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> 6. If you get a massive quantity of some valuable material it'll change the economics. That $20 trillion won't be $20 trillion with the added supply. True, b
by skore 15y ago
> 6. If you get a massive quantity of some valuable material it'll change the economics. That $20 trillion won't be $20 trillion with the added supply.
True, but who says they have to sell it? The way I see it, if they bring that platinum back to earth, they might be better off just using it themselves. That way, yes, they are not making the market value of it in cash - instead, they are saving the market value of it in cash.
Platinum is so expensive because it is rare and you can build awesome stuff with it. If you take rare out of the equation, you can still build awesome stuff - and awesome stuff will surely always sell at a good price.
- gaius 15y agoExactly this. Think about the kind of industries that abundant platinum would make possible. Invest in those industries. Then go get the platinum... Profit! It's the Netscape strategy. Jim Clark said "I'm selling printing presses, but first I've got to teach people to read".
- wtracy 15y agoApparently Jim Clark personally did well, but the phrase "the Netscape strategy" does not paint a rosy picture of success.
- gaius 15y agoThe so-called browser wars were irrelevant really - Netscape's strategy was to seed the world with browsers then sell servers. My employer at the time spent millions on those servers - but as of version 3, they dropped the ball, and all their customers deserted them. That's the real story of Netscape's failure.
- glhaynes 15y agoWhy would it be of more value to them (presumably not mass-manufacturing experts) than to others who already specialize in that?
- skore 15y agoCould you try phrasing your question a little more specific? I have trouble making sense of what you're getting at.
- glhaynes 15y agoSure: I understand your proposal to be that they should—after getting it to Earth—use the platinum to manufacture and sell products (rather than just selling the raw platinum) so as to maximize the value they extract from it. But that assumes that the platinum is worth (massively) more to them than it would be to the existing manufacturers of the world. Which would seem to only be the case if they were particularly skilled with manufacturing using platinum—and had the designs to do so—in some way that every other manufacturer isn't. To put it another way: there's a reason that most of the world's terrestrial mining companies sell raw materials to manufacturers rather than manufacturing end-user products themselves.
- skore 15y agoTrue, but it did make me wonder: Maybe they only do that because it IS so much more profitable to just sell it off. Any company that had access to dirt-cheap platinum would surely have a huge market advantage. Furthermore - The companies that mine the platinum may not be the technologically most advanced while Planetary Resources will surely be the most technologically advanced to have dirt-cheap platinum at their hands.