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Comment by fragmede | Hacker News Reader

It's not one person though. If zero people were using Starlink, then it would be that one person's vanity up there, but since it seems people do find it useful, those satellite lines represent humans being able to connect with modern technology out in the Sahara or in the ocean. For sailors to keep in touch with loved ones and to have a less dreary existence on long ocean voyages. And not to fret, China's managed to land a reusable rocket, so soon they'll have their own constellation up there so it's not just that one particular person making a mess of things.

What we're seeing is humanity managing to become a space faring civilization. I look up and yearn to be up there as well. I'll never make it to space, but it would give me such joy if my children's children had the opportunity to.

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> those satellite lines represent humans being able to connect with modern technology out in the Sahara or in the ocean

Or basic locations in Europe, that can be as close to 20km from a big city. There are a ton of spots where you have at best spotty 4G coverage or no coverage at all.

Used to live where we had 1Mbit ADSL, and no cell ... Trust me, you feel the limitations of that. Keeping your PC running 24/7 to download/buffer, so you can use your day traffic for more important stuff.

Starlink is a insane deal in my eyes. Sure, it uses a lot of power but your paying the same as typical vDSL in Germany. And ironically, ... Starlink is faster then the fixed lines we have here in the "3th" biggest city in Germany.

People really underestimate how much underinvestment there has been in Internet connectivity even in rich countries.

I live in the center of a capital of small EU country and I'm scheduled to get fiber Q3 this year. Copper is getting tired and flakey, 5G is overcrowded. There's been close to no progress in residential internet for the past 15 years.

It is one person who controls it, at his discretion who gets to share in the utility. What your saying can also be true without such an ownership model, right?

No. We’ve tried that for decades now and it hasn’t worked out very well for getting the world connected. The entire rural earth has been neglected. Even in silicon valley my neighborhood only got fiber this year and its saddled with crappy TV bundle deals, bad mobile apps built with wrapped web pages, poor service, and we-will-sell-your-data anti privacy provisions. Starlink has none of that.

Yeah, I don't know how this whole ARPANET thing is really going to play out...

Looks like you stopped reading after the first sentence.

Or if not, what am I missing?

I still don't see why it should be one man rather than commonly owned infrastructure.

So, communism?

Not necessarily, but in any case not a monopoly. E.g. Elon Musk now owns all highways: better or worse? Some distributed ownership seems useful as it distributes power accordingly.

Perhaps a public company then? The symbol could be SPCX. Maybe give some shares to US citizens, like in special accounts maybe? This is sounding oddly familiar.

A public company with weak corporate governance where the board rubber stamps whatever the CEO wants and that CEO happens to own 40% of the stock and 80% of the voting control doesn’t respond to any public concerns. That is a strength. It does allow Elon to execute strategy that might not have public support. That’s also a lot of power to place in the hands of one person.

As Aristotle said, all forms of government have a good form and a corrupt form. A just king can be highly effective and create human flourishing but a bad king is highly destructive. A good democracy and tyranny of the mob majority are equivalent. We need checks and balances in all forms of human organization. SpaceX has no checks or at least is on a path to where there will be none.

Elon recently said, if his plans go as expected, SpaceX will be more valuable the earth. And he is right. How is humanity going to have checks and balances when that happens?

Bezos and others will balance Elon. Be glad it’s Elon and not Walz or Hans Dieter. And AIs will be in place doing who knows what, so all our current governance will probably be out the window.

No. A utility like power and water can be private but regulated so that it can’t extract monopoly rent. Or you can create an ecosystem of providers on top of the public infrastructure.

What percentage of spaceX stock does humanity own? What about Elon?

Can the government shut off your access to GPS? No. Can spaceX shut off your access to their network? Yes.

Do you have rights to judicial review if government harms you? Yes. If spaceX does? Probably not because their terms of service create a contract not a legal right.

We're not space faring. We just put up satellites. There's nothing for us outside of the earth. It would take months of travel just to get to the useless barren wasteland that is Mars.

Maybe some day we'll be mining asteroids near Earth or something. Maybe we'll mine the moon. Going to/living on different planets is pretty much science fiction though. It's hard enough to live on the earth, it's gonna be 1000 times harder to live anywhere else.

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