The "rocket" example is as silly as the "Moore's Law applied to vehicles" arguments that used to crop up on Slashdot decades ago.
"If cars improved according to Moore's law, they'd get XXXX miles per gallon and go YYYY miles per hour". Yes, and they'd also be smaller than matchboxes while seating thousands of people.
Exceptional situations are exceptional. Good on Elon Musk for realising that there was a large latent demand for launch-to-orbit services. Well done, that chap. But you can't generalize from that to everything else. Or anything else, really.[1]
With respect to the rest of your argument, I understood that Amazon makes most of its profit from AWS, while stories about its ruthless exploitation of its warehouse staff are legion. Those factoids don't square with your argument that Amazon is making excess profits.
1. Take luxury yachts for example, which are about as expensive as rockets. The bill of materials would be a slightly larger fraction of the final cost than for rockets, but the same reasoning would seem to apply. Why has no-one "Musked" luxury yachts?
> With respect to the rest of your argument, I understood that Amazon makes most of its profit from AWS, while stories about its ruthless exploitation of its warehouse staff are legion.
Sure, but from what I understand, businesses generally list goods on Amazon for close to MSRP, possibly for contractual reasons. Some of that certainly pays for Amzazon fees, but where does the rest of the difference from wholesale price go?
> Why has no-one "Musked" luxury yachts?
Well, for one thing, a luxury yacht is a status symbol. If it became less expensive, more people would be able to afford them, and the wealthy would feel less special about being able to own one. Certainly not the only reason, but I'm sure it's a contributing factor.
The "rocket" example is as silly as the "Moore's Law applied to vehicles" arguments that used to crop up on Slashdot decades ago.
"If cars improved according to Moore's law, they'd get XXXX miles per gallon and go YYYY miles per hour". Yes, and they'd also be smaller than matchboxes while seating thousands of people.
Exceptional situations are exceptional. Good on Elon Musk for realising that there was a large latent demand for launch-to-orbit services. Well done, that chap. But you can't generalize from that to everything else. Or anything else, really.[1]
With respect to the rest of your argument, I understood that Amazon makes most of its profit from AWS, while stories about its ruthless exploitation of its warehouse staff are legion. Those factoids don't square with your argument that Amazon is making excess profits.
1. Take luxury yachts for example, which are about as expensive as rockets. The bill of materials would be a slightly larger fraction of the final cost than for rockets, but the same reasoning would seem to apply. Why has no-one "Musked" luxury yachts?