this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
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I feel like that explanation is missing a verb or something.
To bow, or bow down or kneel for. But I'm not going to google that for you haha. The basic problem is that starlink theoretically has immense power so it becomes a political tool. He bows to those ones but not to legitimate democratic interests.
Especially once starlink and others can make landline based internet connections obsolete by pricing them out - which they are not currently doing though, but it seems only a matter of time with competition. Basically we could get to a situation where there are only like 2 or 3 internet provider practically controlling internet globally.
When I searched "Elon bows to Turkey" I got this story about Twitter censoring some tweets during the Turkish election... Is that what you're talking about?
Yeah. Which is in stark contrast to Musk's rhetoric in Brazil, which had a legal court order for censoring. Maybe Ukraine/Russia wasn't the best example. My point is that it's immense power. In the hands of a soulless corporation it's bad enough but an outright fascist like Musk is much worse.
They won't be able to price landline based connections out as long as they have to replace their satellites every 5 years. I wouldn't be surprised if they're running at a loss currently.
I'm pretty sure they ran the numbers for potential profits and determined it's a goldmine - in the long run. Maybe they'll need to increase the lifespan of satellites. Their internal launch costs are pretty low already. Amazon wants to build it's own constellation and is building new glen partially because they can't get launch slots from SpaceX. I'm sure you can find some numbers to do some napkin math.
Theoretically they can serve the whole world with internet without requiring only minimal land based infrastructure. That is a gigantic market they can reach. And incredibly power to wield for such a psycho.
Another strange case is high-frequency trading on stock exchanges - because light is faster in the vacuum of space compared to fiberglass they can trade on the stock exchanges around the world like nobody else can. Not sure how much money that makes.