Chuck’s Reviews > Rocket Billionaires: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the New Space Race > Status Update

The US economic system has put enormous resources in the hands of a few space geeks, and they intend to unleash low-cost access to space. Like their peers building social networks and search indexes, they haven’t necessarily thought through the potential downsides.

Still, for all the wild ideas that are embraced by both companies, competition between two well-funded space technology giants is going to be the path forward for the American space program— even if it can be hard to discern the greed from the humanism from the sheer love of big, powerful machinery.

Despite the commercial interest, it’s not yet clear whether humanity’s legal framework for using space, still stuck in a Cold War framework, is ready for capitalism. New laws are being written and debated that would allow companies to claim property rights, or something like them, in space. Some worry that these laws could kick off a potentially destabilizing “land grab” in space…

[Amazon] grew like some terrifying science fiction blob, eating entire industries in a gulp. This led investors to overlook various controversies at the company, like antitrust disputes with book publishers, armies of low-wage temps at its distribution centers, and privacy concerns about its always listening home assistants.

You have these well-capitalized businesses with very, very long-term plans, without Andy near-term or medium-term expectation of return on investment,… that has really upset the traditional business model.

—> pay to play business model

A monopoly is never helpful to the community that they serve. Ever. We knew that if they formed, they would end up being very expensive: prices would go up, innovation would ratchet down.