[degamad]

Exactly. The question is not "are people using it to do stuff?" because we know right now they are. Given free or heavily-subsidised access to powerful tools, people will use them.

If I had someone giving me free access to cranes and excavators, I'd be raving about how easy it was to build houses now. But tomorrow when I have to pay full price for them, I'm going to be making very different calculations about return on investment.

The question we need to be asking is "what is the likely full-price cost we'll have to pay for these tools, and is that cost likely to be worth paying?"

What Ed's pointing to is that the full-price cost will have to cover the capital expenditures that have been invested, or the companies which risked that capital will go bust. That gives us a floor for what the full price cost will be, and that floor seems higher than the value being offered by the tools.

[zuzululu]

you cant operate setup cranes or excavators alone

[Aerolfos]

What does that have to do with anything?

Is reading comprehension really this bad nowadays?

[zuzululu]

it was an analogy