volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@deanbetz but again, you're not giving me anything to work with here 🙂

I really don't give a damn about Musk.

But I see no reason to think that SpaceX would remain as successful if it was nationalized and subjected to US ownership.

And I keep asking for it, but you haven't said anything to make me think it would be.

@deanbetz yeah but the people are the ones who elected this crappy government 🙂

I'm half joking but really I'm still looking for some reason to think that the organization would be a success and not a wart.

Right now we have seen SpaceX make tremendous advancements, and when you're proposing to make such a major change as to nationalize it, I'm looking for reason to think those advancements would continue and not be stymied as just another governmental bureaucratic mess.

Yes, absolutely government has some successes, and it also has some failures, but I want to see some reason to believe this would be the former and not the latter, with us having given up this very successful organization.

@Hypx well the problem with hydrogen, as interesting as it is, is energy storage density.

But I don't really disagree with you. Just throwing out some other ideas for anyone who happens to be passing by.

@deanbetz so the question then is, if we nationalize SpaceX how do we know it will be a success instead of a wart?

And again, whether we write checks to SpaceX is a different question from whether we nationalize it.

@icedquinn oh, but my personal perspective is that we should not be looking to politicians for leadership. We should insist on democratic principles where they serve us, not the other way around.

But that's just my personal philosophy and I know a lot of people do look to politicians for leadership for some reason.

From my perspective I figure pretty much all politicians are going to be jerks. It's pretty much a requirement for getting ahead in that profession :-) so I wouldn't look to jerks for life advice or leadership.

I want a politician to work to represent the interests of their constituents, and I want them to set aside their own interests in the process.

I want politicians to be followers. The weaker willed they are the better so they can follow public interests.

@Hypx or hybrids.

I always think about the amount of energy that could be reclaimed through regenerative braking for vehicles that size.

@deanbetz but why would the US government that has done such a bang-up job with NASA be expected to do any better with SpaceX, regardless of the legal technicalities of its structure?

Your proposal reminds me of how the USPS is set up, and lord knows people have some pretty big complaints about that.

@simonbp they have not sold this rocket as a crewed commercial flight. A crewed rocket has not yet been developed, and I imagine it won't be for a few years.

This is not intended to be a crewed rocket.

A future rocket is, but not this one.

Heck, one would think that if they intended this rocket to have a crew they would at least install a door for the crew to enter :-)

But no, you're confusing some different rockets.

@deanbetz well that's simply not true.

SpaceX has done an awful lot of research on its own.

Not that it matters. Paying for research does not amount to paying for a company.

Anyway, I agree with you about being skeptical of any subsidies, so I think we should stop re-electing the representatives who promote such subsidies. But that's just where our country is right now, and it's a separate question from nationalizing.

The national bureaucracies have let us down, which is why we are in this position in the first place. I see no reason to think that we'd be better off spreading that politicized and failed bureaucracy to SpaceX.

@Corb_The_Lesser well let any interested parties pay for it.

I'd chip in even though I'm not interested in going. Though I do have friends who are.

But anyway I was replying to the caption above that was talking about sending people, which is phrasing that is often problematic.

It immediately reminded me of, "they're not sending their best" if I have that infamous quote right.

@arstechnica

@deanbetz if we paid for it we would already have it.

SpaceX is not nationalized today because the country didn't pay for it.

Instead, the nation paid for NASA, whose program didn't produce the successes that SpaceX did.

Which in the end is just another reason we should probably not nationalize SpaceX.

@icedquinn heck, I kind of like the idea of putting sociopaths in political office. At least then we can keep an eye on them :-)

But actually to be a little bit serious, some psychological conditions might actually be a benefit to the public in a politician.

A desperate need for approval might translate to a representative working extra hard for his constituents to get those pats on the head.

@HistoPol ok, ok, I got off my lazy butt to look up the link to the list of features 🙂

Check out the unique features part of this page:
https://qoto.org/about/more

Yeah I never had any use for Twitter because I just couldn't put up with a website that artificially handcuffs people to limited character lengths. I want people to be typing as much as they need to get their thoughts out.

So that is one of the critical features I was looking for when finding an instance.

@AlliFlowers @ctrlxcvz

@realTuckFrumper well that is oversimplifying, but it's not that unreasonable to make such a claim.

It's like saying pro Republican is pro Trump. Not exactly true, but in a broad generalization, it's all too backed up by the numbers.

@kaffeeringe the problem is that people may disagree on what that dignity entails, and I would even say you risk undermining dignity by imposing your personal feelings of dignity onto others.

You quickly get into issues of bodily autonomy.
Would you let me tell you what you can and can't do with your body? I would hope not, especially since you don't know me 🙂

I can already tell that we have different ideas about what constitutes dignity, so it's pretty likely that you would not like for me to impose my own values on you.

And that's why this is tricky.

@arstechnica

@impactology even so, I would caution against that kind of thing in any domain that doesn't directly involve politics.

You get into messy issues of, well there's a bug in this MRI machine that needs to be patched, but the developer thinks his boss is contributing to authoritarianism, so he's refusing to work, and the end users impacted by the bug are just screwed.

You get into conflicts of interest pretty quickly when you start asking people to function outside thelr positions like that.

@HistoPol yes, it's a modified version where the administrators added the extra features.

@AlliFlowers @ctrlxcvz

@MlleaPankhurst no it's the opposite, the appeals court pointed out what the Voting Rights Act provides for and insisted on respecting it.

It doesn't aim to cut the act. It aimed to reinforce it.

@impactology bad things happen when you try to apply technical solutions to social problems or social solutions to technical problems.

The two worlds really don't engage cleanly.

@lawprofblawg VRA definitely contains enforcement mechanisms because we don't assume people are nice and will voluntarily comply.