Hayadan > The bureaucracy and the moon

The bureaucracy and the moon

Who is the American corporation that landed a man on the moon? how much did he earn

28.7.1999

By: Ephraim Rayner

After we went back and watched the landing of the first (American) man on the moon, and we went back and read the thousands of words describing the history of the operation, one intriguing question remained in the fog: who is the American corporation that did it, how much did it earn, and how much did its shareholders make since then?

We know how and when Bill Gates started, and how much he is worth today. Everyone knows the history of the Ford family, and how it made its fortune from fulfilling the dream of "a car for every worker". We feel part of the world, when three of our own young people sell internet software and win, each of them, tens of millions of dollars. Every dream - its realization is a profitable business.
That is why it is difficult for us to come to terms with the fact that it was not the business world that took the dream of generations - to take off and reach the moon - and realized it in the stock market. It was precisely an anachronistic organization, led by politicians and known by the derogatory name "government bureaucracy", that did the job. In America, the birthplace of capitalism and the free market economy? Yes. It was an American government bureaucracy that recruited thousands of engineers and scientists, took public funds as if they were an inheritance from its ancestors, put them to intelligent use - planning, production and operation - and appropriated world fame.

True, the whole thing can only be understood against the background of war - a "cold" war in this case - and war is always a physical, material and spiritual clash between collectives operated by bureaucracies. And yet there is a difference. The Soviet power, which started the space race, enjoyed all the advantages of "collective" organization. Within a period of 43 months, the Soviets launched the first satellite, the first dog, the first rocket to hit the moon, and the first man into space.

The followers of the Soviet Union throughout the "free" world, and also in Israel, saw these successes as a clear sign of the superiority of the Soviet system. The American intelligence agency also feared at the time, in 1962, that this was the case: "Given the ability of the Soviets to concentrate human and material resources for purposes that are the top priority (...) the American victory in the space race is not certain".

But American democracy surprised and defeated its totalitarian competitor. The Americans behaved "more like Soviets than the Soviets", the heads of the Kremlin apologized. An American study (published in the "New York Times" and quoted in the "Haaretz" supplement, 23.7), which today summarizes the reasons for the Soviet loss, agrees with them: "This point is, perhaps, one of the paradoxes. It was the Americans, those gladiators of the free market, who set up a large bureaucracy and marched their industry into a winning group effort."

What came out of this victory? Next to the right are, of course, the technological achievements of the journey to the moon (and space, in general), and their effect on the economic capacity of the industrialized nations. There is no need to settle accounts with prestige-hungry politicians. The Soviets were the first to launch a rocket that hit the moon, scattering a load of Soviet memorabilia. Cosmic kitsch that only the Americans could overcome. In 1971, astronaut Alan Shepard, from Apollo 14, was photographed rolling golf balls on the surface of the moon.

But for our purposes here, democracy's ability to concentrate human and material efforts according to priorities is the determining lesson. Those who make the government bureaucracy the "enemy of the people" weaken the ability of a civil community to realize its goals, including the development of its economy through the "business sector". Without a strong and skilled public administration (bureaucracy!) not only will we not reach the moon, we will not even cross the traffic jams on the way to Tel Aviv.