4 ms·

I think one could change a handful of words in this article and it would perfectly describe the .com crash of the early 2000's which gives me the impressions th

I think one could change a handful of words in this article and it would perfectly describe the .com crash of the early 2000's which gives me the impressions that lessons were not really learned in my opinion.

tough 3y ago
You can only learn a lesson by feeling the pain of not having learned it before in your own skin
- forgetfreeman 3y ago
  I'm skeptical. If you're out working in the yard and your buddy steps on a rake it's reasonable to put the rake away instead of stepping on it yourself later in the day.
  - Version467 3y ago
    Figuring out the connection between seeing someone stepping on a rake and immediately after getting smacked in the head seems much simpler than knowing about the .com bubble and from that alone managing to avoid the same mistakes decades later. It's easy to call out the similarities now, but I doubt it's easy to avoid the mistakes in the situation.
    - forgetfreeman 3y ago
      I'm even more skeptical now. I lived through the .com bubble and the hype and bullshit were blandly obvious at the time. I worked briefly in the mortgage industry during the run up to the 08 implosion and after about 90 days of wondering what the sideways fuck was going on with all these obviously bullshit loans I decided someone was probably going to jail for something and got tf out of the industry before I found myself caught up in whatever. Now, I'm not carrying any kind of degree, so it obviously doesn't take a doctorate in economics to glance at a business (or even an entire industry) and pick up on the fact that their business model looks like a few tons of horseshit hiding behind a billboard for disney world. Drilling into vertical farming specifically, all one has to do to surmise the entire industry is a crock of shit is note the following: - agriculture has some of the narrowest margins of any industry - vertical ag claims they'll be printing money by adding additional layers of complexity and overhead to the process In my opinion the reason shit like this keeps happening is it's become standard practice in the financial industry to bet on dumb money instead of betting on actual value.
      - Version467 3y ago
        I don't think that's a fair characterization of vertical farming. Yes, some of the startups in vertical farming say that they can print money right now, and I am with you that this is stupid. However I think the actual value proposition is different. Agriculture does have very thin margins. The current approach is only viable by achieving scale through enormous monocultures. Unfortunately this is very bad for the soil and the surrounding eco-system. We try to mitigate this by using fertilizer, but this is a stopgap solution and it won't work forever. One example of this is that there now exists a thriving industry for rentable beehives, because all the bees living in the areas where we grow food that needs to be pollinated are dying. So instead we truck dozens of hives across the country, let them pollinate the fields and then pack them back up for the next one. We are currently forced into ever more complicated counter measures, just to keep the output we have. This will get more expensive until it ultimately just won't work anymore and output shrinks. Meanwhile, vertical farmings biggest expense is electricity, which will get cheaper over time. It uses way less water, does not have to rely on huge amounts of fertilizer, can grow anything year round and can be set up in dense urban spaces so that the output does not have to be shipped all over the place. This isn't better than traditional farming right now (and for some food it probably won't be for a loooong time), but the balance will steadily shift in favor of smaller, more localized agriculture. Eventually, with ever growing citys/urban areas, vertical farming will be more economical. However that day is not this day and the startups that burned through their stacks of vc cash while drinking their own kool-aid deserve to crash and burn.
        forgetfreeman 3y ago
        A lot of people don't think that's a fair categorization of vertical farming. Sadly they either simply don't know anything about some combination of agriculture, real estate, the concept of unit margins, or they're pushing an agenda. All of the problems you highlight with standard monoculture ag absolutely exist, and can only be solved by reducing the global population by some terrifyingly large number to get field utilization down to the point where rotation and fallow schedules start to make sense on a global scale. Attempting to resolve these issues with vertical farming would have you trying to capitalize a 10 story structure almost exactly the size of Vermont just to cover the US domestic wheat crop. We've all heard the marketing song and dance around the industry and none if it scans in the face of even the most cursory examination of actual field acreage utilization figures either domestically or worldwide. You want to solve the global over-farming crisis (and it definitely is one) start engineering a pathogen.
  - thrashh 3y ago
    Same thing. You were close to the incident. Let's say you just started gardening by yourself and no one has stepped on a rake yet. You're going to be in some pain. Also, if everyone instantly learned from elders of every bad incident, we'd get nothing done because all the new people would be too scared to try anything.
    - forgetfreeman 3y ago
      Ah yes. Ignorance, the true driver of innovation...
- LinuxBender 3y ago
  Individuals can be excused for a lack of knowledge and experience. VC's and investment banks can not. This is a fundamental and basic part of their fiduciary responsibility. To me the article is a red flag that some people need to be investigated.
  - 6D794163636F756 3y ago
    Did they lose a lot or benefit from the .com bubble? If they benefitted what would they learn except to do it again?
- drewcoo 3y ago
  Failure is sufficient but not necessary for learning. I don't understand the recent "learning sadism" memes. We're social. We like to mimic one another. Boom - learning! If I were Elon Musk's last living colonist on Mars and I lost contact with Earth, I'd likely have reference materials to watch or read - learning!
  - tough 3y ago
    What reference materials would exist for a novel situation that no other human has ever lived before, anyways? Some theorethical or sci-fi, I guess you'll be at least entertained to death.
undersuit 3y ago
Why learn a lesson when ignoring those three lessons can lead to outrageous success for your funders?
legitster 3y ago
Not really though. The .com crash was really about investors not understanding how to evaluate the profitability of products that have low or no marginal costs. If anything, vertical farming is an example of the opposite - investors who are used to a low or no marginal cost businesses having to learn unit economics for the first time.

tough 3y ago

You can only learn a lesson by feeling the pain of not having learned it before in your own skin

forgetfreeman 3y ago
I'm skeptical. If you're out working in the yard and your buddy steps on a rake it's reasonable to put the rake away instead of stepping on it yourself later in the day.
- Version467 3y ago
  Figuring out the connection between seeing someone stepping on a rake and immediately after getting smacked in the head seems much simpler than knowing about the .com bubble and from that alone managing to avoid the same mistakes decades later. It's easy to call out the similarities now, but I doubt it's easy to avoid the mistakes in the situation.
  - forgetfreeman 3y ago
    I'm even more skeptical now. I lived through the .com bubble and the hype and bullshit were blandly obvious at the time. I worked briefly in the mortgage industry during the run up to the 08 implosion and after about 90 days of wondering what the sideways fuck was going on with all these obviously bullshit loans I decided someone was probably going to jail for something and got tf out of the industry before I found myself caught up in whatever. Now, I'm not carrying any kind of degree, so it obviously doesn't take a doctorate in economics to glance at a business (or even an entire industry) and pick up on the fact that their business model looks like a few tons of horseshit hiding behind a billboard for disney world. Drilling into vertical farming specifically, all one has to do to surmise the entire industry is a crock of shit is note the following: - agriculture has some of the narrowest margins of any industry - vertical ag claims they'll be printing money by adding additional layers of complexity and overhead to the process In my opinion the reason shit like this keeps happening is it's become standard practice in the financial industry to bet on dumb money instead of betting on actual value.
    - Version467 3y ago
      I don't think that's a fair characterization of vertical farming. Yes, some of the startups in vertical farming say that they can print money right now, and I am with you that this is stupid. However I think the actual value proposition is different. Agriculture does have very thin margins. The current approach is only viable by achieving scale through enormous monocultures. Unfortunately this is very bad for the soil and the surrounding eco-system. We try to mitigate this by using fertilizer, but this is a stopgap solution and it won't work forever. One example of this is that there now exists a thriving industry for rentable beehives, because all the bees living in the areas where we grow food that needs to be pollinated are dying. So instead we truck dozens of hives across the country, let them pollinate the fields and then pack them back up for the next one. We are currently forced into ever more complicated counter measures, just to keep the output we have. This will get more expensive until it ultimately just won't work anymore and output shrinks. Meanwhile, vertical farmings biggest expense is electricity, which will get cheaper over time. It uses way less water, does not have to rely on huge amounts of fertilizer, can grow anything year round and can be set up in dense urban spaces so that the output does not have to be shipped all over the place. This isn't better than traditional farming right now (and for some food it probably won't be for a loooong time), but the balance will steadily shift in favor of smaller, more localized agriculture. Eventually, with ever growing citys/urban areas, vertical farming will be more economical. However that day is not this day and the startups that burned through their stacks of vc cash while drinking their own kool-aid deserve to crash and burn.
      - forgetfreeman 3y ago
        A lot of people don't think that's a fair categorization of vertical farming. Sadly they either simply don't know anything about some combination of agriculture, real estate, the concept of unit margins, or they're pushing an agenda. All of the problems you highlight with standard monoculture ag absolutely exist, and can only be solved by reducing the global population by some terrifyingly large number to get field utilization down to the point where rotation and fallow schedules start to make sense on a global scale. Attempting to resolve these issues with vertical farming would have you trying to capitalize a 10 story structure almost exactly the size of Vermont just to cover the US domestic wheat crop. We've all heard the marketing song and dance around the industry and none if it scans in the face of even the most cursory examination of actual field acreage utilization figures either domestically or worldwide. You want to solve the global over-farming crisis (and it definitely is one) start engineering a pathogen.
- thrashh 3y ago
  Same thing. You were close to the incident. Let's say you just started gardening by yourself and no one has stepped on a rake yet. You're going to be in some pain. Also, if everyone instantly learned from elders of every bad incident, we'd get nothing done because all the new people would be too scared to try anything.
  - forgetfreeman 3y ago
    Ah yes. Ignorance, the true driver of innovation...
LinuxBender 3y ago
Individuals can be excused for a lack of knowledge and experience. VC's and investment banks can not. This is a fundamental and basic part of their fiduciary responsibility. To me the article is a red flag that some people need to be investigated.
- 6D794163636F756 3y ago
  Did they lose a lot or benefit from the .com bubble? If they benefitted what would they learn except to do it again?
drewcoo 3y ago
Failure is sufficient but not necessary for learning. I don't understand the recent "learning sadism" memes. We're social. We like to mimic one another. Boom - learning! If I were Elon Musk's last living colonist on Mars and I lost contact with Earth, I'd likely have reference materials to watch or read - learning!
- tough 3y ago
  What reference materials would exist for a novel situation that no other human has ever lived before, anyways? Some theorethical or sci-fi, I guess you'll be at least entertained to death.

undersuit 3y ago

Why learn a lesson when ignoring those three lessons can lead to outrageous success for your funders?

legitster 3y ago

Not really though. The .com crash was really about investors not understanding how to evaluate the profitability of products that have low or no marginal costs. If anything, vertical farming is an example of the opposite - investors who are used to a low or no marginal cost businesses having to learn unit economics for the first time.