Eh, I’ve seen both. It doesn’t really matter here, right?
True, but one is a much close proxy for time-spent-thinking-about-it and real-world-feedback-obtained than the other.
Most opex is someone else’s capex, and capex depreciation is sort of opex.
Also true, but if you’re starting from an assumption that something is infeasible because its total cost is high, and capex is the biggest but not overwhelmingly the biggest component of that, then dramatically reducing the price of the non-capex component reduces the problem from “This makes no economic sense whatsoever, and it isn’t something our industry can fix on its own anyway,” to “Anyone who manages to get capex way down can disrupt this.” It’s removing a systemic constraint on the value and usefulness of other innovations.
True, but one is a much close proxy for time-spent-thinking-about-it and real-world-feedback-obtained than the other.
Also true, but if you’re starting from an assumption that something is infeasible because its total cost is high, and capex is the biggest but not overwhelmingly the biggest component of that, then dramatically reducing the price of the non-capex component reduces the problem from “This makes no economic sense whatsoever, and it isn’t something our industry can fix on its own anyway,” to “Anyone who manages to get capex way down can disrupt this.” It’s removing a systemic constraint on the value and usefulness of other innovations.