Look, look here jack! We're building an economy inside out, upside down, and always twirling twirling twirling!
A lot of people think that mastodon/the fediverse and capitalism are in opposition. In my opinion, capitalism is a requirement to create mastodon and the fediverse. That's why it was produced in a capitalist country, like virtually all open source software.
The thing is, capitalism is private ownership and wealth and the means of production and freedom to trade.
Sometimes, this means that rich sociopaths do every evil thing they can to extract the maximum amount of wealth from a thing before leaving it a useless husk. There's no debating that. It surrounds us.
On the other hand, for some people that means they take their resources and use it to produce common goods like open source software, because people are more than just a series of economic requirements.
This freedom is the source of the technologies we're using to discuss this. Large companies were perfect happy making money off of corporate and government contracts for mainframes, so they didn't care much about the idea of personal computers. Individuals who saw the potential for a personal computer quit their jobs at those companies and created new companies like MOS who created the famous 6502 which in contrast to Motorola was aimed at being low cost for home users, and companies like Apple and Commodore that produced personal computers when if you asked a central planner if you could make these things and give them out then they'd say no -- we know this because that's exactly what happened.
We've also got this entire ecosystem within capitalism of people spending the resources they personally control to create common goods they want, the fediverse is a perfect example -- I've got regular users on the FBXL network sites, and they're happy to be using the sites and I'm happy to have them, and I'll never make a penny from them because that's not the point. I'm sure that the instances you're on is largely the same, people who have private control and ownership of their own things going out and using that ownership to make the world better. The programmers who write open source software even the organizations that contribute to it (and there's lots of big companies that contribute) are all contributing privately owned capital to these commons, and that's pretty awesome.
The fundamental thing here, is that they were free to own and control the capital means of production (as in the computers they used). If they had to go ask a commissar then it's likely none of these projects would have happened. Capitalism isn't the driving force behind these projects, but it's the framework that allows individual people with ideas to go out and spend resources that might otherwise be spent on something the state or the tribe wants on what an individual wants.
Right wing capitalists tend to believe that people are generally bad and need to be civilized. Left wing utopians tend to believe that people are generally good and need to be unobstructed from making them bad, and both are wrong. In each of us we have a whole library of things we could be built into our DNA. Memories of being successful by being antisocial, and memories of being successful by being prosocial. Both are built into our capacity as human beings, and so when we are free to engage in what we would engage in, we generally do both.
The thing is, capitalism is private ownership and wealth and the means of production and freedom to trade.
Sometimes, this means that rich sociopaths do every evil thing they can to extract the maximum amount of wealth from a thing before leaving it a useless husk. There's no debating that. It surrounds us.
On the other hand, for some people that means they take their resources and use it to produce common goods like open source software, because people are more than just a series of economic requirements.
This freedom is the source of the technologies we're using to discuss this. Large companies were perfect happy making money off of corporate and government contracts for mainframes, so they didn't care much about the idea of personal computers. Individuals who saw the potential for a personal computer quit their jobs at those companies and created new companies like MOS who created the famous 6502 which in contrast to Motorola was aimed at being low cost for home users, and companies like Apple and Commodore that produced personal computers when if you asked a central planner if you could make these things and give them out then they'd say no -- we know this because that's exactly what happened.
We've also got this entire ecosystem within capitalism of people spending the resources they personally control to create common goods they want, the fediverse is a perfect example -- I've got regular users on the FBXL network sites, and they're happy to be using the sites and I'm happy to have them, and I'll never make a penny from them because that's not the point. I'm sure that the instances you're on is largely the same, people who have private control and ownership of their own things going out and using that ownership to make the world better. The programmers who write open source software even the organizations that contribute to it (and there's lots of big companies that contribute) are all contributing privately owned capital to these commons, and that's pretty awesome.
The fundamental thing here, is that they were free to own and control the capital means of production (as in the computers they used). If they had to go ask a commissar then it's likely none of these projects would have happened. Capitalism isn't the driving force behind these projects, but it's the framework that allows individual people with ideas to go out and spend resources that might otherwise be spent on something the state or the tribe wants on what an individual wants.
Right wing capitalists tend to believe that people are generally bad and need to be civilized. Left wing utopians tend to believe that people are generally good and need to be unobstructed from making them bad, and both are wrong. In each of us we have a whole library of things we could be built into our DNA. Memories of being successful by being antisocial, and memories of being successful by being prosocial. Both are built into our capacity as human beings, and so when we are free to engage in what we would engage in, we generally do both.
Turns out the answer is complicated. I learned a lot in writing this answer for you, because I didn't want to just say the same thing everyone else does. I wanted to find out why the answer everyone gives is true.
The energy density of gasoline or diesel is a lot higher than for batteries. This is where the answer starts, and what most people would say.
Let's look at a pair of vehicles that are both tuned for efficiency, a Tesla Model S and a Toyota Corolla.
The Tesla Model S long range has a battery with a life of 103.9 kWh. To convert kWh to kJ, multiply the kWh value by 3600, so the energy in those batteries is 374,040 kJ
Gasoline contains 31,536kJ per litre, and the Corolla has a tank with 45 litres, so a total energy of 1,576,800 kJ. So there's a lot more energy there to begin with. One thing to be aware of is that the EV is using its energy with very high efficiency (80-100%), whereas gasoline or diesel vehicles use their energy with much lower efficiency, converting only between 20 and 40% of the potential energy into kinetic energy.
So with all that, you might think that the two cars are the exact same on grade going up since 80% of 374,000kJ is about the same as 20% of 1.576MJ -- but you'd actually be wrong!
See, a Toyota Corolla with a full fuel tank weighs about 3014lbs, and a tesla (with a full battery, not that the charge state of the battery matters ) weighs 5761lbs. Some of that weight is because the Model S is a vehicle that costs twice as much as the Corolla and so has a lot more creature comforts that cost weight, but some of it is due to the weight required for large electric motors and a large amount of it -- about 1400lbs -- is the battery. The energy it takes to move something goes up linearly with weight, so during acceleration the tesla will require almost twice as much energy to get up to speed, and just as importantly it'll take almost twice as much energy to raise the car on a hill.
And then the energy density thing becomes worse as you go. If you want to double the energy in the Model S, you'd need to add another 1400lbs of battery, but if you want to double the energy in the Corolla, you add another 45 litres of gasoline weighing about 80lbs.
This problem gets much bigger if you're not driving a small passenger car. An F150 v6 gas weighs 4564lbs and carries 87 litres of fuel, so about twice as much energy as our Toyota Corolla. An F150 Lightning weighs 6500lbs, and has a battery capacity slightly less than the Tesla we just mentioned for the standard capacity model, or slightly more (131kWh) than a tesla for the extended range model. Given everything, scaling up EVs ends up becoming less capable because you need to add so much weight to add some range.
The energy density of gasoline or diesel is a lot higher than for batteries. This is where the answer starts, and what most people would say.
Let's look at a pair of vehicles that are both tuned for efficiency, a Tesla Model S and a Toyota Corolla.
The Tesla Model S long range has a battery with a life of 103.9 kWh. To convert kWh to kJ, multiply the kWh value by 3600, so the energy in those batteries is 374,040 kJ
Gasoline contains 31,536kJ per litre, and the Corolla has a tank with 45 litres, so a total energy of 1,576,800 kJ. So there's a lot more energy there to begin with. One thing to be aware of is that the EV is using its energy with very high efficiency (80-100%), whereas gasoline or diesel vehicles use their energy with much lower efficiency, converting only between 20 and 40% of the potential energy into kinetic energy.
So with all that, you might think that the two cars are the exact same on grade going up since 80% of 374,000kJ is about the same as 20% of 1.576MJ -- but you'd actually be wrong!
See, a Toyota Corolla with a full fuel tank weighs about 3014lbs, and a tesla (with a full battery, not that the charge state of the battery matters ) weighs 5761lbs. Some of that weight is because the Model S is a vehicle that costs twice as much as the Corolla and so has a lot more creature comforts that cost weight, but some of it is due to the weight required for large electric motors and a large amount of it -- about 1400lbs -- is the battery. The energy it takes to move something goes up linearly with weight, so during acceleration the tesla will require almost twice as much energy to get up to speed, and just as importantly it'll take almost twice as much energy to raise the car on a hill.
And then the energy density thing becomes worse as you go. If you want to double the energy in the Model S, you'd need to add another 1400lbs of battery, but if you want to double the energy in the Corolla, you add another 45 litres of gasoline weighing about 80lbs.
This problem gets much bigger if you're not driving a small passenger car. An F150 v6 gas weighs 4564lbs and carries 87 litres of fuel, so about twice as much energy as our Toyota Corolla. An F150 Lightning weighs 6500lbs, and has a battery capacity slightly less than the Tesla we just mentioned for the standard capacity model, or slightly more (131kWh) than a tesla for the extended range model. Given everything, scaling up EVs ends up becoming less capable because you need to add so much weight to add some range.
The energy required goes up significantly when you're going up an incline. When you're going across level ground, the electric motors need to overcome frictional forces from the wheels and opposition from wind resistance. When you are going up an incline, you need to overcome frictional forces, opposition from wind resistance, and you need to lift the entire vehicle continuously. If you're talking about a fairly large hill, you're talking about a fairly large amount of energy. To give you an idea, imagine the opposite: if instead of going up a large Hill you were going down a large hill. In that situation, it's likely that you can not only travel down the hill without adding any additional energy, but you can charge the batteries as well because in that case instead of using power to raise the vehicle, you are getting power from the conversion of potential energy to kinetic energy.
I work somewhere that proposed using EVs several years ago. I warned about range issues, particularly on inclines. They got them anyway, and the EVs sat in the garage basically forever because not only was the range basically nothing on inclines, but they just die if outside in -40 winters
Reliability centered maintenance. He's about to figure out how to do just enough maintenance but not too much to a thing.
"Look here folks, I Ben Shapiro am the master of eyebrows. She must have eyebrows exactly like mine or the movie is over. My eyebrows are superior, that's the facts and facts don't care about your feelings."
https://twitter.com/FiveTimesAugust/status/1710266209462092128/mediaViewer?currentTweet=1710266209462092128¤tTweetUser=FiveTimesAugust
Tell me nobody else feels the same.
Tell me nobody else feels the same.
2007 wasn't just the year the internet went to shit, it was the year everything went to shit. It's really something else, you take a look at a movie from that era, and maybe a little bit after that, and a lot of the time they're fun. Like, it was still okay to have pretty girls in movies, and it was still okay to notice that they were pretty. Everyone wasn't sitting on pins and needles and so people could make jokes and have fun. A lot of the people who are poster children for the insufferable postmodernist left today we're actually really funny people back then. And go figure, most of the people who used to be funny have disavowed everything that they ever did that made them good.
We used to live in a primarily guilt-based society, where everyone was sort of expected to have their own moral compass, and to follow that moral compass. For many reasons, including the corruption of the internet and pop culture and also the new economic realities brought about by the great financial crisis worldwide, we live in a primarily anxiety based society, where everyone is terrified that they're going to set off someone else's moral compass and in this economic game of musical chairs have their chair taken away.
In a guilt-based society, you can make a joke about something like racism, even if you're not racist, because you are the one judging yourself and so you know what your intention was and you would correct yourself if you felt that you were doing wrong. In an anxiety based society, you can't speak of evil because you are not the one judging yourself, everyone else is judging you so that they can kick you off the carousel.
We used to live in a primarily guilt-based society, where everyone was sort of expected to have their own moral compass, and to follow that moral compass. For many reasons, including the corruption of the internet and pop culture and also the new economic realities brought about by the great financial crisis worldwide, we live in a primarily anxiety based society, where everyone is terrified that they're going to set off someone else's moral compass and in this economic game of musical chairs have their chair taken away.
In a guilt-based society, you can make a joke about something like racism, even if you're not racist, because you are the one judging yourself and so you know what your intention was and you would correct yourself if you felt that you were doing wrong. In an anxiety based society, you can't speak of evil because you are not the one judging yourself, everyone else is judging you so that they can kick you off the carousel.
Played a new game called XEL yesterday I got on sale.
The gameplay was ok, but the writing and voice acting had me uninstalling pretty quickly.
The female MCs massive underbite jawline was a warning sign (2020 art style). I liked the art style other than the MCs jawline. It reminded me of something bright from the PS2 era. That's one of the reasons I bought it (even at a dollar or whatever I paid for it)
Then the writing ended up sounding like peak 2020. As an example, the MC accused the a village elder of running a cult almost immediately after meeting him. Just a very snarky, entitled character. As another example, the MC snarkily attacked the first person she'd seen in the entire game for not helping to fight the boss she just beat -- it's like, why do you think you're entitled to some random passerby putting their life on the line to help you beat some robot you woke up by fat fingering a button just now?
You can have an unlikable protagonist in a video game and have it work -- Kain from the Legacy of Kain series is specifically an arrogant, murderous, Machiavellian, and so on. But he's well written and interesting. Actually, contrast the Kain from most of the series with Kain from Legacy of Kain 2 who was written like a bad fan fiction version of Kain. In the same way, you can do the snarky unlikable protagonist, but you need to walk a line because there needs to be things that make you want to continue on your journey with the protagonist. In the Legacy of Kain series, it's that as the player you do like hearing his insights into the world and there was a good amount of world building in Nosgoth. To an extent, Raziel from the same series was an judgmental, snarky, and in some ways unlikable protagonist, but you can see a sort of nobility and a desire .
The voice acting had decent audio engineering, but there seemed to be a lack of effective direction in the line reads. It was really distracting. An example of this from shortly before I uninstalled the game was a one-off line read by a villager. The MC speaks to the villager who randomly speaks in this drawn out, breathy manner, like deep awe just talking about someone who isn't present. It's hard to describe since I'm not in that field, but it was just a relatively constant mismatch in tone between what was occurring and what was being said. It's not as bad as the first Resident Evil which is the gold standard in this, but it was still distracting, sort of sitting in the uncanny valley of voice acting.
I think these two things might even be OK, but there's another balance that you need to be careful of in game design: This game has long sequences in between puzzles or combat where you're just walking around the environment in linear paths to the next thing to do. Pacing in this way can be appropriate in some cases, but you have to be very careful. In some game worlds, long sequences of environmental travel are an opportunity for the player to see the world that's been built, and it's an opportunity for environmental story telling. In other games, this sort of pacing can be helpful because it gives the player time to anticipate the next reward in the form of a cutscene or something. Again, Legacy of Kain is a great example of this, where you might travel through the semi-open world to the next puzzle or cutscene, but when you arrive you're rewarded with excellent writing and voice work.
Anyway, I don't recommend. There's many better choices out there, including the Legacy of Kain series that's on sale for similar prices right now on GOG.
The gameplay was ok, but the writing and voice acting had me uninstalling pretty quickly.
The female MCs massive underbite jawline was a warning sign (2020 art style). I liked the art style other than the MCs jawline. It reminded me of something bright from the PS2 era. That's one of the reasons I bought it (even at a dollar or whatever I paid for it)
Then the writing ended up sounding like peak 2020. As an example, the MC accused the a village elder of running a cult almost immediately after meeting him. Just a very snarky, entitled character. As another example, the MC snarkily attacked the first person she'd seen in the entire game for not helping to fight the boss she just beat -- it's like, why do you think you're entitled to some random passerby putting their life on the line to help you beat some robot you woke up by fat fingering a button just now?
You can have an unlikable protagonist in a video game and have it work -- Kain from the Legacy of Kain series is specifically an arrogant, murderous, Machiavellian, and so on. But he's well written and interesting. Actually, contrast the Kain from most of the series with Kain from Legacy of Kain 2 who was written like a bad fan fiction version of Kain. In the same way, you can do the snarky unlikable protagonist, but you need to walk a line because there needs to be things that make you want to continue on your journey with the protagonist. In the Legacy of Kain series, it's that as the player you do like hearing his insights into the world and there was a good amount of world building in Nosgoth. To an extent, Raziel from the same series was an judgmental, snarky, and in some ways unlikable protagonist, but you can see a sort of nobility and a desire .
The voice acting had decent audio engineering, but there seemed to be a lack of effective direction in the line reads. It was really distracting. An example of this from shortly before I uninstalled the game was a one-off line read by a villager. The MC speaks to the villager who randomly speaks in this drawn out, breathy manner, like deep awe just talking about someone who isn't present. It's hard to describe since I'm not in that field, but it was just a relatively constant mismatch in tone between what was occurring and what was being said. It's not as bad as the first Resident Evil which is the gold standard in this, but it was still distracting, sort of sitting in the uncanny valley of voice acting.
I think these two things might even be OK, but there's another balance that you need to be careful of in game design: This game has long sequences in between puzzles or combat where you're just walking around the environment in linear paths to the next thing to do. Pacing in this way can be appropriate in some cases, but you have to be very careful. In some game worlds, long sequences of environmental travel are an opportunity for the player to see the world that's been built, and it's an opportunity for environmental story telling. In other games, this sort of pacing can be helpful because it gives the player time to anticipate the next reward in the form of a cutscene or something. Again, Legacy of Kain is a great example of this, where you might travel through the semi-open world to the next puzzle or cutscene, but when you arrive you're rewarded with excellent writing and voice work.
Anyway, I don't recommend. There's many better choices out there, including the Legacy of Kain series that's on sale for similar prices right now on GOG.
My posts keep being so long because I end up giving a lot of examples. Sorry.
You can say that in no way did you suggest that collective ownership did not exist, but you said "Tribal communism isn't a thing". When I read that, I interpreted that it could mean two things: Either that tribal communism as a term doesn't exist, or that tribal communism as a concept doesn't exist. I elaborated that both do exist and explained in some detail and referred to a century of anthropological literature that references the term, from the early 1900s to today.
I've given examples that show that free markets (the core of capitalism) do increase the size of the pie. The example I've already given you shows that democracy is not a requirement to increase the size of the pie. The free market reforms of Deng Xiaoping were not accompanied by free government reforms. At least one Chinese commentator has suggested that this was the cause of the Tiananmen Square massacre, that Chinese students believed the free market reforms had come with free democratic government reforms and they were disabused of that notion by force.
Another example of free markets but not democracy increasing the size of the pie is Singapore. It's a single party state, a longstanding dictatorship, but the pie has grown massively there because of the free market capitalism exercised by the country, and it's considered to have high levels of economic freedom.
A third example of free markets but not democracy would be Dubai. It's run by a dictatorship, but the pie has grown massively there because of free markets. (It's also an example of the dangers with unfettered capitalism, since there's an underclass of virtual slaves imported from other countries)
By contrast, there are a number of democratic republics in South America that moved away from free markets and the pie got considerably smaller. My own home country of Canada is a parliamentary democracy that had relatively free markets for a long time, but it has implemented more and more central control of the economy, and in the process the pie has shrunk (though they play with the numbers so they can pretend it didn't happen, but in another post I pointed out the astronomical cost of living increases in the past 20 years that are not properly captured by CPI)
The idea that we're both using smart phones or personal computers to discuss, and I'm commenting using a website I run myself using open source software on servers I own and operate myself and you're also on servers someone owns and operates independently sort of breaks the idea that you can just say "technological progress" in a vacuum, or that the pie doesn't grow except for some nebulous concept of "Capital". The first computer companies were doing brisk business creating mainframes for other big companies or for governments. Some of the employees of these companies tried to get them to consider less expensive microprocessors and small personal computers, but the big companies and governments had no interest in these things at first. In free market economies, these employees often left the big companies with their expertise, and started for example MOS technologies who created the famous 6502 processor that brought microprocessors to the masses at large discounts over Motorola's high cost processors, or a number of different personal computer companies such as Apple and Commodore that produced innovative new computers. The company founders were able to acquire equipment and make their own thing, and in both cases there were massive payoffs. The same goes for smart phones -- Steve Jobs took a risk building the iPhone. His design brought existing technologies together and also introduced many new innovations. Apple at the time was a bit player in the market. They had something like a 2% share in the personal computer market. The new product effectively created a new product category. Both personal computers and smart phones dramatically increased the size of the pie because entirely new product categories came to exist because individuals were able to take risks with their own money and their own skills. And right now, I'm writing this post on a website I run myself because I'm allowed by capitalism to buy computers without having to ask permission from a central authority. Open source software primarily comes from capitalist countries where individuals with the skills to create it have enough independent wealth to engage in creative endeavors like open source software as well.
There's longstanding innovations that came directly from the sort of small scale innovation you can achieve under free market capitalism. An early computer company out of England called Acorn ended up trying to keep some promises to build special modules that would provide much higher CPU power. One of the innovations they tried was reducing the instruction set so they could manufacture the chips inhouse. This was called Reduced Instruction Set Computing, or RISC. It ended up surprising everyone with high CPU power but low actual CPU power use. If you're reading this on a smart phone, there's a very good choice this story is highly relevant to you, because most smart phones use Acorn Risc Machine processors, or ARM processors.
These innovations might not seem important -- it's just another product, who cares? However, the decentralized process of people taking risks and many failing but some succeeding is how many unintuitive innovations succeed, and surprisingly many seemingly intuitive innovations fail for reasons their inventors didn't anticipate, and reinforcing successful innovations and ending the unsuccessful innovations can go on to massively grow the pie in ways other economic systems can't. Acorn created a surprise processor in the early 1980s that went on to run most smart phones, but at the same time Intel has tried to get rid of x86 or x64 numerous times but failed because the reality didn't meet the fantasy, and in free markets failed products generally stop wasting money. One example of this was the Merced program, which looked really good on paper but ultimately ended up being a waste of time and money.
Actually, open source software proves that markets can create different incentives than you might expect. Despite not being directly profitable, many large cap companies contribute routinely to the Linux kernel or other open source projects because the commons ends up being something that's more useful than just each individual contributors contributions.
You can say that in no way did you suggest that collective ownership did not exist, but you said "Tribal communism isn't a thing". When I read that, I interpreted that it could mean two things: Either that tribal communism as a term doesn't exist, or that tribal communism as a concept doesn't exist. I elaborated that both do exist and explained in some detail and referred to a century of anthropological literature that references the term, from the early 1900s to today.
I've given examples that show that free markets (the core of capitalism) do increase the size of the pie. The example I've already given you shows that democracy is not a requirement to increase the size of the pie. The free market reforms of Deng Xiaoping were not accompanied by free government reforms. At least one Chinese commentator has suggested that this was the cause of the Tiananmen Square massacre, that Chinese students believed the free market reforms had come with free democratic government reforms and they were disabused of that notion by force.
Another example of free markets but not democracy increasing the size of the pie is Singapore. It's a single party state, a longstanding dictatorship, but the pie has grown massively there because of the free market capitalism exercised by the country, and it's considered to have high levels of economic freedom.
A third example of free markets but not democracy would be Dubai. It's run by a dictatorship, but the pie has grown massively there because of free markets. (It's also an example of the dangers with unfettered capitalism, since there's an underclass of virtual slaves imported from other countries)
By contrast, there are a number of democratic republics in South America that moved away from free markets and the pie got considerably smaller. My own home country of Canada is a parliamentary democracy that had relatively free markets for a long time, but it has implemented more and more central control of the economy, and in the process the pie has shrunk (though they play with the numbers so they can pretend it didn't happen, but in another post I pointed out the astronomical cost of living increases in the past 20 years that are not properly captured by CPI)
The idea that we're both using smart phones or personal computers to discuss, and I'm commenting using a website I run myself using open source software on servers I own and operate myself and you're also on servers someone owns and operates independently sort of breaks the idea that you can just say "technological progress" in a vacuum, or that the pie doesn't grow except for some nebulous concept of "Capital". The first computer companies were doing brisk business creating mainframes for other big companies or for governments. Some of the employees of these companies tried to get them to consider less expensive microprocessors and small personal computers, but the big companies and governments had no interest in these things at first. In free market economies, these employees often left the big companies with their expertise, and started for example MOS technologies who created the famous 6502 processor that brought microprocessors to the masses at large discounts over Motorola's high cost processors, or a number of different personal computer companies such as Apple and Commodore that produced innovative new computers. The company founders were able to acquire equipment and make their own thing, and in both cases there were massive payoffs. The same goes for smart phones -- Steve Jobs took a risk building the iPhone. His design brought existing technologies together and also introduced many new innovations. Apple at the time was a bit player in the market. They had something like a 2% share in the personal computer market. The new product effectively created a new product category. Both personal computers and smart phones dramatically increased the size of the pie because entirely new product categories came to exist because individuals were able to take risks with their own money and their own skills. And right now, I'm writing this post on a website I run myself because I'm allowed by capitalism to buy computers without having to ask permission from a central authority. Open source software primarily comes from capitalist countries where individuals with the skills to create it have enough independent wealth to engage in creative endeavors like open source software as well.
There's longstanding innovations that came directly from the sort of small scale innovation you can achieve under free market capitalism. An early computer company out of England called Acorn ended up trying to keep some promises to build special modules that would provide much higher CPU power. One of the innovations they tried was reducing the instruction set so they could manufacture the chips inhouse. This was called Reduced Instruction Set Computing, or RISC. It ended up surprising everyone with high CPU power but low actual CPU power use. If you're reading this on a smart phone, there's a very good choice this story is highly relevant to you, because most smart phones use Acorn Risc Machine processors, or ARM processors.
These innovations might not seem important -- it's just another product, who cares? However, the decentralized process of people taking risks and many failing but some succeeding is how many unintuitive innovations succeed, and surprisingly many seemingly intuitive innovations fail for reasons their inventors didn't anticipate, and reinforcing successful innovations and ending the unsuccessful innovations can go on to massively grow the pie in ways other economic systems can't. Acorn created a surprise processor in the early 1980s that went on to run most smart phones, but at the same time Intel has tried to get rid of x86 or x64 numerous times but failed because the reality didn't meet the fantasy, and in free markets failed products generally stop wasting money. One example of this was the Merced program, which looked really good on paper but ultimately ended up being a waste of time and money.
Actually, open source software proves that markets can create different incentives than you might expect. Despite not being directly profitable, many large cap companies contribute routinely to the Linux kernel or other open source projects because the commons ends up being something that's more useful than just each individual contributors contributions.
People who are going to effortpost really need to hit platforms that let you effortpost. (Unrelated to the joke)