They're not taking money, people are pledging it.

Yeah! Science bitch!

Haha whoops

Yeah but it's only for 10 years...

it's not, they have to provide the knowhow to 3rd parties so they can carry on indefinitely

The closest stars are way too far to reach on any reasonable timescale. That's not even mentioning the fact that moving forwards is a vague goal. Moving forwards towards what exactly? And if the US government got off of it's ass to... Oh I don't know, maybe fix the bullshit healthcare system we have and help people with tax money instead of bombing people for Israel things would improve quite a bit in a very short time. That's assuming we don't bomb each other over terroritorial squabbles first. In any case I don't really understand your defeatism when it comes to inequality but when it's something as difficult as interstellar space travel you seem to be optimistic.

It's not optimism and defeatism, it's recognizing that one of them lasts and the other doesn't. Political changes like you listed can easily be reversed in future, but if we discover something in space, we'll keep that discovery forever even if we stop exploring.

What about the workers that will be eventually replaced by said robots? You think they're just going to get free money to exist? Most likely they'll end up in the private prison system or in institutions while the corporations pocket all of the savings. Things are a lot more complicated than they seem I think...

95% of us used to labour as serfs on farms. 4.5% were technical trades. 0.5% noble class, 0.01% high elite.

The industrial revolution moved almost 95% of people away from direct agrarian labour.

We'll find ways.

It won't be pretty in some cases, but we'll figure it out.

I hope you're right but I think it won't be pretty in all cases. It's easy to forget the industrial revolution wasn't entirely positive for common people or for that matter the environment.

That's upside down. The industrial revolution was more beneficial for 'common people' than it was for anyone else.

The 'industrial revolution' upended the ancien regime of basically feudal order.

For the fist time, it created actual 'surplus' in the economy, and that surplus went into all sorts of things: education, leisure, the arts, medicine, travel.

The very concept of 'working people' taking a vacation - very modern idea.

Then that broke through into basic real emancipation, universal suffrage.

Then medicine, healthcare, social services etc.

All of that only happens because of elevated productivity that's not captured by a passive elite.

The game is different now for sure, but there's almost no argument that can be made for 'less surplus'.

It's almost like saying 'what if energy were free, that would be bad'. No - it would mostly be good.

Well figure it out

Ok IDF

You really don't want to know. The results could be disastrous.

In war you don't have immigrants lining up for FREE HAND OUTS etc etc

Those immigrants who do all those low paid jobs and who paid billions of taxes without the benefits?

Schrödinger‘s immigrant, doesn’t work and takes American jobs

Well, as long as you bomb countries on the other side of the world. Someone else (the long suffering US allies) can deal with all the displaced peoples then.

No, during war you have refugees doing that. But where are these immigrants looking for free handouts? All the ones coming here are looking for work.

One might argue that this war is a free hand-out to foreign interests.

Guys this was sarcasm btw

Unfortunately no one gives a shit besides a lot of us.