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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

#131

Post by rayiner »

grey-area wrote: post #129
rayiner wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Internet; The Web; Firefox, WebKit; GNU/Linux, Unix; HTTP; SSH, SSL, AES; Python, Ruby, C, C++. The internet came from the ultimate monopoly: the government. It was a government project developed by government contractors. Unix and C were invented at Bell Labs when AT&T was a government sanctioned monopoly. AES was developed while the authors were at an university research lab. Stroustrup started C++ in his PhD…

So far you've included university research (Google), large public companies (Xerox), state-sanctioned monopolies (Bell), companies taking advantage of network effects (Facebook), startups (Google's big innovation was in search before the company was born), and anything funded by governments in your definition of a monopoly. If you define monopoly in such a broad way it's really not surprising that most innovation hap…

You're misstating the categories. I'm making the distinction between organizations that are insulated from copying and competition and those that aren't. Xerox at the time of PARC wasn't just a large public company. It had 100% of the copier market and was insulated from competition by its patents. It was a large public company monopoly.

Google and Facebook, circa 2014, also aren't your typical public companies. Google is protected from copying because they don't ship a product. Their algorithms are hidden behind a web-API, and they are kept essentially as trade secrets. Facebook enjoys network effects, which provide protection from competition and in antitrust economics are considered a factor that gives rise to natural monopolies. E.g. the Microsoft and Offices monopolies were built on network effects.

It's obvious why government-sanctioned monopolies, and government and university research labs are insulated from competition. It doesn't matter if people copy their work, because they don't need to make profits in the market in order to secure their funding.

I'm purposefully excluding start-ups and public and private companies that don't enjoy substantial protection from copying and competition. These make up the bulk of economic actors.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#132

Post by couchand »

ajsharp wrote: post #67

I enjoyed your post. I have a couple of thoughts / suggestions for you. I got the impression that the underlying motivation for writing the post, and tactic you used for justifying your positions was largely in response to what I would consider the overly myopic hacker news user base. That is, disproportionately white, male, curmudgeoney programmers. I sympathize with your frustration, but urge you not to let their w…

But the west coast has much different cultural norms towards opulent wealth than does the east coast. Put simply, we like to hide it out here

And from what I understand, use it to hide the beach from poor folks, too.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#133

Post by jacquesm »

hueving wrote: post #115

The author makes some big statements about what Elon is doing and then wonders why everyone isn't guzzling the kool-aid like the author. It has nothing to do with the prisoners dilemma. First, there is a large portion of the population that doesn't believe global warming is an issue. Second, there is another large population that doesn't believe global warming can be stopped by a slow transition to electric cars. Thi…

I really don't think that Elon selling his paypal stake to Ebay is his primary success story.

SpaceX and Tesla are much bigger stories, and they are an ongoing affair. The only reason you can make the statement you made is because you added 'historical', but what use is that if it is only used to eliminate the present which is by far the more interesting portion.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#134

Post by crusso »

mempko wrote: post #73
deciplex wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, what does regulation have to do with capitalism - where did this meme start and how can I kill it? Capital markets are a tool for allocating resources. They're pretty good at it in that they tend to work better than e.g. palace economies and mostly everything else humans have tried. But there is absolutely nothing to the way that capital markets work that suggests regulation somehow breaks it or whatever ot…

There are known problems of markets in the form of externalized costs. Global warming might be the greatest example of capitalism and markets being the worst thing humanity has every done in distributing resources....

How so? India and China are huge societies and have historically been much less capitalistic yet have been horrible polluters. More recently as they've embraced capitalism, their increase in pollution has more to do with their standards of living than with capitalism specifically. Yeah, they're polluting more, but then again they have a significantly reduced amount of starvation.

If anything, capitalism tends to spur the types of innovation that seems most likely to innovate us out of the possible problems of global warming.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#136

Post by Shivetya »

hueving wrote: post #115

The author makes some big statements about what Elon is doing and then wonders why everyone isn't guzzling the kool-aid like the author. It has nothing to do with the prisoners dilemma. First, there is a large portion of the population that doesn't believe global warming is an issue. Second, there is another large population that doesn't believe global warming can be stopped by a slow transition to electric cars. Thi…

Exactly, it not within the expectations we have with Musk. Hence why would people not question the motive or gesture?

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#137

Post by crusso »

deciplex wrote: post #54
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…

Honestly, what does regulation have to do with capitalism - where did this meme start and how can I kill it? Capital markets are a tool for allocating resources. They're pretty good at it in that they tend to work better than e.g. palace economies and mostly everything else humans have tried. But there is absolutely nothing to the way that capital markets work that suggests regulation somehow breaks it or whatever ot…

Koch-inspired bullshit they're selling on Fox News nowadays

Please avoid these types of overtly political inflammatory arguments on HN.

Capital markets are a tool for allocating resources

In the modern sense, when someone on HN is advocating capitalism, they're talking about Free Market Capitalism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#Free-market_economy

Fundamentally, it's the freedom to trade with others based upon supply and demand without the government intervening to dictate what to provide, how to provide it, and at what price to provide it.

The only way to counter that market freedom is to create rules (laws and regulations) to restrict how actors in the market are allowed to conduct themselves.

Honestly, what does regulation have to do with capitalism

If you have another way besides laws and regulations that can force all actors in a market to not act according to their own free will, what is that thing called?

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#138

Post by snarfy »

It's a lack of leadership, and it's endemic to society. The Prisoner's Dilemma highlights this. Trust on both sides isn't the only Pareto optimal solution. A leader dictates the correct outcome and does not require trusting a subordinate's decision. If both sides were leaders, they would reach the optimal outcome.

Elon Musk is one of the few leaders in the world.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#139

Post by prawn »

hueving wrote: post #115

The author makes some big statements about what Elon is doing and then wonders why everyone isn't guzzling the kool-aid like the author. It has nothing to do with the prisoners dilemma. First, there is a large portion of the population that doesn't believe global warming is an issue. Second, there is another large population that doesn't believe global warming can be stopped by a slow transition to electric cars. Thi…

"These cars are out of reach for the majority of Americans" - I don't think these are the last, cheapest, most efficient and advanced cars that Tesla plan to build...

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#140

Post by happyscrappy »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #112
carsongross wrote: post #5

The only hope is cultural change. The only hope is cultural trust , and the only way to achieve that is to allow like-minded individuals to separate themselves into autonomous political units. This is dangerous thinking Chris, if you start following these thoughts through to the end, rather than spinning off into happy-clappy "change the world's heart" wishing...

Or you could just learn to live with people who aren't exactly like you. You know, like everyone on the planet except for wealthy and reactionary enclaves of the United States.

That is stupendously naïve.
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