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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

#221

Post by ryandrake »

FrancoDiaz wrote: post #150
maxxxxx wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably of Graham's worst essays. Nobody is talking about removing all rewards. The question is how much reward is needed. Did CEOs do a worse job when they made 20 times the average worker income or would Zuckerberg do anything differently if he had made $500 million instead of 20 billion? What was his risk? Wasting a few years of his life? Plenty of small business owners go under after years of work and hav…

the question is how much reward is needed Who decides that?

Congress? Someone should. Society has decided that a greater good is promoted when someone decides on a minimum wage. Why can't someone decide on a maximum wage?

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

#222

Post by _m8fo »

koolba wrote: post #183
IslaDeEncanta wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 maint…

You make fair points, however the cost of living is dictated primarily by: transportation, education, housing and health costs. Has technology made these significantly cheaper for someone in poverty?

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

#223

Post by lieut_data »

conanbatt wrote: post #194
DougN7 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've rewritten my comment three times so far ... My wife and I are fortunate enough that she can be a stay at home mom. I grew up the same way. Were middle class, though increasingly probably slightly mid to upper these days. We don't need the babysitter, and want our kids to be educated, so that is the focus. We help them with homework, etc. We're lucky. So from my perspective, having both parents working is the roo…

Babysitting a single child is economically very inefficient. Its something teenage girls can do while they watch tv. A full grown adult with skills is worth considerably more to society working than babysitting. Its not an economic necessity that both parents work, the incentive to do it is extremely large and probably pure conservatism had been keeping it at bay, if at all.

Society underestimates the long-term economic value of a child raised by a full-time, invested parent. Parenting and babysitting are apples and oranges.

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

#224

Post by Neliquat »

AdamFernandez wrote: post #182
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 think…

TRUTH make me, quit for 10 years now, want to light up. That kind of half-truth fearmongering to kids is the posterchild of ineffectiveness. Moreover is sows distrust of the very channels to use to provide valuable public info. Calling it 'truth' was just the hypocritical icing on the cake.

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

#225

Post by bradyo »

rwhitman wrote: post #203

Are there any resources out there for tech folks that might be interested in working full-time for a non-profit, backed by YC or not? I have a strong interest in these areas but not really in the zone for building a team to apply for YC. Increasingly interested in a career pivot towards working with an organization in these areas however. Where should I look?

Look at companies the fast forward accelerator features on their website (mobile or would link otherwise).

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

#226

Post by dukeluke »

pklausler wrote: post #202

Democracy in the US sounds like a great idea. Republicans have won exactly one of the past 7 Presidential elections (viz. 2004) but took power in two more thanks to the Electoral College.

The electoral college was designed so the highly populated states don't have too much leverage over the rest of the country, and worked as was intended. There are many areas of the country seeing a declining quality of life, and those areas happened to vote for the candidate who spoke of economic issues more.

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

#227

Post by basch »

germinalphrase wrote: post #157
basch wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education and News are two sides of the same coin. At some point the majority of the adult population makes the decision to learn about the world from entertainment companies. We should reanalyze what news and continuing education mean, relative to each other. https://theconversation.com/ and http://www.worldcrunch.com/ make good starts, as do aggregators like http://www.aldaily.com/ and https://redef.com/ As far as…

As a teacher, I would kill for a collaborative curriculum and assessment tool. A "backend" service for creating, managing, and personalizing curriculum materials would go a long way to mitigate the absolutely astounding amount of redundant labor that goes on in schools ( you're really creating a comprehension quiz for To Kill a Mockingbird from scratch? ). Contrary to popular belief - even here on HN - teachers are c…

dont you think at some point the optimul remix of Roman History 101 University lecture clips, might exist, and then it becomes a process improvement task to make it a little better all the time, rather than constanly recreating a nearly similar lecture for each school.

I really believe forking is important. People might disagree with concensus and have a better way to do things that is looked down upon by the mass. One curriculum for all sounds like every egg in one basket.

(i decided i like optimul better than optimal)

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

#228

Post by Analemma_ »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #218
shawn-furyan wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This actual analysis from The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which uses long running public (easily accessible) data from the Census Bureau, the BDS report[1], suggests that income inequality hurts startup creation rather than helping it. Note: The specific relationship that they find is that startup creation is associated with home prices. This makes sense in the US, as home prices are a good proxy for middl…

The specific relationship that they find is that startup creation is associated with home prices. This makes sense in the US, as home prices are a good proxy for middle class wealth. Here's a quick not fully vetted interpretation of this finding: When the middle class is relatively rich, they start businesses. When it is relatively poor, they don't. The aspirational income inequality that Graham posits doesn't immedi…

A couple things you should do, if you want to have better discussions:

First, you should stop quoting pg's essays as though they were infallible sources of truth. It's not helping your argument. I like some of his essays; others are misleading or dead wrong (for example: http://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm). Empirical evidence always beats philosophical pondering; shawn-furyan provided data that pg was wrong, and you did nothing but post another data-free essay.

Second, you should stop assuming your ideological opponents are idiots who don't understand simple concepts like growth of wealth. We do; of course it is possible to "grow the pie". But since the 1970's, the majority of GDP growth has translated to income gains only for the top decile. And in such a regime, why should everyone else bother to grow the pie? What income inequality has done is create people who make a rational, and perfectly valid, calculation that "growth" is pointless and not worth fighting for, since they won't see any of it.

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

#230

Post by koolba »

_m8fo wrote: post #222
koolba wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 maint…

You make fair points, however the cost of living is dictated primarily by: transportation, education, housing and health costs. Has technology made these significantly cheaper for someone in poverty?

> You make fair points, however the cost of living is dictated primarily by: transportation, education, housing and health costs. Has technology made these significantly cheaper for someone in poverty?

I specifically cite transportation costs in my prior comment. Housing is also cheap if you don't live in (expensive) cities. There's an abundance of housing in the suburbs and if you're willing to share a place with others (like everybody seems to take for granted in the city) it's insanely cheap.

Education and health are interesting beasts. On the one hand technology has brought the cost of education to near zero through remote learning and internet courses. There's more knowledge available at a person's fingertips than at any point in history and the cost is cheaper than ever. The cost of a formal higher education has gone up but I don't think that's driven by technology. It's from the availability of "easy money" for student loans. Healthcare (in the USA) is uniformly fucked and needs to be scrapped and rebuilt though government programs like Medicaid do cover the people your describe (poverty line).

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