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Comment by tim333 | Hacker News Reader

Not that I agree with it but the conservative argument against SpaceX seems to be largely:

>Despite the numerous public statements by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk decrying crony capitalism, SpaceX would not exist without government contracts and subsidies. According to The Wall Street Journal, government contracts account for about 70 percent of SpaceX’s contracts. U.S. taxpayers have provided SpaceX more than $5.5 billion in the form of Air Force and NASA contracts.

from "Ron Paul: Crony defense budget hands SpaceX a monopoly - why?" op ed in Fox News http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/09/12/ron-paul-crony-def...

I think he also annoys Breitbart types by talking about global warming.

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What about Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and the other major members of the military industrial complex? Many companies get nearly all of their revenue from government contracts.

In any case, they’re getting money in exchange for services or goods rendered to the government. SpaceX can at least claim to have provided a very valuable service, for a very good price.

Compare with programs like the F-35, among many other crimes against the American tax payer.

So, I think it's pretty common to object to monopolies and crony capitalism with defense contractors too. The what-about-ism seems out of place when you're talking about something _people already constantly complain about_.

If every military contractor was as good as SpaceX there would be no problem. It’s not crony capitalism or a monopoly just because the government is your primary customer.

The military contractors (“defense contractor” is doublespeak like DoD) are actually bribing generals and congressmen while SpaceX competes on technology and price. They’re bringing the price down on space launches which is a major strategic goal of the US military. They’ve got some cool shit to put up there but a lot of it is not yet economically feasible even with their budgets.

I don't think the US government was just handing SpaceX money, they're paying to get mass into orbit, and less per kilogram than pretty much any other option. It's the market at work. It just happens that the US Government has a lot of hardware that they want to put into space and no available in-house launch hardware at the moment.

Literally the only angle I can see on this is an "all government spending is bad" angle, and that's way off in tinfoil hat territory.

Yeah my disagreement is SpaceX probably offered better value than paying NASA or defence contractors to do the launches. And there is a strategic value to not say letting Russia do everything.

Thank you for not falling into the "Conservatives hate science" trap.

I can't speak for other people, but my personal issue with Musk's ventures are how much money he funnels from the government.

Multiple choice question!

For its launch capability, the US government should:

- buy on the open market at the lowest available price. Currently this turns out to be Russia.

- buy on the US market at the lowest available price. This may be SpaceX although other contenders are mentioned in the article

- build its own rocket systems from scratch inside government agencies

- just pay Boeing/Lockheed like they've always done

- just give up on space

(basically, if you think Musk funnels a lot of money from the US government, you should check out the rest of the aerospace industry...)

There is a fair point to be made that we should be quite critical of how taxpayer dollars are spent. Musk himself even agrees that subsidies lead to cronyism. He has even said himself that subsidies to Tesla should end in favor of a carbon tax, which would be a more just,fair, competitive, and efficient policy tool. Musk and Ron Paul are both actually right about that.

So given that government money spent towards space should be spent fairly and in support of a policy that maintains multiple competitors, these criticisms are a mix of 1) A warranted and necessary critical thought process, 2) likely influenced and supported by some good-old-boy network/industry support for ULA, and 3) opportunistic politics cashing in on a shallow opportunity to get back at a couple of Trump's adversaries like McCain and Musk.

I've seen this sentiment a lot recently. What's the difference between a) "funneling" and b) using subsidies and bidding for contracts (i.e. using those things the way they're meant to be used)? Do you consider other companies equally guilty of "funneling," e.g. Lockheed, which has about 10x the revenue and an equal if not greater dependence on the US government? http://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/102715/how-lock...

But isn't that a good thing for the "small government" side of politics? You know, government having businesses doing things, instead of spending taxpayer's money on space exploration instead of defending the nation.

okay so they still spend it on space stuff, but at least not directly.

Would they complain if the government sent money to a privatized firefighting business instead of having firefighting be part of the government?

>>"Would they complain if the government sent money to a privatized firefighting business instead of having firefighting be part of the government?"

I believe they would (probably not as bitterly) but the second half of this, is that there is a face to this business (Musk).

Elon Musks's businesses all tend to get quite a fair bit of subsidies, which is why i think Ron Paul talks about "Cronie Capitalism"

So they cry "Free Market PRIVATIZE" and now that we have a privatized space program we get this? LOL the hypocrisy is to much.

Privatization is not really privatization, when we (gov't) still pay for it.

How not? The government has satellites it wants to put in orbit, and therefor must purchase the service like anyone else. Should they get it for free?

HUH? Privatization is Government Work being run by a Non-Government Identity? The logic is confounding.

So all those Military Industry is still paid for by the TAX PAYER?! Makes no logical sense.

When the business takes public money, it is not truly private.

WAIT? That is 100% contradictory! You are taking NASA's work and making the work competitive contracts, saving Government money. So instead of NASA getting 100% of the jobs they are then taking the best bidder, AKA cheapest price that can get the job done.

So since the Government is paying it must be a Government Agency that runs it? Your talking double talk aka hypocrisy. Privatization is 100% taking work monopolized by the Government and putting them out to a private identity that can do it cheaper through the free market system.

It's not a "free" market system when it's using public funds. Simple as that. I'll keep repeating it, until you take a breath.

I don't know why you are so angry or arrogant, but this is the first semi-lucid response you have given.

Wrong, but semi lucid.

Subsidies are the antithesis of a "free" market, since the government is manipulating the market.

This seems to be what we are arguing about here, and well there's no two sides to this debate. You are wrong.

He funnels less money than his competitors. That's how he wins the contracts.

If you don't want private enterprise to get money from the government, you need to argue one of the following:

* Government should develop it's own aerospace and military industry without private sector.

* Government should stop space research and military should stop launching spy satellites.

Can you help me understand how Musk's ventures funnel more money from the government than his competitors? Tesla received less in federal loans than several other auto companies and paid them back early with full interest (a net gain for tax payers). SpaceX has lowered the cost of launch and again, saved money for the government/taxpayers.

The EV tax credit is not specific to Tesla, it's available to purchasers of EV's or partial EV's from all manufacturers.

In the case of SpaceX he took very significant risk. After failing 3 launches they made the 4th, averting bankruptcy for both SpaceX, Tesla and Musk himself.

SpaceX has saved the US $millions by unseating a fat incumbent in ULA. The savings could stretch into $billions soon and will grow larger if reusable rockets get certified for national security launches.

Compared to the amount of money we're shoveling into ULA?

Name one company that would exist without the government. Breitbart itself wouldn’t.

It’s an Internet media and several technologies used on the web were developed with government money.

And without government financed primary education fewer would be able to read and Breitbart would lose huge swaths of its reader-base.

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