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Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

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Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#171

Post by quotient »

x0054 wrote: post #170

Patent discussion aside, I just want to point out that battery powered cars are NOT the solution to global warming, at least not at the current state of technology. Aside from all the environmental damage involved in producing the lithium cells them selves, you have to also consider that to charge those cells we are still burning cola and then transmitting that power over an incredibly inefficient, almost 100 year ol…

The idea is that battery powered cars will become more prevalent and effectively cleaner as the electrical energy used to power them is drawn from more renewable sources, rather than from fossil fuels.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#172

Post by deciplex »

crusso wrote: post #137
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…

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 u…

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

Don't tell me how to post.

>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?

I think I'm not getting your point. Your false dichotomy there between "capitalism" and "remove negotiation from individual interactions" did set some alarm bells off in my head though. Specifically "this person is, at the very least, heavily flirting with anarcho-capitalism and it may develop into a serious relationship if it hasn't already". I'm not a fan of overbearing government bureaucracy either, I'm not a fan of a government that can't steward capital markets effectively, I'm not a fan of the brutal police state America has turned into, basically I'm not a fan of a lot of things. But that doesn't mean I think we should neuter government in the hopes that everything will turn out for the best. The problem with American government is not that it is too big - broadly there are areas where it does way too damn much, and there are areas where it fails through inaction - no the main problem with the American government is that it fails utterly to represent the will of the nation of people it governs. It's been hijacked.

But that doesn't mean I want to get rid of it. Well, perhaps I do this particular government, but not the idea of effective government. Believe it or not humans can do politics well - it is always nasty in a sense but you'd be surprised what can be accomplished via politics, provided a balance of power is kept. Sadly, balance of power doesn't exist in American government right now, nor American society really. Even more tragically, one of the most ubiquitous and sophisticated propaganda campaigns in human history - spanning decades across the public and private sectors - has left Americans mostly unable to fix their problem.

And no, I don't have another way to besides laws and regulations to force actors in a free market to behave according to their own free will. And, I don't think I need one - laws and regulations will do nicely.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#173

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

sergiosgc wrote: post #108
adventured wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you list numerous countries that are examples of not having a restrictive patent system, and subsequently are bastions of innovation? The US economy has been an extreme bastion of innovation for 200 years, while also having a robust patent system (one that has only recently become particularly stifling). In fact I'd argue there has hardly been a greater bastion of innovation in world history than the US economy f…

If you place the USA as innovation leaders in the modern world, you make it very difficult to present an example under similar conditions. You can go back in History, though. Countries involved in world discovery in the 1400-1600 were absolute innovation leaders and required no patent law.

They didn't need patent law, because they had princes and armies. The also had a culture in which information couldn't travel faster than a man (usually a man...) on a horse, and patentable information could only be understood by a few hundred individuals in each country, at most.

One of the points of patent law is to distribute the rewards of invention, so individual inventors - not corporations - benefit from their creativity.

Patent protections aren't the only element in this, but they're one element, and a lot of 20th century products would never have appeared otherwise.

It's simply not historical to argue otherwise.

The 21st century works differently, but with the irony that the FOSS people claim their way is absolutely correct, and no other system is workable.

Sharing certainly works if you have a day job that pays your bills. But innovation is not invention. Patents were originally designed for creative inventors, not commercial packaging operations like [insert corporate giant here], or freeware mash-up/YetAnotherFramework projects.

In the US at least, the system has become a joke. But just because it's broken doesn't mean that inventors shouldn't be rewarded and protected somehow.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#174

Post by bpyne »

marincounty wrote: post #121
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…

I don't want to start a east coast vs. west coast feud over how rich boys spend their money, but there's a difference. I can spot an east coast transplant, even after they lose the accent--and they think, and spend their money differently too. There are always exceptions, but in my world East coast men are more competitive, less empathetic, and have taken more money out of my pocket than west coast men. Yes--I'm ster…

Interesting observation. Being a native Northeasterner, I'd love to know more about the spending patterns of East Coast men even if it's a wild generalization.

I was in NYC over the weekend and Los Angeles - for my first time - back in April. Both large cities with large populations. Both trips were for mostly pleasure. In NYC I stayed in Williamsburg; in LA I stayed in Silver Lake. LA had a very laid back feel to it. Maybe it has to do with all the space. NYC is pure congestion. Wherever you are, a few hundred people around you are trying to pass through that same space. It keeps you moving, hustling to keep from being run over or an obstacle. I loved both cities, but they have very different "feels".

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#175

Post by nawitus »

x0054 wrote: post #170

Patent discussion aside, I just want to point out that battery powered cars are NOT the solution to global warming, at least not at the current state of technology. Aside from all the environmental damage involved in producing the lithium cells them selves, you have to also consider that to charge those cells we are still burning cola and then transmitting that power over an incredibly inefficient, almost 100 year ol…

Your point should've been "transportation emissions are only a small share of total CO2 emissions". If you want to reduce CO2 emissions, you should start by becoming a vegan.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#176

Post by exelius »

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…

I think nukes are a bad analogy: patents are far more likely to be used because their use is not nearly as destructive. When Apple won a $1 billion judgement against Samsung, it wasn't even remotely damaging to Samsung ($178 billion in revenue in 2013).

Really, it's just the inequalities of large markets. In general, it's a bad idea to start up a company in a field that a $100 billion company is expending a lot of effort in. Because they are established, they have the ability to create barriers to entry for you in a lot of different ways (marketing, supply chain, and yes, patents). If patents are no longer a problem, there are still plenty of ways that Google or Apple can keep you from playing in their backyard.

If you're talking big companies vs big companies, they're just trying everything they can to make their competition spend more money on lawyers, etc. to reduce their margins even further. Apple has huge margins, Samsung does not, so it hurts Apple less to spend $100 million on patent lawyers than it does Samsung.

The patent trolls are a new problem, and one that probably needs a regulatory solution. Technology patents in general are a problem, but solving the patent problem won't instantly change the landscape for smaller companies. They'll still be at a distinct disadvantage in a number of ways to larger companies, and need to pick their battles carefully.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#177

Post by abruzzi »

prawn wrote: post #139
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...

Perhaps, but I fear that even if you build a $18k electric car, you will still have a hard time getting a lot of people on board due to the limited lifespan and high replacement cost of batteries (at the moment at least). I've never paid more than $5k for a car, and I see a lot of people in my (pretty poor) state driving $1k clunkers. My current car is 18 years old, meaning if electric it would be nearing the end of the useful life of the second set of batteries. ICEs well maintained, can have a very long lifespan.

I'm not saying that these issues can't be overcome, but I think it will be a much longer time before these types of vehicles trickle down to the lower 50% of the US customers, let alone, poorer nations, given that the current state of electric cars doesn't even begin to meet the needs of many people in the less dense parts of flyover country (yes range!)

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#178

Post by jessriedel »

makomk wrote: post #109
jessriedel wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact other systems actually encourage cooperation and favor candidates that are more in the center. Actually, single-round winner-take-all democracy induces a race toward the middle, not polarization. (If everyone is aligned on a 1D spectrum and votes for the candidate closest to their position, then both candidates are incentivized move toward the median position.) What you're really getting at isn't the idea o…

Arguably, what we've seen happen in practice is both a race toward the middle and polarization - the two parties and their supporters become more and more hostile, aggressive and unwilling to compromise over an increasingly small set of differences between the two.

Yes, I think that's right. I was really criticizing the idea that winner-take-all deomocracy is not a system that "favor[s] candidates that are more in the center". "Polarization" was a poor choice of words; I think "extremization" would have been better.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#179

Post by hueving »

jacquesm wrote: post #133
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.

"historical success story". I meant one that has played out.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#180

Post by r00fus »

natural219 wrote: post #88
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…

Actually, I agree with you more than you'd think. After living in San Francisco for a year or two, I'm absolutely skeptical toward 99% of the stuff that's passed off as "Silicon Valley revolutionary" crap. I'm pretty much only interested in pure technology: SpaceX/Tesla, new hardware manufacturing / internet of things, drones, immersive computing, bitcoin (to some extent), etc. Which is why, I think, I can enjoy the…

SF is a whole different ball game. Go south on the peninsula and towards the real "valley" and you'll get a more relaxed/grounded viewpoint (most families are priced out of SF unless they're DINKY or DISK [1]).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DINKY

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