the tech billionaires didn't give us any of that (though you might have a case with the iPhone and SpaceX); they're just the ones who monetized it

It's like Carnegie setting up 2500 libraries but charging access to them and becoming an even greater billionaire in the process

Making these things make money is hard and it's really valuable. Without that people won't get to use them.

There is a list of defunct spaceflight companies :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Defunct_spaceflight_c...

Here is a very small list of just a few of the defunct internet companies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Defunct_online_compan...

It's also worth considering how many millionaires were made by the companies that the billionaires started.

like I said, you might have a case with SpaceX (though how much does that help humanity? not so sure)

internet companies become defunct because some other company puts them out of business - if we had never had Facebook we would still have had a way to keep in touch online

> It's also worth considering how many millionaires were made by the companies that the billionaires started.

who cares? the world doesn't need more millionaires or billionaires

The point is that the 'billionaires' were not exploiting their workforce. The workforce that made Google, MS and many other companies were also highly paid.

The consumer surplus of all these things is the bigger thing.

And getting to that is really not easy.

The developers that made Google and Facebook and such were highly paid. The people who were hired for a dollar an hour to train the anti-CP models most certainly were not and have instead suffered horrible trauma.

Externalities are so easily ignored if they don't happen in SF (and even the ones that do. For instance, take a look at the pricing out of affordable housing for all the cooks, dish washers, janitors etc who cater to that highly paid workforce but now have to commute hours each way).

Mate, I'm nowhere near San Francisco.

Just because San Francisco is disastrously run despite staggering riches and has horribly magnified problems does not mean it's the fault of people who started companies in San Jose.

You don't see a connection between tech CEOs who hoard vast wealth, and a public sphere starved of real investment?

The US government spends 10 trillion dollars year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_Uni...

That's larger than the GDP of all but two countries in the world.

That is not starving.

On top of that, tech CEOs and highly paid tech workers pay a lot of tax. Far more than they cost the country.

and a lot of it is directly funneled to crony's of the current king...

I doubt DOGE will recommend cuts to SpaceX funding.

I need to remind you that Mush has invented nothing nor is he an engineer. His vast personal wealth is extracted, and at least part of it's vastness is due to corruption. Mush's personal views expressed on his own-media-trumpet Xitter, have hampered more technological innovation than he has ever enabled or paid for.

BTW what's SpaceX carbon footprint like? This 'man' also just paid for a slice of the US presidency that just pulled the US out of a global treaty to attempt to address human-caused climate crises that are unfolding in front of our face on a daily basis as predicted. Mush has done net harm to Earth, not good.

Each Tesla sold in the USA gets a $7500 subsidy. That is the company's entire profit and more.

SpaceX has received $15 billion in government contracts.

I don't think either company would exist without government support.

sure it is. "mature" markets are only interesting for large moneyed entities to try to tweak things and squeeze .01% more profit out of a service/process/product.

innovation is risky and rewards accordingly.

Ycombinator app-startups are low-hanging-fruit with marginal innovation and marginal risk => it ain't hardware, and it's just webservices and a few React devs...

SpaceX and DARPA and ARPA = our tax dollars.

I was going to grant this, but then thought of how VC hit rations work.

Is it really ‘hard’ to make tech firms profitable, or is it more a function of survival?

Many of the companies which enter are bought out, or acqui-hired, adding to the leaders. Tech often rewards those who survive long enough to consolidate.

And finally, enshittification is a way to make MORE money, but it’s not hard.

>And finally, enshittification is a way to make MORE money, but it’s not hard.

maybe it's medium difficulty? There must be some enshittification that makes significantly less money, up to shutting down companies.

hahaha. yeah I was struggling to articulate this and the idea of levels came to mind.

Extracting money out of people, because you can price it better, and competition isn't going to stop you, means theres a race to the bottom.

This is on top of being vastly profitable already.

So its not hard, its just following a script.

The internet was a government project. It's laughable to even imagine that if these billionaires didn't exist then nobody else would have invented video chat...

It's not the invention it's the delivery.

Consumer goods are delivered by businesses. Delivering new, high tech ones is hard.

Discovery (basic research) is usually costlier than applied research (bundling, development, delivery) in labor costs.

no, creating the actual technical standards and the internet is/was hard. monetizing it and walling off sections of it is STEALING FROM THE PUBLIC that which we already PAID for and selling it back to us!

Zoom!? WebRTC! Proprietary XYZ? Standards!

nice try. The billionaires gave us none of the above. Sincerly, an old programmer who was actually there when these things were funded, often at the public expense in many nations.

Computer games are pan-et-circenses, IMO, but I also don't recall any billionaires having created any.

Your John Galt story is trite and untruthful.