It seems like in the last number of years, VC has been prioritizing becoming the beneficiary of the whims of the regime.

In short, I wonder if this has any implications about their confidence in startups' viability in private sectors

I hate asking people what they do, but it's hard to know ahead of time what questions will get an excited answer, so it's sort of a fall back.

I feel like asking 'what brought you to <city>?' is a framing that doesn't box them in so much, they can respond with non-work interests or volunteer about what they do if they want

I would add, that in addition to the immediate need for income, there's an identity component of just being gainfully employed, marching along in life and providing for others. Hitting the brakes on that does psychological harm.

I think what makes this a little murkier is that this Beck guy appears to be already a well known figure in crypto circles. (I don't really follow the space). It feels more like uncovering the secret director of a film to be an established film producer.

For the last point, I agree there's a sort of "who cares" aspect to the piece. There is no artistic intent to interpret. The product speaks for itself making BTC the default crypto coin instead of any of the other millions of coins. The wealth from the founder, from what I can tell, has not been instrumentalized in any significant way.

> I agree there's a sort of "who cares" aspect to the piece

Sure, rationally I agree, but clearly a lot of people do care. It may not matter in any substantive way who Satoshi is but people still care.

> There is no artistic intent to interpret

Is that the case? Obviously there is no artistic intent as bitcoin is not art, but it's not clear to me why the intent of an artist is important but the intent of a technologist is not.

No but the airline might choose starlink. I think a gogo business install is on the hundreds of thousands and annual costs in the tens of thousand for their Eutelesat based system.

Of its still profitable to do so, considering opportunity costs for the capital, firms will continue to build. However, it's so expensive to build that these project wind up not becoming bankable very quickly. I think that's the underlying issue that needs to be addressed.

Correct -- this is what I'm pointing to.

The problem is the cost of inputs. Classic Baumol's disease. We cannot escape Baumol's disease by just saying "hurrr durr just gotta get people to finance projects into a market with falling prices!"

to the point of where the cost of bringing the goods to market or its opportunity cost exceed the price the market will bear. Its why people living in areas of material poverty don't just get everything on discount.

Both can be true. On competitive environments it's harder to pass along costs to consumers, but when a supply pressure is unilaterally applied the competitive pressure to eat the increased costs goes away and is more easily passed along to consumers.

If the court establishes that this was a tax, how would they administer the refund considering it's impossible to disentangle absorbed tariffs by firms and those passed along to consumers?

SCOTUS left it unspecified, but the refund would go to the payer, legally.

To kick this off, I responded by saying that trying to predict the future is a fool's errand, and that he'd just do the best doing something he can be good at and then respond to the world as it changes. However the anxiety over student debt did seem valid considering the recent crop of undergrads are still struggling to land professional jobs.