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0 pointskurthr4y ago0 comments

IBM... Oracle... Palantir much more so, I mean Tesla figured out how to sell EV credits (that were intended for the Big 3), but SpaceX only recently got government funding after crushing all the competition by their bootstraps. It seems like Elon got his early money from parents and Paypal not the government.

I do however notice a general trend of seeing Libertarians on the dole.

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mschuster914y ago

SpaceX got a couple million dollars in direct subsidies over the years [1], the really interesting question is if one also counts the various government-bought services and other incentives (particularly for F9):

- Falcon 1 development was privately funded, but would it have succeeded without DoD/DARPA funding the first three launches of it? [2]

- Falcon 9 development was aided by hundreds of millions of dollars in seed money, not to mention the billions of dollars worth of launch contracts [3]

[1] https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-tech/2021/12/13...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1#Launches

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9#Conception_and_fundin...

_lqaf4y ago

> IBM... Oracle... Palantir much more so

Sure. But the discussion was about "rich people self funding", with him as an example.

I have a couple ideas I would happily self-fund with the state's mid-10 digit assistance.

> I do however notice a general trend of seeing Libertarians on the dole.

If nothing else, it must help with finding the time to write freedom screeds.

More seriously, just about every rich person will tell you all about their bootstraps. I just wish fewer were crass enough to whine so loudly about others getting similar, ah, bootstrap assistance, to theirs.

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