Fundamentally, I am in the Camp that I fucking hate Musk, I didn't use to. But its undeniable, how influential he is in SpaceX and Starlink in particular.
I remember all the podcasts and haters shitting on him in, I think 2016, when the complete Starlink leadship was fired. We don't know all the details, but it's said that they wanted to do a whole other round of test sats and so on. Musk wanted to push harder on go live sooner. That' seems to have turned out quite well with no major issues in the first generation.
So SpaceX and Musk most certainty deserve a big reward for that. I agree that just rushing into 'its monopoly we must destroy the monopoly' isn't the right approach.
> Those are the three options for your mandate.
Those are not actually the only 3 only options. That's an incredibly narrow minded approach.
I have some idea but I'm sure there are more.
For example, what often works with infrastructure like this is open access rights. What if we can decouple the ground and sats infrastructure.
Allow anybody to build terminals for it. And then potentially eventually even have terminals that can use multiple such systems. I'm not an expert on these systems and how exactly they connect but long term I assume this would be possible. Because that's exactly what "GPS" does today, it connects to like 6 different systems. You could pay SpaceX a one-time fee for that. Or a license per terminal.
Or you could start to establish some standard for laser connectivity in space that eventually everybody can connect to a waste laser data network in space.
You can also make other rules. Like net neutrality, SpaceX isn't allowed to block certain things or do certain things.
Government could also chance its mentality to spectrum and maybe the buy to own spectrum model isn't fantastic.
That said, nationalization is on the table as well. One can make the argument that having multiple such system isn't really worth it. Having one and then giving it out in a different way isn't crazy. SpaceX could still be a transport provider.
Also less controversially, I think the 'monopoly' thing is way worse when it comes to the Ukraine. That is a situation where the government should be clear about how to handle it. We can't have Musk doing his own foreign policy.
“Nationalize SpaceX” is a Musk-haters’ fantasy.
And Elon/SpaceX doesn’t get to decide foreign policy via Starlink, at least not since Starshield. Maybe he has influence with Trump, but not direct control of how the government does or doesn’t use Starshield.
But people act as if this was some crazy thing to nationalise infrastructure are silly. The US has less history of that then others but the exception you made are pretty fucking big. And of course other countries then the US exists.
Penn Central is bigger Starlink ever was. Yes it was failing, but it could have been sold for parts.
> And Elon/SpaceX doesn’t get to decide foreign policy via Starlink, at least not since Starshield. Maybe he has influence with Trump, but not direct control of how the government does or doesn’t use Starshield.
Pretty sure the Ukranians are using both Starshild and normal Starlink.
> Maybe he has influence with Trump
And a big reason he has influence is that he controls critical infrastructure. That will always get him a seat at the desk. Not sure why this is hard to understand.
If that is facism to you then you need to go back and read some political science.
Neither regulation nor nationalisation are 'facism'. In fact facism is well known for not nationalizing and instead forming a tight government-cooperation integration.
Social democratic and socialist regimes have done more nationalisation.
Like when my country, Switzerland, nationalised the railways 1898:
https://sbbhistoric.ch/wp-content/uploads/S-048_VARIA_338-sc...
Is this Switzerland facist?
Yeah no shit. You started hating him when you learned that he voted differently than you lol