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rayineryesterday at 2:00 PM0 repliesview on HN

No, I said that ignoring the second order effects of nationalizing SpaceX is like flapping your wings to get to outer space. SpaceX drove the cost of launch far below what NASA and its contractors had achieved. They wouldn't have bothered to invest in doing that if they were going to get nationalized. After you nationalize SpaceX, nobody is going to make that investment in the future. Those are the second-order effects.

The point is that you have to account for those second order effects even in theory. The consequences that arise from those effects isn't some conflict between theory and practice. It's a defect in the theory itself, because the theory ignores relevant variables.