Comment by oskarkk
3 months ago
> Examples include Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, so-called libertarians with entire business that consist of "use your friends in government to get juicy government contracts and grow rich off that sweet, sweet taxpayer money" (SpaceX, Palantir)
Not true regarding SpaceX, they were just cheaper and better than the competitors. They had to sue the government to even be able to compete against Boeing/Lockheed for military contracts. Who had more friends in the government in the 2010s, SpaceX or Boeing/Lockheed? In 2014, NASA awarded two contracts to develop spacecrafts for transporting astronauts to the ISS (at the time, American astronauts flew to the ISS only on Russian Soyuz). SpaceX received $2.6B (for Dragon), Boeing received $4.2B (for Starliner). Since that time, SpaceX has made 11 operational flights with astronauts to the ISS, while Boeing has made 0 (they're still working on it). It's not friends in the government, it's delivering services faster and for a lower price.
what about gvt loans that tesla got in 2008/9 for clean energy ? close to half a billion. EV subsidies ?
Elon Musk is a tenderprenuer, as we call them in africa.
Yeah, I know about that, but I was specifically talking about SpaceX winning contracts by simply being a better option than other competitors, not because of any "friends in the government". Musk wasn't even a billionaire yet, and I doubt he had government friends at the time who did him any personal favors. And in the end the government got what it wanted, Tesla did make a lot of electric cars and repaid the loan much earlier than required. While the current government that Musk helped get elected ended all subsidies for electric cars.
yeah true, we shouldn't negate how superior spaceX was compared to competitors.
however what made him a billionaire was gvt contracts. I guess all i'm tryna say if you wanna be a fat cat (rich) gvt contracts is a lucrative way to do it.
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