• NeptuneOrbit@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Authoritarianism is when taxes pay for defense and civil space program?

    Yeah I get it, out military is bloated, does bad things, and we keep the industrial complex going buy selling weapons to almost anyone who will buy them.

    The government paying SpaceX to build rockets is not authoritarianism.

    • yeahiknow3@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      You could attribute any payment, no matter how corrupt, to “national defense and a civil space program.”

    • Poayjay@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      The Ukraine war has demonstrated what a military asset Starlink is. You can control drones in real time with no direct line of sight.

      • the_crotch
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        7 months ago

        The US is bordered by friendly nations on the north and south, oceans on the east and west, and has a stockpile of thousands of potentially world ending nukes. You could cut the pentagons budget down to the price of a big Mac and fries and nobody would be able to invade.

          • the_crotch
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            7 months ago

            Yes. Have you heard of fuel and supply chains? D-day nearly failed, and the allies had a staging ground right across the channel. Turns out amphibious assaults against an entrenched enemy are really hard.

              • the_crotch
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                7 months ago

                They’re not. The US has as many privately owned guns as it does people. The idea behind arming the populace was (drumroll please) to repel foreign invasions.

                Also, the military weapons we’ve stockpiled for decades, making up the largest armory in the world by a wide margin, aren’t going to vanish into thin air if you cut the pentagons budget.

                Finally, if the US faced an existential threat they’d unload on the aggressor with nukes.

                Nobody’s going to invade the mainland US. They’d be stupid to try and they’d end up getting wiped out.

    • ashok36@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      *paying SpaceX way less for rocket launches than they would any of their competitors.

      SpaceX, Musk or not, has tremendously reduced the cost to launch stuff to LEO. I’d rather give SpaceX $12 than ULA $24 for fewer launches.