[vidyesh]

Very weird and imo, wrong comparison.

WhatsApp is a consumer product. It lives as it breathes. As long as people/consumer keeps pumping in money & time to it, its value will stay or rise from its current value. Once that stops and people/consumer stop using it, its value will eventually fall.

SpaceX on the other hand is not a consumer product yet, but is aiming to become one. Consider it just like Boeing or AirBus, nobody would have valued them as a multi-billionaire company ( back in 1900s when they were founded). Their technological advancements and the development phase would have been same as SpaceX right now.

But eventually it became a very integral part of human life. They have become a consumer product, their value is now because of people using it daily. And unlike WhatsApp people won't stop using air-travel.

Everyday people do not invest directly into it like they do(?) for WhatsApp, but indirectly by using airline services they are paying for it. Similarly for SpaceX everyday people aren't investing in it right now but eventually ( as per SpaceX's ambition ) people would just like they are doing for air-travel.

[TeMPOraL]

> Very weird and imo, wrong comparison.

I think comparison is ok, but people are missing an important distinction - yes, the system works exactly as one would expect it to. There are good reasons for the system to value WhatsApp higher than SpaceX. The algorithm's implementation is correct. The problem is, we're using a wrong algorithm - a system that begins to increasingly value wrong things.

[john_b]

Capitalism as a system has many impersonal qualities, but capitalism per se does not value anything. It just provides mechanism (market prices, investment dollars, and so on) by which the value that people attribute to things can be known.

If "capitalism" values the "wrong" things it's because people at large have the "wrong" values. If that is a problem, it's probably not an economic one, but something deeper.

[TeMPOraL]

Nope, capitalism as a system very much values particular outcomes. It's not a machine that perfecly translates human values into economic output; it's a system that actively prefers one type of values over other. The powerful feedback loops of markets that - I very much acknowledge this fact - led us to prosperity we enjoy today have a side effect that is increasingly becoming apparent: they slowly throw away any human value that stands in a way of being more competetive.

Anyway, that's a long topic. The TL;DR of my point is: it's not our values that control the system, it's the system that controls our values.

EDIT:

Case in point, from other HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8916146.

> And a serious question: How do these people have money and especially free time for this [clever hack involving suspending a jaccuzzi under a bridge]?

That this is actually a serious question shows that there is a strong mismatch between our values and the system we live in.

[dragonwriter]

> Capitalism as a system has many impersonal qualities, but capitalism per se does not value anything.

It values capital and the capitalist class, which is why it was named "capitalism" by its critics (specifically, its socialist critics.)

The free market justifications in terms of Econ 101 simplifications that, in addition to applying to a simplified version of reality in operational terms, also apply to a system different than capitalism as ever actually implemented, came later.

[simonh]

In this case I think the valuations are justifiable.

Imagine that all the people that sent a Whatsapp message in the last year were charged SMS rates for the messages they had sent. How much would that cost them? Well, that's a reasonable rough measure of the value they have derived from Whatsapp. It's an important service that has real immediate benefits for the people using it right now.

SpaceX is a fantsastic venture, I'm very excited by it, but right now it's providing limited economic benefit. The Space Station is an expensive waste of money. A few comms satelites is great, but there haven't been all that many of them. Now, if SpaceX does manage to recover and re-utilise it's boosters that willbe a game changer. Their value will skyrocket (appropriately) and Google will make a killing on their investment. But that hasn't happened yet.

[visakanv]

Yeah, imagine investing in things like... the first electricity service provider, or the first telephone, or the first TV. All of those things are multi-billion dollar industries. I'm sure this entire exchange has been played out before for other emergent industries!

[crdb]

The issue is picking a winner. As Warren Buffett points out, there are thousands of bankrupt airlines and car companies. If you pick a loser, you wipe out no matter how well the industry does, as consolidation is inevitable particularly in high barrier to entry industries. This keeps early valuations low.

[vidyesh]

I am not sure if you are trying to be sarcastic or agreeing to my point.

But yes, emerging technologies are not something every common-man invests in.

[visakanv]

Agreeing! "What use is electricity?" "What use is a newborn baby?"

[arethuza]

Are rockets an emerging technology? There have been commercial launches for decades.

[vidyesh]

FYI, SpaceX was founded in 2002.

And well rockets is really a very broad term which not just includes spacecrafts but also missiles.

SpaceX is unique not for sending 'rockets' but it for being the first privately funded company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft also the first private company to send spacecraft to ISS.

So yes, Space transport/travel is a luxurious and emerging market.

[lmm]

> SpaceX is unique not for sending 'rockets' but it for being the first privately funded company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft also the first private company to send spacecraft to ISS.

In what sense? The SpaceX launches were under NASA contract. Neither STS nor Apollo before it was built purely in-house by NASA; most of the parts were built by Rockwell, Lockheed and others. What's the big distinction here? Just that SpaceX was taking a bigger chunk of the failure risk?

[Crito]

SpaceX retains ownership of the rockets, they sell flights on the rockets rather than the rockets themselves. My understanding is that this is a recent development in the industry. For example, the Shuttles were built by Rockwell but, as I understand it, owned by NASA.

[vidyesh]

You are confusing two things, NASA outsourcing the parts built by other companies is a contract based project for which NASA was funded by the government. This means if any losses, are faced by NASA/government not the companies which made the parts.

SpaceX is more like a privately funded Space Exploration Company. NASA awarded them the contact not to outsource parts like in earlier projects but for SpaceX's design and technology.

Also the NASA contract to send cargo to ISS was one thing of the many SpaceX is doing. So in a lot of sense it is unique. Not sure why you think the ISS contract is the only thing what SpaceX is living on.