That's not a supportable argument. The US government has been extremely fickle about their support of SpaceX's Starlink. Witness the revocation of the funding for rural communities. If you're referring to NASA and other government agencies contracting for launch services, well sure, but that too was an open market that SpaceX won on clear merit.
In my community, Starlink is very popular, because the local DSL (the only option) is terrible. Fiber projects exist, but they are totally blocked by processes requiring the approval of native tribes if trenches dug for fiber discover piles of shells left behind by tribes hundreds of years ago.
In entirely different areas, I see Starlink terminals popping up on every mining and forestry contractor's truck. I suspect Starlink's popularity among those who roam widely is just as important, if not moreso, than any funding the federal government has provided, because that is a clear and sustainable revenue that is entirely based on practical industrial applications.
About EV motor homes: battery capacity for domestic use is plenty in any EV. Powerwalls have much less capacity. So I'd buy a EV motor home with minimal range, like 100 miles. When stationary the capacity is only limited by the solar panels on top (~1.5kW peak). Then again, maybe my use isn't typical.
I'd wish for solar panels mounts as standard for EV vans, with potentially full roof coverage.
Tesla bought a solid-state battery company and also is running a research office dedicated to the subject, so I don't think you can say that Tesla has no solid-state battery program.
Yes, Musk said something like that a few weeks ago in September.[1] Musk says a lot of things. As of August 2025, Tesla's position was that the old technology plus expected improvement was good enough.[2]
There was a rumor a few months ago that Tesla had bought Quantumscape. But
that deal does not seem to have happened. Quantumscape is still publicly traded.
Ticker symbol QS. Up 350% this year. Latest deal is a partnership with Murata for ceramic separators. They made enough sample batteries to power a motorcycle in Dubai.
All the serious players can make high-cost samples now.
It is even deeper than that. The problem is that voters do not have faith in the organizations created to oversee and regulate government waste. Perhaps there isn't enough visibility. Or maybe the typical shenanigans that commenters love to harp on hides the actual good work that public servants sometimes do in managing the public purse.
So as with most political challenges, it all comes down to trust, and a failure to garner it.
The lack of trust then creates the vaccuum into which silly notions of thinking a coffee cup is worth a grand, or an ashtray is tens of thousands of dollars, or the magic hammer that is the same as a normal hammer but costs 100x, or whatever.
Of they just don't fundamentally trust the institutions.
I bet there isn't a single person in this country that can't pick a subject they care a lot about on which the government actively gaslit them in the last ~5yr.
That kind of tarnishes what the .gov has to say on every other subject.
I'm not saying people should implicitly trust the government.
I'm saying that lack of trust, and lack of the ability of people and government to meet in a way that develops trust, is the issue that underlies people holding up a "$1280 coffee mug" as an example of government waste.
The ideal is that representatives you do trust would be evaluating the government for you, and so you would be building trust by experiencing trust with one or more of your representatives. But the scale of the federal government has resulted in few people actually trusting their representatives, and the experience of having a trust test with a representative doesn't scale. This is the fundamental issue.
To be totally clear, I am implying that a change to the system needs to proceed towards improvements in accountability and visibility, so that people can experience more legitimate trust in their government.
People shouldn't need to trust. If you architect the system around it then it will attract people who want to abuse that trust. The system needs to be designed so that no trust is needed, the "correct" thing to do for any given cog in it is also the "correct" thing overall.
This is actually super interesting to me. Given that the US is actually blessed with mineral concentrations, why is it so assumed that only China can produce rare earths? Is it the land opportunity cost? Is it the cost of labor? Is it the cost of regulation? And in the end, this is only a motor, or a battery, and the actual rare earth content is not very high. If the cost of rare earths was double or even triple the amount of sourcing them from China, how much does that actually impact the end price of a consumer good?
Rare Earths aren't rare in the "there is a small supply" sense, but in the "very dilute" sense. Rare earths don't concentrate into ores the way that say copper does. Rare earth deposits are just places where you happen to have 300 ppm instead of the crust average of 220 ppm.
The only way to mine rare earths is to just process massive quantities of earth. Typically this is done as part of another mining operation, like mining nickel. It's labor intensive and requires nasty chemicals. Places with cheap labor, weak environemental regulations, and extremely large scale mining operations that they are going to be operating anyways are always going to be able to produce the cheapest rare earths. It's very easy to see why China naturally dominates the market.
Yep! And we just struck graphite in the US, in the middle of bumfuck nowhere in New York. A little county (well, geographically large), 2800 square miles, 100,000 or so people, and we've struck the first graphite in the US...
The Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine and Processing Facility, owned by MP Materials, is an open-pit mine of rare-earth elements on the south flank of the Clark Mountain Range in California, 53 miles (85 km) southwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. In 2020 the mine supplied 15.8% of the world's rare-earth production. It is the only rare-earth mining and processing facility in the United States. It is the largest single known deposit of such minerals.
Look at the history section to see how this mine initially dominated rare earth element production, then shut down due to low price competition, then reopened, then shut down due to low prices, then reopened.
The total addressable market for rare earth elements is small in dollar and tonnage terms, but opening mines and processing plants is expensive. One big new mine could tank the global market price.
The US used to maintain large stockpiles of many mineral resources for defense purposes, but mostly stopped in the 1990s after the end of the Cold War. The pendulum may be swinging the other way now. The Mountain Pass mine received DoD grants in 2022 and 2023 to support continued operation, regardless of open market prices.
It is regulatory costs these days. Most mines currently operating in the US were grandfathered into current regulatory regimes, they'd likely never be developed today.
This creates a perverse incentive where it is often cheaper to reprocess low-grade ore from an existing mine than to jump through the regulatory hoops and decades of lawsuits to develop a new mine with high-grade ore. Refining a low-grade ore in the US often is not cost competitive on the global market, so there isn't much incentive to do so even though you've already mined the material.
The US needs to make it fast and efficient to develop new high-grade ore deposits. America has extraordinary mineral wealth as a matter of geology but we barely even explore in the US anymore because even if you find it you can't develop it. This has been the case since circa the 1980s or 1990s.
Price controls on gold up until the late 1970s didn't help either, since it discouraged gold exploration. Many high-value mineral deposits in the US have been discovered as a side-effect of gold exploration. The price controls disappeared but were almost immediately replaced with regulatory regimes that made it unprofitable to develop new mines.
Many rare earth deposits in the US were discovered as a side-effect of uranium prospecting. The US government stopped subsidizing uranium mining ~1970, which was the main reason it was being done at all, and so people stopped discovering associated minerals around the same time.
Should the price of these domestically-produced minerals include the environmental impacts on the watersheds, superfund'd land, and Americans living next to the mining operation?
Or is that just the inefficiency introduced by them pesky regulations you're trying to make more "fast and efficient"?
If you don't price all that in, some might say you're asking some locals and counties to give a pretty major subsidy to some private mine owner.
> why is it so assumed that only China can produce rare earths?
Simplistic thought, but, they're the only ones willing to ignore and cover up the insane pollution it causes. Rare earth is somewhat synonymous with "exceptionally toxic."
I was going to say the same. Let China destroy their land and everyone else just buy what they need. When that’s all gone only then mine your own land.
Stockpile 10 years worth of the entire west's consumption of rare earth minerals? That's not gonna be cheap. Would China even have the production capacity to handle it in a reasonable time frame?
Would China even want to sell it, even if they could? Letting a country stockpile doesn't seem in their interest: the whole reason you want to do it is to reduce reliance on them, they'd probably want to keep you hooked
We're reasoning about the current state of things. We're /not/ suggesting this is good or should continue.
The unwritten implication is, we can do it ourselves, but the price will skyrocket as a result. I personally think that would be fine. Wait a minute and someone else will come by to yell about this the other way.
Refining. China has build up the entire pipeline from mining to raw ore to refining for industry use. It's the only place that has it all. Building the refining capacity took decades.
> why is it so assumed that only China can produce rare earths?
Pollution. The smokestack emissions are very toxic. The residue/slag is toxic and radioactive. One should remember that "rare earth metals" are not rare, they're the bottom 2 rows of the periodic table. They are rather hard to separate chemically and many people like to exclude the bottom row of the periodic table (the actinides) because that's where uranium and plutonium are located and those 2 elements terrify people enough to derail discussions about the materials.
Does that mean to say "the Chinese government regularly subsidizes BYD"? Because the US regularly subsidize Ford, and I don't think you'll find any one that disagrees with that.
> mines many elements domestically, so why the sudden environmental concern specifically with rare earths
Optics mostly, along with a healthy dose of social media disinfo [0]. Processing is also a pain in the butt and causes severe externalities.
> while the US relied on market forces to handle supply chains.
Pretty much, but private sector firms are also worried/hemmed by the implications of litigation.
The recognition that the status quo is unstable arose after China weaponized exports to Japan during the Senkaku Diaoyu crisis (it was one of the first things I worked on in my short stint in policy), but "industrial policy" was a dark word you could never utter on the hill until the last 3-4 years.
Also, 13-15 years ago, China wasn't really viewed as a threat the same way it is today. Russia was viewed as the primary peer state competitor to the US back then. I yelled hoarse warning the people I reported to that we needed to deep dive into Chinese institutions back then, but no one listened.
The US mines many elements domestically, so why the sudden environmental concern specifically with rare earths?
Is there evidence that China’s rare earth mining creates more environmental damage than US coal, gold, or other domestic mining operations?
The real issue seems to be strategic: China made rare earth supply security a policy priority, while the US relied on market forces to handle supply chains.
I like nature and care about the environment. I care about my fellow man, I want them to be able to work a safe job with good pay and have the ability to provide for their family.
With that being the case, how can I in good conscious take a position that would lead to mining and manufacturing being done in any country that is not enforcing environmental and safety regulations? In any country that is not paying a living wage?
So yes, I want mining and processing done here. I want the manufacturing jobs here. We want clean air and clean water, we have to pay for it.
This isn't manufacturing (though even that is very dirty depending on the industry). This is mining and processing. There is NO clean way to scar the earth and then leverage chemicals to separate and extract the materials needed.
As such, there will be environmental externalities no matter what, and wishing for "clean mining and processing" is the same as giving "thoughts and prayers" - essentially meaningless.
Curious why this is downvoted, as this matches my understanding. We have strong (ish) environmental and worker protections in the US that other countries don't have.
These are good things, but they make it a lot more expensive to do this stuff domestically.
Probably because it brings into focus the unconformable truth of what we have been doing.
In a similar vain, I was talking with a friend about plastic straws and the movement at the time to ban them. My friend was all on board and told me about the stainless steel ones they just bought from Amazon Prime. It's very convenient, delivers straight to your house and if you don't like it you just send it back.
So here we are worried about the straw but are having things shipped with 2 day delivery to the door. We live in a reasonable large city, drive to and from work past stores that are selling the same items. 2019 numbers have Amazon's van fleet at 30,000. Assuming 67 tons of GHG per vehicle(https://www.transportationenergy.org/resources/the-commute/l...) gets you 2 million tons.
I don't worry about the straws, I worry about the thinking that gets us to focus on the straws instead of the larger picture.
The vans are probably a wash, carbon-wise, because they are taking cars off the road.
I hardly ever drive anywhere these days. Pretty much everything we buy in the household comes through Amazon or another online seller, and gets delivered by vehicles that would have been on the road anyway, delivering other things to other people. The "larger picture" may be larger than you think it is.
Maybe, but we have how many competing delivery networks?
If they all shared the same last mile delivery vans/routes, wouldn't that take many trucks off the road?
I'm not saying it's doable. I'm sure that in Soviet USA there'd only be one delivery service, but it'd be about as fast and reliable as UDP over avian carrier :)
Before Amazon Prime we had 2 major deliver services: UPS and FedEx as well as USPS.
Now we have 3.
I didn't include in my previous comment but most of the people using Prime that I know still drive everyday, many drop their kids off at school. Going past stores that sell the same sorts of things they are buying on Prime.
For them the main driver is convenience of not having to stop and the ability to tell Alexa to put it on a list and reorder periodically.
This seems to be the case for most of the customers, look at the rise of Instacart. Door Dash followed suite by expanded from just hot meal delivery to Retail and Grocery. Traditional grocery stores don't want to leave the margins on the table so they are launching their own efforts.
The BBC piece is an interesting attempt at garnishing attention. The reporter provides the google maps link to show how large and disgusting the process is. But it is actually a very small lake, if you compare it to things such as oil extraction.
Take a look at the oil sands of Fort Mcmurray, Alberta; and at the same zoom level as the reporter uses, you'll see this is absolutely massive and diminishes the "massive" rare earths waste lake by orders of magnitude: https://www.google.com/maps/@57.0304073,-111.55372,6025m/dat...
I don't think it is good, but let's be reasonable in comparing environmental harm.
This isn't about China or the size of the lake, but the fact that there is a lake because the effluent is difficult to dispose of and currently has no use.
Edit: to further clarify, I am not against refining them in the USA. Just that we have to also address the consequences of doing so.
"Difficult to dispose of and has no use" is the very definition of a tailings pond, and you'll find them all over the place if you care to look. Environmental catastrophies are happening all over the globe on a massive scale. My point is exactly that; yeah it's toxic, but so is basically every mine and many oil refineries too. Check out the rate of cancer around coal mines or refining hubs, you might be surprised.
I don't want people roaming through my yard and stepping on my plants and stuff or god forbid they bring their stinky dogs and their urine and feces so I have a fence put up to keep them out.
Sweden has the right to roam on privately owned nature property but it is trumped by exceptions for crops and the right to privacy at home. So it’s not ok - and not done - to walk in peoples yards etc. The rules are well taught at schools and well explained for tourists and it just works nicely.
In the United States at least we don't really have privately owned nature property like you might in Sweden. I live in Ohio for example, there's nothing to go see or look at. We have no need for the right to roam. What are you going to do, roam through a cornfield? A parking lot? The woods? The mall? Well you can already do that. We have state parks, local parks, national parks, etc. to get your nature fix and it works very well here, there are no complaints about this whatsoever.
Sometimes Europeans are so convinced that their way of life is better or their policies are the best they forget that sometimes their policies solve problems that don't exist in other countries. There's no need to have a right to roam in America. There's nowhere to roam to, and the places that you would roam to are already owned by the public where you have... the right to roam! Though we are much more strict about natural preservation in those parks which sometimes conflicts with the desires of some to go "off trail", but that's a separate issue.
The UK might be a little different, granted, but the no-true-scotsman approach to someone suggesting they enjoy the UK's right to roam but they can't because the Nordic countries are so much better in this regard is annoying, to say the least.
Yea but the discussion happening in this thread was about something else. If you don't want to participate that's fine but please don't derail ongoing discussions.
You come across very Italian, for sure. I guess? :)
The white collar worker doesn't need to be replaced for the bots to be profitable. They just need to become dependent on the bots to increase their productivity to the point where they feel they cannot do their job without the chatbot's help. Then the white collar worker will be happy to fork over cash. We may already be there.
Also never forget that in technology moreso than any other industry showing a loss while actually secretly making a profit is a high art form. There is a lot of land grabbing happening right now, but even so it would be a bit silly to take the profit/loss public figures at face value.
Numbers prove we aren't. Sales figures show very few customers are willing to pay $200 per month for the top AI chatbots, and even at $200/month, OpenAI is still taking a loss on that plan so they're still loosing money even with top dollar customers.
I think you're unaware just how unprofitable the big AI products are. This can only go on for so long. We're not in the ZIRP era anymore where SV VC funded unicorns can be unprofitable indefinitely and endlessly burn cash on the idea that when they'll eventually beat all competitors in the race to the bottom and become monopolies they can finally turn a profit by squeezing users with higher real-world price. That ship has sailed.
I don't think you can confidently say how it will pan out. Maybe OpenAI is only unprofitable at the 200/month tier because those users are using 20x more compute than the 20/month users. OpenAI claims that they would be profitable if they weren't spending on R&D [1], so they clearly can't be hemorrhaging money that badly on the service side if you take that statement as truthful.
"OpenAI claims that they would be profitable if they weren't spending on R&D "
Ermmm dude they are competing with Google. They have to keep reinvesting otherwise Google captures the users OAI currently has.
Free cash flows matter. Not accounting earnings. On a FCFF basis they largely in the red. Which means they have to keep raising money, at some point somebody will turn around and ask the difficult questions. This cannot go on forever.
And before someone mentions Amazon... Amazon raised enough money to sustain their reinvestment before they eventually got to the place where their EBIT(1-t) was greater than reinvestment.
> They just need to become dependent on the bots to increase their productivity to the point where they feel they cannot do their job without the chatbot's help
Correct, but said technology needs to be self sustaining commercially. The cost the white collar worker pays needs to be enough to cover the cost of running the AI + profit
It seems like we are a long way off that yet but maybe we expect an AI to solve that problem ala Kurzweil
Why are this and the first reply being downvoted? Perfectly legitimate thoughts.
Anyway, I'd just point out that users don't even need to depend on the bots for increase productivity, they just need to BELIEVE it increases their productivity. Exhibit A being the recent study which found that experienced programmers were actually less productive when they used an LLM, even though they self-reported productivity gains.
This may not be the first time the tech industry has tricked us into thinking it makes us more productive, when in reality it's just figuring out ways to consume more of our attention. In Deep Work, Cal Newport made the argument that interruptive "network tools" in general decrease focus and therefore productivity, while making you think that you're doing something valuable by staying constantly connected. There was a study on this one too. They looked at consultants who felt that replying as quickly as possible to their clients, even outside of work hours, was important to their job performance. But then when they took the interruptive technologies away, spent more time focusing on their real jobs, and replied to the clients less often, they started producing better work and client feedback scores actually went up.
Now personally I haven't stopped using an LLM when I code but I'm certainly thinking twice about how I use it these days. I actually have cut out most interruptive technology when I work, i.e. email notifications disabled, not keeping Slack open, phone on silent in a drawer, etc. and it has improved my focus and probably my work quality.
There are cheaper locks if you don't care to defend against shimming.