One thing that can’t be scaled is “prime location”
There will be locations that are more desirable than others, and even if you keep building houses where there’s space, the need to congregate in particular areas (such as for work) will result in particular locations being more desirable.
And, it’s hard to increase the density of an area once the housing supply is already built out.
So instead, that supply stays fixed, demand increases, and the price increases in turn.
This actually made me think then that an accelerator for scalability could be: public transit into population centers that ensure areas with abundant space (and cheaper housing supply) can still easily access the areas that would otherwise be hugely expensive to live near
I believe this was done near DC where the public transit buildout helped foster further housing development in those emerging areas. Not sure if other HCOL areas, e.g. CA Bay Area, have similar things going on for East Bay mobility / other cross-county transport
This also kinda makes me think back to how most of the influential thinkers we know didn’t make their impact in the structures we know today.
Makes me wonder if most of the prestige and “remnants” of those eras are actually just competitive pressure cookers that may not provide the environment anymore for the achievements they once enabled.
Once something catches on, jumping on the bandwagon gives people a sense of community.
But, the nature of what makes something viral, like how the article mentions pandemic, seems agnostic to what actually becomes viral. Why did labubus go viral and not something else[1]? It’s luck and timing, and we can try to reverse-engineer it, but it’s just being prepared & luck. We’re seeing a survivor bias and thinking the survivor is special inherently.
So what enabled Pop Mart to be prepared?
[1]Actually, there’s also sneaker hype, meme stocks, etc.
I’m really curious how the brand reputations will carryover in the EV era…
All the reputations that car brands have are from their legacy of existing products. Who’s to say if they will continue in the same way for their new manufacturing processes, supply chain, branding, performance, positioning, etc. for their new EV offerings
It’s a new world!
I almost wonder if they should just start over with new brands.
Fascinating!
But does this only apply if the company is incorporated in that particular state?
If there is any state that doesn’t adopt the new law structure, then companies will just re-incorporate to that other state.
Of course, not every company may find it worthwhile to do that. So on the whole, it will probably mean companies that aren’t that involved in political spending will become even less involved. But, the largest spenders may find it worthwhile to re-incorporate so they can continue to do it.
My admiration of Honda and Toyota comes from their hybrid offerings, probably the most practical kind of car to get.
EVs have the charging requirement, so it’s a lifestyle / home setup adjustment. Plus, other trade-offs like being way heavier due to the battery, and higher risk of being totaled if the battery pack is even slightly damaged.
Slight aside: I only recently learned how much easier it is to total an EV. A small accident can be fine for a gas car, but for an EV, if it does anything to the battery, and requires replacing the battery or going deep inside to try and figure out what’s wrong with it, it’s just not worth it anymore, and gets declared totaled by the insurance company. Not great! Felt it was worth including in my expected cost calculation for whether or not to get an EV.
And regular cars haven’t gotten MPG improvements in years.
So I have a good impression of the hybrid technologies they’ve developed!
Though their electrification strategy seems completely different.
Toyota/Lexus I think are in the hybrid lineup still. Whereas Honda went full electrification and shut down a lot of production so as to refit their factories. I believe one of the reasons that Honda sales plummeted recently, since they had just ramped down production.
Maybe that technology will be lost someday, I wonder how well-documented it is and if it’d be easy to ramp back up
> still seek out the good quality stuff at as good a price as he can manage and fix it up if it were broken.
I think that's a nice story to highlight, being able to do things well and preserving that knowledge
While there can be benefits for mass producing things, what actually is produced is going to be limited by what techniques are conducive to automation. So the techniques that are hard to automate are lost from the market of provided goods and then human capital for it also gets lost (can't think of any concrete examples off the top of my head, but maybe the techniques for some elements of clothing that are now only found in couture/custom pieces). Another related idea is how there are much fewer color variations in manufactured goods now, simply because it simplifies the mass manufacturing process.