Random Friday: Moon partnerships, bitcoin bubble, Obama

News Story of the Day: NASA has announced that it is partnering with nine U.S. companies to return to the moon and then embark upon Mars. Called “Moon partnerships,” the space agency wants to work with the private sector to bring costs down and ensure humans explore the stars.

Believe it or not, Elon Musk’s SpaceX was not on the list, and neither was Jeff Bezo’s Blue Origin.

The government refrain from explaining why it chose businesses like Lockheed Martin and Draper. This level of cronyism should have you concerned.

Why can’t the free market explore space and save taxpayers billions of dollars?

Paging Walter Block, indeed!

Chart of the Day: It looks like the bitcoin bubble has popped, but you can’t tell avid bitcoiners about it because they will tear you apart limb from limb. All jokes aside, this MarketWatch chart suggests that bitcoin bulls may rise from their slumber and hit the buy button.

Illustration of the Day: The NPC meme is the gift that keeps on giving. This is just one more example:

Quote of the Day: Conservatives have a vendetta against Big Tech, and they want to use the archaic public-utility rule to rein in Silicon Valley. But what happened to the free market? This is why you can’t trust the right. Reason makes a great point:

Indeed, the market shifts quickly and brutally. Companies that only a few years ago seemed as if they were permanent monopolies have gone away. Meanwhile, conservatives want to use the public-utility model to bust up these big companies, yet utilities are the nation’s only true monopolies because the government uses its muscle to forbid any competition. Conservatives used to understand such elemental free-market ideas.

As Phelan detailed, the years of monopolized public telephone utilities were years of low innovation. Only after deregulation did the cell phone and all the other immense innovations take place. There’s definitely a connection. Utilities are guaranteed a profit and protected from competition, so they don’t innovate. They also are protected from liability, which explains some of the intractable problems and rising prices that take place on their watch. If you are guaranteed a profit based on a formula rather than your competitive prowess, how competitive will you be? If conservatives get their way with regard to the Internet, imagine how that will hobble its growth. And if you’re worried about censorship now, just wait until the federal government—and Republicans won’t always be in control of it, you know—gets its grubby paws on it.

Internet regulation isn’t the only example. President Trump has brought many conservatives aboard his quest to expand tariffs, which are an aggressive form or taxation and regulation. The government slaps enormous taxes on companies that produce particular products to shield favored companies from competition. It also shifts trade decisions from private companies to bureaucrats. It’s a pernicious form of crony capitalism that allows the government to pick winners and losers.

There always has been an anti-market element within the GOP, but that faction hadn’t been in ascendancy until recently. Now such ideas are spreading. I remember when Fox News’ Tucker Carlson complained that many of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ “employees are so poor” and that “you’re paying their welfare benefits. And he’s not the only tech billionaire offloading his payroll costs onto taxpayers. Why is only Bernie talking about it?”

Conservatives ought to think long and hard before heading down the Bernie Sanders path. It might be fun to stick it to private companies they don’t happen to like. But it’s never worth the price to abandon the magic of the marketplace in favor of the heavy hand of government.

Tweet of the Day: For some reason, people think everything stagnates, and that nothing changes. Mark Perry explains that this just isn’t the case, using energy as an example.

That’s like somebody saying in 1840 “If we use up all of the whale oil now, what do our grandchildren use?” Answer: Crude oil. Today’s answer is: Some alternative or future fuel source we maybe can’t even imagine right now. https://t.co/gG80iuNfZh

— Mark J. Perry (@Mark_J_Perry) November 30, 2018

Video of the Day: Former President Barack Obama sure loves himself: