This is Ted Turner asking the questions. Carl Sagan gives a powerful reply.
The interviewer him is Ted Turner, founder of TBS, CNN… and former husband of Jane Fonda. Turner has since displayed “socialist at heart” tendency.
Carl Sagan was a great man. The question came up because of Sagan’s reference the to the USSR space program. The “Star Wars” reference to was to the Reagan administration initiative to militarize space in the form of a missile defense shield.
Comments:
Kev
Why does America have poor social policies? Because it’s run to benefit corporations, shareholders, and the rich. People are seen as sources of labour so why would you spend money to benefit them at the cost of your bottom line? If you look at the US government policies from this point of view, all their actions make sense. It’s what happens when the majority of election funding comes from private entities and companies.
Lobo Mau
Resist neo-fascism! RIP, Carl, we love you!
Saman Xhetry
The old man wanted to paint Carl as a KGB agent with: “Are YOu sOcIaliSt?”
B
It’s funny he mentions homelessness. The highest homelessness in America are in all democrat run cities which implement socialistic styles of local govt. The homeless rate explodes in these cities. I wonder why? Homeless people are better served by being pulled out of homelessness with job opportunities. These democrat run cities just let homeless people camp out and pass laws that allow them to stay. They’re doing a great disservice to these people. They don’t care about homeless people. I live in one of these cities and it’s the saddest thing to see.
Jane Doe
Strange how there’s still homeless people in Republican states too. The key to saving homeless people isn’t Capitalism. I know that’ll probably go over your head, but there’s no need for a government, or money, or exploitation. We can live harmoniously if we choose to.
Miss D
Journalism has been garbage for decades.
Arioh
The only man who’s using money for the right purposes I can think of.. is Elon Musk.
Frankos
The US spends a fortune on state-sponsored defence whilst refusing to help out the poorest in society. There is a difference between socialism and a government doing its job.
Hound
Scientists want government grants and job security, so they tend to support higher taxes and infrastructure. Ludwig Von Mises and Murray Rothbard were quite prolific, but they are either anarchists or borderline. Thomas Sowell and Tom Woods value clarity and even someone with minimal prior knowledge can learn a lot from them. The scientific, romanticized vision of humanity working towards the greater good is actually seriously anti-intellectual. It has no grounding in evolutionary biology or anthropology, which suggests that hierarchies and tribes arise naturally and not because of “capitalism”.
Andy
Socialism is great, except everywhere that has implemented it.
Jeffrey
We can and do feed the poor. The problem is that a lot of people choose to be poor so they can get stuff without having to work for it or because of the lifestyle choices they have made. Why should we support them?
macktheknive
Wars make money, the poor cost money.
Anonymous
Fighting wars, or going to the moon for another example, are problems that are a lot more addressable with the technical capabilities that human beings have on hand, than other problems like, say, “solving poverty”. You might think “solving poverty” seems like a trivial problem. All we have to do is be more fair to each other, or something, right? But in practice, whenever any attempt is made, to make something like that happen, some complications are invariably encountered that I think probably should have been pretty obvious from the start. See if you can guess what they are. Anyway, I totally support any and all efforts to make people more fair and civilized to each and stuff – so that poverty, among other things, can be minimized. That is, also obviously, kind of the whole point of having a “civilization” in the first place. But I don’t see any current prospect of any “final solution” to poverty anywhere, and I don’t think there ever was one.
Susie
Show me one person in this country who is starving. Childhood obesity rates are the highest in the world, especially amongst lower economic families.
