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Every significant technological innovation has been accompanied by an investment bubble. The point is that there is a competition for the best solution in terms
by skippyboxedhero 2y ago
Every significant technological innovation has been accompanied by an investment bubble. The point is that there is a competition for the best solution in terms of money.
The context of these comments often imply that at no point before SV existed did anyone invest large amounts of money in something that failed to work.
The reason why economic growth is rare (most economic growth that occurs globally is due to the impact of technology invented outside the country, 95% of countries globally have zero organic growth) is because it is extremely disruptive and means that someone with nothing other than money, who may not have been approved by society can invent something.
The point about disrupt vs reform above is correct...it just ignores the fact that reform has never been successful (despite it being repeatedly tried by politicians) because economic growth is so damaging to vested interests (there are multiple books about this topic, Innovator's Dilemma is one...I worked as an equity analyst, the number of examples of a company actually turning it around when faced with technological change are very few, the number of examples of a company bailing-in taxpayers due to political connections when faced with technological change is too large to count, this is particularly case outside the US because so much technological change comes from the US so calls to "protect" domestic industry are frequent and economically crippling).
- niemandhier 2y agoLots of money surly helps, just pointing out that we as a species can also advance in other situations. Fire,the wheel, farming, animal husbandry, spinning; all probably not the result of an investment bubble. In more recent times: Antibiotics, vaccination ( against smallpox). There are plenty of cases where humanity advance in a higher leap without giant capital concentrations.
- skippyboxedhero 2y agoNo, there aren't. There are no examples of this. The exact reason humanity didn't develop economically for tens of thousands of years was because of the very ideas that you have, almost every human has. Do you not look at the rest of the world and think: if this is so easy then why is technical innovation limited to a handful of countries? It makes no sense. How can you look at the economic history and think this? It makes no sense.
- FrustratedMonky 2y agoReal question: what is "SV"? I missed the anachronym ref.
- illinx 2y agoSilicon Valley
- jordanb 2y ago> Every significant technological innovation has been accompanied by an investment bubble This seems like more a characteristic of "winner take all (or most)" capitalism rather than a characteristic of innovation. A new technology potentially creates a new market opportunity and you have everyone bum-rush it as quickly as possible with as much money as possible in the hopes of being the new monopolist. At any rate, this Ellison play wasn't about an innovation. It was about muscling into a mature market he didn't understand (an "eating-the-world play" to use SV lingo).