> Irrational beliefs can persist because the true believers convince the majority that there might be SOME risk to the belief being true, and the majority acting cautious based on this belief validates the true believers in turn.
This passage makes me think of how some beliefs about health interventions spread.
That argument can be made for Tesla (regardless of whether he got the title of "founder" there or not because he was there with the capital and ideas around formation, even if he didn't run it at first).
The creating value vs capturing value is a fascinating one to think about. You want to build a business that produces more value than it captures, but where you are positioned and what leverage you have to capture varies quite a lot. One I find quite interesting is US entrepreneurs who leverage Shenzhen to build their product and then are faced with low cost competitors on Amazon almost immediately. The value of their idea can be quite fleeting. (though on the flip side locking down value for hundreds of years with copyright is not ideal either).
It's a very interesting dance/interplay between these variables, and I feel like it's important enough that we should hear more about it (I don't hear zero about it, but I don't hear nearly as much as on other topics).
I think the idea business is probably one where value capture goes up over time, but SLOWER than additional value creation, so that you build up a lot of goodwill/pricing power for some day in the future when you may need it.
It's a different type of thing, but this is one reason why I didn't have a paid option on this newsletter for the first ˜8 months, and didn't have a paywall after that. I wanted to see if I could capture a very very small fraction of the value I created, but then work really hard to create more value and hopefully the captured part would scale to enough that it would make is sustainable and in the end it'd be win-win (ie. more people can read than with paywalls, so that creates more value).
Another great edition, just makes sad I have to wait until Wednesday for another one.
Regarding run of river dams, all hydroelectric generators rely on a height difference between inlet and outlet to generate power, this is referred to as hydraulic head. The power output is linearly proportional to the head (double the head, double the power). The general answer is that you can build a run of river hydro dam anywhere you have a change in elevation (waterfall) or you can create an elevation change by damming a river and creating a large reservoir (while also flooding a bunch of land).
That was kind of my understanding. Just makes me wonder why there's not more of them... Every time the conversation gets on hydro, it's "yes, it's great, but the good spots are already taken, etc" and people sound like we can't easily build a lot more of it.
I wish we'd hear as much about pushing for hydro as we do for wind, solar, nuclear.. Even if not gigantic projects like those in Nothern Quebec, at least some smaller run-of-the-river projects on rivers that already have existing ones would help move the grid in the right direction.
I'm not saying it's simple, of course, but it just seems like it may be worth pushing more, in parallel with other sources.
I think you are absolutely correct, I call Hydro the 99% solution. Lasts over 100 years, reliable, dispatchable.... it's not perfect but it's one of the best we've got.
Exactly. This reminds me that at some point I should look up what's going on in Northern Quebec, I think the Phase II was supposed to bring total to something like 26GW of capacity.. Not sure what's going on with development there. Would be great to massively increase exports to the US.
> Irrational beliefs can persist because the true believers convince the majority that there might be SOME risk to the belief being true, and the majority acting cautious based on this belief validates the true believers in turn.
This passage makes me think of how some beliefs about health interventions spread.
Sounds like a domain where it's very applicable, yes!
Isn't Elon Musk one of the greatest, if not _the_ greatest, re-founders of all time?
That argument can be made for Tesla (regardless of whether he got the title of "founder" there or not because he was there with the capital and ideas around formation, even if he didn't run it at first).
The creating value vs capturing value is a fascinating one to think about. You want to build a business that produces more value than it captures, but where you are positioned and what leverage you have to capture varies quite a lot. One I find quite interesting is US entrepreneurs who leverage Shenzhen to build their product and then are faced with low cost competitors on Amazon almost immediately. The value of their idea can be quite fleeting. (though on the flip side locking down value for hundreds of years with copyright is not ideal either).
It's a very interesting dance/interplay between these variables, and I feel like it's important enough that we should hear more about it (I don't hear zero about it, but I don't hear nearly as much as on other topics).
I think the idea business is probably one where value capture goes up over time, but SLOWER than additional value creation, so that you build up a lot of goodwill/pricing power for some day in the future when you may need it.
It's a different type of thing, but this is one reason why I didn't have a paid option on this newsletter for the first ˜8 months, and didn't have a paywall after that. I wanted to see if I could capture a very very small fraction of the value I created, but then work really hard to create more value and hopefully the captured part would scale to enough that it would make is sustainable and in the end it'd be win-win (ie. more people can read than with paywalls, so that creates more value).
Another great edition, just makes sad I have to wait until Wednesday for another one.
Regarding run of river dams, all hydroelectric generators rely on a height difference between inlet and outlet to generate power, this is referred to as hydraulic head. The power output is linearly proportional to the head (double the head, double the power). The general answer is that you can build a run of river hydro dam anywhere you have a change in elevation (waterfall) or you can create an elevation change by damming a river and creating a large reservoir (while also flooding a bunch of land).
That was kind of my understanding. Just makes me wonder why there's not more of them... Every time the conversation gets on hydro, it's "yes, it's great, but the good spots are already taken, etc" and people sound like we can't easily build a lot more of it.
I wish we'd hear as much about pushing for hydro as we do for wind, solar, nuclear.. Even if not gigantic projects like those in Nothern Quebec, at least some smaller run-of-the-river projects on rivers that already have existing ones would help move the grid in the right direction.
I'm not saying it's simple, of course, but it just seems like it may be worth pushing more, in parallel with other sources.
I think you are absolutely correct, I call Hydro the 99% solution. Lasts over 100 years, reliable, dispatchable.... it's not perfect but it's one of the best we've got.
Exactly. This reminds me that at some point I should look up what's going on in Northern Quebec, I think the Phase II was supposed to bring total to something like 26GW of capacity.. Not sure what's going on with development there. Would be great to massively increase exports to the US.