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Comment by mcguire | Hacker News Reader

If we all obeyed a dictum to "avoid selling things until you can provide those things", Silicon Valley would dry up overnight.

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I fail to see a downside.

I don’t really see why that’s true, unless you consider companies’ pitches to investors to be “selling” something. Silicon Valley isn’t really known for the business model of taking money for preorders.

There is a difference in "avoid selling things until you can provide those things" and "avoid selling things until you are allowed to sell things".

What's the difference?

You may have the stuff you've invested into production of, and potential buyers willing to give you the money. But if your stuff is illegal to sell, tough luck.

So the real difference is between collecting preorders for something you MAY be able to fulfill in the near term vs something that you may be blocked from selling for an indeterminate amount of time.

Starlink will eventually be legal in India, but it could take decades. In this sense, there's no real difference between "avoid selling things until you can provide those things" and "avoid selling things until you are allowed to sell things". It's just that a normal person has a cutoff point where it becomes an unreasonable wait.

By default, all satellite operators are blocked in India. I haven't checked in last year or 2, you cant even use Garmin emergency devices which are becoming common in west outdoors. To use the satellite phones, you need to apply to the federal gov (called Central gov in India) and you can rent the phone from ministry. Atleast, thats the process for tourist or who are entering India from other countries. There are some changes happened in last 1-2 years, few satellite companies got the lic to provide services, but I am sure all the devices and services are highly regulated.

Since it’s just math in a machine and we have the math written down all over, what would be losing of long term value to the human species?

I have made a lot of money thanks to SV, but it’s not what puts food on my table; people where I live do. I don’t live near SV.

Billions of us don’t give af about SV. It’s all hype and our daily lives will look pretty much the same without it.

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