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Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

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Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#31
post #9

Imo Education is overvalued, Capital is under appreciated, And, Because Capital is trapped into networks, that Capital is squandered among an infinite array of companies employing the talent and producing products that don’t make you, or the planet, better, healthier, smarter or happier. (Apple’s SJ era, Google until 2014~ and Tesla fit the useful smarter happier paradigma, and not many other) My solution is: take a…

If I had been given $1 million when I was 22 to build something, the world would have a pretty awesome Honda Civic with a flamethrower on the front, a 40" subwoofer in the hatch, and a dial to change the camber angle of the wheels on the fly.

That doesn’t sound far fetched tho, which would be the main requirement

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#32
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unbelievably childish idea which would be trivial to gamify. You only have to look at the industrialised corruption of public tenders for legitimate needs in Africa for a glimpse of human nature.

While this is just a very basic idea I put out, still, corruption is rampant everywhere anyway. I suspect it would be a net positive to have a ton of Brilliant students getting money for their projects even if half of the money are corrupted away.

You can't satisfy corruption by throwing money at it and hoping it only takes its share. It won't. It will take it all, and then it will find a way to take more besides.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#33
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the US is the major superpower in good part because of Cisco, Bell Labs, Fairchild, Intel, Apple, Lockheed, Google etc.

Are we speaking military expenditure, basic research, or entrepreneurialism? I'm also uncomfortable of this suggested idea about American exceptionalism. We have been bested by foreign competition despite our superior economic resources and liberty. I mean, we had to completely begin shifting gears away from public, politicized development in the launch market when our best option became hitching rides with one of ou…

Even Lockheed (or some other aerospace company) at some point was a risky venture developing far fetched tech, doing basic research

So I’d answer: all of them

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#34
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unbelievably childish idea which would be trivial to gamify. You only have to look at the industrialised corruption of public tenders for legitimate needs in Africa for a glimpse of human nature.

While this is just a very basic idea I put out, still, corruption is rampant everywhere anyway. I suspect it would be a net positive to have a ton of Brilliant students getting money for their projects even if half of the money are corrupted away.

I suspect it another millenial fantasy much like basic income et al

I suspect giving people with no life experience, exposure to failure or real life dynamics will end badly. The single digit number of success stories in limited domains aren't representative of any real meaning

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#35
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is just a very basic idea I put out, still, corruption is rampant everywhere anyway. I suspect it would be a net positive to have a ton of Brilliant students getting money for their projects even if half of the money are corrupted away.

You can't satisfy corruption by throwing money at it and hoping it only takes its share. It won't. It will take it all, and then it will find a way to take more besides.

Well, a lot of the budget of any given government is corrupted away, regardless of what you put that into. But some inevitably goes to what it was meant to address. It won’t take it all, or no one would have any access to healthcare facilities and public transport. But we do.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#36
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is just a very basic idea I put out, still, corruption is rampant everywhere anyway. I suspect it would be a net positive to have a ton of Brilliant students getting money for their projects even if half of the money are corrupted away.

I suspect it another millenial fantasy much like basic income et al I suspect giving people with no life experience, exposure to failure or real life dynamics will end badly. The single digit number of success stories in limited domains aren't representative of any real meaning

Giving people money at minimum redistributes wealth, so it cannot possibly be any worse, than letting wealth concentrate.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#37
post #9

Imo Education is overvalued, Capital is under appreciated, And, Because Capital is trapped into networks, that Capital is squandered among an infinite array of companies employing the talent and producing products that don’t make you, or the planet, better, healthier, smarter or happier. (Apple’s SJ era, Google until 2014~ and Tesla fit the useful smarter happier paradigma, and not many other) My solution is: take a…

If I had been given $1 million when I was 22 to build something, the world would have a pretty awesome Honda Civic with a flamethrower on the front, a 40" subwoofer in the hatch, and a dial to change the camber angle of the wheels on the fly.

What about the wing, though?

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#38
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had been given $1 million when I was 22 to build something, the world would have a pretty awesome Honda Civic with a flamethrower on the front, a 40" subwoofer in the hatch, and a dial to change the camber angle of the wheels on the fly.

That doesn’t sound far fetched tho, which would be the main requirement

What is far fetched in your opinion?

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#39
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Education is overvalued, Capital is under appreciated, In today's world in which capital appears to assume an autonomous form itself, in which every goal of civil society gradually becomes subsumed under it, this statement must be read ironically - there is no other possibility. Capital can only appear underappreciated in a world truly dominated by capital.

There’s way more people complaining about expensive or poor education around the world than lack of growth capital for their far fetched science research / companies So I would deem it to be under appreciated by the general public

Wouldn't that follow from the fact that there are way more people concerned with the state of education (because everyone must be educated) than there are people who have ideas for far fetched science research and companies? Education is viewed (rightly in my opinion) as an intrinsic good. Somebody's far fetched idea for a company isn't.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#40
post #2

How many talented people , in advanced economies, with good technical degrees , do take part in inventing important stuff ? Very few. Educating more kids and having more "ideas" won't change that. We're not lacking ideas. We're lacking the right incentives to make ideas happen.

Everything is a hassle. Building permits, operating licenses, legal compliance, etc. All those things arguably exist for good reasons, but it's a huge hurdle to doing anything useful. I can't have a 20 foot radio tower in town, I can't subdivide smaller than 10 acres outside of town, I can't build any facility out there to operate the experimental tower without building permits, radio licenses, compliance with tracki…

I'm a fan of the chemistry analogy here: you can catalyze (reduce barriers) and you can incentivize (increase rewards). If the incentives point the wrong way, catalyzing won't help. If the barriers are too high, incentivizing won't help.

I strongly suspect we're in a "barriers too high" regime rather than an "incentives are too low" regime, and that our money would be better spent reducing barriers than increasing incentives.

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