ARI MELBER: I put both questions to you what is the potential public good and research? I know you love research and what about the larger issues of inequality and ethics?
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: So we should make a few obvious first points, that there has been inequality and hunger and poor and racism and all these problems all that long predates anybody's attempt to fly in space. So to now look at success in space launches and say because we're doing that is why we have not solved the rest of these problems is kind of a false equivalence. . . In a democracy, an elected republic, we vote every year for representatives to then create a budget of things we value. . . We do things because that's the identity of the country we want to create and we're wealthy enough we can do it all. So don't just say why are we spending there when we should be spending [ elsewhere ] well let's spend it in both places period.
ARI MELBER: Now by the way I did the math on this i want to know how rich Jeff Bezos is. The 200 billion dollars is, at last I checked, his wealth. . .
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: . . . [ He's ] got plenty of money. He can do that and 20 other things, so if you want to complain about Jeff Bezos, complain that he's not helping the poor the hungry or his workers but that specifically wouldn't have to directly address the fact that he wants to go into space and . . . with Branson [ create ] an entire new [ branch of economics ]. . . This this is America. If you don't think that it should happen that way, that's a different country. . .
The second, by Mehdi Hasan of Anand Giridharadas:
MEHDI HASAN: One estimate suggests Bezos has spent around five billion dollars on his space quest so far, which is also ironically around what he would owe if an Elizabeth Warren style wealth tax were brought in. He's clearly got the spare change for it.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS: [ What ] we saw today was as you say an advertisement for wealth taxation in America, and for breaking up these concentrated fortunes. Because what you saw is literally the money that could have been paid as wages, should have been paid as wages, could have been paid as taxes. . . [ Bezos' fortune comes from ] monopoly money that, you know, wouldn't be there in that amount if it didn't have the abusive and precarious employment practices . . . [ We ] know where that money comes from, it comes from those antisocial and abusive, and frankly, anti-democratic practices.
And so the money paying for that jet fuel, the money paying for those rockets, the money paying for the PR . . . is the money that properly belongs to Amazon workers and the tax authorities. And something actually really important happened today on that score, which is of all people on Earth, Jeff Bezos acknowledged that in what might have been a slip of the tongue. He said Amazon customers paid for this, which is sort of an obvious thing to say, but then he said Amazon workers also funded that. And that is actually a stunning admission from a CEO [ whose fortune ] . . . is funded by withheld wages.
Even if one agrees with him, no serious person can be anything but embarrassed for Neil Degrasse Tyson. In one sense I do feel bad for him, as he's an astrophysicist who is clearly out of his depth on economic and historical matters. Yet however out of his depth he might be, he is both stridently assertive and blithe to the point of being willfully ignorant. He opens with what is plainly a non-sequitur, as the fact of the problems he describes as existing prior to the space program is irrelevant: money did pre-exist the space program. Neither is money so abundant that it cannot be said spending more on ICBMs ( an ulterior aim of the Apollo missions ) does not prevent us spending more on education or food stamps.
Ironically Degrasse Tyson complains throughout his interview with the all too sympathetic Ari Melber that the criticisms of Bezos's riches funding a private space program are not serious. He states, rather flatly, that the American democracy is responsive to voters wishing to reign in the power and wealth of Croesus himself, and that massive inequality is the American way - were it otherwise, it would not be America. One can't help but wonder if he agrees with Drumpf and Tucker Carlson that Ilan Omar ought to back to the country from which she came.
Where Degrasse Tyson constantly conflates state funding of original science research with three billionaires privatizing the profit from public expenses, Anand Giridharadas makes a cogent and concise repudiation of the entire project. Bezos's wealth, like Branson's, like Musk's and Suckerberg's and Bill Gates's, is possible only through paying workers less than the post-war average share of GDP. They can do this because like Bezos and Gates, they headed a monopoly. Or because like Musk and Suckerberg they were able to capitalize on the work of others, with Musk particularly benefitting from public expenditures. Now that he's profitable, he of course moves out of a state which has given him millions of taxpayer subsidies because, you know, they'd like to see a small part of that investment returned.
I think Giridharadas makes his point clearly enough that I don't have to dwell on it. I'd like to bring out another point: these billionaires aren't playing space age Wright brothers because they want to help humanity. In fact none of these projects will EVER meaningfully affect the lives of 99.9% of all Americans. They're doing it because they want more. Picture Christopher Plummer in Ridley Scott's All the Money in the World.
And that "more" will come in the form of near-future competitions for US Government weapons programs. This is not about space tourism, as in Degrasse Tyson's adolescent and totally out of touch dreams. It's about more.
More money, certainly. But what these neo-aristocrats want more of is control. Is Gates "giving back" with his investments in failed approaches to education? Or is he solving problems as he sees fit, because he sees fit to do it? During the 50s and 60s the "space race" was ultimately about "conquering space," about weaponizing space to threaten terrestrial enemies. That's still the case today. But this "race" isn't being run with bland government officials liasing with private companies nobody's ever heard of, such as Thiokol. However much he profited from his various companies doing military related work, even Howard Hughes was nowhere near as personally associated with the space program of his era than Bezos is today. Why do you think that is?
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