I don't think difficulties are involved here at all, lowering costs generally translates into higher profit, that should be enough to invest in new technology.
While the expectation vs. reality dichotomy is very real, the cost vs. return is just as vital and, ultimately, more easily solvable in the years to come. Curbing the expectations of the money-givers in regards to what they might get out of these ventures is always tough but using tech is going to be cheaper because, well, the price trends for tech have been downward for a while.
Personally, hoping to see more shifts toward trying new things rather than attempting to perfect the already existing models. This would, well, not solve but circumvent the need to try and improve something when the tools are not there yet. This way, a broader groundwork will be laid.
That's a terrible point, though. The way the costs come down is by slowly chipping away at them, and scaling up production of all the important components. This is how all new technologies arrive.
Empirically, building more of these technologies reduces the costs of these technologies. This is often called Wright's Law across a wide range of industries. These links look at real data for this.
If you are unwilling to accept this premise, of changing costs, then there is no neutral or accurate source that you will accept. Which is kind of what I expected when I responded, so I regret taking the time. I hope other readers of these comments can benefit from the knowledge, however.
Interesting that this is mostly about lowering costs by exploiting, and encouraging, the increase in liquidity of many goods and services, facilitated by tech infrastructure.
It's some factor of both things are cheaper now and things will be cheaper in the future. I'm betting these companies know what they are bidding for and it's likely technology will continue to make incremental improvements in this area. Compound interest works well here too and even modest decreases in costs compounded over 20 years will be very worthwhile.
It's a super interesting subject, but I don't really buy the argument that this will drive down costs for the consumer. Never mind that whole better standard of living line...that's just cheerleading. Companies have shown over and over again in the last two decades that they are capable of absorbing those new profits from efficiencies.
Another factor to consider is discounting. Even if a technology has zero marginal cost, it's not necessarily profitable when you take opportunity cost and discounting into account.
Not to be incredibly nit-picky, but the costs of the product right now don’t matter nearly as much as the ability to scale production and variable unit costs.
As a ‘hard tech’, they need to work themselves through the technology readiness framework before the cost of a particular material even tells you anything of value.
It's a long term play, I think. All of the tech becomes a sunk cost, and over time the removal of variable costs creates the ability to scale with costs still trending to 0, or, less upwardly.
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