Marc Andreessen: “Take the Ego Out of Ideas”

I've seen him moderate people because they're posting too much "anti-this or anti-that". Not because of their behavior, but because he didn't like what they were posting.

And this community is aware that dang will do that, so you watch them flag ideas that absolutely have no reason for being moderated.

To be quite frank, I don't really like HN's community, I mostly lurk for the interesting things that get posted, rather than the discussion that comes afterwards.

HN is about backrubbing discussion, I don't know that I'd call it good or quality discussion. That's not to say you don't see good discussion here or there, but in general? no, absolutely not.

"Keeping an unmanned Predator drone in the air for twenty-four hours requires about 168 workers laboring in the background. A larger drone, such as the Global Hawk surveillance drone, needs about 300 people...an F-16 fighter aircraft requires fewer than 100 people for a single mission."

It's well known that the industrial revolution created countless new jobs that were unimaginable at the time, a sentiment echoed in The Second Machine Age by Brynjolfsson. But how do you pick the winners that will bring the most jobs? Some say disruptive innovation, but it still seems like an open question.

It is critical to understand that the super rich are not superhuman, though some may believe they are. They are just lucky. That doesn't mean they aren't entitled to their belongings, but it's bad for everyone to believe that such wealth translates to superiority or to some type of hidden knowledge.

Famous last words!

> If I were smart, I would elevate them to the upper class and remove their current class loyalties.

Until they realize they don't need you, kill you, and take control. See history of the Praetorian Guard. Or KGB.

> Basic income is assumed to mean "just enough income to buy vital products, services, and utilities."

It means a lot of things. Notice I said "expand welfare" because that's a lot easier and clearer than "introduce basic income". Basically financial security is high and will continue to increase, so the question is about solutions to that.

> Commodities don't drive the economy and innovation.

Actually, they kind of do because you have to look at b2b startups and how they really represent most of the interesting companies (and value) being generated by startups these days; if you're innovative and an entrepreneur and all that, odds are high that you might find yourself starting something in the b2b space. You'll be trying to sell to large enterprises that sell stuff like electricity, cell phones, food, etc. Commodities. The commodities that drive the economy.

You know who the biggest ad buyers in the US are? Procter and Gamble. AT&T. Comcast. Verizon. Commodities. And every ad agency is a b2b startup. Not to mention "ad tech".

Enterprise margins/profits are up now because of gains from automation, and they're driving the startup boom (plus an unhealthy amount of free money pumped into the top--instead of bottom which is what I'm proposing). Eventually, that will run out because bottom up consumer demand will drop (and free money will stop). That will cause a crash. Unless measures are introduced to give people money to spend so they can jumpstart the economy from the bottom up.

> Which then, why work? The average joe doesn't care about the same things most HN users do. They'll simply stop producing the labor that serves as the foundation for so many "innovative" and "cool" companies.

You can still get rich with a cool innovative company. But yeah, if you're not doing something interesting, why work? My answer to that is, "You shouldn't, and the cheapest solution to your resulting financial insecurity is for the government to give you money to go buy things."

> Similarly here, crack down on the most obvious, and less intelligent, of the pack and you're just strengthening the sociopath's genome.

Yeah, people have been doing that for generations and are starting to see the problem, therefore looking to the top.