• NeptuneOrbit@lemmy.world
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    1 month 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.

    • ashok36@lemmy.world
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      1 month 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.

    • muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      Well the sad reality of the world is u need weapons otherwise ull get ukrained by some imperialists. And the economic benefits from production of scale means the more countries putting into the same pot to build the same interoperable systems makes it cheaper for everyone.

      • the_crotch@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month 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@sh.itjust.works
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            1 month 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@sh.itjust.works
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                1 month 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.

                • muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee
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                  1 month ago

                  As someone who doesnt live in the use who relies on there global dominance for freedom they better keep selling us weapons.

  • kerrigan778@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Wow, government contractors get paid by the government which translates to your tax dollars. That money bought things. How the money made from businesses gets distributed and what the government spends money on are totally different discussions. What a stupid fucking meme.

          • kerrigan778@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            It very obviously is considering no part of the meme specified any type of good or service and the one thing it decided to single out is SpaceX funding which is literally NASA. Is your hot take on this meme that we should defund NASA and you are opposed to the Artemis program? Or do you just not like Musk or are diverting to the defense spending which was clearly not the focus of the meme?

            • Match!!@pawb.social
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              1 month ago

              I don’t care about the last half the meme, being that that’s just an appeal to pathos against Musk. I care about the first $336 mentioned and that it’s largely for military spending that I do not want.