It's Time to Take Starlink Away from Elon Musk(paulkrugman.substack.com)

29 pointsby martythemaniak6 hours ago3 comments

iugtmkbdfil8346 hours ago
It is rather bold to suggest we take companies from its founders regardless ( or as a result ) of political expediency.
- cactacea5 hours ago
  The defense industry is already the most socialized industry in the US today. Do we want Raytheon deciding that they want to sell cruise missiles to whoever they want? Of course not. Do we let Lockheed-Martin just sell F-35s to whoever they want? Of course not. In fact it is the US the government goes out and sells them to other countries!
  SpaceX only survived because of government investment and intervention. The majority of their income continues to be provided by the US government. Why shouldn't the government cut out the trillionaire middleman?
- pinewurst5 hours ago
  While Krugman has never met anything he wouldn’t nationalize, it’s legitimate and traditional for national entities to enforce communications carrier controls in the national interest.
  - ballmerpoint5 hours ago
    Absolutely. It’s not socialism to nationalize a company that’s gone and made itself instrumental to national security and/or foreign policy. Especially when said company seems to interfere with either on a whim, often against (or perhaps I should say, not always entirely aligned with) America’s interests.
- cyanydeezan hour ago
  right? We can't even get a treanous president elect in prison with video footage of the treason.
- verdverm2 hours ago
  unprecedented times may call for unprecedented actions
  The oligarchy is out of control
- rayiner5 hours ago
  There’s two kinds of socialism. The first is “we will all pay really high taxes so we can all enjoy a safety net.” This kind of socialism is built on solidarity. The other kind is more focused on taking away things other people built. This kind of socialism is built on the resentment of people like Krugman who are smarter than 99% of people, but not smart enough to actually build anything.
  - ballmerpoint5 hours ago
    > people like Krugman who are smarter than 99% of people, but not smart enough to actually build anything.
    You can just say you don’t like his politics. You don’t need to misrepresent his accomplishments.
    rayiner3 hours ago
    I don’t actually dislike Krugman’s politics, in the sense that I’m also generally a market oriented economic liberal. But this is America, and here we value people who build stuff and are skeptical of people who just study stuff. It’s not just us. There’s a reason he won the “Nobel Memorial Prize” in economics and not a real Nobel Prize.
    toomuchtodo40 minutes ago
    Close. The US values people who capture the hard work of others and put it forward as their own. The actual people who do the work, not valued so much, treated as replaceable and disposable cogs.
    If you work hard, you’re the sucker. But running around as a thought leader on the backs of everyone else? Captain of Industry, probably mentioned in Arena Magazine or a Works In Progress publication.
    cactacea5 hours ago
    HN should really have an "ignore posts from this account" feature.
    ballmerpoint5 hours ago
    You know, I hadn’t noticed that it didn’t.
    Must be some vestigial, ancient hacker ethos thing.
jrecard39 minutes ago
"Well, I'm on the phone with my computer security service, and as I understand it someone compromised my IP address and is using it to download child pornography. I might just be a random target. But this could be an attempt to Qanon me." - Paul Krugman, Jan 2020
mrguyorama4 hours ago
Um, we did take starlink away from Musk.
That's the point of StarShield. That's the point of government in general. We have the FCC and rules around space launches.
If the current US admin wanted Ukraine to be able to use something like starlink despite Elon's personal beliefs, then it would.
Elon is taking the blame because he is being allowed to take the blame. It's a distraction.
Trump wants Ukraine to stop hitting refineries because apparently he has only just now realized that blowing up refineries in Russia affects gas prices, which was the entire reason that Biden prevented Ukraine from doing such things. Which implies the hilarious caveat that Trump at some times has been more beneficial to Ukraine simply by not understanding the global economy and second order effects.
But Trump desperately wants to massage gas prices for a few weeks, which is why he does the stupid things like suddenly leaning on Ukraine as hard as possible and buying a pitiful amount of Russian diesel.
Allowing Starlink to limit Ukrainian utilization has absolutely nothing to do with any the bullshit "But ITAR" claims of weird people who don't seem to realize that wasn't a problem previously, somehow. It's about putting more pressure on Ukraine to not blow up refineries.
If there was an ITAR issue, then it wouldn't have taken months of coordination to purge the Russian Starlink terminals.
Our government is holding Ukraine's arms behind it's back against a literal invader because the American public does not care about Ukraine's basic sovereignty nearly as much as they care about an extra 25 cents per gallon of diesel. That's it. Oligarchs or not, that's the core issue causing most problems in America. People don't pay attention, don't give a fuck, don't learn, don't think, and then complain that everything is going to shit.
If you don't want to do these things, you have to elect different people. For as much money as there is in our elections, they are still decided by vote, not price. A lot of work each election goes into convincing people to stay home, entirely because voting works