The US spends $30-60 billion a year on agriculture and subisides [1]. This is controversial for all the obvious reasons. Without subsidies we'd waste less food but overproduction of food is an intentional objective of these programs. Why? Because if there's a major drought or crops are lost to ice or snow or flooding, Americans won't starve. It's why we have things like the US government having a reserve of over a billion pounds of cheese [2].
People not starving is a national security interest.
It's getting to the point where the software we rely on is also a national security interest. The US government should be paying to maintain and improve this software. Security risks in Linux and core packages threaten to shut down key infrastructure.
Paying developers to maintain open source projects that are actually used could be an incredibly effective use of tax dollars.
People not starving is a national security interest.
It's getting to the point where the software we rely on is also a national security interest. The US government should be paying to maintain and improve this software. Security risks in Linux and core packages threaten to shut down key infrastructure.
Paying developers to maintain open source projects that are actually used could be an incredibly effective use of tax dollars.
[1]: https://usafacts.org/topics/agriculture/#581290c9-a960-49aa-...
[2]: https://www.deseret.com/2022/2/14/22933326/1-4-billion-pound...