economic growth, not profit-hoarding conglomerates.

A large portion of our discoveries and inventions in the past fifty years or more are building on top of innovations made during the 60s, 70s, and 80s by NASA's launches. Electrical engineering, structural engineering, communications and data, materials sciences, all needed to be advanced for space travel. Handing this responsibility off to SpaceX just leads to all the data, discoveries, innovations, and corollaries being patented, trademarked, and locked away to make sure no competitor can take advantage of it.

Shell knew climate change was going to devastate the planet over 50 years ago. Did they capitalise on that opportunity to develop green and renewable energy first and completely dominate that market for the betterment of themselves and the planet? No. They locked down that information, spread misinformation for decades, and made short term profiteering decisions to advance their own individual careers. Now we're watching the planet slowly burn. So sure, let's trust the corporate pigs.

[โ€“] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago

My god you really do believe all this capitalist bullshit. Listen, things have material and labor inputs. Those material and labor inputs could be applied elsewhere, so there are opportunity costs. But the idea that the solution is to create extraneous services that can only be afforded by people who are hoarding our medium of exchange is missing the forest for the trees. If the real problem was that we didn't have enough paper money to pay for shit, the communists have a great answer for that and it's called abolishing private property. End of hoarding.

Now we have all the paper money we need because no one is hoarding it. And yet, and yet, we still have labor and material inputs and those inputs could be used elsewhere.

So NOW, under communism, we get to make decisions not based on what sociopathic hoarders want but instead based on what society needs. Do we need to figure out the safety challenges for gold plated toilets on Mars, or should we maybe focus on some other aspects of space research. Because if we follow what the sociopathic hoarders want, we're not getting efficiency, we're getting maximal waste.