Sam: "I'm not in it for the money. I have principles."
World: "But what if it was like, a lot of money?"
Sam: "Oh alright you convinced me. Fuck my principles."
World: "But what if it was like, a lot of money?"
Sam: "Oh alright you convinced me. Fuck my principles."
I could tell you in very plain terms how a competitor to Boeing and SpaceX would benefit the American economy. I have not even the faintest fucking clue what "AGI" even is, or how it's profitable if it resembles the LLMs that OpenAI is selling today.
People use SpaceX every day even if they never connected to a starlink -- the lower costs that governments pay for space launches means more money for other things, not to mention no longer paying Russia for launches or engines.
Which sounds all well and good until you realise it’s at the complete whims of one highly misinformed and reactionary individual.
He’s one made-up article away from turning sides and fucking everything up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_in_the_Russo-Ukrainia...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Views_of_Elon_Musk#Russian_inv...
On the other hand, just because the execs who do the layoffs bought into the narrative it doesn't mean they're right.
what annoys you?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9Le1ibX2zY
> if you went to a group of investors and pitched a board game where the winners get space ships and the losers die, they'd call you crazy. But if you suggested to those same investors that perhaps we shouldn't organize our entire society that way, they'd call you crazy.
The Social Security budget is $1.4 Trillion, just the federal welfare budget is >$1Trillion (not including state budgets), and then there's medicare. Meanwhile, the NASA budget is <$25B (with SpaceX's operating budget and profits being a fraction of that)
I wish we lived in that simple of a world. But we don't.
Was the original quote. I just showed that you could get rid of all rockets ever made and it would be a rounding error for any funds used to save the “losers” from dying.
How is that a non-sequitur?
Feed the hungry. House the homeless. Give away money unconditionally to those in need. Build hospitals in poor countries. Fight disinformation on crucial topics (such as climate change). Provide disaster relief. Not build more power hungry technology that exacerbates our current problems.
Do literally anything positive for another person, that does not harm others.
The list is pretty big when one isn’t selfish; there’s no law forcing anyone to build space agencies.
A lack of imagination is not an excuse.
Funnel $10B in housing to Los Angeles and you'll build less than 100 units of housing, because the inflationary push of that money would balloon the cost of per unit housing. I don't want to imagine the effect of that on middle class housing.
Funnel $10B of food to xyz famine region and you've undercut local farmers for generations. Happens all the time [1]. And that's assuming you can get the aid past local corruption.
These problems aren't as simple as people assume, and I'm low-key happy young naive Billionaire's are avoiding these issues instead of trying to throw their weight around.
FWIW: Sam's already funneled a bunch of money into green energy production[2].
[1]: https://haitisolidarity.net/in-the-news/how-the-united-state...
[2]: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/25/sam-altman-backed-nuclear-st...
Doesn't make sense to me. An uptick in construction work will not be an inflation balloon. More disposable income doesn't mean 1:1 more spending.
If you build a lot of (social) housing, you put at worst a lot of people a roof above their head.
Families having less financial stress might lower crime rate and improve children school scores. They might save to start businesses or find their other talents.
For some, this might be a downside tough. It makes workers more educated, healthier, more stable, less desperate and less dependent on bosses, plus they might be less angry so politically less exploitable too.
There's a massive shortage in construction workers [1], so yes there will be? The few construction workers we do have can demand higher wages (yay!) but then will they be outbidding other mid-income folks for housing with those increased wages? Sounds like an inflation spiral to me.
My statement wasn't against social housing, I love social housing. We just haven't cracked the code in scaling housing (and subsequent maintenance) yet. And the problem is about 80% political will, billionaire cash is useless here.
[1]: https://www.abc.org/News-Media/News-Releases/abc-2024-constr...
It is rather the other way around. Higher rents / house prices will make sure only people with higher wages can afford to live there. That means your bagel or coffee will be more expensive there too.
Pretty much everything required to build housing, wood, labor, pre-approved land is in a massive shortage that we can’t spend money to fix.
So more money to simple pump demand for all those things will have a massive inflationary impact.
Please, forget anything you are worrying about here, it does not apply.
If just these problems could be solved the state has more than enough funds to house everyone. What billionaires do would be wholly irrelevant (like it is now)
[1] https://www.constructiondive.com/news/construction-materials...
Start by collaborating with organisations which are entrenched in studying these issues and the impact of the solutions. If you have the money you can pay them to help and guide the effort, don’t act like if you know everything.
They won’t touch American housing problems with a 10ft pole. That should tell you something.
Go to Berkeley, tell them a Billionaire wants to build housing for the homeless in their neighborhood. See what happens.
It’s a hard pill to swallow but the best thing billionaires can do is let us tax them and then butt out go fly rockets. The political problems is upto the rest of us.
Why do you keep insisting on the USA? It’s not the only country in the world.
> Go to Berkeley
I will not. I’m not American.
> It’s a hard pill to swallow but the best thing billionaires can do is let us tax them
Maybe it’s a hard pill to swallow for the billionaire, but I personally agree and think you’re right. However, this conversation started with someone asking “what do you do with a a lot of money past a point” and offering only a private space agency as an alternative to working on AGI. My point was there are many other problems worth pursuing.
If you don’t think NIMBYism and degrowth is a problem in your country yet, just give it a couple of years. It just hit England, you’re next. No billionaire can save you.