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The Refragmentation

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Refragmentation

#41

Post by visakanv »

sfk wrote: post #35
rpgmaker wrote: post #24

Disappointing article filled with pseudo historian rubbish.

It's an essay, not a comprehensive treatise that might fill 1000 pages. I was glad to see some of the old pg back. His startup essays tended to be bit artificial, as if he had to force himself to write them.

> His startup essays tended to be bit artificial, as if he had to force himself to write them.

He was basically doing content marketing for YCombinator, which is understandable and probably served him/them well. But this is probably the sort of thing he's actually more interested in writing.

Re: The Refragmentation

#42

Post by wbl »

I think this essay ignores the impact of the Civil Rights Movement and feminism in undermining the 1950s. The world of the 1950's wasn't one where women could work, despite that having been the case since the 1920's. It was also the world in which Brown v. Board of Ed. lead to federal troops being deployed in the south to safeguard the rights of citizens, and ultimately lead to the Freedom Summer which radicalized a lot of New Leftists. So perhaps the 1950's was a world based on certain kinds of exclusions, that once removed, broke down.

Re: The Refragmentation

#43

Post by bhuga »

Interesting piece. It will take some time to digest.

I wonder about the arrow of causation for conformity back in the 40's. This essay describes WWII as a spark of a generation of conformity (preceded by the New Deal for some). But it's really hard to imagine modern society signing on to a world war. What's to stop parents afraid of vaccinations from taking their draft-age children to New Zealand?

Was there something else that was already more conformist? Or was there another proximate cause, maybe even one as simple as a perceived global threat (communism, fascism) combined with a lack of individual physical mobility?

The essay is good and makes a strong point in and of itself, but I wonder if there's other variables it (and I) are missing.

If pg is reading, one piece of concrete feedback:

> the LBO wave?

LBO wasn't defined in the text previously and I had to google it (it's leveraged buy-out).

Re: The Refragmentation

#44

Post by frik »

On the one side we have very huge corporations that have a (near) monopoly on a sector (big, small or niche). On the other side we have many small players "fighting" [not the best word] for the remaining niches ...the rest. And they dream to be the next big player by betting on a raising sector (new technology) and sometimes disrupt old players that are too slow to adapt. Or they fix it with cash. Absolute monopoly is often bad (for everyone except a few (shareholders)), so anything else (fragmention) is better.

Re: The Refragmentation

#46

Post by csense »

Interesting to see that PG agrees with something I've been saying here for a long time, about the role of globalization in economic inequality [1] [2] [3].

Of course I grew up in the Rust Belt, where the average person used to be able to make a good living with a high school education in the steel or automotive industry, but now most of the factories are idle, rusting eye-sores, most of the ambitious, talented kids want to go somewhere else -- anywhere else -- and the closest thing to a growth industry is health care for the folks who earned a good retirement during the glory days and are starting to get old.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9868017

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9560872

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7152378

Re: The Refragmentation

#47

Post by jacquesm »

golergka wrote: post #36
rsync wrote: post #3

"Obviously the spread of computing power was a precondition for the rise of startups." If you live in San Francisco (or are visiting) you can visit the USS Pampanito - a retired WWII submarine.[1] One thing I think you will notice is the manufacturers plaques attached to every little piece of equipment in the submarine ... every one of them the plaque of some tiny little supplier that you have never heard of . Some l…

That seems to be just small businesseses, not startups. Startups either go Facebook or go bust, they're not created to stay stable at small scale.

> Startups either go Facebook or go bust, they're not created to stay stable at small scale.

Nonsense. Plenty of companies start out as small companies and suddenly find themselves on the upwards slope of a hockey stick, others start out as aiming for that hockey stick and end up being 'just' sustainable businesses.

This whole start-up naming thing denies 125 years of objective reality. You can't start a scalable company deliberately any more than you can reliable write an evergreen book. Time will tell what you've got, not your label of it.

Re: The Refragmentation

#48

Post by paulpauper »

Small observation: why title the file re.html? Why not just spell fragmentation? Is there a reason to do it this way? Why .html? Doesn't that make it hard to update all the pages at once such as menus and footers? The design is very minimalist, but it's effective.

We're definitely in a winner-take-all economy, whether it's real estate, stocks, the dominance of companies like Google, amazon, and amazon, or web 2.0 valuations.

Re: The Refragmentation

#49

Post by beagle3 »

harryh wrote: post #40
sce wrote: post #32

Regarding income inequality, I recommend listening to some of the speeches/debates with Bernie Sanders. E.g. he argues that the greatest receiver of welfare in the US is the wal-Mart family, because they get even richer paying their workers so little that the workers have to live on welfare. (In other words the welfare is "paying" the workers so that Wal-Mart don't have to.) He proposes to rise the minimum wage. http…

This assumes an obligation on Wal-Mart's part to pay people according to their need. In a market economy, people are paid according to their ability.

But welfare payments are paid according to need.

My understanding on Sanders' statement is that it could be paraphrased: "If walmart employes didn't get state welfare, waltons wouldn't be as rich, because they would have to pay more (employees who can't afford food and shelter can't work for you) ... ergo, walmart employees are, at the moment, practically, a conduit of welfare from the state to the waltons".

(That is how I understand his statement -- I don't agree or disagree, I don't know the details well enough to do either)

Re: The Refragmentation

#50

Post by csours »

csense wrote: post #46

Interesting to see that PG agrees with something I've been saying here for a long time, about the role of globalization in economic inequality [1] [2] [3]. Of course I grew up in the Rust Belt, where the average person used to be able to make a good living with a high school education in the steel or automotive industry, but now most of the factories are idle, rusting eye-sores, most of the ambitious, talented kids w…

I read a comment once that the steel industry collapsed in the US because they failed to innovate or continuously improve (much like the Big 3 automotive companies).

Do you know of any concrete examples of this? or books about how US Steel lost?

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