For Reason, Katherine Mangu-Ward writes in Bezos, Branson, and the Billionaire-Funded Race To Make Space a Bargain: Billionaires are going to space. They will help us get there too. She then notes critics of these ventures:
"Here on Earth, in the richest country on the planet, half our people live paycheck to paycheck," complained Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.). "But hey, the richest guys in the world are off in outer space! Yes. It's time to tax the billionaires."
The anger directed at Bezos, Branson, and SpaceX's Elon Musk stands in striking contrast to the high approval long enjoyed by NASA, even though the space agency spent the better part of the last decade unable to get humans off-planet at all while still soaking up billions in taxpayer dollars.
"Should billionaires play out their space travel fantasies," tweeted Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.), a member of the NASA caucus, "or should we invest in schooling, provide healthcare, and create prosperity for everyone?"
The irony is that NASA takes our money without our consent to finance a space program that no ordinary citizen could ever hope to access. Yet when Branson, Musk, and Bezos spend their own wealth with the explicit goal of one day selling ever-cheaper tickets to all comers, that's when congressmen get grumpy. [my emphasis]
These Capitalist billionaires earned their fortunes. “Earning money” is something alien to these grumps. But these entrepreneurs earned their $billions by producing vast amounts of wealth, not to mention millions of jobs, for ordinary folks. They are now investing their fortunes in creating a new industry with the promise of untold new wealth and jobs for generations to come.
Yet political criminals like Sanders and Khanna, who see industry only as milch cows while they themselves produce nothing—no wealth, no paychecks—want to tax these entrepreneurs’ wealth away for their pet wealth transfer schemes. This is injustice. Yet the worst thing about these assaults against the space billionaires is the moral premise underpinning them. They are being punished for their success and deprived of the pursuit of their own happiness because others need it. That is the altruist premise that ends in universal poverty. That is worse than unjust. That is hatred of the good for being the good.
Mangu-Ward concludes:
Bezos, Branson, Musk, and others have overtaken a wildly expensive, ineffective government program and built a competitive industry, driving down the cost of getting a kilogram into Low Earth Orbit by 44-fold already. Which billionaire goes to space first, how high he flies, how big his rocket is, or how much of his income went to taxes last year—none of that matters. What matters is what the rest of us are going to do with access to those same spacecraft and bigger, better, and weirder ones in the years to come.
Kudos to Jeff Bezos and his Blue Origin, Richard Branson and his Virgin Galactic, and Elon Musk and his SpaceX -- and to hell with their mediocre, envious, nihilistic little critics.
Related Reading:
The NJ Star-Ledger's Barbaric Smear of Charles Koch
QUORA: 'How is becoming a billionaire even possible, chronologically?'
How is it Possible that ‘1% control over 95% of the wealth?’ It’s Not, and They Don’t.
All Earned Wealth, No Matter How Big the Fortune, is Deserved Whether ‘Needed’ or Not
Inequality Has Surged Since 1989, but the Lifestyle Gap Has Shrunk by John Tamny for FEE
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
From the NYT newsletter 7/21/21: Billionaires going to space is an expensive waste, Jacob Silverman argues in The New Republic. [But it’s their “waste.” We all “waste” money on pursuing our values. Mind your own damn business, Jacob] Liz Wolfe of Reason disagrees, writing that the feats will yield spinoff technologies that will improve life on Earth.
Related Viewing:
"The Unrelenting Beauty of Wealth Inequality" by John Tamny
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