Just browsing the comments on this one, it struck me how users of this website, an incubator for new technologies and ostensibly private businesses, seems to not believe in the capacity of private businesses to provide the most socially-useful goods and services.

My basic woke laymen POV is that the in last 150+/- years, we figured out 100% of how to sustain humanity at scale and even offer some perks like efficiently traveling huge distances. Greed/nationalism/willpower get in the way from time to time, mucking up the works, but creating opportunity for well-timed industrialists on borrowed wealth to come in and provide "solutions."

This is all viewed through glorious, rose-tinted hindsight, but what even are we doing here?