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> A lot of people are going to sneer at this because they like seeing rich tech people fail, but I think it’s great that he’s trying something. Is it? It feels
by arrosenberg 2y ago
> A lot of people are going to sneer at this because they like seeing rich tech people fail, but I think it’s great that he’s trying something.
Is it? It feels like the same money could be given out to thousands of people who actually understand farming to run little experiments. That's how America is supposed to work. Relying on Larry Ellison to succeed in a field he has no experience or instincts by throwing money at it seems like a terrible strategy.
- diob 2y agoPeople underestimate how much our regressive tax structure and lax antitrust enforcement are holding back innovation. If we didn’t allow such massive wealth concentration, we'd see more competition and breakthroughs.
- tbrownaw 2y agoRight, of course, excessive concentration of wealth is the only thing preventing another Bell Labs or Xerox PARC from bringing us tomorrow's future today.
- citadel_melon 2y agoI don’t understand the sarcasm. More competition in the marketplace would create more innovation: I don’t think this should be controversial.
- nottorp 2y agoEven Bell Labs and Xerox PARC are two different entities. These days Bell and Xerox would maybe merge to "consolidate their market position" and fire half of the researchers to show cost savings at the next board meeting.
- snailmailstare 2y agoI hear a lot about how ahead of their time they were and how everything since is based on them.. But it seems like newer things since then are all being built on the shoulders of a generation of thousands of giants instead of a generation where we can only identify 2.
- hello_moto 2y agoIt's a different time. I don't think we can compare the old Bell Labs/Xerox PARC vs Larry Ellison. The Larry Ellison. People have been saying that these concentration of wealth will end up hoarding our basic needs and we've seen that already with Housing. First they come for your House, next they come for your Food.
- TheMagicHorsey 2y agoRight, because so much innovation comes from places with super high taxation in Europe. Give me a break.
- immibis 2y agoIt does. If you identify "innovation" differently. The American meaning of "innovation" is finding a way to force ten million people to pay you a dollar each. European innovation is, like, Mastodon, where you specifically cannot be forced to pay a dollar. This tends to not pay as well. This is because America selects for people who can get paid lots of money much more strongly than Europe does.
- TheMagicHorsey 2y agoYou seriously think America's innovation is Saas for a dollar? As opposed to almost everything that makes the modern world move forward, like cheap spaceflight, modern EVs, quantum computing, semiconductors ... the list of American-driven innovations is endless. What kind of rock are you typing under?
- diob 2y agoYou’re missing the point. It’s not a simple ‘high taxes bad, low taxes good’ binary—it’s a spectrum. The U.S. has a tax structure that allows wealth to concentrate at the top while failing to enforce competition, which actually stifles innovation. Meanwhile, countries like Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and Japan—despite having higher taxes—consistently drive innovation. Germany leads in engineering and automotive tech (Siemens, BMW, Bosch). Sweden produces global tech giants like Spotify and Klarna. Denmark is a leader in renewable energy (Vestas, Ørsted). Japan? It revolutionized robotics, semiconductors, and high-speed rail while fostering companies like Toyota, Sony, and Nintendo. The issue isn’t just tax rates—it’s whether a system allows new players to compete or just protects entrenched monopolies. The U.S. is increasingly choosing the latter.
- starspangled 2y ago> Germany leads in engineering and automotive tech (Siemens, BMW, Bosch). Sweden produces global tech giants like Spotify and Klarna. Denmark is a leader in renewable energy (Vestas, Ørsted). Japan? It revolutionized robotics, semiconductors, and high-speed rail while fostering companies like Toyota, Sony, and Nintendo. And you can't think of anything the US innovates in? Your evidence / anecdotes aren't really sufficient to prove the claim .
- david38 2y agoAs if he personally ran this without people who knew a few things? Go look at the success rate of university research. This sounds like someone who hasn’t been part of research.
- arrosenberg 2y agoPer the article it sounds like the entire operation took place on his company-town Hawaiian island of Lanai, so...kinda, yeah, that is what I think. I'm sure he had a small staff, but my instinct is that most of the expenses were capex and self-dealing.
- antasvara 2y agoThe article specifically says that he had tech CEO's running the project. The mistakes they made also seem pretty fundamental to farming; things like: 1. they didn't consider that a greenhouse designed for the desert wouldn't work in Hawaii 2. solar panels need to be installed differently depending on their location and never see the theoretical power generation in practice 3. immature/mature plants were growm right next to each other in a way that spread pests 4. they bought marijuana greenhouses without considering that it is grown so differently from other standard crops. This is pretty basic stuff that should have been caught by someone with knowledge of agriculture. This seems to indicate that while they had a really smart team, they made the mistake of assuming that general AI/robotics would map 1:1 to the problems of agriculture. The success rate of university research should have been the ultimate warning sign that you shouldn't dump half a billion into "solving agriculture." Progress in established fields like agriculture is expensive, time consuming, and (usually) incremental. The thought that you could do all of that at once and outcompete an approach that has been refined for thousands of years is wild. Kudos to them for dreaming big, but I just don't see why they thought they had an edge here outside of "AI can solve any problem" hubris.
- pengaru 2y agoIt's not like the money vanishes into thin air, wealthy people throwing their money at anything is a desirable outcome vs. say hoarding it.
- tbrownaw 2y agoHow exactly would one "hoard" money these days? Even if it's just sitting in a bank, that still translates to getting lent out at whatever interest rate that bank charges.
- francisofascii 2y ago> How exactly would one "hoard" money these days They buy real estate and sit on it. Since land taxes are so low, you can make money without actually doing anything with the land.
- mistrial9 2y agothey call that "velocity" of money? it means a rate at which money circulates in some wider way.. it is well-known in some theory circle IMO
- HPsquared 2y agoFinite resources (mostly, peoples' time) are expended.
- codr7 2y agoSo just because it's better than nothing we should consider it good enough?
- dan_mctree 2y agoIf all the wealthy would band together to spend their money on convincing every farmer to write software instead, then we'd all starve
- moralestapia 2y ago[flagged]
- jjtheblunt 2y ago> That's how America is supposed to work. Where did you get that?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- syndicatedjelly 2y agoIt's just the default argument someone uses when they have nothing of substance to offer to the conversation
- scotty79 2y agoHe's throwing money at someone. Probably someone roughly as deserving (in the grand scheme of things) as farmers are. So I'd say that it's good that he's throwing his money instead of hoarding it or doing some ruthless exploitation or something with oil pumping. Expecting billionaires to spend their money in any way that benefits someone other than them is unrealistically high bar. We should apploud them if they at least manage to do less harm.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]