klintcho
Joined 14 years ago
Joined 14 years ago
- We should go for something akin to universal basic income? Given we could produce a bunch of output with very few people (I guess at that point it's more and ideological question of if these few people that get to stay + shareholders are going to get all that value rather than someone else) - People that are talking about "productivity growth" has declined the past 20 - 40 years, are probably wrong and we have seen productivity growth, we've just filled it up with useless stuff and made up jobs? - It also sort of implies that some of the projects that Google and Meta has taken on even though not financially sound right now haven't produced any value for humanity (and I fully understand that in a capitalist society; profits are the way we value things). I think they have and a lot do (like long tail stuff like producing knowledge, producing open source tech, driving tech that while not mature now, will explode in the future, VR + self driving comes to mind)
Another thing that comes to mind when it comes to founder driven companies doing whatever they want is all the Elon Musk companies. He has also made a bunch of crazy bets that "value"-companies would def not have made.
- Cruise + other self driving car companies (obv also a bunch of software, maybe even software focused, but looking at Waymo, they developed all their own hardware, LIDAR tech etc.)
- Commonwealth Fusion + a bunch of other fusion startups (obv they haven't really gotten to a product yet one could argue, but a bunch of breakthroughs in high powered electro-magnets has been made)
- Heart aerospace - electric planes
- Canvas construction - robotic plastering and painting for construction.
While supersonic flight has been proven, albeit not economically viable, it's still something that has been done, and done like 40+ years ago. It's not really on the "fusion power"-levels of difficult. But sure, I guess on could argue both sides equally well :)
In regards to research breakthrough, sure they were handwavy at least as it relates to jet engines capable to support supersonic flights. I don't have any sources but I have little doubt that jet engine / material breakthroughs has been made since the 80:s.
- Anyone of IBM, Microsoft or Yahoo could build a better (quicker and cheaper) search engine than what a bunch of new grads from Stanford can (Google)
- Anyone of the car manufacturer can build a better (quicker and cheaper) electric car than a software millionaire (Tesla)
I don't agree with the statement, I think there are numerous reason people embark on ambitious project that incumbents "could" do, but are not doing;
- An unexpected insights,
- A new research breakthrough from some other field
- Collecting a bunch of the most bright people coming up at the same time in the field (Mueller for SpaceX comes to mind for instance) etc.
But most of the time it's just that it's not really in their business to do a 100 million dollar - 1 billion bet on something that risky, they are in the business of returning like 7 - 10% a year to their shareholder, not producing 5x returns (like the VC/startup business).
Let people put up a small deposit as well for getting a place in the queue, and it'll be deducted whenever you buy the machine. Keep the deposit if you cancel your place in line. Would incentivize less manipulation as well.
I've been trying to get a PS5 for 2 years now, and I refuse to pay some scalper 200USD more than market price, out of principle. (But I guess that is also why I still don't have one :) )
"So that makes tesla worth $8 tril by these metrics."
https://twitter.com/GerberKawasaki/status/143129811631815884...
Some valuations are truly difficult to grasp.