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The only moat left is money?

elliotbonneville.com

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Re: The only moat left is money?

#371

Post by RGamma »

XorNot wrote: post #278
scoofy wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of doing something non-scalable is that you can enter and exit the market fairly easily. You don't need to be a tailor your whole life. You can make a living as a barber, electrician, teacher, or nurse. I'm not saying it's easy ! It's hard as hell. It sucks when your job gets automated. I'm just saying that aiming for something non-scalable means you're not always tilting at windmills, and the game can't be…

All of those professions you've listed require about half a decade of dedicated training to be legally allowed to practice. For example an electrician takes like 7 years to become qualified, that's a full time apprenticeship, and it pays badly in the meantime. A fact endlessly annoying to electrical engineers who legally can design their houses power system but not work on it. (I mean I think a barber is quicker, but…

> For example an electrician takes like 7 years to become qualified

Using a similar playbook for what happened to SE (loads of good ~free info, bootcampification) you can drastically reduce the time to be economically useful, but that can only go for so long due to saturation. Especially residential electric work (or other trades) is no witchcraft that would require anywhere near several years of education/practice. And yeah, the legal system would have to cooperate, which will only happen when the pressure becomes high enough (see e.g. debates around "Meisterpflicht" in Germany).

That said if AI continues to progress like it currently does we may not get to that part.

Re: The only moat left is money?

#372

Post by laterium »

tuatoru wrote: post #324
Ntrails wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's simply a case of looking back and deciding this technical revolution is identical to the ones preceding it. Thus jobs destroyed will be replaced with new jobs, it always happens that way. Of course past performance is no guarantee of future success...

> jobs destroyed will be replaced with new jobs Not for horses though, or at least not the majority of them. Some were kept as pets or essentially status objects. In this case we are the horses.

95% of human farmers lost their jobs because of industrial revolution. What happened then? No jobs were created and we still have 95% unemployment, right?

Re: The only moat left is money?

#373

Post by iamgopal »

throwawaytea wrote: post #330
iamgopal wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welding is being heavily targeted for automation, apart from pressure vessels etc, most welding can be automated now a days , very soon ( months? ) every welding can be automated.

You're thinking of factory welding, manufacturing or maybe repetitive pipeline welding and thinks like that. It'll be a while until a robot disassembles a trailer enough to remove the bent axle, cleans off all the paint and rust, bends the trailer back into shape where needed, cuts a custom support to makeup for some lost strength, welds it in, primers it, paints it, and assembles the trailer. Same for construction t…

If automation excels sufficiently, robot will replace bent axle with new one automatically, repair cost will be usually higher than replace cost if all things are automated

Re: The only moat left is money?

#374

Post by thoughtpeddler »

This person needs to study Ronald Coase's Theory of the Firm in order to not make incorrect assertions like 'the only moat left is money'. There's many other criticisms to level at this piece, but this is the one I'll use my reply/comment on. If the author was right, then the entities with the most money, or ability to print money, a.k.a. the government, would be in charge of all economic activity. They are not. Empirically, what we observe about human economic activity is that it's not about who has the most money. Money helps, and certainly there's economic structures that are a tier below government but definitely far larger than a small business that can use money as a weapon to stay entrenched or gain other advantages in the market, etc, but it's not the only thing. Empirically it is just not. There has been, is, and will continue to be room for what other commenters have called 'creativity' broadly speaking, and that even includes creatively recruiting other people to your cause/company versus another's, etc, that 'the one with the most money' has not alone shown to be decisive.

Re: The only moat left is money?

#375

Post by lelanthran »

prmph wrote: post #270
lelanthran wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which clones? Are you seriously contending that apps that have Obsidians functionality don't exist? Just on HN alone, throughout 2023 - 2025 we were seing like one new TODO app show up on HN weekly! > And why not the others? Because money is the moat, and they have it! That was my entire point - money is the moat .

You are not making sense. > Just on HN alone, throughout 2023 - 2025 we were seing like one new TODO app show up on HN weekly! This response shows you missed my point entirely. I am saying a todo app does not a PKM make! I'm not interested in a vibe-coded todo app, it is useless to me. > Because money is the moat, and they have it! You're sidestepping issue and contradicting yourself. I asked: if cloning is so easy,…

What's the point you are trying to make here? That it is not possible to trivially clone good ideas?

Let's start with my actual claim - "It is now trivially possible for someone to clone your good idea".

I want to clarify your position: Do you think that the bar for cloning someone else's good idea is now:

1. Harder to do with AI,

2. Easier to do with AI,

3. Exactly the same level of difficulty it always was.

Because if you are arguing that #2 is an incorrect answer, there's no real point in continuing the argument, is there? I'm taking #2 as a given, and you appear to be arguing that it is a baseless assumption.

Re: The only moat left is money?

#376

Post by nicbou »

amelius wrote: post #264
scoofy wrote: post #184

So, I really felt like more people should be reading Nassim Taleb's Incerto series of books. A lot of the issues that fall out of AI he dealt with in his books like ten years ago. He gives one the best pieces of advice I've ever heard: if you are going to do something for a living, make sure it is NOT scalable. If you do something that isn't really scalable, like being a welder or a tailor, then you only have to comp…

> He gives one the best pieces of advice I've ever heard: if you are going to do something for a living, make sure it is NOT scalable. You mean like opening a restaurant? Too bad delivery services like Uber Eats totally own the market now. Starting a hotel? Booking.com and Airbnb are there to take your profit margins away!

Yes and any other business has to play the Google Maps and SEO game.

Re: The only moat left is money?

#377

Post by prmph »

lelanthran wrote: post #375
prmph wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not making sense. > Just on HN alone, throughout 2023 - 2025 we were seing like one new TODO app show up on HN weekly! This response shows you missed my point entirely. I am saying a todo app does not a PKM make! I'm not interested in a vibe-coded todo app, it is useless to me. > Because money is the moat, and they have it! You're sidestepping issue and contradicting yourself. I asked: if cloning is so easy,…

What's the point you are trying to make here? That it is not possible to trivially clone good ideas? Let's start with my actual claim - "It is now trivially possible for someone to clone your good idea". I want to clarify your position: Do you think that the bar for cloning someone else's good idea is now: 1. Harder to do with AI, 2. Easier to do with AI, 3. Exactly the same level of difficulty it always was. Because…

My point is that "easier" is not the same as "trivial".

Yes, for a skilled and determined hacker, judicious use of AI can enable them do more. That is a far cry from "AI makes cloning complex flagship apps trivial".

Furthermore, the value of software is not primarily in the arrangement of bits. It is about the technical, domain, and contextual knowledge you gain as you develop the software, the understanding you gain about your customers, etc. AI cannot give you that on a whim.

Re: The only moat left is money?

#378

Post by lelanthran »

prmph wrote: post #377
lelanthran wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point you are trying to make here? That it is not possible to trivially clone good ideas? Let's start with my actual claim - "It is now trivially possible for someone to clone your good idea". I want to clarify your position: Do you think that the bar for cloning someone else's good idea is now: 1. Harder to do with AI, 2. Easier to do with AI, 3. Exactly the same level of difficulty it always was. Because…

My point is that "easier" is not the same as "trivial". Yes, for a skilled and determined hacker, judicious use of AI can enable them do more. That is a far cry from "AI makes cloning complex flagship apps trivial". Furthermore, the value of software is not primarily in the arrangement of bits. It is about the technical, domain, and contextual knowledge you gain as you develop the software, the understanding you gain…

> That is a far cry from "AI makes cloning complex flagship apps trivial".

That is not what I claimed, though.

I said "Cloning your good idea", and context in this thread and this story is not, nor was it ever, about producing Windows 11 or a similarly large and non-trivial product.

It was, IIRC, about small teams (the actual story is about a solo founder) executing a good idea, and then seeing someone with a $20 CC account cloning that product in a week.

That's what I responded to.

Re: The only moat left is money?

#379

Post by navane »

tuatoru wrote: post #324
Ntrails wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's simply a case of looking back and deciding this technical revolution is identical to the ones preceding it. Thus jobs destroyed will be replaced with new jobs, it always happens that way. Of course past performance is no guarantee of future success...

> jobs destroyed will be replaced with new jobs Not for horses though, or at least not the majority of them. Some were kept as pets or essentially status objects. In this case we are the horses.

Horses don't pay tax. The reason we have jobs is to pay tax.

Re: The only moat left is money?

#380

Post by mothballed »

bccdee wrote: post #359
mothballed wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Anyway, what regulation is responsible for Walmart and Amazon putting local retailers out of business? Walmart + Amazon combined are only ~16% of the retail business. They're not monopolies. The fact they put a small minority of businesses out of business does not mean they're a monopoly. This is likely part efficiencies and also part regulatory capture via the insane zoning/building regulations in this country and…

> Walmart + Amazon combined are only ~16% of the retail business. of ALL RETAIL? That includes groceries! That's huge! Anyway, Amazon is >40% of e-commerce & Walmart is >10%. Together they control more than half of all online commerce. That's definitely monopolistic. > It was not already a monopoly. […] shortly before your noted date of "regulation" those competitors held the majority market share From Wikipedia: "AT…

>They had an 80% market share pre-regulation. Yes, it was already a monopoly.

Absolute and utter hogwash -- a straight up lie. You must be using a very liberal version of 'control.'

    After seventeen years of monopoly*, the United States had a limited telephone system of 270,000 phones concentrated in the centers of the cities, with service generally unavailable in the outlying areas. After thirteen years of competition**, the United States had an extensive system of six million telephones, almost evenly divided between Bell and the independents, with service available practically anywhere in the country.[1]
* My note, under the government imposed patent monopoly period -- Bell's patent expired in the 1894 which started the "years of competition." **13 years of competition marks 1907.

That is, by 1907, the market had dropped from a patent imposed monopoly to half-and-half, and getting shredded further by competition (that is until regulation in 1913, when AT&T started to pick up market share again). This 80% quote is total fiction unless you're using some weasel version of 'control.' The monopolies were all government imposed -- first by the patent and then later by regulation ('universal telephone service' reguluation and commissions and franchises, also ~nationalization and government intervention circa WWI).

Also of interesting note -- to look at the ownership of telephones before and after the Kingsbury committment. They had been falling off a cliff after the patent expired, but then ramped up at pretty much the same time as the Kingsbury Commitment (minima at 1910, with what looks to be 5 year granularity).[2]

>of ALL RETAIL? That includes groceries! That's huge! Anyway, Amazon is >40% of e-commerce & Walmart is >10%. Together they control more than half of all online commerce. That's definitely monopolistic.

And 100% of business with an Amazon logo on it! Amazon has 40% of e-commerce, walmart has 6%, even together they are a minority. Even with all the efficiencies of Amazon logistics they still together can't break half of the market. And even if they did, their margins are so razor thin that they could not engage in monopolistic behavior, as the second they raise prices they can again be eaten alive by the other 54% or one another.

[1] https://archive.org/details/telecommunicatio0151broc pg 122

[2] https://imgur.com/a/DWsexwg

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