[ExI] it won't work, but i have a better idea

[Adrian Tymes]

On Sun, Oct 12, 2025 at 10:58 AM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
> Subject: Re: [ExI] it won't work, but i have a better idea
>
> On Sun, Oct 12, 2025 at 10:15 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >>... OK.  Now I REALLY sense a market here.  Time and money, put em together and they produce MORE money.  It is what capitalism is all about.
>
> >...Yes, and China sensed this market decades ago.  That's why they went on to establish the near-monopoly they have today.  Without starting with a lot of money, any solution you produce, they can simply undersell you, leaving your solution with not enough income to sustain operations...
>
> Well there ya go.  If they do, then we get the dysprosium.  Alls we need to do is create a factory and the Chinese will turn loose of it.  So here's the deal: sell short on dysprosium metal, start your factory, you win either way.

No, you lose money with just that strategy.  The factory costs money
you won't recover, *and* you can't recover enough profit from short
selling rare earths (they don't need to undersell you by that much).

> >>... Complicated factories, those are words that cause engineers to get turned on...
>
> >...Finding ladies who like e.g. Minecraft is a bit of a challenge, yes.
>
> >...My wife is playing Minecraft in the other room as I type this email.
> I love her...
>
> Adrian, does she have any sisters at home?  My son is single.

All of her siblings are older and significantly less technically savvy than her.

> Or really Adrian... how damn hard can it be to extract an element from ore?

I believe there has already been knowledgeable commentary in this
thread on this particular ore's extraction difficulties, so I will
defer to that commentary.

> I refuse to accept the notion that the Chinese are the only ones who can do this, or even that no rare earth facilities can ever compete.

Again, you confuse "can ever" for "can right now with the resources
currently at hand (or what can be achieved in the very near term)".
The problem is not absolutes, but rather economic.  It's kind of like
how people keep confusing "the amount of oil that is profitable to
extract at current prices" with "the amount of oil that can ever be
extracted".

You've read that nuclear thermal spaceplane report I've talked about,
which finally got published a couple weeks ago, right?  (I think I
mentioned that it finally cleared export control, and so got published
on http://cubecab.com/ .)  Refer again to that report's definitions
section, specifically the part up front where it defines "impossible".
That bit somewhat applies to this discussion too.