Even if you give SpaceX the benefit of the doubt and assume they'll eventually settle at the profit rates Apple, Google, etc. have (~25%, check it), it'll be $4b in annual profits holding up $1.8t in market cap or roughly 450 PE ratio.

And that's if we give them the same great odds for profitability as America's most successful and profitable firms.

In summary, in the short-term the stock might very likely shoot up to $3t, but in the long-term, it doesn't look very healthy.

Even if Iran gets 500 years to build out a proper technological economy, there's no universe where they're a threat to the US. All the players the US has invaded the Middle East to fight don't constitute a threat to Joe in Alabama. It's all about weakening potential threats to leave Israel as the only extant regional power, no matter the costs to American credibility, military stockpiles, finances ($10t so far, according to Brown University Costs of War).

The overton Window has shifted and this question will not go away.

It's a societal-level policy: 47% of Israeli Jews want all Palestinians killed; 82% want all Palestinians forcefully expelled (i.e., ethnically cleansed) [0] which would constitute genocide. 56% want the same for all Israeli Arabs.

So, it's pathetic when Westerners act surprised at Israel's antics: you can't support a genocidal state and then be shocked when it does genocidal stuff. This is just Tuesday for them.

Once you understand this, Israel's actions are not an anomaly. It's the natural expression of people who consider their neighbors beneath them, and barely even human.

[0]: https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/poll-show-most-jew...

Fresh off WW2, with a titanic arsenal and industrial base, America and all of its allies couldn't end the war on their terms after China intervened.

That's why the US only did search-and-destroy missions, targeting Vietcong cells in the south and bombing supply lines in Laos. Which didn't matter much.

Once the Americans left, the North marched down a proper army and wrapped it up.

Maybe just pull a Bending Spoons after the acquisition, layoff most of the staff, and bring a lot of ops in-house and they'll be in profit ASAP.

Secondly, having thousands of protesters chanting your name still doesn't confer state power. State power is in the ability to achieve and retain a monopoly of violence. Khamenei's forces can (and are doing so already) mow down the protesters with machine gunfire, just like the Egyptian Army mowed down the supporters of Morsi in Cairo.

If you can't achieve a monopoly of violence, an asymmetry works just as well since you can impose your wishes on the opposition with superior firepower. That is what will, and is happening in Iran right now.

Or, like Mao said, "the Army is the chief component of state power and whoever seeks to acquire and retain state power must have a strong army."

Now, you may point to other "popular revolutions" throughout modern history, but that only proves my point. After Khomeini went into exile in France, tens of thousands of his loyalists continued building their networks in Iran's universities, bazaars, mosques, offices, government agencies, etc. The revolution of 1979 was simply that underground network rising to topple the modernist Persian state once they'd reached critical mass.

Even during the Arab Spring, nothing really changed. For instance, in Egypt, the Army ousted Mubarak to simply install their own man who commanded a real army with guns (Sisi). When the protesters didn't get the memo, they were fired upon and thousands killed.

Across the Artesh (Army), IRGC, Basij militias, and other Shia paramilitary groups, Khamenei has over a million armed, trained young men who believe his words are God's words, and whose fortunes are tied to the regime's survival. No amount of airstrikes can meaningfully degrade those numbers to the point where Reza Pahlavi can be allowed to touch solid ground and be installed as king.

Reza Pahlavi has millions of bots on Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, etc. who astroturf him as a contender for state power.

It's not even a contest.

Did you mean to say nah? Mba actually means just that in at least one language I know.

All the veteran researchers still left have to be reading the room by now.

Clearly, Meta is signalling that they care less for foundational research and more for habit-forming products like Chatgpt/Sora that can give them another 10-15 years of runway like Instagram did.

Even if you want to give OpenAI the benefit of the doubt by comparing it to other software primos, they're doing terribly. Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, etc. were profitable almost immediately after their founding. In the cases where they accumulated losses it was a deliberate effort to capture as much of the market as possible. They could simple hit the brakes and become profitable at will.

In OpenAI's case, every week yet another little-known lab in China releases a 99% competitive LLM at a fraction of their costs.

It's not looking good at all now or in the long-term.

Growth has slowed to a crawl (just over 1%), trade friction has choked countless small exporters, and the “take back control” slogan now sounds hollow when irregular immigration is still higher than ever, while industries that relied on EU labor, say, healthcare or agriculture, are struggling.

Even though public opinion has shifted toward rejoining the EU, it could take a decade or more to rebuild the political will — and any return deal would likely come with less favorable terms.

How they choose to organize their society is none of your business. Whenever any Arab society becomes democratic, it's almost guaranteed they'll vote in Muslim Brotherhood types that'll be joined at the hip with Islamist movements. So, you don't want rapidly liberalizing benevolent monarchies, but rather democratic Islamists? Wasn't it the Americans who nudged the Egyptian military to topple Morsi after the Arab Spring brough an Islamist to power? Democracy until whoever we dislike is elected by the people.

It was the Western powers messing around with Mossadegh's democratically-elected regime in Iran that led to its fall and later down the line, the rise of the Shia-extremist Iran.

You westerners are so full of hubris. You don't know how to leave well-enough alone.

>Solar energy is cheaper and it doesn't need to be trucked around on ships, threatening insanely expensive disasters.

That's none of your business either. No western country is accelerating the renewable transition. Stay out of the way of those doing it, and don't pontificate to those providing energy for civilization now.

>... and instead funding them in Western countries, yeah. Saudi funded madrasa schools or imams funded by oilsheik countries are a massive problem, although I admit a part of that is our fault as well for not running theology studies in our universities for Islam (unlike for Christian denominations).

That's a YOU problem! Western governments hold a monopoly of violence within their own borders. You can simply shut down Islamist mosques. If you refuse, you implicitly permit their activities. There's a reason why extreme preachers are imprisoned/executed in the Arab Gulf, but they find an audience in the West. You allowed it; it's a you problem.

>Well, Hamas is strongly supported by Qatar and Iran.

And Israel too, right? Are we going to gloss over that? That these fighters are mostly orphans, whose parents and grandparents where marched out of their homes at gunpoint and had their homes stolen?

>Well, Hamas is strongly supported by Qatar and Iran.

You're still making these mistakes now, like the ongoing genocide in Gaza. You don't get to pontificate or preach. You don't have the moral capital. No one takes the West's moral posturing serious. The only people who do are developing countries paying lip service so they can get aid handouts. No one cares. Pack it up.

Likewise, if you legally purchase double-digit percentages of Indian, Chinese, Brit, Australian land, it doesn't give you the moral or legal precedent to expel the natives from the rest of their land and declare it your state.

So, being attacked and nearly killed by other white boys does not validate his opinions on apartheid.

All the third-world countries that have had their debts to China blow out of control have been able to renegotiate.

>Countries near China's borders have turned strongly against their neighbor. The US has built a widespread network of alliances around that.

I'm not upholding China as a moral actor. They're as utilitarian as anyone else, but they're honest about it, that's all.

Western countries preach about morals, human rights, rules-based order, and all kinds of bullshit but always seem to violate their acclaimed principles every Wednesday.

China sells weapons to everyone who has money, works with all kinds of regimes, and generally have a non-interventionist policy. That's why smaller countries tend to prefer partnering with them. They're not your fairy godmother, but at least they're honest about what they want.

This is just a rogue state going mask-off.

Imagine if China or Russia even suggested the same willingness during a press conversation, let alone making a law to that effect.

I actually don't mind tyranny on some level if I can't do anything against them. it just feels good having the mask of righteousness & honor fall off so that the world can see the ugly, unvarnished, hypocritical beast under the makeup.