It seems to me that the problem isn’t that we shouldn’t be subsidizing farm insurance, but that we need tighter controls on what the insurance companies are allowed to do. We’ve seen it in every sector, insurance companies will take advantage of people with unfair policies and always refuse to pay out if they possibly can. But crop insurance is an important and valuable safeguard, we shouldn’t throw it out entirely, we just need to keep the insurers from being criminally greedy and make sure that even smaller farm operations have access to this service.

But why? I mean the effects of that are pretty regressive right?

As a country, we want to be able to produce lots of food, that’s a good thing. And we want to keep the price of food down, that’s also a good thing. We don’t want a scenario where food is so expensive that more people need to start making hard choices between eating and rent. And regardless of that extreme example, if we see higher prices on food, that’s going to have a greater impact on the poor than on the wealthy.

We subsidize lots of things, fuel, education, home renovation, etc. Many of these subsidies are pretty important to making our economy operate smoothly. Food production seems like one of those things that’s worth paying for.

Isn’t that part of the grift?

Isn’t what?

I mean the reason for starlink was that they could, and they could do it for cheaper than anyone else because they would be launching at cost.

Also, falcon doesn’t really get subsidies for launching. SpaceX got a grant for the rural broadband infrastructure thing, but that’s like a one time thing, it doesn’t really pay for ongoing launches.

I’m not sure what isn’t viable about it, I mean it’s demonstrably viable, it’s working now.

Who’s buying satellites?

SpaceX is putting up satellites for SpaceX, they’re the manufacturer and operator…

It’s definitely in their best interest to keep them working as long as possible.

That said, they’re high end communications devices, very fancy routers essentially. And like all computer technology, these things become obsolete quickly. So even if they could last 20 years, you wouldn’t want them even 10 years from now. 100 GB/s speeds might be great now, but 10 years down the road 10 TB/s could be the norm, so at that point why are you still trying to provide service with ancient hardware 100x slower than it should be.

Well you wouldn’t want to put them much higher, but if you raised their orbit by say 40%, they’d be getting significantly less atmospheric drag. It could probably extend their life by 15 years. And yeah, they’ll be 40% further away, so slightly more latency. Perhaps going from 70 ms ping to 100 ms ping. Not awesome, but definitely not a huge problem.

Yeah, the EU has shown they’re serious when it comes to consumer protections. It’s great to see!

I’m not a fan of the use of glue in the joycon sides and the fact that the color strips under the controllers are hiding screws.

I’m not even surprised when I find screws under stickers or rubber pads anymore, it’s become all too common. And like a dad, at this point it doesn’t make me angry, just disappointed.

It does tell me a lot about what to expect from the manufacturer though. Anyone who actively hides their screws is no longer on my side, they’ve just branded themselves as an adversary. At that point I know I’ll be better off buying 3rd party replacement parts, I know to ignore any “recommendations” from the company.

Great video. That’s a disappointing outcome though.

It was interesting to hear though that Nintendo hasn’t made any replacement parts available for the original switch, despite the fact that New York State apparently requires this by law.

I wonder if they’ll be forced to comply with that at some point. There are probably other jurisdictions that require this or that will require this soon. I’d love to see some pressure applied to companies that don’t make replacement parts available.

You mean I should wish only good things for the dude who just took a chainsaw to the US government

I mean you should wish only good things for the world, which is in fact what I said.

It’s wild to me that you think that the US government would do a worse job of running SpaceX and Starlink than Elon Musk.

Two things. First, I’m not suggesting the US couldn’t run SpaceX given the appropriate funding. I’m suggesting the US won’t run spaceX. Trump will figure out how to deprive it of all funding, or appoint some lackey as a director to totally disassemble it. Do you honestly have any doubt that’s exactly how it would go down?

Second, It’s wild to me that you think that the SpaceX is run by Elon Musk. Go look up who the CEO is.

The article is not far off from the mob mentality in this thread. It makes one good point, that one oligarch should not be in control of a global communications network, but it fails to notice that this move would take the power from one wealthy individual and hand it over to another, who now holds all the power.

And let’s be clear, if we nationalized, Trump would ruin SpaceX, run it right into the ground like every company he’s ever touched. Starship would never be finished, despite being within sight of the rocketry holy grail, reusable rockets. Washington would take control of starlink, which would probably be good, except it gives trump control over a communication system, which is a terrible idea. But it wouldn’t last long, because when we mismanage and underfund SpaceX and it crumbles, we’ll have no way to replace starlink sats and the whole network will disappear.

Nationalisation is SpaceX is a dumb idea because people aren’t really thinking it all through. The outcome would be a lot worse for everyone, especially with a vindictive president that would like nothing more than to seize the assets of his opponents and liquidate them into his own coffers.

This really is just the dumbest thread on Lemmy right now. A bunch of reactionary mob think. “Grab your torches and pitchforks, let’s burn it all down!”

I hear you, why can’t we be in that timeline?

Let’s say I bought you a car, I paid for it in full and then gave it to you, and in return you sometimes drive me around.

Let’s say I get tired of this arrangement, should I repossess the car just to drive it into the ocean? What would be the point of that? Sure, it’s rightfully mine, but what good does it do to destroy it?

“IT BELONGS TO US” is not a very compelling argument for arbitrary distribution.

Yeah, if they want to make satellites last longer, they could go a bit higher in their orbits. The option is there.

Well that’s not really the case. Conservatives will accuse progressive of being communists, and claim any social services are examples of communism. But it’s mostly those progressives here on Lemmy suggesting communist ideas.

So it’s not really ironic, just unsurprising I guess.

I mean you have to realize how important it will be to have fully reusable rockets and a significantly reduced price to get to space. The goal with starship is to reduce the cost of getting to orbit by at least an order of magnitude (but possibly much more than that). When that starts to happen it’ll allow for new and exciting things to happen in space.

First, we can go back to the moon and to Mars, we can explore again. But more than that, it will make some new things possible. It will eventually become feasible for resource extraction and manufacturing to move to space. That would mean processes that produce harmful waste don’t have to happen on our planet. Mining asteroids would mean again, minimal ecological impact compared to mining a mountain on Earth. And of course creating industry in space is the first step towards a future where people actually live in space, the first step towards humanity getting a real foothold off of earth.

But you literally can’t get to any of those possibilities without reusable rockets first, it’s just not feasible.

This is the thing, NASA is underfunded as it is, if we nationalized SpaceX, we wouldn’t actually continue to fund it appropriately and it would simply die. Actually, with trump at the helm, nationalizing it would mean Trump immediately liquidating it. SpaceX is definitely the most successful rocket company in the US. It would be an awful shame for the space industry and for humanity’s future in space.

I hate musk as much as the next guy, but I think the success of spaceX is undeniable. Their success with reusable rockets is not just impressive, it’s ground breaking and important. Developing a fully reusable rocket is probably the most important challenge humans are working on in this era, and I only know of three companies attempting to do it. I don’t want to kill the company that’s furthest along.

That’s kinda petty though, I mean to hope an asshole stays a full asshole their whole life, rather than at least doing one good thing for the world, just because that might make them feel good… I mean that’s pretty shitty.

I feel like even the worst people should aim to improve. And rooting against that improvement just feels wrong to me.