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Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

cjohnson.io

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Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#41

Post by hibikir »

Trust is not a binary decision, it is a continuum. And within that continuum, the US is way further to being a trusting society than not. When we sign a contract, we have an expectation that it will be fulfilled, and that if it isn't, the courts will work, albeit slowly. You get a job, and you tend to get paid. Go in a cab, not expect to get robbed, or murdered. If you hire an employee, you expect him to at least attempt to do his job. Is someone does a good job, there's a chance there's some reward behind it.

There's a reason Southern Europe has worse economic outcomes, and that's trust. You get even worse results as you move towards the development world. And many parts of South America make Southern Europe seem downright trustworthy.

It's important to have a high trust society, but it's really more of a systemic trust than anything: About having negative consequences to breaking trust, not about taking leaps of faith to trust companies.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#42

Post by E_Carefree »

If Tesla did this in the early game, would they still be in the position they are today? I think this open source movement works but only if you have the next thing in hand or after you've taken your fill and are ready to move on. In Tesla's case, I think both are true.

If a hunter goes out, learns out how to kill an animal, and then teaches everyone else in the tribe how to do the same, he is shooting himself in the foot because he is no longer useful. The tribe can get their own food and his specialization is no longer special. So he dies off. Unless, he's ready to retire the hunting business and/or holds the monopoly for creating the weapons.

In Musk's case, he seems more interested in what SpaceX is doing and just built the largest electric car battery factory.

It's amazingly philanthropic and evil genius at the same fucking time!

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#43

Post by gfodor »

E_Carefree wrote: post #42

If Tesla did this in the early game, would they still be in the position they are today? I think this open source movement works but only if you have the next thing in hand or after you've taken your fill and are ready to move on. In Tesla's case, I think both are true. If a hunter goes out, learns out how to kill an animal, and then teaches everyone else in the tribe how to do the same, he is shooting himself in the…

Your argument only makes sense if you ignore the fact that Tesla is a company made up of a large number of employees, not literally Elon Musk personally designing, building, and selling electric cars.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#44

Post by crusso »

The thing about capitalism, and our dismal history with capitalism-at-large, the "assume the other party is a shitbag" idea is so fundamentally ingrained in our cultural

What's that got to do with Capitalism? Correct me if I'm making a straw man, but the alternative to capitalism is to remove negotiation from individual interactions by implementing more State-heavy mechanisms like Communism. Isn't creating a crap-ton of government bureaucracy, rules and regulations to tell people exactly how to live and interact with each other institutionalizing the idea that people are shitbags and shouldn't be allowed the freedom to behave freely?

I liked your original HN post and tend to be similarly disappointed in the lack of giving some people like Musk his due for trying to do the right thing... not to mention the nit-picking posts that assume that Musk and his people are too mentally deficient to properly allow use of their patents.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#45

Post by [deleted] »

crusso wrote: post #44

The thing about capitalism, and our dismal history with capitalism-at-large, the "assume the other party is a shitbag" idea is so fundamentally ingrained in our cultural What's that got to do with Capitalism? Correct me if I'm making a straw man, but the alternative to capitalism is to remove negotiation from individual interactions by implementing more State-heavy mechanisms like Communism. Isn't creating a crap-ton…

[deleted]

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#46

Post by thaumaturgy »

rayiner wrote: post #35

The idea that the Pareto-optimal situation is the one where everyone freely copies from each other may be appropriate for the market Tesla finds itself in, but is in general directly contradicted by the actual experience of the technology industry. The experience of the technology industry is that innovation happens in periods of monopoly. That monopoly might arise from first-mover effects, network effects, lock-in e…

AT&T developed the transistor, but it was government pressure that prompted AT&T to release control of its patents on the invention, and it was licensees like Motorola, Texas Instruments, and Fairchild (which gave birth to Intel) that did the bulk of the work in the transistor market. AT&T wasn't even sure what to do with it; they were just looking for something better than the vacuum tube.

The Alto was first built in 1973, but was used only internally at Xerox and was never made into a commercial product. Meanwhile, a loose-knit Homebrew Computer Club had among its members two guys named Steve. It was a visit to Xerox by one of them, in 1979 -- a full six years after the initial release of the Alto -- that led to the beginning of the modern graphical interface.

Microsoft began developing multi-touch technology in 2001, but it was the iPhone, in 2007, that won the market. Rumors of Microsoft's wall-mounted multitouch displays predate Apple's products, but it was Apple that figured out how to get the products into customers' hands.

What has happened to the PC is that it has become mature. This happens to all technologies. Modern automobiles are not very different from their 1950s counterparts -- just more refined. Refinements in PC technology however has led to things like the Raspberry Pi and a second-generation community of electronics tinkerers.

Not to belabor the point, but the automobile was also patent-encumbered, and it was the development of better production techniques (the moving assembly line, by Ford), that made the automobile accessible to large numbers of people.

The fundamental problem of product development is that those most suited to inventing things are usually not also those most suited to bring a product to market.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#47

Post by Ygg2 »

noonespecial wrote: post #22
nostromo wrote: post #14

I've been thinking of patents as nukes during the Cold War lately. Superpowers (US/USSR, Apple/Google) acquire very large nuclear/patent arsenals under the guise of protection/defense. These arsenals are relatively cheap for superpowers to build, but they are expensive for small states (small countries/small businesses) to acquire. The US and USSR were roughly equivalent in their arsenals so it made little sense for…

That and even if the states that developed them in the first place never intended to use them, they remain in the environment for many years after, poisoning entire regions of the landscape. Sometimes to the point of making those regions uninhabitable.

On the other hand, regions which make it uninhabitable for humans make it habitable for animals. Chernobyl is now a haven for wildlife.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#48

Post by rayiner »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #46
rayiner wrote: post #35

The idea that the Pareto-optimal situation is the one where everyone freely copies from each other may be appropriate for the market Tesla finds itself in, but is in general directly contradicted by the actual experience of the technology industry. The experience of the technology industry is that innovation happens in periods of monopoly. That monopoly might arise from first-mover effects, network effects, lock-in e…

AT&T developed the transistor, but it was government pressure that prompted AT&T to release control of its patents on the invention, and it was licensees like Motorola, Texas Instruments, and Fairchild (which gave birth to Intel) that did the bulk of the work in the transistor market. AT&T wasn't even sure what to do with it; they were just looking for something better than the vacuum tube. The Alto was first built i…

I don't see where we disagree. Bringing a product to market isn't innovation in the way developing something new is. You can't bring products to market using technogies that don't exist, and history has shown that monopolies are a fertile ground for developing such technologies. Your Microsoft example is consistent with the ones I presented, so is Intel. Intel heavily relies on trade secrets to ensure that its competitors don't have access to its fabrication technology.

> The fundamental problem of product development is that those most suited to inventing things are usually not also those most suited to bring a product to market.

This is absolutely true. So how do you ensure that inventors get adequately compensated when people bring their ideas to the market, backed up by tight outsourced supply chains and heaps of marketing?

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#49

Post by xianshou »

nostromo wrote: post #14

I've been thinking of patents as nukes during the Cold War lately. Superpowers (US/USSR, Apple/Google) acquire very large nuclear/patent arsenals under the guise of protection/defense. These arsenals are relatively cheap for superpowers to build, but they are expensive for small states (small countries/small businesses) to acquire. The US and USSR were roughly equivalent in their arsenals so it made little sense for…

Interestingly, this analogy works very much at the company level, but reverses at the country level.

For companies, patents represent weapons in an arsenal, in which MAD prevents offensive action, as you've said.

For countries, the reverse holds: a country that jettisons its patent architecture, or never evolved a restrictive one to begin with, will be a bastion for innovators. The stable equilibrium is no bad patents - a lack of shallow protectionism - and the only reason patent law in the US has remained constant for so long is because of the other advantages that have given it technological and scientific primacy.

As those advantages erode, patent law will loosen to stimulate competition. Perhaps there is an upside to the perception of decline?

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#50

Post by 21echoes »

crusso wrote: post #44

The thing about capitalism, and our dismal history with capitalism-at-large, the "assume the other party is a shitbag" idea is so fundamentally ingrained in our cultural What's that got to do with Capitalism? Correct me if I'm making a straw man, but the alternative to capitalism is to remove negotiation from individual interactions by implementing more State-heavy mechanisms like Communism. Isn't creating a crap-ton…

There are plenty of alternatives to Capitalism that do not involve State-heavy mechanisms. For instance, in Communism, despite your assertion to the contrary, there is actually no state at all.
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