Oct 26, 2021 04:25 PM
https://theconversation.com/musk-v-bezos...lue-170314
EXCERPTS: . . The reality is that, as with other technology billionaires [...] align more often than they diverge. This new space race is partly a celebrity publicity stunt to generate clickbait headlines that build public awareness of, and popular support for, a new commercial frontier. If we focus on the rivalry and keep asking who’s winning, perhaps we won’t ask the big whys of commercial space colonisation.
In general, there is little in the tech barons’ interest to acually work against one another. Writing in his 2014 book Zero to One, Thiel has claimed that “competition is a relic of history”, and because a competitive market is seen as fundamental to capitalism, “monopolists lie to protect themselves”. These billionaires, all monopolists, may indeed use their celebrity profiles to create the illusion of competition where there is none. Google co-founder Larry Page also stated in a speech that Silicon Valley’s billionaires “travel as if they are pack dogs and stick to each other like glue”.
We learned through our research that the west coast billionaires that dominate the tech industry do indeed support each other financially and strategically. [...] The algorithm ... helped us identity a dense network, which you can see in the diagram.
So while Bezos and Musk haven’t directly financially supported each other, they are part of a wider system that has. Bezos was an early funder of Google, and in turn Google’s founders put money into Musk’s ventures from as early as 2006. As Ashlee Vance writes in his biography of Musk, Google underwrote Tesla to the tune of $5 billion (£3.6 billion) in 2013 when it looked as if it was about to go under, as well as investing large sums in SpaceX at critical moments.
[...] These entrepreneurs tell us compelling stories about their lives, their businesses and their vision. We will never know if they are true, manicured and coiffured as they are through one of the most successful publicity machines in history. So if we find ourselves swimming in clickbait about these men, it’s not incidental that we find them alongside celebrity news: it’s absolutely fundamental to their business strategies and thus a key source of their wealth and power... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: . . The reality is that, as with other technology billionaires [...] align more often than they diverge. This new space race is partly a celebrity publicity stunt to generate clickbait headlines that build public awareness of, and popular support for, a new commercial frontier. If we focus on the rivalry and keep asking who’s winning, perhaps we won’t ask the big whys of commercial space colonisation.
In general, there is little in the tech barons’ interest to acually work against one another. Writing in his 2014 book Zero to One, Thiel has claimed that “competition is a relic of history”, and because a competitive market is seen as fundamental to capitalism, “monopolists lie to protect themselves”. These billionaires, all monopolists, may indeed use their celebrity profiles to create the illusion of competition where there is none. Google co-founder Larry Page also stated in a speech that Silicon Valley’s billionaires “travel as if they are pack dogs and stick to each other like glue”.
We learned through our research that the west coast billionaires that dominate the tech industry do indeed support each other financially and strategically. [...] The algorithm ... helped us identity a dense network, which you can see in the diagram.
So while Bezos and Musk haven’t directly financially supported each other, they are part of a wider system that has. Bezos was an early funder of Google, and in turn Google’s founders put money into Musk’s ventures from as early as 2006. As Ashlee Vance writes in his biography of Musk, Google underwrote Tesla to the tune of $5 billion (£3.6 billion) in 2013 when it looked as if it was about to go under, as well as investing large sums in SpaceX at critical moments.
[...] These entrepreneurs tell us compelling stories about their lives, their businesses and their vision. We will never know if they are true, manicured and coiffured as they are through one of the most successful publicity machines in history. So if we find ourselves swimming in clickbait about these men, it’s not incidental that we find them alongside celebrity news: it’s absolutely fundamental to their business strategies and thus a key source of their wealth and power... (MORE - missing details)
