[ckilmer]

Wow horrible straw man argument and most progress exists without public money or help and it’s impossible to know what was lost from reallocating resources......
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Not really, just one US agency — DARPA lies at the root of a huge percent of american technology since WWII.

Silicon valley was primarily funded by the Federal Government through the 1970’s. Before private money took over.

The oil patch is primarily privately funded. But federal money has consistently funded research there through the years.

The NIH spends nearly 2 billion annually on parkinson’s disease research alone. That’s a good thing. Parkinson’s disease costs the government about 280 billion annually. If they get a cure —that cost goes away.

The DOE spends .5 billion annually on next generation nuclear power. (money poorly spent imho because most of the money goes to light smr’s based on light water designs.)

The general rule is that private corporations can fund research that has a payback within 5 years. Beyond that the feds have to do the job.

That is the feds pay for basic research. there is often a public, private, university coalition that works on applied research and usually but not always private money that works on entrepreural projects.

SpaceX is a government contractor. They do the job for half the cost other government contractors. To most sentient beings that’s a good thing. If you want to be consistant at least blast the whole concept of being a government contractor. Insist that all work should be done by federal employees.

The bread and butter of the USA is invention. That’s what we do as a nation and a people. There are all kinds of players in the game. One of the players is the government federal state and local.

If you knew jack about what the Chinese are up to—you would know that the USA is in a fight of its life right now and for the next 20 years over IP dominance. The feds have to seriously up their game or the USA is going to be eclipsed by the Chinese.

[rb22982]

You realize its a strawman argument because you are arguing he's cheaper than other guys at SpaceX. That wasn't my argument at all - just that he's nothing special and wasn't even the reason I mentioned he has lived off the taxpayers. Your entire rant had virtually nothing to do with what I said. SpaceX is the only Musk company that makes sense to have a relationship with taxpayers but his solar company has (lg tax credits to buyers, now part of Tesla) and Tesla has (tax credits, selling CAFE credits to other car manufacturers) and he still has never been profitable at any of those 3 companies (probably getting reasonably close at SpaceX at least).

Musk has NEVER created a company that wasn't subsidized by the government, period, and hasn't made a profitable company even with that.