[quuxplusone]

The same bootstrapping problem exists for everything. What makes roads? Construction equipment. How do you get that construction equipment to the job site, without a road already being there?

I actually met a person a few months ago who worked for a startup doing delivery/fulfillment of materials for construction projects. They pointed out that this requires special expertise beyond, say, Amazon, not only because these materials tend to have unusual and/or dangerous physical properties, but also because the delivery addresses tend to be... well, they tend not to have addresses yet! This is all solvable (apparently), but only with expertise beyond the usual for delivery companies in the modern age.

[fragmede]

fascinating! I suppose our normal modern systems aren't equipped to handle descriptive addresses - "take a right after the foo store and then go to the end of the road and give the equipment to the people at the end of the road so they can make more road"