jmastrangelo

Not sure why you got downvoted. I think Tesla is a great company, but these valuations suggest they're going dominate transportation in a way no car manufacturer ever has.

Even if that is possible, which I'm not sure it is, the future is uncertain and the stock should have significant discount to reflect that.

Don't forget that Intel had a few decades where nearly all software was written for their x86 chips. This reinforced every computer needing to have intel, and only recently has the move to web apps made it easier for devices to use something other than intel.

I highly recommend the book 7 Powers by Hamilton Helmer. Helmer defines "Power" as the ability to retain meaningful profit margins for a meaningful period of time. Each of the 7 Powers is a method he has seem companies use to retain this (network affects, switching costs, etc.). Very insightful read.

Focusing on the gear seems like a cheap and easy solution compared to fixing training and accountability, the actual root of the issue.

Agreed, the goal isn't to replace transit in places that are well suited to it, its to provide better transportation in all the places transit isn't well suited.

I'd argue that in its more general form, its absolutely axiomatic. Humans are mortal, in order to preserve our life, we have to put in a considerable amount of effort. There is no organization of society that negates this truth.

Maintaining life at our current standard of living requires an extraordinary amount of work. And if you're going to use society's resources to survive then you should contribute back to society by working, its not a "ritual".

The idea that working is somehow an artificial constraint is completely wrong, and leads to utopian thinking, not actual possible policy alternatives.

It seems to me that when it comes to growing and scaling their successful products, Google is data-driven. However when bringing new products to market Google basically has been driven by what leadership thinks is interesting/important, instead of analyzing what the market wants.

Sometimes they hit a big opportunity like Gmail and it grows like crazy, but a lot of the time there's actually no market for their product, or the technology is nowhere near ready to work at scale. This leads to a lot of canceled projects.

Haha, hello fellow Northeastern student and disciple of Matthias! Lots of interesting things to read on his page.

I don't agree that Uber's business model is fundamentally "rotten and antisocial". Short range point to point transport (cabs) was awful before Uber and Lyft. The rides are easier to get, the drivers are less likely to screw you over, and you know in advance just how much things will cost.

I'm glad they took on a legal gray area because cabs had completely used regulatory capture to get away with being a terrible service to the public.

Definitely would add Bezos and Musk. Bezos is one of the most managerially/business astute CEOs and Musk is able to will futuristic companies basically out of thin air.

I think these analogies are way way older than Iraq, and I'd bet they exist in cultures all over the world. War is probably the most intense part of the human experience, and using War analogies lends easy power to your statements.

All of the mechanics available to the Fed and Politicians are large imprecise tools. Regular people still have unmet needs and successful businesses are still started all the time to meet those needs.

Ime past a certain point years of experience doesn't seem to improve one's programming ability. Even in large organizations promotions tend to slow after reaching senior engineer as the job becomes more about people management than actually improving as an engineer. Yes you can continue to gain experience in new tech but the fundamentals of thinking through software solutions doesn't really change.

But a central tenet of Communism was dismantling all other social structures like religion. Modern technology under capitalism may be destroying these social structures over time, but communism did actively.

This whole comment just reeks of fanciful anti-capitalism with little real substance.

Don't understand why you're being downvoted. Surviving and thriving in the world requires lots of material goods. These goods are produced by the economy so of course you have to participate in it in order to live. A world where people don't have to participate in the economy would have no goods.

Its not a straw-man its a very real comparison if you think about a physical copy of content vs a digital copy. When you bought a dvd in stores you paid more than the $5 it cost to manufacture, ship and store the physical medium. You payed mostly for access to the content therein, and gave that compensation to the creators of the movie.

He's not saying you're acting entitled towards the content, (ie you'll throw a fit if you can't pirate it). He's saying you're acting entitled towards being morally justified in downloading the content for free from a torrent site.

It's perfectly possible to have an ability to do something and not be justified in doing it.

Not true if the cost is too low to justify creators continuing to invest in such works.

I don't see how changing the commodity from media to rice improves your argument, if anything it weakens it. Of course people who grow your food need to be compensated for it! Otherwise they'll stop growing your food. You're not entitled to steal rice from food manufacturers.

Secondly media is far more complex than the art we've had for millenia. The sheer amount of resources to create a modern movie dwarfs what artists have created in the past, its comparing apples to oranges.

> Except when you pay money for TV, movies or video games, your money either doesn't go to the artists behind it, or very little of it does. Rather, the money goes to the investors who funded the work, or the publisher contracted with the musician.

This is the reality with any industry that has lots of "losers" for every winner. What you don't see is the massive amount of money lost by these same investors on media that doesn't hit. Returns on the winners have to be high enough to justify continued investment in the space. Media isn't created for free.

Isn't more the opposite? In Europe (well at least Germany, Europe is big) don't students get split up between a vocational track and university track pretty early in their educations? Even going to different kinds of high schools. Then for the university track people education is free but few vocational trackers end up going to university at all?

Students in the US can only go in the institutions that admit them, but the vast majority of students can get admitted to their state school and get a decent degree.

I agree tradesman are looked down upon by degreed workers, but thats more based around having/not having an education, not the pipeline that leads people there. (Also money talks in the US, and plenty of tradespeople make way more than those with useless degrees, and therefore end up with a good social standing later in life)

Often yes but in this case I don't think so. These guys are worth _billions_. It would be financially imprudent to not cash out a little bit purely for diversification and buying a nice house or two.

If you'rea a founder in a world where you can fundraise enormous sums from private markets, why deal with the headache of going public?

But what happens when you can't raise taxes any further? Or the high taxes shrink the motivation of the people running businesses to expand their businesses.

The money has to come from somewhere or you _will_ have runaway inflation.

I find it funny that people scorn the pursuit of economic profits, but complain that the other "better" activities aren't given economic rewards.

Ultimately "Corporate Profits" produce the economic value that people desperately want, and participating in the creation of something people want _should_ be a prerequisite for getting economic value in return.

Nearly every country on Earth that has bought into the Capitalist system has become far better off than they were 100 years ago, not just the richest countries in the world.

I agree that "No true Capitalism" is just as bad a fallacy as "No true Communism". But our real life imperfect Capitalism has still had incredible results whereas real life imperfect communism has lagged significantly and failed more brutally.

Is that true though? "service with a smile" and "The customer is always right" are notions I've seen far far more in the US.

I think its more of a cultural thing than an effect of tipping, but service in the US is usually pretty high quality.

NYC and SF both have tremendous advantages that Nashville doesn't, Nashville needs to compete.

I don't know if NYC and SF are examples of good governance, or examples that show great cities can support lots of poor governance as long as they retain the things that make them great.

Essentially then, you're advocating for FB's core infra to become a competitor to AWS/Azure/GCP?

I guess I just don't see why this is necessary at all. Company 2 is essentially exactly the same as FB would be now if it switched its infra to AWS, with pretty much the same pros and cons as a company. Facebook would have a stressful couple years of transition, and then we'd all be right back at square one.

Outside SV, Seattle and NYC it pretty much does still pay middlingly. But these same places that don't compete with SV on pay also often don't have an many resources for the startup oriented as well.