digitaltrees

This is totally false. It moved from pure military to university grants. Go ask professors how the government funding environment is now. It’s a five alarm fire of collapse.

America was the factory of the world before and England before that. The temptation of “moving upstream” is irresistible.

I am more concerned about what happens to the file if I give permission.

Opensource and local are seeming like the only way.

Except none of those were autonomous actors. And most of society was not as freaked out by any of those cycles.

Each of them did have some fairly serious downsides that required social policy to correct. I don't want to go back to the era of Charles dickens.

A monopoly in a domestic market is sufficiently harmful to be avoided. It doesn’t have to be totally global.

I owned a recording studio and small label before Napster and lime wire. I know a ton of musicians that lost the joy of making music due to piracy. I am glad you had fun. But also take a little joy in the loss of that joy but some how it seems asymmetric in your benefit.

Omg. I needed this in my life.

I thought it was reasonably helpful. And much better written than a lot of Claude slop.

Except the general trend has not been equal degrees of snap back but rather a general trend towards market consolidation, deregulation, lowering taxes and eliminating anti trust enforcement. If we went back to the regulation immediately post world War this country would feel profoundly different.

That's fair but it does end up flowing through the US right?

I agree with this for in-person payments. But surely stripe has a monopoly on development api payments and PayPal on e-commerce. What i would expect is that visa Master card try to buy the stripe/PayPal.

The contracts with merchants prohibited them from accepting other forms of payment.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s...

Most people missed my point. I am most concerned about a single person having a monopoly on satellite networks.

Vertical integration of launch capabilities and use of the satellites is an old monopolistic strategy.

Doubling prices over night is kind of an indicator of a monopoly.

https://www.corporatejetinvestor.com/news/starlink-price-ris...

I have 4 different types of smart glasses. I feel visceral aversion about the meta glasses because of passed abuses of data.

What is the regulatory capture? Visa and master card have contract terms that ensure retail capture. That’s a private moat not regulation.

Trying to create a monopoly before the lack of antitrust enforcement window closes.

Nice to see people wanting to strike a balance between automated AI and staying involved. I have been frustrated by push to fully autonomous long horizon agents because the lack of course correction seems to burn tokens with worse results

If we are talking about a meritocracy and access to opportuity this doesn't even have to be about fairness the reality is if there are talented people that dont do as well on tests simply because they cant afford private tutors and prep courses maybe it makes sense to factor that in.

But there is also a legitimate reason to pursue fairness. When a society loses upward mobility and becomes a calcified caste social unrest becomes an existential threat. When we ignore that disparity compounds and locks people out of the social system we risk destroying the very system that we benefit from.

I didn’t say it to be a gotcha. But let’s admit that legacy admissions and athletes represent a non meritocratic social goal, and then ask why those are legitimate social goals but racial diversity is not one?

You didn't think the 50% admit rate for athletes, 40% admit rate for deans interest ie large cash donors, and 35% legacy admit rate were "the whole think"?

Compounding interest means assets are accumulated and concentrated. At a certain point a tipping point is reached a it’s no longer possible to buy assets. No Russian serf was ever going to have upwards mobility.

Yes. But by allowing a monopoly to exist each of those customers has the risk of being forced off the service by a terms of service change, price gouging, or other predictable monopolistic behavior with no alternative. And this is avoidable by ensuring a competitive market or regulated utility.

No. I used a rhetorical device to highlight a theoretical monopoly we assume would never exist. But imagine I launch a space sail that can cast a shadow on any part of earth I chose. I could block or unblock sunlight at will and grant access only for paying customers.

Is that something that should be permitted?

A public company with weak corporate governance where the board rubber stamps whatever the CEO wants and that CEO happens to own 40% of the stock and 80% of the voting control doesn’t respond to any public concerns. That is a strength. It does allow Elon to execute strategy that might not have public support. That’s also a lot of power to place in the hands of one person.

As Aristotle said, all forms of government have a good form and a corrupt form. A just king can be highly effective and create human flourishing but a bad king is highly destructive. A good democracy and tyranny of the mob majority are equivalent. We need checks and balances in all forms of human organization. SpaceX has no checks or at least is on a path to where there will be none.

Elon recently said, if his plans go as expected, SpaceX will be more valuable the earth. And he is right. How is humanity going to have checks and balances when that happens?

No. A utility like power and water can be private but regulated so that it can’t extract monopoly rent. Or you can create an ecosystem of providers on top of the public infrastructure.

What percentage of market share do they have in launches? In awarded contracts? In satellites in the sky?

Also pointing to blue origin which is substantially related to the Amazon monopoly isn’t the best refutation of my argument. When all competition and innovation requires behemoth monopolies rather than ecosystems of entrepreneurship and capital markets capitalism has been replaced with oligarchy.

Nasas mandate wasn’t to build reusable rockets. They built the space shuttle, which was reusable. The GPS network is a constellation of satellites. They also launched numerous spacecraft that landed on planets and moons. If we wanted nasa to do what spaceX has done it could. At then end of the day teams of humans do things. If we want the teams of humans in government to do things we can arrange them to do it. I don’t see anyone saying private military, fire departments or police departments are significantly better than public government systems.

Dude. Stop worshipping private companies. At the end of the day human organizations creating things whether it’s a government, a partnership, a corporation. The US government created GPS, the stealth bomber, all kinds of basic tech. Thomas Edison created things as an individual and by creating a lab. Those two realities can coexist. But they have trade offs. ATT being a monopoly was bad for consumers. But breaking up ATT resulted in bell labs being disbanded and a lot of innovation stopped.

I would fully acknowledge that spaceX pushed space exploration and commercialization forward. But you have to admit 1. The government paid for that by awarding contracts. 2. A monopoly isn’t an agreement we have to accept.

He had a product with the most product market fit ever. He thinks everything he does will have the same user tolerance for his brutalist disrespect for humanity. Thats why everything else he tries to build fails so he has to buy the competition.

I built something similar: www.propelcode.app want to collab?

I think I am your target customer. I own a national health care franchise and want private AI. What is unclear to me from your site that I view as a gating item is do you source, install and configure the hardware or deploy your platform on ours. Or both?