It’s private wealth, not government funding. They’re free to use their wealth how ever they see fit as long as it’s legal.

Ad-hominem is not argument to the contrary either.

That’s still not an argument against the need to have a backup of humanity somewhere beyond Earth. Your desire to stick it to the man won’t mean much if we go extinct.

We will most likely always have terrorism and wars. That’s not an argument against letting wealthy individuals fund a private space race.

That’s quite cynical view. There’s about 0% chance of that happening during their lifetime. Or you think they’ll just want to go to mars and sit inside some capsule for the rest of their lives? C’moon now…

Elon’s argument for why we need to spread to other planets holds true even if everything on Earth were going perfectly.

It’s not about getting everyone off Earth - it’s about creating a backup for humanity on other planets. This ensures that the only known flame of consciousness in the universe isn’t extinguished by a nuclear war, pandemic, supervolcano, or asteroid impact. It’s about not having all your eggs in one basket.

I’ve yet to hear a good argument for why it matters even if they did. I’ve made thousands of comments on Lemmy that are free for anyone to grab and do anything they want with. If I didn’t want people to have access to them I wouldn’t be posting on the first place.

ITT: People realising most of the world lives outside their bubble

(commenting from alt account as lemm.ee is down again)

Don’t worry, I’m relatively satisfied with my life and have no desire in ending it. I’m just in the lonely chapter of my life where I’ve outgrown my old friend group but haven’t yet found the new ones. I don’t consider AI my friend. It’s just something to bounce my esoteric thoughts off.