YC's request for startups: Government 2.0 • Hacker News Board

Re: YC's request for startups: Government 2.0

#81

Post by Kalium » Thu, May 23, 2019, 6:17 PM UTC

lumens wrote: post #71

Kalium wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be sure I understand you clearly, are you making the claim that making sure people don't forget or lose track of court dates will help literally nobody avoid going to jail?

People for whom forgetfulness is the reason they'd miss a court date are likely solve their problem with a normal calendar reminder. Literally nobody is probably close to accurate.

One of the things I've learned is that a non-trivial number of people never acquired what some might consider basic life skills. Like keeping track of upcoming future events or adhering to a schedule.

For all the important systemic problems that parent rights points to as very important, most of them have also proven to be rather intractable. Helping a few people whose major problem is that they never learned how to schedule strikes me as much more tractable.

Sometimes helping people means having to choose between a minor-but-addressable aspect of a large problem and a major-but-intractable one. Just because someone thinks they've found somewhere small where they can make a difference doesn't mean they have earned scorn for not being intimidated by poverty and hopelessness.

Small changes can add up. They certainly do a lot more than giving in to despair.

Re: YC's request for startups: Government 2.0

#82

Post by 0xDEFC0DE » Thu, May 23, 2019, 6:18 PM UTC

Note that none of those startups are currently tackling stagnant wages directly, which is really what would fix a lot of the other problems listed here.

I've worked for a company that paid millions for a contract and software that ultimately wasn't used. There was tons of corporate waste that could be solved by simple internal CRUD apps and a little user training, purchases that weren't used much (if at all), projects that were bad from the start, and apathetic leadership with a comfy golden parachute.

But why would I make a startup that encourages companies to pay their employees more? Or fire bad leadership and bad employees? Or stop making dumbass purchases? Or stop giving out golden parachutes and force leadership to actually have skin in the game?

No business would hire that startup.

Re: YC's request for startups: Government 2.0

#83

Post by nabnob » Thu, May 23, 2019, 6:19 PM UTC

pcmaffey wrote: post #66

nabnob wrote: post #28

The solution to income inequality is not going to come from venture capitalists and private companies. I have an idea for a non-profit that tackles a systemic problem, but I can't help but look at some of the other yc grads and think that their companies seem hopelessly out of touch with the problems they're trying to tackle. Promise is mentioned as "tackling mass incarceration", but their company seems geared more t…

You think YC/VC's are searching for a solution to income inequality? Check @pg's twitter feed... The government is already stricken with profit-seekers extracting value from the public. SV wants its piece too. And it will, if it can make VC money out-impact the status quo of entrenched lobby money.

I agree with you, I’m just hoping other people see it.

Re: YC's request for startups: Government 2.0

#84

Post by blang » Thu, May 23, 2019, 6:20 PM UTC

mwseibel wrote: post #54

nabnob wrote: post #28

The solution to income inequality is not going to come from venture capitalists and private companies. I have an idea for a non-profit that tackles a systemic problem, but I can't help but look at some of the other yc grads and think that their companies seem hopelessly out of touch with the problems they're trying to tackle. Promise is mentioned as "tackling mass incarceration", but their company seems geared more t…

I honestly disagree. There are many people in jail now pre-trial because the government is worried that they won't appear for trial. As a result these people often lose their jobs and their housing -- even if it turns out they are not guilty. Better software and technology can help address this problem.

Or we can change bail laws as they exist now:

https://whyy.org/articles/n-j-officials-have-finally-release...

>Yet new data shows only modest increases in two of the main measurements of success since 2017.

In that year, 26.9 percent of defendants released from jail before their trials were charged with a new crime — either an indictable offense or a disorderly persons charge. That number increased from 24.2 percent in 2014.

Some 89.4 percent of defendants appeared for their court dates in 2017, down from 92.7 who showed up in 2014. Analysts cautioned that “small changes in outcome measures should be interpreted with caution and likely do not represent meaningful differences.”

Re: YC's request for startups: Government 2.0

#85

Post by Jun8 » Thu, May 23, 2019, 6:23 PM UTC

nabnob wrote: post #28

The solution to income inequality is not going to come from venture capitalists and private companies. I have an idea for a non-profit that tackles a systemic problem, but I can't help but look at some of the other yc grads and think that their companies seem hopelessly out of touch with the problems they're trying to tackle. Promise is mentioned as "tackling mass incarceration", but their company seems geared more t…

You're absolutely correct that good approaches to social problems (don't want to use the term "solution" which is ill-suited, I think) will not come from VCs: It will come from naive entrepreneurs, naive in the sense that they don't quite appreciate the problem they are tackling, because if they do they would never take it on. A simple fact I learned in volunteering that's applicable here, too, is that in tackling these issues money is not the bottleneck, it's finding people who want to be involved. If you have a good idea in this space it's not hard to secure money from many different foundations and sponsors.

You have focused on a single idea to criticize. It's true that some who venture in this space may be young, privileged, out of touch, etc. I don't think this negates the approach.

Many times what happens with non-profits is that they start great with founders' motivation but have a tough time turning that into a sustained operation.

Re: YC's request for startups: Government 2.0

#86

Post by SRasch » Thu, May 23, 2019, 6:23 PM UTC

nabnob wrote: post #28

The solution to income inequality is not going to come from venture capitalists and private companies. I have an idea for a non-profit that tackles a systemic problem, but I can't help but look at some of the other yc grads and think that their companies seem hopelessly out of touch with the problems they're trying to tackle. Promise is mentioned as "tackling mass incarceration", but their company seems geared more t…

I think you're making a category error by thinking of companies and countries as completely different.

In the global world countries can be seen as sort of quasi-companies that happen to have monopoly control on a particular area (a monopoly that is slowly dissolving with the internet) + force.

There are many ways a company can help solve problems that we tend to think of as government problems. 1. Government also buys services. 2. Startups can fix the services government does badly as an additive product, e.g. Gusto or TurboTax. 3. Startups can solve government problems directly, e.g. Fedex vs USPS.

The only real difference between the two entities is the power of force that government can apply to make you people their services. Which is sometimes useful, but doesn't make voluntary efforts at solving the same problems a bad thing. It is also not in competition. Whenever I see these arguments being made I see people who would rather limit their work on these problems to voting once a year, instead of actually trying to solve the problems themselves.

Re: YC's request for startups: Government 2.0

#87

Post by jon-wood » Thu, May 23, 2019, 6:24 PM UTC

bytematic wrote: post #6

gioele wrote: post #4

If anybody is planning anything that combines laws, versioning/revision control and public access to legal resources, please get in touch with me. I have quite a bit of experience in that field that I'll be happy to share thoughts and talk shop.

I have been dreaming about a government system of laws that uses open source version control with a github-like ui, maybe even a constitution. If I had my own country, that's how I would do it.

I have hunch that with the right NLP you could probably do this, at least in the UK. Every now and then I've looked at proposed alterations to acts of parliament and they've mostly been in a format like "In section 3a, paragaph 4, replace 'carrying a maximum sentence of 3 years' with 'carrying a maximum sentence of 5 years, and a sign in the town square telling everyone you're a bad person'".

Re: YC's request for startups: Government 2.0

#88

Post by adpirz » Thu, May 23, 2019, 6:25 PM UTC

I'm on board with this. This sounds like creating products / software that basically make public ops much better.

As someone with a background in education, this is what I wish more edtech startups focused on. Yes, instruction is core, but so much of what's failing in today's schools is bad ops -- hiring, sourcing, maintenance, managing student data, etc. It's also all based on many legacy public systems.

Re: YC's request for startups: Government 2.0

#89

Post by nabnob » Thu, May 23, 2019, 6:26 PM UTC

Kalium wrote: post #52

nabnob wrote: post #28

The solution to income inequality is not going to come from venture capitalists and private companies. I have an idea for a non-profit that tackles a systemic problem, but I can't help but look at some of the other yc grads and think that their companies seem hopelessly out of touch with the problems they're trying to tackle. Promise is mentioned as "tackling mass incarceration", but their company seems geared more t…

To be sure I understand you clearly, are you making the claim that making sure people don't forget or lose track of court dates will help literally nobody avoid going to jail?

I'm not denying that it might help people, it just seems like a half-assed bandaid solution given the breadth of the problem.

Re: YC's request for startups: Government 2.0

#90

Post by jakelazaroff » Thu, May 23, 2019, 6:28 PM UTC

Kalium wrote: post #52

nabnob wrote: post #28

The solution to income inequality is not going to come from venture capitalists and private companies. I have an idea for a non-profit that tackles a systemic problem, but I can't help but look at some of the other yc grads and think that their companies seem hopelessly out of touch with the problems they're trying to tackle. Promise is mentioned as "tackling mass incarceration", but their company seems geared more t…

To be sure I understand you clearly, are you making the claim that making sure people don't forget or lose track of court dates will help literally nobody avoid going to jail?

Of course not. The claim is that even though it might help people, it does nothing to fix the systemic issue, which is that we jail way too many people. The U.S. has less than 5% of the world's people, but almost 25% of the world's prison population [1].

The question is what happens when we try to radically reduce the number of people we send to prison. Is there still space for Promise to make the new justice system more efficient? Do they pivot? Do they scale down? Do they disband entirely?

Or do they end up opposing efforts that would solve the root problem?

I'm sure they have noble intentions. But a lot of these problems are not things that you can make money by fixing. They require laws and policy changes. Not band-aids on top of an inherently broken system from companies that are unaccountable to the citizens they're ostensibly helping.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/04/...