Ronan Farrow writes in New Yorker that U.S. govt so reliant on #ElonMusk whose mobile Internet terminals #Starlink are vital to #Ukrainian military that it is now struggling "to respond to his risk-taking, brinkmanship, and caprice". There is little precedent for the dependency that the U.S. now has on Musk from the future of #energy and #transportation to the #exploration of #space. #SpaceX is currently sole means by which #NASA transports crew from US soil into #space https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/08/28/elon-musks-shadow-rule
@bespacific Just nationalize Starlink and have NASA run it. Reality check for the Musker
Given NASA's record, that sounds like the setup for a reality check for the rest of us and a great lesson on why nationalizing things has so frequently gone so poorly throughout history.
Why would we have faith in a political appointee being capable of running a Starlink in that bloated federal bureaucracy, that to emphasize the point, is subject to the brinksmanship and caprice of Congress?
At least Musk has his own skin in the game.
@volkris @kimhoar @bespacific Musk is the poster boy for caprice and brinkmanship.
Indeed, though through legal agreements that can be held in check.
It's a bit harder to hold in check those who are actually making the laws in the first place.
Like I said, for all his faults, at least Musk puts his own skin in the game.
@volkris @kimhoar @bespacific oh but he doesn’t. He throws money around and puts other peoples skin in the game.
Whose money does he throw around? And how does he get that money without trading skin for it?
That doesn't really make sense unless he is putting on a mask and robbing banks.
I go the other way around with that: it's how much money the people we've elected give him.
And once our officials hand him money, it's his money, no longer government money.
So it goes back to him throwing around his own money, even if it was a boneheaded thing for us to elect people who would give it to him.
@volkris @kimhoar @bespacific do take a moment to look into how much government money he receives.