This factory that Tesla is building is truly impressive. And the logic behind trying to make good use of economies of scale, is also sound.

The point that is often missed here, though, is that this presupposes an important property of the system in which you are operating in, which in this case, is of course the very beginning assumption of mass production for mass consumption. Efficiency, in that regard, becomes quite narrowly focused on only a few aspects of the process of making things; as in only the factors of cost that apply to a commercial entity, in getting a thing made, and then getting it to a market to be sold. At which point, in the original model, other process providers take up the task of getting a consumer to purchase, to thus recirculate the capital.

The other point that is often missed here is so obvious that it becomes almost impossible to see, especially for those who relish swimming with the sharks, for the love of money; unless, of course, you happen to be blessed/cursed as one of the most oddly formed people you have ever hear of, who just wasn't built to stand the thought of such immersion.

Be that as it may be, however, the missed point is an obvious fact already illustrated quite plainly when Tesla Motors stock began fluctuating so wildly, only a few weeks ago, in fact, on the mercurial behavior of an, undoubtedly, very creative, though also no doubt, quite complicated person. When only a few weeks before that, most analysts were poo pooing the idea of anyone even thinking of selling Tesla short.

This is important, though, beyond the crazy casino that the stock market is. This is so because of how the entrepreneurs always seem to forget that the consumer now is already stretched so thin, on what they can afford, discretionary spending wise, that even hints of recession increasingly mean they start holding back on their purchases; and all on the very reasonable fear that layoffs are sure to soon be coming. And this on top of the already now prominent fears of some extreme weather related event doing them costly harm, if it hasn't already, as well.

All to say, at the end of the day, that depending on a consumer, steeped in the increasing roil of chaotic events occurring, to keep spending as you desire, is like depending on islands build at sea with nothing more than sand, now that the sea levels are already rising.

That being said, what kind of real longevity, or dependability, do these, even well intentioned, entrepreneurs, expect here in the sense of reliable demand, to service the capital requirements of centralized processes so vast? And how ready for change really, in any case, can such large facilities be, when changing circumstances might require completely new kinds of things to be made (as in let's just fill the space with endless rows of servers for the cloud stuff that can return profits just as fast as the servers can be made to operate; or as in desperation makes us start growing food inside them instead)?

And perhaps again, and maybe most importantly, how can you have something that might become quite critical for hoards of other systems, be so not fault tolerant? At least as far as all of the dependants are concerned, whose subsequent failure, because of the loss of one critical, very large, point source, then creates a terrible, cascade event, that ripples out with ever increasing, catastrophic failures.

This is where my bias as a database guy comes in. Also fueled by the fact that I was there when the thinking about computing went from the very big mainframe behemoths that IBM used to make, to the desktop revolution that first taught us the value of "distributed processing."

In databases, my experience taught me that going as granular as possible was always the best bet, and by that I mean creating table structures with as few indexes as possible. More tables, and less indexes, though can be a real bitch for the T-SQL programmer; which is why I had to get as creative as I could, early on, to set things up so that the T-SQL could be created dynamically; trying to find clever ways to logically accommodate change contingencies, in the code creation algorithms. That way you could create union queries no matter how many tables, changing requirements, make you have to add to all of the joins that the user, or established business logic might require, while also inserting, dynamically, the needed filtering criteria, for each join.

It turns out, however, that you actually don't want only "distributed processing," in your attempt for as much self sufficiency as you can get. No, it is actually better to use various hybrid combinations of distributed, with both granularity, and some regional, medium sized centralizations; all dependent on the regions, and their individual characteristics, and the effect that might have on local requirements.

The bottom line here is not that Mr. Musk will live or die by the Gigafactory, but that his Giga efforts are, first and foremost, dependant on markets that will be forced to start factoring in ever more elements of the chaos that too much instability, pumped into too many, interdependent systems, has wrought, and from which has lead us to the hot house environment we see in all of our major complex systems now, creating ever more complex turbulenc; in both natural, and social/economic systems.

If Mr. Musk thinks investors are twitchy now, just wait six months to a year and a half from now, when it won't be just them, it will be the entire world ready to twitch into spasms of brute reaction that may cause us to look back on these times with envy.

The reference article quick list:

1:TESLA WILL LIVE AND DIE BY THE GIGAFACTORY

2:WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A FACTORY TOWN LOSES ITS FACTORY

3:How did Microsoft just overtake Apple as the world's most valuable company?

4:Microsoft has better fundamentals, but buy Apple, says Heartland Financial CIO

5:An Amazon revolt could be brewing as the tech giant exerts more control over brands

TESLA WILL LIVE AND DIE BY THE GIGAFACTORY

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A FACTORY TOWN LOSES ITS FACTORY

How did Microsoft just overtake Apple as the world's most valuable company?

Microsoft has better fundamentals, but buy Apple, says Heartland Financial CIO

[Reference Note: So far, we've been talking about the possibility of entrepreneurs of "Big" who are ostensibly well intended. Obviously, there is also the possibility that they are not so well intended, at least as far as the hopes, aspirations, and needs, of the rest of us are concerned. J.V.]