Very few societies promote Self-actualization in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not
121–130 of 350 posts
Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
A handful of far-fetched ideas have added more economic value to the world than every diploma combined. I’m not sure we could even assign a dollar value to crazy ideas like satellites or the internet because the positive externalities they’ve created are so far-reaching. Crazy ideas a lot harder to evaluate, and a lot riskier, but they’re definitely not less valuable.
> A handful of far-fetched ideas have added more economic value to the world than every diploma combined.
If you really believe this, it is shocking to me. It is almost impossible to overstate how incredibly wrong this is. This is probably the single most false yet honestly put forward statement I've read on HN.
The fact that anyone believes this shows both how much a slice of society lives in a complete echo-chamber and also how woefully unaware many people are about the actual causes of societal technological progress.
Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not
#123Earlier 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…
It’s odd that you use a government-funded program as an example of US liberty and poor economic resources failing. Isn’t SpaceX a shining counter example in the fact that it is successful without involuntary taxation as its entire operating budget?
Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
So what is the solution to corruption? It does seem like it's getting worse, or maybe media coverage about it is getting better. Has any country in the world successfully fought corruption in a peaceful way? (ie. no revolutions, no guillotines)
Most of the west is not corrupt. You have to visit eastern europe, latin america, middle east and east asia to experience it
The solution is not throwing more free money in public coffers. It definitively exacerbated corruption in greece for example
Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Corruption is not rampant everywhere. And perhaps that gets at the root of why some places have functioning modern economies and others do not.
Switzerland, Norway and who else exactly? Out of 100+ countries
Full list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not
#126Imo 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…
Perhaps worth noting that the U.S. government already has a grant program with approximately this budget range. Pell grants give money to students who need money. Is it possible that Pell grants already provide more economic return than is possible with a far-fetched-idea plan for a small number of people? Pell grants do help enable education for millions, and as we see in the article & study, education is absolutely…
Pell grants force the spending to be allocated to universities.
Leaving aside how laughably wastefully the universities spend that money, disconnecting the borrower from the spender of funds is a massive anti-pattern.
Awareness of and discretion over spending is an extraordinary effective forcing function.
Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not
#127Imo 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…
Perhaps worth noting that the U.S. government already has a grant program with approximately this budget range. Pell grants give money to students who need money. Is it possible that Pell grants already provide more economic return than is possible with a far-fetched-idea plan for a small number of people? Pell grants do help enable education for millions, and as we see in the article & study, education is absolutely…
I find most universities to be borderline scams. The ones I deem not a scam, don't draw any benefit from that.
I explained in another reply what I mean by far fetched products, which can be valued mathematically
Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not
#128If you study rhetoric, this article is so full of shit :)
Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not
#129Imo 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…
>My solution is: take a piece of the federal budget and give $1-3MM to anyone with a far fetched idea that has a prototype to back it up. No long processes. If 30K -mostly students- a year get a mill to develop their thing, I suspect we would find ourselves way into the future in just a decade. And that’s just $30-90B/y Ideas require good execution to be off any value and money doesn't buy that. Look at all the Kicks…
Well, the twist is those are far fetched and they have a prototype. e.g If you want to build a reusable rocket and you already have something 100 times smaller, kind of working but not really and one contract to be paid upon delivery, that's good enough, most likely, when there are 30 companies building reusable rockets and 29970 more a year doing other far fetched things, in theory
Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not
#130Invention is overvalued as well as the idea of "creativity." The biggest proof is the current China-USA standoff. USA is on the paper the biggest nation on earth by manufacturing output, but what was the last time you saw made in USA household goods in supermarket without having to specifically look for them? Why China has industrial base and USA doesn't? Wages difference? No, not by a chance. In some places in China…
It's not at all surprising that low-wage assembly jobs aren't going to attract the best talent in a high-wage country. Also not surprising that low-margin manufactured goods are made in a low-wage, not high-wage, country.