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Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#181

Post by IslaDeEncanta »

koolba wrote: post #178
maxxxxx wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's easy to say for someone with a good income. For a lot of people wages go down while cost of living goes up.

> That's easy to say for someone with a good income. For a lot of people wages go down while cost of living goes up. Bullshit. Technology brings down the cost of living by making the supply side more efficient. What goes up is the cost of the way you'd like to live as you have more options to choose from. Obviously there's disruptions along the way (ex: automobiles lessen demand for horse breeders) but when capitalis…

You have no idea if you think technology magically brings down prices. Tell that to the 100 million people living in/near poverty in the USA alone.

The "efficiency" increases in recent years have more often than not been various ways of cutting labor costs. It doesn't matter if things are cheaper in a nominal sense if your ability to earn a living is eroded.

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#182

Post by AdamFernandez »

thowar2 wrote: post #34

Education should be on this list. The root of all these problems stem from a lack of effective education. 1) The current methods are highly ineffective for teaching By getting more effective at teaching children, and helping them to self educate, we get better informed citizens who can interpret news more accurately and effectively participate in democracy. 2) The current goals for education do not align with current…

Education is a great long-term solution, but we need a PSA/Marketing solution for rational thought today. Similar to the TRUTH anti-tobacco campaign. Make it 'cool' to use logic and base your decisions on rational thought. I'm not advocating any particular policy issues, but a lot of problems can arise if people can't tell the difference between real and fake news, and don't bother to. They don't bother because thinking rationally is not something we encourage.

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#183

Post by koolba »

IslaDeEncanta wrote: post #181
koolba wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's easy to say for someone with a good income. For a lot of people wages go down while cost of living goes up. Bullshit. Technology brings down the cost of living by making the supply side more efficient. What goes up is the cost of the way you'd like to live as you have more options to choose from. Obviously there's disruptions along the way (ex: automobiles lessen demand for horse breeders) but when capitalis…

You have no idea if you think technology magically brings down prices. Tell that to the 100 million people living in/near poverty in the USA alone. The "efficiency" increases in recent years have more often than not been various ways of cutting labor costs. It doesn't matter if things are cheaper in a nominal sense if your ability to earn a living is eroded.

> You have no idea if you think technology magically brings down prices. Tell that to the 100 million people living in/near poverty in the USA alone.

I suggest you go do some basic math on the cost of producing consumer staples like rice, beans, milk, and meat. Technology has brought down the cost of all of them.

Similarly, efficiency gains in MPG and durability improvements have lowered the price of owning and maintaining a vehicle. Uber, Lyft, and other ride sharing apps have lowered the price of it even further to remove the capital outlay.

> The "efficiency" increases in recent years have more often than not been various ways of cutting labor costs.

Which is bad because why exactly? Is the purpose of the corporate sector to produce goods and services or to provide a place for people to go?

> It doesn't matter if things are cheaper in a nominal sense if your ability to earn a living is eroded.

Sure it is. That's the definition of makes things more efficient: being able to be produced more cheaply

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#184

Post by drabiega »

baron816 wrote: post #23

I think an important question to ask with regards to Democracy is "why do people believe the things they believe" or "how do they acquire their political beliefs?" The biggest influencers are likely 1) their family and 2) their friends. Essentially, they come from social interaction. People need a (fun) way to increase the number of real social interactions they have with other people. What's really dangerous right n…

I don't think this is going to be possible until the basic arguments over what information sources are factual is resolved. Over the past decade I've seen the social structures that I grew up bifurcate because discussion between the two sides is basically impossible.

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#185

Post by davidw »

mynameishere wrote: post #163
davidw wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if they listen more to phone calls or letters if you're a donor. And if so, what kind of dollar amount makes your call 'matter'? I'd happily donate $5 to the local Republican congressman if he'd take my calls more seriously.

Five dollars? No. Just search for "[your representative's name] dinner event" and you can find the typical cost of access. For instance, my Rep has required 500 dollar contributions in the past. If you're actually interested, just call up the local party HQ and ask for the next event.

I know that $5 isn't going to get you "real access". It's a token amount so that you can truthfully say you're a donor. My thought was along the lines of "Hi, I'm a donor to XXXX's campaign, and I feel YYYY about ZZZZZ". Make a difference, or not?

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#186

Post by Cleisthenes »

thowar2 wrote: post #34

Education should be on this list. The root of all these problems stem from a lack of effective education. 1) The current methods are highly ineffective for teaching By getting more effective at teaching children, and helping them to self educate, we get better informed citizens who can interpret news more accurately and effectively participate in democracy. 2) The current goals for education do not align with current…

Using public education for any form of job training is one of the gravest mistakes that has put us in the current position.

The reason for public education is to have an informed citizenry able to participate fully in society. Using it as job training is just corporate welfare, that is using tax money to pay for something businesses should do themselves.

There is often overlap in the skills needed in an informed citizenry and employees (e.g. reading, computer skills, etc.), but not always.

Trying to chase what business or the marketplace wants is a fools journey that create citizens poorly prepared to be fully empowered citizens with a solid understanding of the world.

I suspect entrepreneurial skills would be well covered by this approach as it should emphasis skills of leadership, self-reliance, consensus, and creative thinking.

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#187

Post by [deleted] »

thowar2 wrote: post #34

Education should be on this list. The root of all these problems stem from a lack of effective education. 1) The current methods are highly ineffective for teaching By getting more effective at teaching children, and helping them to self educate, we get better informed citizens who can interpret news more accurately and effectively participate in democracy. 2) The current goals for education do not align with current…

[deleted]

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#188

Post by PaulHoule »

sudosteph wrote: post #153
PaulHoule wrote: post #4

If you're concerned about jobs and democracy, open an office in a swing state. The way the us electoral system is organized, every young educated person who moves from the heartland to California is a vote for Trump. Alternately find some way to get uneducated heartlanders to move to Fresno or something. Also it would help if you show just the smallest amount of empathy people in the U.S. who don't live in one of two…

Your wording could have used some improvement, but I think you're onto something about the regional concentration of influence and money being a negative thing for the well-being of the nation. We need to stop writing off states that aren't progressive enough as places unworthy of investment or business. Part of the problem is that "founder culture" isn't big in smaller cities away from the west coast. Some time and…

It is more exit culture than founders culture. SV may not be the best place for a company with less than $500k in funding (say you want to start Twitter) but it probably is the best place if you need to scale up fast and seek progressively larger rounds or get acquired by a big player.

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#190

Post by gizmo »

dandare wrote: post #179

I have a very specific idea on how to improve democracy. Make all public spending easy to search. Let me elaborate: Via direct and indirect taxes democratic governments take and redistribute between 30% and 50% of our income[1]. Yet we usually have no idea how exactly is it the money spent. This has two effects: 1) many disenfranchised people think state spending is somehow secret therefore "all politicians steel" an…

I support transparency in government spending, especially financial information in a standardized format. However, I don't share your optimism regular people will be able to make sense of this data.

Just take the financials for public companies for example. Because all public companies report their financials in GAAP formats you'd think that therefore it would be easy to look at a company's balance sheet and cash flow statement to figure out what's really going on, right? Except it isn't. Despite standardized accounting rules and a standardized reporting format it's still very difficult to tell what's really going on behind the numbers. With the stock market there is a huge incentive for analysts to figure out what the numbers represent, for obvious reasons. And yet, more often than not, analysts get it totally wrong. There won't be similar army of analysts for public spending disclosures, just a couple of dedicated individuals, think tanks, and PhD students.

I still support full financial transparency for the public sector, but I don't think it will have a huge impact because numbers by themselves say very little.

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