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It’s Time to Build

a16z.com

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Re: It’s Time to Build

#311

Post by parthdesai »

usaar333 wrote: post #183
car wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly not all of them, but the German healthcare system has dealt extremely well. There is plenty of testing capacity, and plenty of ICU beds. Thanks to century old unified health insurance laws. Edit: Otto von Bismarck actually instituted the health insurance system of Germany, certainly not a socialist!

The republican stronghold of Texas has one of the lowest covid deaths per capita in the United States, better than even California (which is doing relatively well). Deaths per capita at 16/million is lower than almost anywhere in Western Europe. It's not obvious to me at all you can make a political judgement from covid19.

Are you conveniently going to ignore the density of Germany compared to Texas and usage of public transport in Germany compared to Texas?

Re: It’s Time to Build

#312

Post by [deleted] »

MR4D wrote: post #305
oxymoron wrote: post #70

I'm in the process of reading _Why Nation Fails_. The central thesis is that the rich and poor countries are separated by inclusive vs extractive institutions. The extractive institutions are characterised by elites that attempt to defend their own wealth and status by maintaining the status quo and resisting the creative destruction that may threaten that position. It seems to resonate a bit here, when Marc speaks o…

Simple - politics is about control. Laws are a form of politics. Why would anyone give up control once they had acquired it?

[deleted]

Re: It’s Time to Build

#313

Post by quietthrow »

Since you are reading why nations fail I would like to recommend a pairing. How democracies die by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky. The central thesis here is parties are the gatekeepers of democracies and when they put party before nation they erode the democracy that eventually fails. More often it’s a slow degrade than a sudden spectacular collapse. The erosion paves way for leaders that are more “spectacular” in every negative way than the last one. Makes you think if trump is the problem or merely a symptom. GOP put party win before a nation by agreeing to nominate an unfit individual for office. They failed as gatekeepers. His presidency will lead to future leaders justifying behaving like him or worse and the “norm” Keeps degrading over time to the point where people are fed up and bring into power a person that they don’t fully understand and one who plays to their fears and portrays themself as their only solution. The book is amazing to read specially with the context of last 4 - 6 years of American politics.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#314

Post by cactus2093 »

MattGaiser wrote: post #121
cactus2093 wrote: post #78

Ok, assume I'm bought into this idea - where would I even begin? What are some companies working on these kind of fundamental building things problems? I know of the Boring Company, though haven't really heard anything from them since the flamethrowers a few years back. Sidewalk labs was doing some cool things in Toronto, but I think they've been running into big regulatory issues too and it one point it sounded like…

In many cases, I am not sure his solutions address the real problem. Housing is rising in price as more people pile into fewer cities. There is no housing crisis in Spartanburg, Louisville, Lethbridge or even Houston. You can build all the homes you want, but unless they are in Manhattan or San Franciso, a billion new homes won't make the condos there cheaper. You can also build all the colleges you want, but the ret…

I don't see your point re: housing. The current situation is where the equilibrium has naturally ended up. SF is much more expensive than small cities, but people still get enough value from it (or think that they do) to pay the higher cost and live there. If some of the people on the margin moved to a cheaper second-choice place, they'd be slightly worse off, otherwise they would have already done that. So telling them to move to Louisville doesn't make them any better off.

However, if more innovative ways of building (and getting approval to do it) could make housing twice as plentiful and half the price, that would make them much better off.

Land is expensive in SF, and it is hard to get approval to build new housing. But it's not the only problem. Just building can be insanely expensive, like this project where it's going to cost almost $900k per unit to build affordable housing [1]. It's not clear if some of that is land cost, but it seems to imply that is not the case because it sounds like this is land that is already owned and dedicated to affordable housing.

[1] https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/supes-question-890k-per-unit...

Re: It’s Time to Build

#315

Post by casefields »

core-questions wrote: post #152
csallen wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why not write simpler laws and regulations and leave it to the courts What incentives do lawmakers have to make laws simpler?

This is why judges cannot be the highest power - the people still need to be able to hold them accountable to ensure that the legal institutions don't become inaccessible to the common man. (Not that they are accessible now... but it could be worse.)

That was Scalia's point in his dissent of the gay marriage decision:

Scalia argues in his opinion that the court is increasingly creating policy rather than serving as a neutral arbiter.

“Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court,” he writes.

“This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.”

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/246249-sca...

People in one part of the country go to the courts, and force their will/values on the rest of the country. Activists across the political spectrum do it.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#316

Post by viraptor »

kick wrote: post #133
viraptor wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a word for this phenomenon? Taunting? If you stand in a room full of people and say "the sky is blue", you'll get a weird look at most. If you say instead "Most of you will think it's controversial and criticise me, but I think the sky is blue - you're free to voice your opinion though", you'll get lots of people commenting (as you did) that this is not controversial and the sky is indeed blue. You can get…

I don't think he'd waste his reputation in that way intentionally, especially when pretty much every word he utters gets to the top of the charts on this site and goes semi-viral elsewhere.

I think you're overestimating his popularity here. There's A LOT of his links submitted https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=a16z.com

Yet, this is the first one which crossed 300 votes, as far as I can tell (only checked 8 pages back or so) and is currently the highest scoring one. It may be that it's the most interesting one too. But adding popularity didn't hurt.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#317

Post by treis »

qplex wrote: post #285
Barrin92 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The inclusive vs extractive institutions mentality makes sense but I think in the exact reverse way then you suggest. It's precisely because of the Wests (and like Marc says it really is the West) failure to respond to this crisis. It's the excess of inclusivity that leads to short term, ballot box decision making in response to crises, and it is the short term, market logic that leads to loss of autonomy and neglect…

All the recent outbreaks of viruses like this have originated from East Asia. I really wouldnt give much praise to the great governing elite that failed to prevent this in the first place, despite scientists telling them about it a long time ago.

>All the recent outbreaks of viruses like this have originated from East Asia.

That's not true. Swine flu came from Mexico and MERS, as the name implies, started in the Middle East

Re: It’s Time to Build

#318

Post by worik »

amasad wrote: post #278
KirinDave wrote: post #167

I find this essay to be extremely frustrating, and a good example of the attitude I've personally witnessed Andreessen have in the few interactions I've had with him directly. > Is the problem capitalism? I’m with Nicholas Stern when he says that capitalism is how we take care of people we don’t know — all of these fields are highly lucrative already and should be prime stomping grounds for capitalist investment, goo…

> We don't have it because building these things requires long term investments and folks like Marc and his investors are not interested in long term investments. I don't know where you get this from but as far as VC goes a16z are especially willing to take long-term bets. Case in point, when we pitched them, we explicitly said it's going to take us a decade to achieve our goals and they were okay with that.

There is a problem. Ten years is not long term.

In the long term we are all dead. So we have to want to do these things for people who are not born yet and who will never pay us or pay us back or be able to even thank us. We have to do these things because these things are the right thing to do.

That will decrease our wealth.

Now please explain how capitalism can do that?

Re: It’s Time to Build

#319

Post by yumraj »

KirinDave wrote: post #167

I find this essay to be extremely frustrating, and a good example of the attitude I've personally witnessed Andreessen have in the few interactions I've had with him directly. > Is the problem capitalism? I’m with Nicholas Stern when he says that capitalism is how we take care of people we don’t know — all of these fields are highly lucrative already and should be prime stomping grounds for capitalist investment, goo…

VCs are not thought leaders, they just like to pretend to be thought leaders so that they can attract good dealflow.

They are investors and money managers for LPs and not much different from the Wall St types.

So, we should not try to read too much into such blogs and articles.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#320

Post by fastball »

tathougies wrote: post #162
fastball wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably they are talking about how monopolies are hard to compete against, and that monopolies are a fairly common outcome of no regulation.

It's disingenuous to say that monopolies are an outcome of lack of regulation, when they are also an outcome of over regulation

Not really. The point is that in a regulatory vacuum, monopolies will exist. Therefore "less regulation" is not always better. That is the only point.

That being said, this is not an example of regulatory capture.

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