Ask HN: Which industry will most likely produce the first trillionaire? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Which industry will most likely produce the first trillionaire?

#21

Post by methusala8 » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 12:05 PM UTC

muzani wrote: post #14

I'd say it's something that has to grow exponentially for a very long time. That rules something like finance out, which compounds very poorly, and hasn't produced trillionaires despite being around for centuries. I'd bet on education. Colleges and universities can be worth billions each. While the billion dollar ones are pretty good, the sub billion ones aren't and are getting competed with by several month courses.…

Any particular thoughts on how to improve education with interactive technology? I am a teacher and hence curious on how it can be improved.

Re: Ask HN: Which industry will most likely produce the first trillionaire?

#22

Post by MS90 » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 2:25 PM UTC

shostack wrote: post #20

MS90 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope I can live long enough to see the effects of asteroid mining on the world and the economy. Palladium today is $1704.73 per ounce, but the price of palladium comes from the fact that it's extremely rare on Earth. But what if someone comes back from an asteroid with an amount of palladium that suddenly triples the worldwide supply? What will the effects be on the price point? I'm sure the costs of getting it bac…

If you have a stranglehold on an exceptionally rare resource, I'm not sure it would be a wise business move to suddenly triple the world's supply.

Yeah, probably would be best to take the De Beers approach and bury 99% of it in storage.

Re: Ask HN: Which industry will most likely produce the first trillionaire?

#23

Post by idoh » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 10:13 PM UTC

sidcool wrote: post #12

May be I am pessimistic but I don't see a trillionaire this century. In next century it will be a space mining company.

We are already at a couple people being 100 billionaires. Inflation alone is enough to get us there by then.

Re: Ask HN: Which industry will most likely produce the first trillionaire?

#24

Post by muzani » Thu, Nov 14, 2019, 3:39 PM UTC

methusala8 wrote: post #21

muzani wrote: post #14

I'd say it's something that has to grow exponentially for a very long time. That rules something like finance out, which compounds very poorly, and hasn't produced trillionaires despite being around for centuries. I'd bet on education. Colleges and universities can be worth billions each. While the billion dollar ones are pretty good, the sub billion ones aren't and are getting competed with by several month courses.…

Any particular thoughts on how to improve education with interactive technology? I am a teacher and hence curious on how it can be improved.

Lol, we should be asking you that question.

Spaced repetition seems promising. Or letting students learn at their own pace. Maybe going deeper down in details they're interested in. But we had those for decades and they never took off.

Maybe we should be looking more into learning than teaching.

I learnt a lot from Europa Universalis. I think people should be able to simply experiment more with things, see what happens when they tweak things, actually play.

We teach derivatives and integrals all the time, and yet nobody has mainstream software that illustrates how they work. The concept is easy visually, difficult in writing. It's used a lot in algorithms, but that's more because programmers make algorithms to illustrate to themselves the concept. We can do a good deal with physics, chemistry, and so on.