> These things happen in private sector organizations too; the assumption that the private sector somehow will do it better needs to be supported.
Regardless of which one does it better, NASA is funded through forcefully-extracted US tax dollars. They can be as stagnant and bureaucratically bloated as they want to be thanks to moral hazard. I'll gladly support space exploration, but it should be using resources that are donated voluntarily.
I know I'm philosophizing, but let me challenge the views you express with the following: people opposed to government and taxes always assume that taxes are "taken" or "extracted" from private property. Historically, though, the opposite is true: private property was extracted from common property and given to private individuals. Shared property predates private property by more than a few millennia. In fact, private property had to be invented when the agricultural revolution came about. That an individual (as opposed to a tribe) could own something was a big revolution in human thinking, and an artificial cultural construct. This doesn't change much in how people think about distribution of wealth, but it seems like people, especially in the US, seem to believe that private property is the natural state of things and government infringes on that, even though the opposite is true. Society decided to let individuals own some things -- not the other way around.
I'm not under any illusion that "private property" is some kind of perfect solution (even libertarians schism into geolibertarians, libertarian socialists, etc. around the sticky issue), but let's not fly off into pure philosophy land here. This situation is pretty direct: the federal gov't, and by extension NASA, skims off my paycheck to fund what it thinks are noble endeavors.
Unfortunately this leviathan that nobly funds NASA also spends trillions dropping bombs on brown people halfway across the planet, funding revolutions to topple governments, and violently suppressing victimless crimes (e.g. drug use, prostitution) that have a very real negative impact on my life and the lives of others I have no qualms with.
If we could decide which systems to voluntarily contribute to, which ones would be funded?
But you can look at it the other way around: the US government is good enough to let you have your paycheck. Why do you assume the money is yours to begin with? The gov't also spends money on police and roads so that you'd be able to earn your paycheck, so it seems to me like it's doing the hard work for you.
And as to voluntary choice, why do you think that voluntary choice by the individual is more important than the choice of society as a whole? After all, you have a democratically elected government, so it represents the set of deals or compromises struck by the members, and various groups of members, that form society. How is that not voluntary? Who says your own individual will is more important than that of society? It seems to me that the current system is a lot more voluntary than the one you're proposing. In the current system deals are formed to pool resources together to achieve common goals. Because pooling resources is required to achieve some goals, how would that be achieved in your system? My guess is that people who have accrued more wealth (thanks to the government's work) will use their influence to advance the goals they desire, without taking into any account the will of most other people. Is that fair?
To me, it sounds like you're saying "Don't be upset at your husband for beating you, you're lucky he's letting you live at all!" After all, ownership of wives by husbands predates feminism by more than a few millennia...
Private property is an enlightened concept based on the fact that a person's own labor is his and not the property of the state/tribe to appropriate at will.
I was just playing devil's advocate to explore a different point of view. But if you're talking about enlightened ideas, then welfare states are also an enlightened idea predated by centuries of feudalism (which a private-property-based society with little or no government looks like).
And the tribe didn't appropriate the individual's labor. It was naturally assumed that if you're a member of a tribe (that you rely on for survival) then your work should benefit the tribe -- not you specifically. Doesn't that make sense?
You don't think there are alternate ways to build roads or put out fires? I can tell you one thing, I definitely would like to upgrade to a better fire department so that my parents' house doesn't burn to the ground again when our shitty municipal fire department runs out of water.
> I definitely would like to upgrade to a better fire department
Then why didn't you? Are there laws against private fire departments? Of course that's not a fair question because public fire departments suppress the demand for private fire departments, but do you think better fire departments would be available for comparative prices without public interference?
Regardless of which one does it better, NASA is funded through forcefully-extracted US tax dollars. They can be as stagnant and bureaucratically bloated as they want to be thanks to moral hazard. I'll gladly support space exploration, but it should be using resources that are donated voluntarily.