I dunno man, im getting kind of jaded as I get older. "True moonshot" to me seems more like cheap clean water for everyone, or a real way to sequester carbon, not a way for rich folks to get to their country cottages faster.
Isn't the original literal moonshot (i.e. flying to the moon) more in the category of "things that don't help the working people" than "things that solve poverty/suffering"?
I know the meaning may have shifted over the years, but i've always interpreted it as "audacious and unlikely to succeed", rather than any particular moral / altruistic content.
True. This kind of technology would be a game changer for poorer rural communities with limited infrastructure and vast distances. Places like Greenland or East Congo. But this article did not mention this benefit at all. All they seem to care about is getting rich people between places they already can.
This is just basic marketing. You sell to the guy who can buy.
The Tesla company was started in 2003 to productionize the AC tzero. In 2005, the Roadster was conceived as the product it became and Tesla and Lotus tied up.
The Secret Master Plan arrived in 2006. So yeah, that's just how it goes. Because there is an army of people who lament things targeted at rich people, but that army does not participate in progress, either in money or in sweat.
The intelligent futurist always ignores them because they contribute nothing.
That makes the current state of our humanity kind of sad, doesn’t it.
It is also not true. There are numerous innovations targeted for the betterment of us all. The three-point seat-belt is a quick one that comes to mind. The field of medicine has tax funded research innovating at a remarkable frequency, where the target beneficiaries is all humans who need it. Expensive infrastructures like roads, train networks, electric grids, and trash disposal systems are build around the world for everyone who needs, not just the once who can afford it.
But we do lament things that are target at rich people, because these rich people are literally destroying the world with their over-consumption. They certainly don’t deserve more nice things that the rest of the world is paying for.
It's always been the case. We linked the world via trade in search of making a rich man's food taste better. I don't think it's sad. I think it's wonderful. The rich 'subsidize' progress for everyone.
All of the things you mention (except the 3-point seatbelt, perhaps) have a story just like this one with some guy saying things just like this guy and a veritable shower of lament with no effort behind it.
This sounds like an HN version of trickle down theory which I thought had been thoroughly debunked by economists.
It’s funny but, I’ve always been under the impression that the opposite were true in standard economics, the poor—with their labour—are the once who subsidize the rich. I find it hard to believe that the economics of progress are any different. Let me draw up some napkin economics:
Scenario A: The poor pay disproportionaly higher taxes then the rich. Taxes pay for infrastructure, education, etc. The rich uses the infrastructure and the higher skilled workforce to work on a thing. The rich get richer on that thing. The rich give them self a higher percentage of the profit then the workers or the state. The rich just got richer because of subsidy from the poor.
Scenario B: The poor pay disproportionaly higher taxes then the rich. Taxes pay for infrastructure, education, etc. A team of PhD students (the poor) and their assistance (the poor) spend thousands of work-hours to figure out how a thing can be improved. A company uses their findings free of charge to deliver a better product. The company does not give the students and their assistance a fair share of the profits. The company pays their shareholders (the rich) the majority of the profits. The rich just got richer because of subsidy from the poor.
“Trickle down theory” has not been “debunked” by economists because it’s not an actual economic theory. It’s a pejorative used to criticize tax cuts.
Also the fact that technological progress/experiment typically (but not always) targets the top end of the market and works its way down is not controversial.
This phenomenon is also not what most people mean by “trickle down economics” as it relates to the pejorative against tax cuts which, again, isn’t a real theory peddled by credible economists.
I'm not sure about the medicine example. There are many cases of diseases being ignored because despite being widespread there isn't much money in treating them.
This is an effect of massive wealth inequality. In some cases, you could run a more profitable business with Jeff Bezos as your only customer than building products for an entire country's worth of people.
Sometimes I imagine if our collective minds were put together to figure out some of those basic - civilization wide problems like clean water for all, clean energy for all, or carbon sequestration. Imagine that world...
Who is going to feed these members of the collective mind while they are working? Who is going to pay for the water, electricity, compute power they use while solving the world problems?
Access to transportation is a stronger predictor of economic mobility than growing up in a two parent household, early test scores or the crime rate. So yes, it is in fact, extremely socially beneficial.
I’m not so sure. “A cheap and easy way to clean water” is probably the easiest Kickstarter scheme you can pull off. So naturally you will hear a lot of ideas, and none of them will work.
But lets say that your right on your first point, and a general solution exists. Then your second point is most definitely false. It is not the problem that nobody wants to pay for it. It is a problem that the people who need it can’t pay for it, and that nobody is willing to give it to them. See it’s a problem of distribution, not of demand.
That sounds like a "true green revolution". Moonshots are, to me, technology projects supercharged by heavy investing to bypass present market forces.
Sure, perhaps your age may indicate a preference for that kind of project but DDE was 70 when he started the moonshot so it's less likely to be age and more likely to be a predisposition to that sort of thing.
Helicopters and ambulances are already pretty good at that. This vehicle seems to have some added restrictions (like landing capabilities) which would make it less good.
Helicopters are really expensive to operate though, so perhaps this vehicle could fit in if frequent flights would have to be made to a place without a road connection, such as to provide an emergency relief after big disaster.
Where it could be a game-changer is transporting people and light cargo in rural communities with limited infrastructure, such as East Congo or Greenland.
We can easily do both those things already, the problem is nobody wants to pay for it, because the people most affected by bad water/hunger/climate change are the people with no money.
Moonshots afaik are risky ideas/ventures that have the potential to "moon" i.e. make a shit-ton of money. Solving a problem with no funding can't be a moonshot by that definition.
