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That's not the reasoning I critiqued.

You can apply the ole "oh, but if only said human effort was directed toward charity" line of thinking to every activity, which means it isn't a very useful line of thinking.

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The actual line of reasoning being applied is not that, though - it's a very specific case where effort was already applied toward charity but a different kind of effort could have been applied for greater effect had the applier been solely interested in helping and not inflating their own ego.

I don't think it is at all clear that an engineering solution here is a priori a bad idea. It is possible that an organization that can land rockets standing up has better than average engineers.

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