{"id":37618,"date":"2017-03-10T04:00:11","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T09:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=37618"},"modified":"2020-08-07T09:43:03","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T13:43:03","slug":"the-two-elon-musks-the-savvy-businessman-and-the-crony-capitalist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/03\/10\/the-two-elon-musks-the-savvy-businessman-and-the-crony-capitalist\/","title":{"rendered":"The two Elon Musks – the savvy businessman and the crony capitalist"},"content":{"rendered":"

In The Federalist<\/em>, Eric Peters<\/a> describes the ways Elon Musk and his SpaceX crew manage to profit from government subsidies in the process of putting their Falcon rockets into space:<\/p>\n

\"\"

Image from SpaceX website.<\/p><\/div>\n

Today, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration specializes in putting taxpayer dollars into the pockets of crony capitalist chieftains such as Elon Musk, whose SpaceX operation manages to get NASA to pay<\/a> him<\/em> to use its launch pads and other infrastructure \u2014 all provided at taxpayer expense. He also doesn\u2019t cut NASA in when he uses its facilities \u2014 our<\/em> facilities \u2014 to launch rockets carrying private cargo<\/a>, meaning he effectively gets paid for it twice.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s once in the check he gets from the private business whose cargo his rocket is carrying; then again in the de facto<\/em> subsidy he gets for the free use of NASA\u2019s equipment at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Why isn\u2019t Elon paying the freight, as opposed to blowing it up?<\/p>\n

Incidentally, that happens a lot. Over the past five years alone, SpaceX has lost the same<\/a> number of rockets as NASA did space shuttles over the 30 years<\/a> it operated them. And the shuttle wasn\u2019t a money-making machine for politically connected crony capitalists such as Musk. Taxpayers funded it, but no private citizens got a check<\/em> from taxpayers.<\/p>\n

The shuttle even made some money for<\/em> taxpayers. Private businesses paid NASA to carry satellites into orbit, recovering some of the cost of building that infrastructure. The shuttle also did things useful for the public, like put the Hubble telescope in orbit. It has given humanity an unprecedented view of the universe, and not on pay-per-view.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I read a biography of Elon Musk<\/a> soon after it was published … and it did a good job of pushing a more sympathetic view of its subject than the linked article above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In The Federalist, Eric Peters describes the ways Elon Musk and his SpaceX crew manage to profit from government subsidies in the process of putting their Falcon rockets into space: Today, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration specializes in putting taxpayer dollars into the pockets of crony capitalist chieftains such as Elon Musk, whose SpaceX […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,84,44,13],"tags":[1391,645,727,1006,716,708],"class_list":["post-37618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-government","category-space-science","category-usa","tag-biography","tag-corporatewelfare","tag-cronycapitalism","tag-elonmusk","tag-spacecraft","tag-spacex"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9MK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37618"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59403,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37618\/revisions\/59403"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}