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Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

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Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#221

Post by mmc4444 »

simonh wrote: post #216
jandrese wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In market based economies there will always be a general movement of capital to the top, because simply having money allow you to earn more money. It's a positive feedback loop. That's why it is important for an external force, which pretty much has to be a government, to tax the wealth at the top and move it back to the bottom. Otherwise the system gradually turns into feudalism by its very nature. A government that…

Most capital is invested in businesses, it's not piles of money in banks, but it's embodied in factories, jobs, products, research efforts. The vast majority fo the wealth of billionaires is tied up in the businesses they control, and that's fine. That money is doing useful work. We don't want to take it away from people who have proven they are effective leaders and managers and hand it over to bureaucrats. Let the…

> inheritance is a problem because it's un-earned wealth

> Inheritance taxes should be high, without being overly punitive

What's strange is that when you talk to people about inheritance tax they become instantly outraged at the idea of the government taking their money by force, yet they seem to have no problem with the government forcibly taking close to half of their salary.

It's a strange paradox and it seems that people just aren't used to the idea, despite it being much fairer. Tax the wealth of the dead rather than the earnings of the living.

If we could slash income tax in half but implement an inheritance tax of, for example, 50% above a certain threshold, it would be a win-win for everyone. The rich would still leave lots of money to their kids and the average person would get to keep more of their earned money. It's more meritocratic on every level.

Sadly, so many of our leaders now are very wealthy themselves, so this isn't a proposition they're likely to be enthusiastic about.

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#222

Post by postingpals »

ActorNightly wrote: post #180
postingpals wrote: post #174

Crunchyroll acquired by Sony, BD acquired by Hyundai, Slack acquired by Salesforce... Our economic system seems to have a natural tendency towards monopoly. This is happening before our eyes and we don't even realise it.

Don't confuse monopoly with consolidation. When Salesforce goes out and gets a patent that says you can't have any client resembling Slack without paying them royalties , then you can consider that a monopoly. And for fringe companies like BD, its honestly better that they get acquired by someone that can dump IRAD money into it cause the research that comes out of these is arguably more valuable than the products th…

Contrary to what you might have learned on hackernews, monopoly doesn't mean there is no alternative and having no alternatives is not the primary downside to monopolies.

> United States v. Grinnell Corp., 384 U.S. 563 (1966) Grinnell made plumbing supplies and fire sprinklers, and with affiliates had 87% of the central station protective service market. From this predominant share there was no doubt of monopoly power.

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#223

Post by bhickey »

WanderPanda wrote: post #208
jandrese wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In market based economies there will always be a general movement of capital to the top, because simply having money allow you to earn more money. It's a positive feedback loop. That's why it is important for an external force, which pretty much has to be a government, to tax the wealth at the top and move it back to the bottom. Otherwise the system gradually turns into feudalism by its very nature. A government that…

Thats not at all correct. In the mid to long term money will move to the person allocating it most efficiently. This of course assuming a non corrupt government. And thats where I see the actual positive feedback loop: People like you want the government to have more power, with more power there is more room for corruption/lobbyism, people demand even more government power

> Thats not at all correct. In the mid to long term money will move to the person allocating it most efficiently.

Under what model? Having more capital at your disposal enables you to stake more and riskier positions, which allows you to outcompete a smaller, but more efficient rival.

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#224

Post by lucian1900 »

postingpals wrote: post #174

Crunchyroll acquired by Sony, BD acquired by Hyundai, Slack acquired by Salesforce... Our economic system seems to have a natural tendency towards monopoly. This is happening before our eyes and we don't even realise it.

It's certainly the dominant trend, but it's not new.

Lenin analysed it more than a century ago https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#225

Post by WanderPanda »

postingpals wrote: post #218
WanderPanda wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats not at all correct. In the mid to long term money will move to the person allocating it most efficiently. This of course assuming a non corrupt government. And thats where I see the actual positive feedback loop: People like you want the government to have more power, with more power there is more room for corruption/lobbyism, people demand even more government power

Your second claim has a simple counter-argument: the government has allocated wealth so well in the past 100 years that they are responsible for some major tech innovations (nasa, CERN, every startup that began in a public college) and subsidise private industries that would die without them (Starlink, The corn industry).

1. Who defines whats „unnecessary“?

2. So going to the moon / CERN are particularly necessary? Besides that, a counter-argument to this doesn‘t work like: Lets pick some „good“ examples out of a big pool. This has to be viewed through the average and on average governments are beyond terrible at investments (some more than others)

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#226

Post by ajmadesc »

WanderPanda wrote: post #225
postingpals wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your second claim has a simple counter-argument: the government has allocated wealth so well in the past 100 years that they are responsible for some major tech innovations (nasa, CERN, every startup that began in a public college) and subsidise private industries that would die without them (Starlink, The corn industry).

1. Who defines whats „unnecessary“? 2. So going to the moon / CERN are particularly necessary? Besides that, a counter-argument to this doesn‘t work like: Lets pick some „good“ examples out of a big pool. This has to be viewed through the average and on average governments are beyond terrible at investments (some more than others)

Governments are great at investment. Its just they don't reap the rewards life a firm would. If every company had to 'license' the discoveries and tech funded by taxpayers there wouldn't be much of a private sector.

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#227

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

jitix wrote: post #209
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A ~30 years bet on a company is difficult in any country or any sector for the matter of fact unless it has potential to change the landscape of future wars, thereby providing ROI in the form of strategic superiority or at least that's what U.S. DoD hoped for with Boston Dynamics and it didn't happen. On the same context, Imagine if Boston Dynamics was only involved with drones, it would have never changed hands.

And it’s fine. Boston Dynamics paved a way with research and prototypes and some company will come along and commoditize it. My point was that the economic culture in the US supports and this kind of innovation. No other country - maybe barring China, can do that. I’m not praising the US as a country either (infact I’m moving to Canada). The US has deep flaws but it’s one redeeming quality is industrial innovation.

>Boston Dynamics paved a way with research and prototypes and some company will come along and commoditize it.

BD had already started selling its robots(Spot, Pick) commercially and had even had projected a plan for profitability[1].

Current sale is not really an indicative of its inability to make money but rather desperate situation of Softbank VF after string of poor bets, this must have been hard as Masayoshi Son is a self-acknowledged robophile.

[1]https://venturebeat.com/2020/09/14/boston-dynamics-ceo-profi...

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#229

Post by dreamcompiler »

souprock wrote: post #136
dreamcompiler wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BD robots could be easily defeated by a 50-cal bullet or an EMP or a sandstorm or merely by preventing them from recharging their batteries. Reality is not like the movies.

Reality is that adding armor is trivial, but hitting critical components (small parts) is not. EMP protection is standard for military systems. The military already deals with the logistics problems related to batteries and fuel. The preferred energy choice might not be a battery. Consistent usage of dumb tactics is unlikely. The robots aren't going to just run across a huge open field, straight toward the enemy, wit…

Adding armor that blocks small arms fire is straightforward, although even this might add too much weight to a BD robot.

Armor that blocks a .50 caliber rifle bullet is a completely different story; a Barrett 50 round will go through an engine block. If such a round hit the robot anywhere, it would almost certainly disable it.

Detecting an approaching robot would be trivial with radar, IR (these things have to make heat), tripwires, etc.

Not sure what you mean about "setting up" a 50 cal gun; a Barrett 50 is handheld. Setting it up takes about a second. Although in practice a perimeter would probably be established in advance with robotic guns using closed loop feedback.

My point is that it would be a significant engineering challenge and at least an order of magnitude cost increase to design a BD-style robot to deal with even the most prosaic threats of a hostile battlefield. And the power supply would probably need to be a gasoline engine rather than batteries just for reasons of weight and endurance.

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#230

Post by piva00 »

WanderPanda wrote: post #208
jandrese wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In market based economies there will always be a general movement of capital to the top, because simply having money allow you to earn more money. It's a positive feedback loop. That's why it is important for an external force, which pretty much has to be a government, to tax the wealth at the top and move it back to the bottom. Otherwise the system gradually turns into feudalism by its very nature. A government that…

Thats not at all correct. In the mid to long term money will move to the person allocating it most efficiently. This of course assuming a non corrupt government. And thats where I see the actual positive feedback loop: People like you want the government to have more power, with more power there is more room for corruption/lobbyism, people demand even more government power

> In the mid to long term money will move to the person allocating it most efficiently

Not without protections for antitrust and other uncompetitive practices. Picture this: Google becomes an even larger behemoth, with their cash they acquire Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Amazon and a few other larger companies (as it's happened in a much smaller scale with IBM and some other old tech companies growing larger and acquiring competitors). There is no pushback from government, they are allowed because they have the cash, they hoard companies and markets.

Now you are going to try to compete with this. How? You can be as efficient as possible but you are small, they have trillions, how do you compete? Isn't this a corrupt system by definition? It's ingrained in it, if you have more money you don't really have to be hyper competitive, you can just buy out your competition.

So there is a point where government intervention is necessary to keep a fair market, if not then you are bound to the monopolistic tendencies of accumulation of capital.

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