Hacker News Reader

Comment by kelnos | Hacker News Reader

I get the general frustration there, but it's weird to focus on NASA's budget when it's such a teeny tiny fraction of the total.

Yes, there's a lot of government waste, but NASA ain't it.

And I would suggest that the billionaire class and unfettered capitalism are far more responsible for the modern day version of Scott-Heron's woes than the good ol' government scapegoat.

View on HN

If DOGE served for anything at all it was for showing that there isn’t even that much “waste” per se. If there’s any waste it’s in the Pentagon which can’t even audit itself, but of course DOGE didn’t even get close to that. It was all performative for them.

I think they proved that the waste is not easily defined. I would call fraud, waste, but a computer program isn't likely to discover it without boots on the ground looking to see if the money is actually going where the records indicate.

The richest person in the world, who has had billions from government handouts, decided they were going to audit government spending.

Fraud doesn't even begin to describe it.

SpaceX did not receive government subsidies. Government contracts, yes, but those are payments for services delivered, not subsidies or handouts.

Those contracts are direct subsidies. They would not exist in the private market. Government spending subsidizes whatever it spends on.

> Those contracts are direct subsidies.

They are not. You are imputing your own meanings into the word "subsidy". If you buy a Coke from a Coke machine, you are not "subsidizing" the machine's vendor.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com