Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

This, horribly, may be a current Silicon Valley view. That's the problem.

By contrast the example I gave elsewhere in this discussion is "France ages ago noticed a problematic reliance on fossil fuels and decided to actually solve that problem (for power and heating). That was a super ambitious program of building an entire, country-size industry capable of designing, building, fueling, running and reprocessing grid-scale nuclear reactors. It even worked. Growth WHILE solving problems. But yeah, in France as elsewhere, that effort was and is tied to political will and electoral moods. And so now it's in jeopardy."

That was a giant program with participation of many private companies - not even one private one dominating costs or profits that I noticed. The newly created companies forming the project started for some, and ended up for others owned by France through many different channels: national research labs, national electric utility, development banks, government agencies, etc, etc. No doubt some private companies made excellent money from that project - but that is not its most prominent feature by far.

It was an ambitious engineering and organizational effort.

So yes "ambitious" is a good thing.



Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: