The Rant light is ON!

[gridlore]

I need all of you to shut the fuck up about Jeff Bezos and Blue Origins. Also, STFU about Space X, Virgin Galactic, and every other private attempt to make space travel easier.

Because if you hate that these guys have reached the edge of space in privately built craft, you need to get some pitchforks and torches and march down to the Smithsonian's Air & Space Museum and burn the Wright Flyer, and the Spirit of St. Lous, because both of those were also used for stunts.

Does anyone here remember the filksong Bloody Bastards? We used to celebrate the idea of private space travel.

So here's to Conesgstosa,
Pegasus and Liberty
And all the rest who've joined them in the race!

Oh, we're proud of NASA's heroes
But we'd rather raise our glass
To the hard-nosed bloody bastards who will get us into space

Jeff Bezos is a hard-nosed bloody bastard, and I'm sorry, but Salvage One was a fantasy of the highest order. Do you want orbital hotels? Asteroid mining? Large-scale orbital manufacturing? Governments ain't going to do it! It's going to be Space X or Virgin Galactic who will contract to build a Hilton in low Earth orbit.

"But Doug, there are some many problems on Earth!" Damn right, and we could bankrupt every billionaire on Earth and not make a dent in those problems. Do you think money is going to solve the political nightmare that if Africa? A nightmare that prevents effective infrastructure growth to help end hunger? How many billions to end religious tensions in the Mideast? How much are you willing to spend?

This brings me to my next point: It's their money! And I would rather have them spending it on building things over hiding billions in an offshore bank in the Caribbean. Yes, they need to pay more taxes, that's a different rant. But there's an important concept here called the velocity of money.

Back when I drove for Lord&Sons, my job was delivering construction materials, mostly fasteners and connectors plus things, like Unistruct and allthread to various subcontractors. Here's how the velocity of money works.

You're rich and decide to build a beachside resort. You're going to have a hotel, some cottages, a couple of pools, and a dock. You probably get banks to finance most of this. You hire a general contractor and an architectural firm.

Right here at the start, your money is moving. It's paying people. It's paying for detailed models and the print shop for blueprints. You're also paying lawyers, who create more velocity of money. Then the building starts, and an army of subcontractors are brought in. Steelworkers, concrete people, electricians, plumbers, IT contractors, power generation experts. They only increase the velocity of the money being spent.

Because each of those contractors is hiring workers and buying materials. That's where I come in. There were sites that I delivered to every day for two or three years. Which increased my income, so Kirsten and I had more money, and I could buy a truck from Ford, which increased the velocity of the money. . .

See the point? Things like Space X and Virgin Galactic create money velocity. That Blue Origin bird cost money and involved that same pyramids of engineers, designers, subcontractors, and workers, all the way down to whatever taco trucks showed up for the launch. Creating and making moves the economy!

Yes, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are tone-deaf assholes. Charles Lindbergh was a Nazi sympathizer. The Wright Brothers were racists. But they are getting us closer to space being accessible, and getting us off this rock! To them, I raise my glass!

Finally, to everyone who made a dick-joke about Blue Origin; congrats, Dr. Freud, you really went to the basement on that one.

Comments

[robhansen]

The thing that gets me about his "critics" is really, what, exactly, are they criticizing?

Bezos already has the money. Whatever social evils went into the acquiring of that money are irrelevant to the question of how that money will be used.

Option one: he freezes his assets by investing in gold, artwork, or other physical trinkets. Not exactly socially beneficial.

Option two: he invests his assets in the market. We can argue the social beneficence here: I think "Bezos makes more money by helping other mini-Bezos make Bezos money" is a social positive, maybe you don't, whatever.

Option three: he spends his assets on a vanity project. Whether it's spaceflight or building a yacht, suddenly he's giving money pretty directly to the truck drivers, accountants, engineers, etc., exactly as you point out.

And there is no option four! There is no "donate it to charity." All donating money to charity does is take a chunk of money and say "I'm trusting someone else to choose option 1, 2, or 3." That's not a slam on charity — I donate a lot to charity — but just a statement that they, too, have to choose between asset freezing, investment, or spending. I donate to a food pantry, they in turn option-three it by driving to Costco and buying food in bulk for hungry people.

When people complain about Bezos spending money he's already acquired on spaceflight, my initial question for them is, "so which option should he have chosen?" And they never have a useful answer. Never.

It's like they've never held a job in their lives.

[freyjaw]

Thank you! This is about how my brain was going. Too often the uber-rich sit on their wealth. It won't go through the little guy's hands. Financing projects means the little guy will have more money passing through his hands. The same can be said for the government paying for infrastructure upgrades so desperately needed.