Bond villian-esque plan. Offer the services of your highly advanced satellite network to Ukrainian forces fighting for their very country's future then turn it off as troops are advancing and...
Bond villian-esque plan. Offer the services of your highly advanced satellite network to Ukrainian forces fighting for their very country's future then turn it off as troops are advancing and demand $400 million annually from Western allies to keep the network up and running.
I get it, as a corporation SpaceX is no ones friend but SpaceX's and as the richest man in the world Elon will have lost all of his humanity years ago but he really is an absolute cretin.
I doubt he planned it to happen quite the way it did. Responding quickly in an emergency and then cashing in on it is an approach he's tried before. Compare with the Tesla Big Battery in...
I doubt he planned it to happen quite the way it did. Responding quickly in an emergency and then cashing in on it is an approach he's tried before. Compare with the Tesla Big Battery in Australia. Make money and have people say nice things about you was probably the plan.
The cashing in part was a problem this time, due to going ahead with no contract. (Compare with the normal way of getting a defense contract; it would have taken years, probably.)
There are situations where businesspeople who trust each other might get away with going ahead on a handshake deal, but this wasn't one of them. Much like with the Twitter purchase, arrogance and impulsiveness got him in over his head. Kind of like rock star behavior?
No doubt, as you said he probably dived in headfirst and then realised afterwards the true cost of offering satellite services to the army of a huge country like Ukraine where they're fighting a...
No doubt, as you said he probably dived in headfirst and then realised afterwards the true cost of offering satellite services to the army of a huge country like Ukraine where they're fighting a war for their very survival.
Just drawing parellels to how it has echoes of the sort of plan a megalomaniacal billionaire industrialist Bond villain would come up with.
I think this is true for all of his ventures. Certainly it was a goal to be successful in both spaceflight and electric cars/energy, but stronger competition was probably also expected. A big part...
I doubt he planned it to happen quite the way it did.
I think this is true for all of his ventures. Certainly it was a goal to be successful in both spaceflight and electric cars/energy, but stronger competition was probably also expected. A big part of why SpaceX and Tesla are in their current positions are because the incumbents were consistently dismissive towards changing anything about how they operated and invested in obstructionism rather than modernization.
By the time the incumbents realized that being obstructive wasn't working it was too late and they've been struggling to play catchup ever since. This is particularly pertinent to spaceflight, with e.g. Boeing's halfhearted attitude in their catchup resulting in boneheaded moves like contracting out the software for their commercial crew capsule to the lowest bidder, which is why it's seen constant delays while Dragon has been racking up successful missions.
At least for spaceflight, a lot of this could've been avoided if the government hadn't cozied up with its old aerospace contractors and continually lowered their expectations for them, paying them ever larger sums for barely moving forward at all.
He’s clearly not a reliable ally or someone you want to depend on for critical infrastructure, and yet here we are. I hope the US government was able to negotiate a good contract.
He’s clearly not a reliable ally or someone you want to depend on for critical infrastructure, and yet here we are. I hope the US government was able to negotiate a good contract.
IMHO we risk elevating corporations to the godly statuses found in dystopian cyberpunk stories if we continue this path. Alternatively, we can work to build publicly owned utilities that perform...
IMHO we risk elevating corporations to the godly statuses found in dystopian cyberpunk stories if we continue this path. Alternatively, we can work to build publicly owned utilities that perform the same task instead of allowing private monopolies in these spaces. I would really love to see r&d in the public realm that results in publicly owned goods and services that don't exist to make profit.
I'm also not above governments annexing these types of infrastructure that have already been built and turned into public utilities. It would save a lot of headache for us for building the...
I'm also not above governments annexing these types of infrastructure that have already been built and turned into public utilities. It would save a lot of headache for us for building the infrastructure out. And many of these companies should be public utilities anyway (looking at you PG&E).
Yep, I'm in favor of a public actor pushing competition and prices down. If you can outperform the public option then good for you. Like regulatory capture though, we'd need to do better to safe...
Yep, I'm in favor of a public actor pushing competition and prices down. If you can outperform the public option then good for you. Like regulatory capture though, we'd need to do better to safe guard against corporate influence to water down the public option.
We've been here before. This is just the 1920s 2.0. Let's hope this time the 30s is a little less tumultuous for the common man while still dealing with monopolies and consolidation of power for...
We've been here before. This is just the 1920s 2.0. Let's hope this time the 30s is a little less tumultuous for the common man while still dealing with monopolies and consolidation of power for private industry.
Bond villian-esque plan. Offer the services of your highly advanced satellite network to Ukrainian forces fighting for their very country's future then turn it off as troops are advancing and demand $400 million annually from Western allies to keep the network up and running.
I get it, as a corporation SpaceX is no ones friend but SpaceX's and as the richest man in the world Elon will have lost all of his humanity years ago but he really is an absolute cretin.
I doubt he planned it to happen quite the way it did. Responding quickly in an emergency and then cashing in on it is an approach he's tried before. Compare with the Tesla Big Battery in Australia. Make money and have people say nice things about you was probably the plan.
The cashing in part was a problem this time, due to going ahead with no contract. (Compare with the normal way of getting a defense contract; it would have taken years, probably.)
There are situations where businesspeople who trust each other might get away with going ahead on a handshake deal, but this wasn't one of them. Much like with the Twitter purchase, arrogance and impulsiveness got him in over his head. Kind of like rock star behavior?
No doubt, as you said he probably dived in headfirst and then realised afterwards the true cost of offering satellite services to the army of a huge country like Ukraine where they're fighting a war for their very survival.
Just drawing parellels to how it has echoes of the sort of plan a megalomaniacal billionaire industrialist Bond villain would come up with.
I think this is true for all of his ventures. Certainly it was a goal to be successful in both spaceflight and electric cars/energy, but stronger competition was probably also expected. A big part of why SpaceX and Tesla are in their current positions are because the incumbents were consistently dismissive towards changing anything about how they operated and invested in obstructionism rather than modernization.
By the time the incumbents realized that being obstructive wasn't working it was too late and they've been struggling to play catchup ever since. This is particularly pertinent to spaceflight, with e.g. Boeing's halfhearted attitude in their catchup resulting in boneheaded moves like contracting out the software for their commercial crew capsule to the lowest bidder, which is why it's seen constant delays while Dragon has been racking up successful missions.
At least for spaceflight, a lot of this could've been avoided if the government hadn't cozied up with its old aerospace contractors and continually lowered their expectations for them, paying them ever larger sums for barely moving forward at all.
He’s clearly not a reliable ally or someone you want to depend on for critical infrastructure, and yet here we are. I hope the US government was able to negotiate a good contract.
IMHO we risk elevating corporations to the godly statuses found in dystopian cyberpunk stories if we continue this path. Alternatively, we can work to build publicly owned utilities that perform the same task instead of allowing private monopolies in these spaces. I would really love to see r&d in the public realm that results in publicly owned goods and services that don't exist to make profit.
I'm also not above governments annexing these types of infrastructure that have already been built and turned into public utilities. It would save a lot of headache for us for building the infrastructure out. And many of these companies should be public utilities anyway (looking at you PG&E).
Yep, I'm in favor of a public actor pushing competition and prices down. If you can outperform the public option then good for you. Like regulatory capture though, we'd need to do better to safe guard against corporate influence to water down the public option.
We've been here before. This is just the 1920s 2.0. Let's hope this time the 30s is a little less tumultuous for the common man while still dealing with monopolies and consolidation of power for private industry.
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