
Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism - natural219
http://cjohnson.io/2014/tesla
======
nostromo
I've been thinking of patents as nukes during the Cold War lately.

Superpowers (US/USSR, Apple/Google) acquire very large nuclear/patent arsenals
under the guise of protection/defense. These arsenals are relatively cheap for
superpowers to build, but they are expensive for small states (small
countries/small businesses) to acquire.

The US and USSR were roughly equivalent in their arsenals so it made little
sense for either party to act offensively. However, the implied power behind
the arsenals gave them a lot of power when dealing with smaller actors. The
superpowers benefit greatly from acquiring these arsenals. Even without using
them publicly, the threat can always be used behind closed doors (as Jobs has
been shown to do).

But there's a third actor; the most universally feared actor:
terrorists/patent trolls. These actors behave only offensively because they
have nothing to defend. These actors are best poised to benefit from nukes and
patents and can send an otherwise orderly system into chaos.

Anyway, just a fun but flawed analogy to play with in your noodle. :)

~~~
xianshou
Interestingly, this analogy works very much at the company level, but reverses
at the country level.

For companies, patents represent weapons in an arsenal, in which MAD prevents
offensive action, as you've said.

For countries, the reverse holds: a country that jettisons its patent
architecture, or never evolved a restrictive one to begin with, will be a
bastion for innovators. The stable equilibrium is no bad patents - a lack of
shallow protectionism - and the only reason patent law in the US has remained
constant for so long is because of the other advantages that have given it
technological and scientific primacy.

As those advantages erode, patent law will loosen to stimulate competition.
Perhaps there is an upside to the perception of decline?

~~~
Spooky23
I think you need to append "for software or business methods" liberally.

For products where development costs dwarf manufacturing costs, patents
provide the incentive to do stuff. Would anyone invest a few billion into a
drug if anyone with access to a few million bucks could go manufacture it?

~~~
steveklabnik
I've always enjoyed "Against Intellectual Monopoly" (read free online here:
[http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/against.h...](http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/against.htm)
), which has a chapter
([http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/ip.ch.9.m1004.pdf](http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/ip.ch.9.m1004.pdf))
that specifically addresses this.

~~~
throwawaykf05
I would be wary of taking that book at its word. The authors have an agenda
and they are not afraid to twist historical facts to suit their narrative. I
mean, their very first chapter begins with a lie which perpetuates the myth
that Watt's patent retarded steam development [1].

When the authors of [1] called out Boldrin and Levine on this, the latter
responded by fabricating new myths rather than admit that the truth undermined
their narrative [2].

The very chapter you cite itself has such inaccuracies. I did not track down
all the stuff they cite, but I did find an instance of mischaracterizing
references to suit their view points. For instance, when they discuss the
German dyestuff industry, they cite a study by Murmann to support their
narrative that Germany dominated in that industry due to the lack of patents.
But if you look at the actual study itself, Murmann paints (heh) a much more
nuanced picture. German dominance in that industry was fueled by close ties
with academic research, and later by R&D labs encouraged by, of all things,
the newly introduced patent laws:

 _> When in 1877 German patent law protected dye innovations, a few German
firms such as Hoechst, BASF, and AGFA saw the advantage of hiring organic
chemists whose sole task was to synthesize new dyes. After these research
chemists turned out economically successful dyes, firms hired more and more
chemists and pioneered an entirely new corporate function, formally organized
research. The birth of corporate research and development (R&D), which today
is a standard activity in high-tech industries ... can be traced to the German
synthetic dye firms in 1880s. By the 1890s the vast majority of dyes were
being discovered in the R&D laboratories of Bayer, Hoechst, and BASF.

> Whereas in the early days of the industry a firm could exist by copying dyes
> invented somewhere else, patent laws made the systematic application of
> science within the boundaries of the firm a critical dimension of remaining
> a leader in the industry._

And elsewhere:

 _> The most important institution in the early success of the German dye
industry was the university system, but patent laws were a second key factor
that allowed the German firms to capture a dominant position._

With that many assertions in the study that refute their view, they cherry-
pick a few comments and actually cite the study as one that supports their
view.

With so many mischaracterizations in there, I find it hard to take anything
else they say in that book at their word.

1\.
[http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1589712](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1589712)

2\.
[http://econpapers.repec.org/article/bpjrlecon/v_3a5_3ay_3a20...](http://econpapers.repec.org/article/bpjrlecon/v_3a5_3ay_3a2009_3ai_3a3_3an_3a7.htm)

3\. Murmann JP, 2003, "Knowledge and Competitive Advantage – The Coevolution
of Firms, Technologies and National Institutions." \-
[http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam041/2003043048.pdf](http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam041/2003043048.pdf)

------
ajsharp
I enjoyed your post. I have a couple of thoughts / suggestions for you.

I got the impression that the underlying motivation for writing the post, and
tactic you used for justifying your positions was largely in response to what
I would consider the overly myopic hacker news user base. That is,
disproportionately white, male, curmudgeoney programmers. I sympathize with
your frustration, but urge you not to let their world-view cloud yours, or
cause you to search for complicated answers to simple questions.

An example of what I mean:

> I believe the current skepticism around Silicon Valley's "Make The World a
> Better Place" mentality is deeply rooted in historical anxiety about
> institutional capitalism.

On this point, I urge you to consider a much simpler explanation: that people
are skeptical because there is much to be skeptical of. People like Musk are a
rare breed in Silicon Valley. Today's tech "entrepreneur" rarely looks like
Elon Musk, someone who genuinely seems to want to do good things for the
world. The skeptisism exists because there are a lot of startups doing plain
silly things, masked in global do-goodery marketing narrative.

Startups are the new gold rush, today's investment banking. But the west coast
has much different cultural norms towards opulent wealth than does the east
coast. Put simply, we like to hide it out here, they like to flaunt it out
there. Thus, "we're making the world a better place" instead of something like
_The Wolf of Wall Street_.

Still, I enjoyed your post and your choice of using macro-economic theory as a
lens through which to view this. Thanks for writing.

~~~
natural219
Actually, I agree with you more than you'd think. After living in San
Francisco for a year or two, I'm absolutely skeptical toward 99% of the stuff
that's passed off as "Silicon Valley revolutionary" crap. I'm pretty much only
interested in pure technology: SpaceX/Tesla, new hardware manufacturing /
internet of things, drones, immersive computing, bitcoin (to some extent),
etc.

Which is why, I think, I can enjoy the HBO show thoroughly while still
lamenting about "where did all the hackers go"

~~~
api
The hacker has been partly replaced by the hustler, and that sucks. But there
are still hackers around.

There's also things that the hacker can learn from the hustler, like how to
take something early or minimal and make it self-supporting. In a sense the
hustler is a kind of hacker. The problem is that hustlers are often just
hustle... not enough substance. But when you have substance _and_ hustle,
that's powerful.

I do get turned off by all the self-congratulation coming out of the Valley.
It's important to listen to criticism. Sometimes the critics have a point. In
particular, a lot of the optimism out of the valley sounds dangerously close
to "let them eat cake!" to the rest of America. (News flash! Most of America
is more or less in a long shallow depression right now.)

------
hibikir
Trust is not a binary decision, it is a continuum. And within that continuum,
the US is way further to being a trusting society than not. When we sign a
contract, we have an expectation that it will be fulfilled, and that if it
isn't, the courts will work, albeit slowly. You get a job, and you tend to get
paid. Go in a cab, not expect to get robbed, or murdered. If you hire an
employee, you expect him to at least attempt to do his job. Is someone does a
good job, there's a chance there's some reward behind it.

There's a reason Southern Europe has worse economic outcomes, and that's
trust. You get even worse results as you move towards the development world.
And many parts of South America make Southern Europe seem downright
trustworthy.

It's important to have a high trust society, but it's really more of a
systemic trust than anything: About having negative consequences to breaking
trust, not about taking leaps of faith to trust companies.

~~~
sergiosgc
> There's a reason Southern Europe has worse economic outcomes, and that's
> trust.

I have no idea where you got this impression from. It is wrong, though. I did
business in several southern Europe countries, and you can seal a deal with a
handshake and be confident it'll go through.

~~~
ahomescu1
> It is wrong, though.

As an Eastern European, I think he got it right. From my own experience,
there's a huge difference in trustworthiness between the Western and other
countries/regions.

I have tons of stories to support this, but here's just one: in supermarkets
in my own country, you're not allowed to walk in with a backpack (you have to
seal it outside or leave it in a locker); I've never had to do that in the US.

------
darkmighty
Playing devils advocate, I'd say sure, it sucks that some (or most) people are
selfish dickheads leading to mutually degrading situations. But it would suck
almost as much to always be at mercy of your competitors good will (that he
won't arbitrarily screw you, leave unpunished _and_ with a better outcome),
even if it happens sparsely. The obvious solution to this fabricated game
theory dilemma is regulation, which is nothing more than eliminating those
scenarios which are undesirable for society altogether. Not only it avoids the
risk of being screwed, or the costs associated with being screwed, or the loss
of optimality of outcomes -- but most importantly it simplifies greatly the
game. Markets are quite complex already and the added constraint of having to
think hard about your _oponents_ and consider all the scenarios to make sure
you're not screwing them is enormous. I think this behavior is distinct from
bad faith, it's just a matter of responsibility and scope.

This, to me, is ideal capitalistic behavior: oblivious, but with good faith
(not trying to 'unfairly' or 'destructively' bring down your opponent) -- and
it should come with swift regulations and laws flexible enough to punish edge
cases.

We have a truly unrecognized _gift_ as a species: morality. Not because it's
cute or honorable (that would be a circular assessment), but because it allows
us to reach those Pareto optimal spots. We just have to use it in proper
settings, with proper rules.

~~~
blackskad
In this story, it's regulation that has put some companies at the merci of
competitors. Small Startup Y has to hope that Big Corp X wants to license a
patent for a fair $ amount. Startup Y has no way to negotiate a large fee down
to an acceptable level, pay the expensive licenses or fight in court if they
ignore the patent.

Considering two companies with patents, you get the Nash equilibrium where
both companies go to court for patent infringement (assuming the plaintiff
always wins). The payoff matrix could look like this, where the numbers are
the changes in profits in %.

    
    
                | court    | not court
      ---------------------------------
      court     | -5 \ -5  |  -15 \ 10
      ----------|----------------------
      not court | 10 \ -15 |  1   \ 1
      ---------------------------------
    

Assume the profit of the previous year is 14%.

    
    
      - If no company goes to court, both profits grow slightly with 1% to 15%.
      - If one company goes to court, and the other doesn't, the plaintiff's profit increases with 10% to 24% and the defendant's drops with 15% to -1% (placing it a loss).
      - If both companies go to court, the profits of both companies drop with 5% to 9%.
    

If you want a real-life example of this situation, just look at the lawsuits
between Samsung & Apple. Probably the only case where they'll evolve to the
pareto optimal solution, is when patents no longer exist at all.

A world without patents would allow companies to win customers based on pure
attractiveness and features, not by getting competition banned. Note that this
isn't the same as giving your key designs away for free. It means I could
reverse engineer an iphone touchscreen and create a compatible version,
without being sued by anyone. Apple would still have the early mover advantage
with existing customers; the consumer would have more/better/cheaper choices
and i would have a more attractive product. (Note that this might not be the
case for other sectors, like pharma, where it costs a lot to develop a new
drug from scratch, rather than the cheaper additive innovations in the tech
sector).

------
yomritoyj
The author is seriously mistaken about game theory. The Nash Equilibrium
requires every player to be maximizing their payoffs given what the other
players are doing. But game theory itself does not say what the nature of the
payoffs are: there is no problem in modelling altruistic players who attach a
high payoff to outcomes which are good for everyone and low payoffs to
outcomes which benefit only themselves.

The Pareto Optimal is not an outcome which is best for both, since the whole
point of this concept is to avoid giving a definition of "best for both".
Rather it is an outcome from which no player can be made better off without
making some other player worse off. So, for example, for two greedy people
sharing a cake, any division of the cake, including one which gives the entire
cake to one person, is Pareto optimal.

Anyone seriously interested in understanding what game theory really says and
avoiding superficial mistakes in its interpretation should read at least the
first chapter of Binmore's 'Playing for Real'.

~~~
robbrown451
I think when you allow for altruistic players, the core insights you get from
game theory tend to vanish.

I think the author had that part mostly right, actually.

~~~
yomritoyj
But if you really are a selfish player, and you have somehow persuaded the
other player to trust you and play "deny" then you should definitely play
"confess" to maximize your payoff. With selfish players there is no way to
move to ("deny","deny") in a one-shot Prisoners' Dilemma. Cultural change
cannot help unless it amounts to a change in payoffs.

[The story would have been different in a coordination game with multiple
Pareto-ranked equilibria where a change in beliefs can move you from a bad
equilibrium to a good equilibrium.]

------
gojomo
Author is very unfair to the "capitalist environment like America's". Our
market-driven society requires, and rewards/trains, a level of trust that's
less-common elsewhere. Just two data points:

(1) Americans are "The Weirdest People in the World", per one review of
psychological studies, in economic games. They're more willing to punish
'unfair' offers in the 'Ultimatum Game', and offer higher shares against naked
self-interest in the similar 'Dictator Game'. See for more details:

[http://www.psmag.com/magazines/magazine-feature-story-
magazi...](http://www.psmag.com/magazines/magazine-feature-story-
magazines/joe-henrich-weird-ultimatum-game-shaking-up-psychology-
economics-53135/)

(2) We've had a number of explicitly "anti-capitalist" nation-states in the
last 150 years. They haven't been paragons of collective action for the
greater good, or protection of the common environment. In particular, the ex-
Communist societies and emigrants-from-same sometimes take a while to adjust
to new economies where every stranger, government and non-government alike,
isn't constantly trying to screw them under false pretense of shared-
sacrifice.

The actual games in "capitalist America" are only very occasionally dog-eat-
dog zero-sum affairs. More often, they're iterated games rewarding not just
consciously chosen cooperation but an optimistic, cooperate-by-default
mindset. Politics, with its zero-sum elections and redistributions, is an
exception. _Its_ partisanship shouldn't be attributed to market processes, but
to electoral/governmental ones.

------
robbrown451
_This explains, at the very least, why rampant partisanship is an
inevitability in a large Democracy, despite it being worse off for everybody
(including politicians themselves)._

Instead of saying "in a large Democracy" it should say "in a large Democracy
which uses plurality voting." Some voting systems (for instance Condorcet
compatible ones) do not encourage partisanship in the same way as plurality
does. In fact other systems actually encourage cooperation and favor
candidates that are more in the center.

And I think that points to a flaw in the conclusion of the article: attempting
to directly change human nature (or culture, as the OP suggests) is a fool's
errand.

Instead, changing the rules of a system, such that the Pareto optimal result
and the Nash Equilibrium align more closely, is a much more realistic
approach. And I believe that when you do set up good systems where people are
rewarded for cooperating, the culture changes with it.

(Regardless I think it is an excellent article and the more people who
understand the Game Theory stuff he explains, the better. And I absolutely
agree with his sentiment than Musk should be lauded for what he is doing
rather than being met with cynicism.)

~~~
jessriedel
> In fact other systems actually encourage cooperation and favor candidates
> that are more in the center.

Actually, single-round winner-take-all democracy induces a race toward the
middle, _not_ polarization. (If everyone is aligned on a 1D spectrum and votes
for the candidate closest to their position, then both candidates are
incentivized move toward the median position.)

What you're really getting at isn't the idea of polarizations versus
moderation, it's voting coordination (i.e. political parties) aka collusion.
Unfortunately, alternate voting systems don't eliminate collusion, they just
push it to a different level (e.g. proportional representative systems still
have 51% coalitions at the level of parliament). You might reasonably argue
that that's a better level to put that collusion, but it's definitely not
eliminated through some simple choice of voting system.

If you _really_ want to eliminate collusion and induce consensus making, you
can consider "randomized parliaments". They operate in a way very analogous to
the mechanism that makes poker showdowns rare. Although he chooses an
unfortunate name of "quantum parliment" (since there's nothing quantum about
the randomness), Aerts explains the idea well here:
[http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0503078](http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0503078)

~~~
makomk
Arguably, what we've seen happen in practice is _both_ a race toward the
middle _and_ polarization - the two parties and their supporters become more
and more hostile, aggressive and unwilling to compromise over an increasingly
small set of differences between the two.

~~~
jessriedel
Yes, I think that's right. I was really criticizing the idea that winner-take-
all deomocracy is not a system that "favor[s] candidates that are more in the
center". "Polarization" was a poor choice of words; I think "extremization"
would have been better.

------
x0054
Patent discussion aside, I just want to point out that battery powered cars
are NOT the solution to global warming, at least not at the current state of
technology. Aside from all the environmental damage involved in producing the
lithium cells them selves, you have to also consider that to charge those
cells we are still burning cola and then transmitting that power over an
incredibly inefficient, almost 100 year old power grid (in US).

In fact, given the environmental damage from production of a new car combined
with environmental damage from production of lithium batteries, combined with
CO2 emissions from the cola burning power plants and nuclear waste from the
nuclear power plants, I would argue that the earth is better off if you were
to drive an older F150 pickup truck for another 300k miles, rather than buy a
new Tesla. If you have an option though, you should choose something more
efficient.

But overall, I just wanted to point out to anyone who is honestly concerned
about global warming. Driving your current car for longer (assuming it's
reasonably economical), and investing the money into fixing it up and getting
more miles out of it is way better environmentally than buying a new car.
Remamber, repair > reuse > recycle > replace.

~~~
nawitus
Your point should've been "transportation emissions are only a small share of
total CO2 emissions". If you want to reduce CO2 emissions, you should start by
becoming a vegan.

~~~
falcolas
> If you want to reduce CO2 emissions, you should start by becoming a vegan.

I'm going to regret this, I have no doubt.

Vegan != no carbon footprint. In fact, I would imagine that when compared to a
typical vegetarian diet, it is less carbon efficient.

Isolation from animal (by)products means that food bound for vegans typically
requires specialized handling and processing. Loss of efficiency gained from
the economies of scale.

Limited food processing means that food can not be easily stockpiled and
distributed. This results in more frequent but smaller food shipments - the
opposite direction you want to go for efficiency.

The small intersection with the average person's diet also means that vegan
foodstuffs don't gain any production efficiency when compared to, say, a
vegetarian's diet.

All of that, and vegan-bound foodstuffs still have to be planted, fertilized,
harvested and transported.

~~~
nawitus
>Vegan != no carbon footprint.

Well, no sane person has claimed that.

>In fact, I would imagine that when compared to a typical vegetarian diet, it
is less carbon efficient.

Your imagination is not consistent with reality/studies.

[http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/food-carbon-footprint-
diet](http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/food-carbon-footprint-diet)

>Isolation from animal (by)products means that food bound for vegans typically
requires specialized handling and processing.

The average vegan food is a lot more efficient than any animal product. An
animal is just a biological machien which converts plant matter to animal
products. You could take out the inefficient converter and just eat the plant
directly. For example, 99% of soy in the United States is eaten by animals.

>Limited food processing means that food can not be easily stockpiled and
distributed.

What? There's no special truck for vegan products. Supermarkets ship vegan and
non-vegan products together.

>All of that, and vegan-bound foodstuffs still have to be planted, fertilized,
harvested and transported.

Yeah. And because animals eat plants, the average omnivore consumes more plant
matter than the average vegan.

~~~
dllthomas
_" The average vegan food is a lot more efficient than any animal product. An
animal is just a biological machien which converts plant matter to animal
products. You could take out the inefficient converter and just eat the plant
directly. For example, 99% of soy in the United States is eaten by animals."_

Not that this destroys your thesis, but some animals happily eat things humans
won't. A pig fed leftovers is going to be more efficient than sending those
leftovers to landfill. People don't eat much grass. &c. This is, of course,
mostly irrelevant to how we actually feed ourselves in the developed world
(where, for instance, pasture would serve other uses).

------
greatzebu
> A "Pareto optimal" solution is one which, given all the possibilities of
> action, produces the best outcome for both parties (with some negotiable
> surplus).

This isn't quite right. In a Pareto optimal solution, there's no way to
improve things for one party without making them worse for another party, but
there's no guarantee that the outcome is good for everyone. "I get everything,
you get nothing" is a Pareto-optimal way of diving things up.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
That still isn't quite right. Pareto optimal better describes transitions than
states. A state can be described as Pareto optimal only in the sense that
there are no Pareto optimal transitions out of it. So for example, in
prisoner's dilemma, all of the states are Pareto optimal because none of the
moves are. No matter what anyone does, somebody will be worse off than the
alternative.

As another example, "I get everything, you get nothing" isn't necessarily
Pareto optimal because there could be something non-rivalrous that the person
getting nothing could have without depriving the person getting everything of
it.

~~~
araftery
Agreed. Seems like the author is looking for something more along the lines of
"socially optimal." Also seems like he mixed up which outcome is Nash and
which is socially optimal. (Deny, Deny) = (Defect, Defect) = Nash Eq.
(Confess, Confess) = (Cooperate, Cooperate) = socially optimal.

------
rayiner
The idea that the Pareto-optimal situation is the one where everyone freely
copies from each other may be appropriate for the market Tesla finds itself
in, but is in general directly contradicted by the actual experience of the
technology industry.

The experience of the technology industry is that innovation happens in
periods of monopoly. That monopoly might arise from first-mover effects,
network effects, lock-in effects, or IP protections (patents, copyrights, and
trademarks). This has been true from Bell Labs to Xerox to Google to Facebook.
Bell Labs had its heyday when AT&T was a government-sanctioned monopoly. The
Xerox Alto, which pioneered the GUI, the mouse, and networking, was invented
at a Xerox that had 100% of the U.S. copier industry, a few years before an
antitrust consent decree forced it to license its patents to Japanese
competitors, quickly destroying its marketshare.[1] If another search engine
could easily copy Google's data and algorithms, they wouldn't have the money
to be working on self-driving cars and AI. Facebook is a textbook example of
network effects precluding perfect competition.

In comparison, look at the PC industry, which is based on open standards and
an OS licensed on non-discriminatory terms. What has happened to the PC? They
have become commodities and innovation is essentially dead. Companies like
Lenovo eke out single-digit profit margins, and nobody can afford to spend
money on R&D.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox#1970s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox#1970s)

~~~
tstactplsignore
I think you've cleverly bundled together a couple of meaningless correlations.
Yes, there's a grab bag (but, in my opinion, not much more than that) of
important technological innovations which have come from large companies, but
so what? You still have corporations with large amounts of disposable cash for
R&D in a world without monopolies and intellectual property. The handful of
innovations you can mention don't really have anything to do with monopoly or
intellectual property, they just happen to have come from big companies - and
there's really no evidence that those companies would simply collapse by being
slightly more cooperative.

The majority of important software innovations have come from the open bazaar,
not the cathedral. The Internet; The Web; Firefox, WebKit; GNU/Linux, Unix;
HTTP; SSH, SSL, AES; Python, Ruby, C, C++. Thousands of humble open source
projects which have been distributed to and changed by millions of users.

And even when large corporations do spawn projects, those that succeed are
those that encouraged at least some degree of openness. Android from Google,
Java from Sun. Open standards for computer hardware architectures and software
have lasted and stood the test of time.

Open code, projects, and standards have more than stood the test of time. We
are actually living in a time of unprecedented open source success. The
majority of computing systems run on significantly open source code. Millions
of Android phones running Linux. Every serious server on the planet running on
Apache or NGINX on Linux or BSD. A landslide percentage of users accessing
them using Webkit, Blink, and Firefox. That's just the tip of the iceberg!
Millions of lines of code are being updated publicly, in real time, by
thousands of people across the world in collaboration. More so than ever
before!

Sure, maybe _some people_ are a bunch of VC-backed business-savy Steve Jobs-
worshipping iPhone mobile app developers now, but it's still sad to see
someone say that tech innovation "happens in periods of monopoly" on
_HackerNews_.

~~~
parasubvert
"majority of important software innovations have come from the open bazaar,
not the cathedral. The Internet; The Web; Firefox, WebKit; GNU/Linux, Unix;
HTTP; SSH, SSL, AES; Python, Ruby, C, C++."

The vast majority of those were not developed by an open bazaar, but rather by
focused cathedral organizations: the early Internet, UNIX, C, C++, SSH,
Firefox, SSL. The bazaar maintains them or cloned the success of others (SSH).

I also think you're vastly underestimating the influence and power over
millions that continues to exist from closed commercial software: Apple iOS,
IBM zOS, pOS, and DB2, SAP ERP, Oracle database, middleware, and various
HR/SCM/CRM/ERP suites, Microsoft Office and Windows / IIS. The big difference
is that there is an order of magnitude more revenue and more people being paid
to work with commercial software than with open source.

That you claim all serious servers run Apache or Ngnix on *nix is profoundly
ignorant of the millions of Windows servers and IIS servers out there, some of
which power very large websites. I think Ngnix is a great server, but most of
the large enterprises (banks, Telcos, etc) I've visted in my consulting run
WebSphere or IIS and have never heard of HAproxy or Ngnix.

This is not to say this is a static state of affairs. Certainly in many cases
the open source alternative is a better technology or better project,
sometimes even the better product. Just there's a big difference between an
innovative PRODUCT and an innovative PROJECT. There are lots of the latter on
Github, but other than saving people some money, they're not having anywhere
the economic impact a PRODUCT has.

There is scant evidence that open source leads to more innovative products.
There's a lot of evidence it helps to lower the acquisition costs of
supporting software for what usually wind up as partly proprietary products.
All of the latest software kings: Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple,
Salesforce, Google - their primary money making innovations are closed source
built on (mostly non GPL) open source . Their contributions of open
componentry back to the community is welcome but limited.

The only large and "purely" open company is Red Hat, and even they go through
major hoops to make it inconvenient for others (eg. oracle) to use their open
source code for their own purposes (ie. Offer a RHEL clone and loss lead on
support). They remain innovative. But so is SAP. So is Oracle.

~~~
AlisdairO
> but most of the large enterprises (banks, Telcos, etc) I've visted in my
> consulting run WebSphere or IIS and have never heard of HAproxy or Ngnix.

WebSphere is an app server rather than a straight http server. The equivalent
to Apache/Nginx from IBM would be IBM HTTP Server, which is an extension of
Apache.

~~~
parasubvert
I didn't want to really get into the distinction (Apache is an app server too
if you consider mod_*). Yes, IHS is common and they will often use that.

As part of my broader point, IHS is a product, one of many Apache-based
products. They're not using the open source project code directly. Even if
IBM's "innovations" are modest, they're using it because IHS and the WAS
plugin work best with WebSphere. I've managed to convince some to avoid this
combo in favour of a simple HAproxy, but it's hard.

------
hueving
The author makes some big statements about what Elon is doing and then wonders
why everyone isn't guzzling the kool-aid like the author. It has nothing to do
with the prisoners dilemma.

First, there is a large portion of the population that doesn't believe global
warming is an issue.

Second, there is another large population that doesn't believe global warming
can be stopped by a slow transition to electric cars.

Third, there is a large majority of the population that can't afford a 90k
luxury car so they fail to see how Tesla will revolutionize the world. This is
compacted by the fact that the batteries will need to be replaced in 6-10
years and it will likely cost 20k+. These cars are out of reach for the
majority of Americans it's not really going to reduce CO2 output by anything
significant enough in time to matter.

Fourth, Elon made a fat stack of cash selling PayPal to Ebay. With that being
his primary historical success story, it doesn't make it sound like he is
doing just what is optimal for humanity. SpaceX is great for space
exploration, but that's not really optimal for humanity considering our
current problems.

The article had a nice write up on pareto optimal solutions and the prisoner's
dilemma but they are completely irrelevant to the skepticism observed here.

~~~
avz
You've alluded to "things which are optimal for humanity" and "our current
problems". Could you elaborate?

What do you think is optimal for humanity?

Which current problems are more significant than planetary-level challenges
like global warming and confinement of our specifies to a single planet?

These put the existence of our civilization at risk. I would really _love_ to
hear which other problems are more significant than those.

~~~
hueving
Cut the melodrama. Your post reeks of first-world privilege.

Confinement of our species to a single planet is much lower priority than the
suffering caused by violent governments, starvation, diseases, and drug
problems. Colonizing another planet might be optimal for spreading of our
species, but it does little to reduce the suffering here.

Global warming is a problem. However, making luxury electric cars is a drop in
the bucket compared to convincing China and India to crack down on things like
unfiltered coal power plants.

~~~
avz
It'd be great if we could first make everyone on this planet happy and then
move on to the next one, but it's just not going to work that way. Long tail
of human unhappiness will be very hard to eliminate.

Your mix of problems is highly heterogeneous. Starvation and diseases are
serious challenges we have in fact been making a lot of progress on. However,
they pose more limited and localized danger than global warming or planetary
confinement and so must be given a lower priority.

Violent governments and drug problems are political and so out of scope.
Gating space exploration on all politician playing nice and all people staying
clean and sober is the best way to doom the project.

Making electric, environment friendly cars be perceived as luxury and
something one can aspire to is a small step in the right direction. Also,
they're luxury because the technology is expensive. Cells phone began as
luxury product, too. Eventually, they'll become mainstream.

~~~
hueving
Violence and starvation are not a 'long tail' of human happiness. The market
that can afford Teslas is much further down the tail than people subject to
these problems.

------
rowyourboat

      I believe the current skepticism around Silicon Valley's
      "Make The World a Better Place" mentality is deeply rooted
      in historical anxiety about institutional capitalism. 
    

OT rant here: I don't think this is related to Tesla opening up at all. "We
make the World a Better Place" is self-important bullshit in 99.9% of cases.
The most likely outcome is that what you are doing has no measurable impact on
the "goodness" of the world. In most cases, what you are doing matters only to
a tiny fraction of the world's population. "Making the World a Better Place"
is simply self-important hyperbole to the extreme.

~~~
rowyourboat
Addendum: The fact that your fancy new app is only for a tiny fraction of the
world's population is totally fine. Most products are like that. Just don't
pretend it's anything more than it is.

------
carsongross
_The only hope is cultural change._

The only hope is cultural _trust_ , and the only way to achieve that is to
allow like-minded individuals to separate themselves into autonomous political
units.

This is dangerous thinking Chris, if you start following these thoughts
through to the end, rather than spinning off into happy-clappy "change the
world's heart" wishing...

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Or you could just learn to live with people who aren't exactly like you. You
know, like everyone on the planet except for wealthy and reactionary enclaves
of the United States.

~~~
carsongross
Everyone?

[http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/oneyoungworld/2014/06/05/sout...](http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/oneyoungworld/2014/06/05/south-
africas-rape-crisis-2/)

------
MarcusVorenus
You are being melodramatic. There is no anti-Tesla sentiment, at least here on
HN. People were simply asking why didn't Tesla release the patents under an
irrevocable, royalty-free defensive patent license instead of just blogging
about it, which is a perfectly legitimate concern.

Also optimism has never been as high as it is now with all this talk about
full automation of the economy and people living happily ever after with their
guaranteed basic income.

------
E_Carefree
If Tesla did this in the early game, would they still be in the position they
are today? I think this open source movement works but only if you have the
next thing in hand or after you've taken your fill and are ready to move on.
In Tesla's case, I think both are true.

If a hunter goes out, learns out how to kill an animal, and then teaches
everyone else in the tribe how to do the same, he is shooting himself in the
foot because he is no longer useful. The tribe can get their own food and his
specialization is no longer special. So he dies off. Unless, he's ready to
retire the hunting business and/or holds the monopoly for creating the
weapons.

In Musk's case, he seems more interested in what SpaceX is doing and just
built the largest electric car battery factory.

It's amazingly philanthropic and evil genius at the same fucking time!

~~~
ahomescu1
> If a hunter goes out, learns out how to kill an animal, and then teaches
> everyone else in the tribe how to do the same, he is shooting himself in the
> foot because he is no longer useful. The tribe can get their own food and
> his specialization is no longer special. So he dies off. Unless, he's ready
> to retire the hunting business and/or holds the monopoly for creating the
> weapons.

This ignores competitive and first-mover advantages. Maybe he's the best
hunter (because of experience or talent), or maybe no one else wants or is
able to be a hunter (especially if it's dangerous or physically-demanding).

Essentially, you're arguing that the sole hunter should keep a strong grip on
the hunting monopoly by keeping everyone ignorant. In practice, this never
works out well.

------
autokad
"Of course, this applies way beyond Tesla. I believe the current skepticism
around Silicon Valley's "Make The World a Better Place" mentality is deeply
rooted in historical anxiety about institutional capitalism."

silicon valley really needs to get over itself. the only thing different about
silicon valley and other companies is that silicon valley is to naive to
realize they are just like every other company, no matter how much they doth
protest.

companies dont set out to make the world a worse place for the most part, even
hated companies like BP have good intentions. but if you want to be a
publically traded company, and if you want to make money, you have to make
profit.

i mentioned on HN before that its funny how Amazon is loved and Walmart is
loathed. all the reasons why walmart is loathed Amazon has in spades.

i also feel your view on how capitalism works in the western world. in fact,
it has always been a prisoners dilemma / golden rule do onto others as you
would have them do onto you economy. thats actually a reason why capitalism
has worked so well for the west, and one of the reasons why it took longer in
places like China.

------
crusso
_The thing about capitalism, and our dismal history with capitalism-at-large,
the "assume the other party is a shitbag" idea is so fundamentally ingrained
in our cultural_

What's that got to do with Capitalism? Correct me if I'm making a straw man,
but the alternative to capitalism is to remove negotiation from individual
interactions by implementing more State-heavy mechanisms like Communism. Isn't
creating a crap-ton of government bureaucracy, rules and regulations to tell
people exactly how to live and interact with each other institutionalizing the
idea that people are shitbags and shouldn't be allowed the freedom to behave
freely?

I liked your original HN post and tend to be similarly disappointed in the
lack of giving some people like Musk his due for trying to do the right
thing... not to mention the nit-picking posts that assume that Musk and his
people are too mentally deficient to properly allow use of their patents.

~~~
deciplex
Honestly, what does regulation have to do with capitalism - where did this
meme start and how can I kill it? Capital markets are a tool for allocating
resources. They're pretty good at it in that they tend to work better than
e.g. palace economies and mostly everything else humans have tried. But there
is _absolutely nothing_ to the way that capital markets work that suggests
regulation somehow breaks it or whatever other brain-damaged Koch-inspired
bullshit they're selling on Fox News nowadays.

It's like looking at a hammer lying on a table, stating 'that is for pounding
nails', then leaving the room and expecting the hammer to pound nails for you.

~~~
mempko
There are known problems of markets in the form of externalized costs. Global
warming might be the greatest example of capitalism and markets being the
worst thing humanity has every done in distributing resources....

~~~
crusso
How so? India and China are huge societies and have historically been much
less capitalistic yet have been horrible polluters. More recently as they've
embraced capitalism, their increase in pollution has more to do with their
standards of living than with capitalism specifically. Yeah, they're polluting
more, but then again they have a significantly reduced amount of starvation.

If anything, capitalism tends to spur the types of innovation that seems most
likely to innovate us out of the possible problems of global warming.

------
smutticus
One of the inherent assumptions of neo-classical economics is that we're all
selfish, rational, utility maximizing, humans. That's built into our
understanding of markets and how they function.

Now I understand where the author is coming from, and I agree there is a
terrible lack of trust in modern America. I just don't agree that the cynical
view, that all humans are untrustworthy shit-bags, is all that terrible.
Cyncism causes parties to make explicit their assumptions about future
behavior. We can then codify this assumed behavior in contracts.

If I was a battery manufacturer and I wanted to use Tesla's patents, I would
approach Tesla and ask for a contractual agreement whereby Tesla agreed not to
use those patents against me. If Tesla were unwilling to enter into this sort
of contractual agreement with me, I would assume they were reserving the right
to later use these patents against me.

------
ntoshev
Just having the right culture is not a solution. You can have a culture that
routinely goes for Pareto optimality. If that's not an evolutionary stable
strategy, the moment you introduce agents that choose the Nash equilibrium
instead, they would start winning and gaining ground.

I wonder about a different solution though: can you design a mechanism that
transforms the Nash equilibrium of a Prisoner's dilemma game into the Pareto
optimal outcome? Something similar to escrow?

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy)

------
mythz
Elon Musk's response:
[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/477223079421046785](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/477223079421046785)

"Apparently, lots of confused media inquiries about blog title. Look, we just
to make sure they don't set us up the bomb."

~~~
Lagged2Death
It's "up us" dammit.

------
osmala
Comment to claim in that large scale democracy automatically becomes more
partisan.

In large scale democracy partisanship is not necessity. American system has
some specific methods to cause it, compared to Finland where it isn't really a
problem. And its really these TWO issues that make the american politics more
partisan than rest of the world.

A) Election system is strongly geared towards creating two party. When new
party has gained enough support it replaces one of the previous two parties at
the control, and there is new TWO parties which compete each other. Compare
that to systems in which allows smaller parties to get seats. For examble in
Finland there are 3-4 big parties that total 60-70% of seats and rest goes to
smaller parties. That means to pass anything you pretty much have to have two
big parties agreeing on the matter and either third big agreeing or some small
parties agreeing.

B) Executive branch is Winner takes all. In Finland the parliament(legislative
branch) selects Executive branch and because no party has half or near half
seats there is need to be enough parties agreeing on the matter. So if you are
REALLY uncompromising you NEVER get to be part of executive branch EVEN if you
become the biggest party of elections, since you didn't get more than half the
seats anyway in multiparty system. The biggest party gets first attempt to
create the cabinet, but they still need to get enough others onboard. The
cabinet pretty much needs majority of legislative branch to support it. They
need a program which over half the legislative branch supports and usually
give seats in the cabinet to enough other parties that have over 50% of
parliament. If biggest party fails to create agreement of the program the
responsibility of trying to form the cabinet goes to next largest party. And
if all else fails parliament may agree a minority government OR even putting
some professional bureaucrats instead of politicians in top positions of
executive branch. Both are extremely rare situations in here.

------
noodlehead
Anti-Tesla sentiment certainly wouldn't have anything to do with Tesla's
defrauding taxpayers, would it?
[http://doubtingisthinking.blogspot.com.es/2013/10/tesla-
carb...](http://doubtingisthinking.blogspot.com.es/2013/10/tesla-carbon-
credits-ongoing-scandal.html)

------
matnewton85
This article expresses perfectly why:

a) I'm very cautious about working with American companies b) Why my
contractors nearly all bitch about working with American companies (I use a
lot of contractors on oDesk and they tell me the same thing).

America's great but the lack of trust in business is the one thing that really
grates on me.

~~~
smutticus
As someone who has done lots of work for both EU and US companies I agree. The
amount of times American companies just say "trust us" versus EU companies
definitely grates on me. The US is not all terrible, but there is tons of work
force exploitation going on in the US. Especially in the bay area.

------
dabernathy89
> under the assumption the other player is a selfish dickhead. In a capitalist
> environment like America's, with no social controls or other factors besides
> ruthless logic, this is the default behavior.

Sigh. One of the most prominent features of capitalism is that it relies on
_mutually beneficial_ exchanges.

~~~
ep103
Ideal capitalism. Much of modern capitalism is about getting the person on the
other side of the table into a desperate enough situation, that they have to
take your 'mutually beneficial' offer. I present as Exhibit A Greenspan's
speeches on lowering worker mobility during his tenure.

------
absherwin
Reputation should solve this problem given that life is a repeated game as
long as we also are able to be long-sighted. A more formal argument can be
found here:
[http://economics.mit.edu/files/4754](http://economics.mit.edu/files/4754)

That suggests the cultural problem is decline in longer-term thinking or more
likely a decline in arbitrary codes of behavior without a concomitant increase
in longer-term thinking that would recreate many of those same norms.

American business used to place a high value on trust: "A man I do not trust
could not get money from me on all the bonds in Christendom. I think that is
the fundamental basis of business." -J. Pierpont Morgan

As another example, Warren Buffet seldom does diligence to determine an offer;
he trusts those from who he buys to deal and report honestly.

------
babenzele
Any company would be stupid to develop car manufacturing based on another
company's held patents. But just ask your lawyer to talk to Tesla's lawyers to
buy a very cheap, almost free license. Then we'll see if they're serious about
this or not.

~~~
brongondwana
Obviously you would do more than just trust a web page as a licence to the
patents, but I imagine it would be hard for Tesla to win an infringement case
after publishing this. This is no "Sun CEO blogs congratulating Google on
android" level of plausible ambiguity.

------
hawkharris
Interesting article, but the font is very difficult to read. I had to change
it using the Web Inspector before I could finish reading.

------
wtbob
I think he's making a grave error to attribute mistrust to capitalism; in any
other system dishonesty is also possible.

------
zby
There is a body of literature on the subject how self governing groups escape
the tragedy of the commons. For example: [http://www.amazon.com/Governing-
Commons-Evolution-Institutio...](http://www.amazon.com/Governing-Commons-
Evolution-Institutions-Collective/dp/0521405998)

This is all empirical studies.

------
highCs
In the prisoners dilemna, you know the outcomes - mostly because the game has
a short life span. In life, you don't know the outcomes since the game has no
end. So you _never_ know if you've ultimately chosen the right solution. It's
all about your own moral at some point.

------
WhoBeI
Got to love this.

I'm reading the comments on the earlier thread and thinking 'shit, people are
really negative'. I refresh the page and this thing shows up. Nice to see that
at least on HN people possess Second Thoughts or would this be Thirds
Thoughts?

------
recursive
> The Prisoner's Dilemma demonstrates that a Nash equilibrium solution is not
> always Pareto optimal. The "confess-confess" solution is the Nash
> equilibrium. You will always be better off screwing the other person over,
> whether they are honest or dishonest. The "deny-deny" solution is Pareto
> optimal. If both parties can somehow trust each other, they will both be
> better off selecting this solution.

This part is very confusing to me. I've always understood that deny was the
screw-over move in the prisoner's dilemma. But this segment suggests that
confessing is a local optimum. Have I misunderstood the prisoner's dilemma all
these years?

~~~
haihaibye
>> deny was the screw-over move in the prisoner's dilemma. But this segment
suggests that confessing is a local optimum.

The competition is between you and the other prisoner, not vs the state.
Confessing screws over the other prisoner.

------
jleader
Isn't the ultimate socially-optimal answer for the "guess 2/3rds of the
average" game be to convince everyone to answer 0? Because 2/3rds of 0 is 0,
so everyone wins.

------
nickbauman
Really great post. There's another angle here that has implications around the
notion that the Nash Equilibrium is the norm: Path dependence. Getting out of
this mess may be less possible because of that notion because how we can
proceed is path dependent upon all of us thinking that, underneath it all,
Musk is also a shitbag.

We've got a lot of problems facing humankind right now. The stakes get higher
every day. Whatever it is we have to do to solve the toughest one we need to
do _whatever it takes._

------
Liz0
So first off I also want to say I found this a great read -- I studied poly-
sci and business and work in the tech scene, and when they all collide it gets
_really_ interesting.

This raised a lot questions for me though. I was trying to draw the payoff
matrix for adopting Tesla technology. How would this look? How to estimate
relative gains for each player? I was hoping he'd go through it a-la Khan
Academy.

------
snarfy
It's a lack of leadership, and it's endemic to society. The Prisoner's Dilemma
highlights this. Trust on both sides isn't the only Pareto optimal solution. A
leader dictates the correct outcome and does not require trusting a
subordinate's decision. If both sides were leaders, they would reach the
optimal outcome.

Elon Musk is one of the few leaders in the world.

------
teawithcarl
Thanks Chris - a superb article, deeply meaningful.

------
lsalamon
Testa try new battery design now: CarbonBattery The Ryden dual carbon battery
developed by Power Japan Plus is balancing the energy storage equation of
performance, cost, reliability and safety.
[http://powerjapanplus.com/](http://powerjapanplus.com/)

------
AndrewCoyle
Individuals and corporations are not rational machines. Things are much more
complex then an equation.

------
typingduck
Great article. Very well articulated.

If you haven't seen it already, there's a BBC series called "The Trap" which
raises interesting questions too around game theory reflecting human behaviour
versus game theory driving human behaviour through modern capitalism.

------
cubancigar11
"I believe the current skepticism around Silicon Valley's "Make The World a
Better Place" mentality is deeply rooted in historical anxiety about
institutional capitalism."

I am sorry, but that statement shows misunderstanding the issue at such level
it is hard for me take his argument as something based on facts.

No. The skepticism around Silicon Valley has always been because of its
coziness with the gub'mint. From internet to Siri, DARPA funds large parts of
our research. And when this research reaches the public via SV, it
automatically divides people into two groups - those who can use it and those
who have been replaced. The group which can trump this research, though, keeps
disappearing.

It doesn't, by definition, follow the principals of capitalism. That
institution in 'institutional capitalism' is the government and it cannot be
whitewashed over.

------
Q6T46nT668w6i3m
While a Homo economicus plays the Prisoner’s Dilemma, a Homo sapien plays
Calvinball.

------
stringbeans
really like this article... but your font (or font weight) hurts my eyes :(

~~~
ars
Same here, I had to disable the font-family css command in order to read it.

------
smackfu
I'm just generally skeptical of Musk. He is great at putting out blog posts
that people don't treat like the press releases they are.

------
markbnj
I'm willing to overlook that horrible font because I learned what a "Keynesian
Beauty Contest" is. Excellent article.

------
bindley
I wonder if a foundation of multiculturalism is why America's business culture
is so distrusting.

------
jarradhope
Relies too heavily on Prisoners Dilemma, should read Governing the Commons by
Elinor Ostrom

------
E_Carefree
So much win in this! Let's move together towards Musk's Pareto Optimal
solution!

------
rooodini
> between 1 and 100

I think this should be between 0 and 100 (for the Nash equilibrium to work,
anyway.)

------
xtx23
making anti-tesla looks like supporting everything that is wrong with
establishment and patent system is exactly the kind of connection he wants
people to make. Just another PR gimmick there.

------
guelo
So if we could all just trust Elon Musk and never question anything about him
or his companies we could save the environment, and capitalism and our culture
and all of humanity?

OK then.

------
pmarca
Great piece.

------
skepticalone
<place holder for skeptical comment>

------
nipponese
David: What is the primary goal? Joshua/WOPR: You should know, Professor. You
programmed me. David: Oh, c'mon. What is the primary goal? Joshua/WOPR: To win
the game.

