Oiling the Wheels

It is very similar to the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac scenario, but with much more dire consequences. The more money the big aerospace companies make, the more government officials they can buy, the more money they make. Except the result of this positive feedback loop is that the Chinese get to the Moon and start exploiting its resources (for the good of mankind) long before we can decide how we're going to get there the second time around.

On space station we had a saying that when dealing with Russia it was always clear that "their socialists were better than our socialists." We have chosen the fascist model of socialism in our aerospace system. In fascism, the government decides what and how much is produced and the so-called private sector is free to figure out how to perform the government's wishes.

This is obviously the least effective socialist approach because it leads to this very loop of ineffectiveness we are currently stuck in. We would be better off to go to a more communist socialist structure where the government controls both what is produced and the means by which it is produced, or to go to a more capitalist system where the government pays for products and not process. This fascist approach blows.