[JumpinJack_Cash]

> > Are you saying SpaceX isn't innovating?

Innovation serves as a means to an end, like for example mRNA vaccines solved a big problem like COVID.

SpaceX doesn't solve any problem, 90% of the global population lives in urban areas, they connect to the internet using cell towers propagating 3/4/5G and good old fiber or fiber+copper

The remaining 10% is too poor so they cannot afford it, and they are also unskilled so if they want a shot a decent life they'd have to move to cities too where they can start as manual laborers and slowly climb the social ladder, they'd have to do it either independently or thanks to help from NGOs, UNICEF, UN, Doctors without borders etc. To put it bluntly fast internet is the last of their necessities.

SpaceX is textbook SV self dealing and wealth isolation where a bunch of assholes (led by the Chief Asshole of SV) who want to play with rockets and get paid for it , so they try to retroactively find a pitch to sell to VCs and asset managers to finance their play time and they do so by pitching them stuff like:

"Internet on your 10M sailboat" or

"Internet on your 2M Luxury RV"

And of course they get billions because VCs are also loaded and so they painted themselves so much in the corner with their wealth that the only thing that makes them enthusiastic is thin marginal improvement to trophy assets like a 10M sailboat or a 2M luxury RV, stuff that is totally uncorrelated with what regular consumers want or what the economy at large needs.

[Auracle]

Holy hell. This take is so arrogant it’s incredible. Get out of your city bubble sometime.

I live in a rural area (the nearest town has a population of ~500) and use Starlink. I’m a photographer/software developer. My wife is a financial analyst. We have friends or family in the area that are teachers, engineers, nurses, small business owners, etc. Not everyone living outside of a large city is a freaking coal miner.

My wife works remotely and I need to upload large amounts of data for my job. Starlink has probably done more to help with housing prices in cities than every politician in the US combined as it allows people to work remotely anywhere.

[JumpinJack_Cash]

You should get outside of your bubble! You are one of the few people who is in the 10% global population living outside cities who is educated, isn't poor or struggling financially. Data don't lie.

This only happens organically in the US and Northern Europe due to double condition of incredibly high GDP and a geographic morphology which is incredibly sparse and/or with lots of mountains and rugged terrain. 2 or 3 countries =! the world.

> > My wife works remotely

In light of this, you being able to negotiate a good compensation while working 100% remotely, in sectors that can be both defined by economists as advanced tertiary services then who has to get out of their bubble?

I am sure Sudanese villagers will be able to do just the same if you provide them with Starlkinks. Not!

[grecy]

> This only happens organically in the US and Northern Europe due to double condition of incredibly high GDP and a geographic morphology which is incredibly sparse and/or with lots of mountains and rugged terrain. 2 or 3 countries =! the world.

Canada too. Also Australia. Don't forget New Zealand. Friends in Mexico use it to work remotely. South Africa too. Also remember Argentina, Brazil and Chile.

[JumpinJack_Cash]

Expats don't count, their wealth is still originating from rich countries

[grecy]

Plenty of locals using it in all those countries.

[lupusreal]

The urban anti-car crowd seem to think all rural people are as bad if not worse than coal miners because rural lifestyles require cars. Their arrogance is through the roof.

[mardifoufs]

That's a completely arbitrary definition though. If it's only innovation when it's useful, most inventions wouldn't be innovative when they were discovered or created. Going by your definition, mRNA vaccines weren't innovative until they were used in COVID vaccines, even though they have been worked on for years before.

Also, I don't want to debate the specifics of starlink or spacex, but starlink isn't really that much more expensive at all compared to average internet pricing here in Canada outside of the big 3 cities. Also, if SpaceX isn't useful for anyone, who is filling and buying all those launches (outside of starlink)? Are the satellite operators that use SpaceX also useless?

[JumpinJack_Cash]

> > Going by your definition, mRNA vaccines weren't innovative until they were used in COVID vaccines, even though they have been worked on for years before.

Unfortunately cancer and viruses will always be with us. The secular trend of people moving to cities will not reverse, that's because of technical realities such as industrial and transportation economies of scale, critical mass of intellectual power and problem solving, logistics in food processing and distribution etc.

People live in cities for convenience and go to the wilderness for re-creation.

> > but starlink isn't really that much more expensive at all compared to average internet

Because it's subsidised by the military AKA tax dollars and VCs AKA future pension dollars of pensioneers and policyholders who are forced at gunpoint to part with some of their wages because government think they are too stupid to administrate their funds on their own.