[angleofrepose]

Indeed. You widen the conversation here, and remind me of the idea that moneyed influence is underrepresented in analysis and understanding of the world. Maybe the most appropriate way to understand big questions is who is funding the various players.

I like to think about "learn by doing". While I have of course lived it, I try to think of counterpoints. It seems clear that solar owes it's growth to Germany and California policies which subsidized the global solar industry with taxes on their economies, most disproportionately placed on individual ratepayers. But why couldn't solar research have been long-term funded based on it's fundamental value? Talk about national security, or geopolitical stability -- especially post 1970s! Skip the intermediate and expensive buildouts of the 2000s, failed companies heavily subsidized and fund research instead to hopefully bring the late 2010s forward in time?

What's a good model here, or concrete example? We see the same side of the history in electric vehicles. I think Tesla and Rivian, to pick two, both lost money on every sale in early years. Why not skip that expensive step in company history, and develop better products to sell at a profit from the beginning of mass manufacturing? Are there industries or technologies where this expensive/slow process went the other way?

[epistasis]

> It seems clear that solar owes it's growth to Germany and California policies which subsidized the global solar industry with taxes on their economies, most disproportionately placed on individual ratepayers. But why couldn't solar research have been long-term funded based on it's fundamental value

I think this is a really important distinction, that between research in the lab versus research on the factory floor. Tesla in particular has talked about how much they value engineers that get down in to the production process versus those that are working in the lab. That's the "doing" that needs to happen. As well as shaking out parts of the upstream supply chains and making all that cheaper.

We can theorize about what's going to work in practice, but the price drops are the combination of 1% savings here, 0.75% savings there, 0.5% there, and until you have the full factory going you won't be able to fully estimate your actual numbers, much less come up with all the sequential small improvements that build on each other. And all that comes together in the design of the next factory that's the next magnitude up in size.

[angleofrepose]

I hear that, it seems a common observation. Maybe a fundamental truth of enterprise.

> until you have the full factory going you won't be able to fully estimate your actual numbers, much less come up with all the sequential small improvements that build on each other.

Why not? Is there a theory or school of management or industry that establishes this foundational principle that seems so commonly invoked? It feels true, but I don't really know why it might be true. There must also be great examples of counterpoints in this too!

Maybe it goes back to learn by doing: it's a common refrain in outdoor recreation that safety rules are written in blood; that many of our guidelines directly follow from bad things that happened. But certainly we can also design safety rules by thinking critically about our activities. Learn by doing vs theory.