Tesla, iPad Socialism and the Return of the Future | Hacker News Reader

Tesla, iPad Socialism and the Return of the Future

wire.novaramedia.com

25 pointsddouglascarr11 comments

What is the main idea being put forward in this article? I tried reading over it but I don't seem to get it. It seems to put forward certain concepts but doesn't seem to have any substance to it or even coherence.

I'll try: that the last 30-40 years of innovation are the result of, not in spite of, government involvement in industry. Secondarily, that what we think of as great innovation is the result of such involvement or investment, and without which some of these companies wouldn't exist.

I understood it to be that seemingly Ayn-Randian heroes like Musk are standing on the shoulders of giants, giants being the State.

Add to that the thesis that the same way Musk wants to keep SpaceX private to focus on the long-term, states can take that same long-game stance with their strategic economic policies.

And because of that, the author is looking forward to a more leftist current (Sanders, Podemos) to increase and lead government spending and investment.

Except that the state doesn't take any sort of a long term view, unless you consider the next election a "long term". The state can't do anything to benefit the economy- by definition all the money spent by the state was taken via taxation or inflation, in both cases taken out of the private economy exactly at the point where they would otherwise be invested in economic growth... and the state is notoriously terrible at allocating that money (most of which is spent bombing people, or preparing to bomb people.)

> exactly at the point where they would otherwise be invested in economic growth

That's why a tiny percentage of people hold the vast majority of wealth... Because they "reinvest"?

Are you seriously arguing government shouldn't exist and shouldn't tax?

Just to clarify, I wrote what I understood the piece to be, I don't necessarily hold the same view. I have seem my share of resources squandered by a short-sighted politician looking for re-election.

I guess in a perfect world, the State realizes it needs to plan and invest beyond 4 years, and in the rest of the cases your mileage will vary greatly.

You could also argue that the money being taken by the state is being used for programs like public education and infrastructure instead of being stashed offshore by multinationals where nobody can use it.

Ah man, one of those right-libertarian/anarcho-capitalist types. Don't worry, most of these people change their belief system once they take an elementary economics class. I know I did :)

Just because the government-- which has spent $8T over the past several years -- spends some money on "technology", mostly aimed at better killing people overseas, does not mean that the government is the reason that we have iPads, etc. SpaceX in fact, shows how inefficient it is-- instead of spending $1B (at least) per launch of the "reusable" space shuttle, SpaceX is able to put things in orbit an order of magnitude cheaper.

If a thief steals your car and gives you a bicycle, should you thank the theif for giving you the gift of transportation, or recognize that you would have been better off in the first place if you could have kept the car?

This is the problem with all these "government made the internet" type claims-- they ignore that the government spends orders of magnitude more, and produces remarkably little ($8T during the Obama presidency, for instance. The entire national debt accumulated to the Reagan era-- widely criticized for his profligate spending-- was only $4T.)

You are comparing money without factoring inflation or overall GDP... So basically you are just spreading FUD.

Is there evidence that private sector is more efficient?

Lots of companies blow money on lots of stupid shit... I guess that doesn't fit your narrative though.

The Hyperloop also can only exist with government cooperation. Stringing together such a technology across multiple state (or nation) boundaries will require much more collaborative effort than the Eisenhower administration's Interstate system.

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