I don't think you're trying to be an asshole (not yet at least ), I just don't see very much potential in hydrogen fuel cells. Certainly not enough to warrant killing someone and burning his lab down.
If it were some other sort of tech, maybe...
Maybe that's part of our confusion. I wasn't saying that fuel cell tech was worth it, I just used that as an example of a situation that can be viewed in a pretty sinister way.
I didn't mean to make a statement about the feasibility of fuel cells or their place in the energy market, my bad.
That doesn't mean that it happens every time, or that it happened that time. Don't fool yourself tough, someone who can do what you're postulating doesn't come cheap, most cheap contract killers will shoot you and take your wallet.
Of course it doesn't happen every time, I never suggested it did. But do I think it could happen? Definitely. Do I think it has happened before in the realm of 'big business'? No doubt about it.
Also, don't fool yourself into believing the Hollywood mythos of a super assassin. Finding someone capable of pulling a trigger is not expensive. "Oh, such a shame about Joe getting killed in that mugging."
It really doesn't take any special skills, just the ability to curl your finger.
I'm not talking malice, I'm talking business. The flip side of Occam's Razor is to not take things at face value, always look deeper. Just because a guy gets mugged doesn't mean that he wasn't mugged for another reason.Just a little bit of Occam's razor, don't attribute to malice what can be explained by many other more simple reasons..
You're, I think, attributing levels of organization and malice to entities who aren't that organized (or malicious, though what they do might be seen as that..)
Once again, I'm not talking malice. I'm not saying these corporations are evil. But when you weigh billions against a life, very few times does the life prevail.
As far as organization, you're just being nonsensical. Companies with 24/365 coordinated operations running all over the world, including in some of the most remote regions on this planet, don't have organization?
Give me a break man, that doesn't even make sense.
The private space programs aren't billion dollar ops, there are prizes, it's more or less yacht racing for billionaires who don't like boats..
You need to research farther than the X-prize man. Private launch companies make billions a year, and are developing further.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_new_nuclear_power_plants
All the existing nuke plants were built by monopolies (government approved ones, obviously), or state owned power companies..
Yes, government approved, not government owned.
Maybe if he wanted one to power the microsoft campus..
So you do admit that a nuclear plant can be built without government funds.
None of them could have been built without government intervention..
What do you mean by intervention? Regulation and incentives don't make the companies government owned.
I've seen it happen, the tech doesn't disappear, people don't forget about what they've seen, or invested in..
Of course people don't forget what they've seen, but if they can't talk about it, it doesn't really matter what they remember seeing. And with all the research, notes, and prototypes gone, they couldn't feasibly reproduce it anyway. Especially with the corp guarding it's new patents and tech like we discussed earlier.
As far as investors, why would investors give two shits? They got bought out at a profit, so they got what they were there to get.
I've seen it happen too, and it was like the tech had never existed.