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> Every industry seems to have gone through a similar cycles where the free has been a threat to the commercial products. I’m very doubtfull of that. How would

> Every industry seems to have gone through a similar cycles where the free has been a threat to the commercial products. I’m very doubtfull of that. How would a free car manufacturer work? Which free watch offering threatened the commercial industry? When did free construction threaten commercial offerings?

dijit 3y ago
Cars are a good example because "free" car manufacture is what caused the downfall of Detroit in the US and Coventry in the UK. Suddenly there was an influx of these cheaper cars, and at least in the US there were measures introduced to decrease the viability of imported cars. Free construction has a similar fate, which is why planning permission is more difficult than it has ever been.
- qubex 3y ago
  How are cars that one has to pay for ‘free’?
  - dijit 3y ago
    Libre vs Gratis. That FOSS software is given gratis is a happy byproduct of it being libre and having zero cost to copy. "open source" cola for example is not free to manufacture, so it has some cost associated, though you could make it yourself if you had the means.[0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_cola https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_cola
    - qubex 3y ago
      I didn’t even know that existed, and have never tried it, and wouldn’t know where to begin looking for it. Meanwhile Coca-Cola…
- krisoft 3y ago
  Cheaper cars are not free. They are not even “free”. > Free construction has a similar fate, which is why planning permission is more difficult than it has ever been. This is new to me. Planning permissions are difficult because the rulling class makes their money from owning property, and thus they prefer to keep the housing supply thight, and their wallets thick. They would do this even if the cost of construction would have increased. (Which it often did.)
- vidarh 3y ago
  Plenty of places where large developers sit on and let planning permissions expire and apply again because it's better return on investment to hoard land and first build and sell finished properties when an investor wants to exit. I live in London, and there are buildings approved with an aggregate of many thousands of flats immediately surrounding my local station alone where nothing has happened for years, because why would they, when delaying the actual construction means they effectively get extra leverage on their investment. As long as house prices rise fairly consistently, if you can raise additional capital chances are good it will give you better return to keep accumulating more land than use the capital to finance construction on land you already own. I'd really like to see heavy taxation on underutilized land (insufficient to only go after unused land because then they'll just plonk down something cheap and low-density and rent it out until the time is right for something bigger.
- Zak 3y ago
  Japanese companies were making objectively better cars than the US and UK from the 1970s until pretty recently. I'm not sure how much sharing of designs between companies had to do with that; they were using better quality materials and manufacturing as well as iterating faster.
tap-snap-or-nap 3y ago
Cars and car based infrastructure had a stiff competition from properly funded public transportation.

dijit 3y ago

Cars are a good example because "free" car manufacture is what caused the downfall of Detroit in the US and Coventry in the UK. Suddenly there was an influx of these cheaper cars, and at least in the US there were measures introduced to decrease the viability of imported cars. Free construction has a similar fate, which is why planning permission is more difficult than it has ever been.

qubex 3y ago
How are cars that one has to pay for ‘free’?
- dijit 3y ago
  Libre vs Gratis. That FOSS software is given gratis is a happy byproduct of it being libre and having zero cost to copy. "open source" cola for example is not free to manufacture, so it has some cost associated, though you could make it yourself if you had the means.[0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_cola https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_cola
  - qubex 3y ago
    I didn’t even know that existed, and have never tried it, and wouldn’t know where to begin looking for it. Meanwhile Coca-Cola…
krisoft 3y ago
Cheaper cars are not free. They are not even “free”. > Free construction has a similar fate, which is why planning permission is more difficult than it has ever been. This is new to me. Planning permissions are difficult because the rulling class makes their money from owning property, and thus they prefer to keep the housing supply thight, and their wallets thick. They would do this even if the cost of construction would have increased. (Which it often did.)
vidarh 3y ago
Plenty of places where large developers sit on and let planning permissions expire and apply again because it's better return on investment to hoard land and first build and sell finished properties when an investor wants to exit. I live in London, and there are buildings approved with an aggregate of many thousands of flats immediately surrounding my local station alone where nothing has happened for years, because why would they, when delaying the actual construction means they effectively get extra leverage on their investment. As long as house prices rise fairly consistently, if you can raise additional capital chances are good it will give you better return to keep accumulating more land than use the capital to finance construction on land you already own. I'd really like to see heavy taxation on underutilized land (insufficient to only go after unused land because then they'll just plonk down something cheap and low-density and rent it out until the time is right for something bigger.
Zak 3y ago
Japanese companies were making objectively better cars than the US and UK from the 1970s until pretty recently. I'm not sure how much sharing of designs between companies had to do with that; they were using better quality materials and manufacturing as well as iterating faster.

tap-snap-or-nap 3y ago

Cars and car based infrastructure had a stiff competition from properly funded public transportation.