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a business empire with a financial structure that works only if risky companies perform perfectly on ambitious plans Everyone talks about the wonders of capita
by codeulike 10y ago
a business empire with a financial structure that works only if risky companies perform perfectly on ambitious plans
Everyone talks about the wonders of capitalism and how risk is rewarded, but then someone comes along who is actually taking risks to achieve big objectives and the industry watchers collectively shit their pants.
- radiorental 10y ago> Everyone talks about the wonders of capitalism and how risk is rewarded Yes, when that risk is spread across the system and the fundamentals are stable ventures. Point being when all you do is take large risks, that's a problem. (fwiw: long on tsla)
- codeulike 10y agoMusk is basically undertaking a moon shot: either a huge success or crash and burn. There's not much point keeping reserves.
- friendlygrammar 10y ago>Musk is basically undertaking a moon shot A mars shot if you will
- jacques_chester 10y ago> Musk is basically undertaking a moon shot: either a huge success or crash and burn. I wish people would stop using the Apollo program as an example of an expensive gamble. There was no market uncertainty. The problem was complex but the physics showed it could be done. The overall plan was tested in multiple stages (which is why the first landing was by Apollo 11) undertaken with massive armies of bright folk overengineering the living daylights out of everything in view. Meanwhile people call any old MVP a "moonshot" or a speculative research program a "moonshot" and it's just ... a poor analogy.
- codeulike 10y agoThere are plenty of ways the moonshot could have failed. It just didn't fail so that's how it's remembered. Going from 'physics showed it could be done' to actually doing it is very hard and armies of bright people is not necessarily enough.
- jacques_chester 10y ago> There are plenty of ways the moonshot could have failed. Yes, and they were explored extremely thoroughly by Apollo missions 1 through 10.
- codeulike 10y agoEven well tested rockets still explode sometimes. Rockets are risky, complex, explosive machines. Ask an insurance company about it.
- jacques_chester 10y agoTaking us back to my original point: comparing an MVP or a pure research project to the Apollo program is silly.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- qeternity 10y agoI applaud your use of trading lingo but it's just "long tsla" ;)
- gremlinsinc 10y agoA lot of economists / journalists I'm sure probably made the same remarks about Edison / Wright Bros, but history came out in their favor.