Lugh

  • 715 Posts
  • 617 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 25th, 2023

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  • The US has voted for someone who likes to govern via chaos. We’ve seen it since they took office, and we can assume that is how the next 4 years, and maybe longer will be.

    Chaos has consequences, and one area that may soon be felt is space exploration. With regard to the Moon, there’s currently two large-scale efforts. NASA’s Artemis program, and China’s plans to build an International Lunar Research Station at the Moon’s south pole. As Elon Musk is now the de facto leader of America’s space exploration, is it his plans that will take precedence? He says the Artemis program is a waste of time and the US should focus on going to Mars instead.

    All of this has consequences - US partner space agencies from Europe, Japan and Canada are all spending billions on their parts of the Artemis program. Is there any point any more? What alternatives do they have, for not just lunar exploration, but replacing the aging International Space Station.

    One thing seems likely, they won’t want to spend billions of their taxpayer’s money on chaos.

























  • Western countries rejected the state having a large role in their economies in the 1980s and ushered in the era of neoliberal economics, where everything would be left to the market. That logic dictated it was cheaper to manufacture things where wages were low, and so tens of millions of manufacturing jobs disappeared in the West.

    Fast-forward to the 2020s and the flaws in neoliberal economics seem all too apparent. Deindustrialization has made the Western working class poorer than their parents’ generation. But another flaw has become increasingly apparent - by making China the world’s manufacturing superpower, we seem to be making them the world’s technological superpower too.

    Furthermore, this seems to be setting up a self-reinforcing virtuous cycle. EVs, batteries, lidar, drones, robotics, smartphones, AI - China seems to be becoming the leader in them all, and the development of each is reinforcing the development of all the others.

    Where does this leave the Western economic model - is it time it copies China’s style of capitalism?