Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

It’s Time to Build

a16z.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 1001 posts

Re: It’s Time to Build

#321

Post by amasad »

worik wrote: post #318
amasad wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Having children will give you that incentive. People with no children will have higher time preference -- they prefer today's consumption over investment in the future.

That's why I find a lot of the antinatalism of modern western culture to be concerning.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#322

Post by CyanLite4 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #206
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?

How can we change incentives for lawmakers?

Congress has a 20% approval rating, polled weekly for over the past decade. Yet we vote every two years for the same folks who give us the same results. The problem isn’t them. It’s us.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#323

Post by 3ygun »

oxymoron wrote: post #296
harryh wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point being, why not write simpler laws and regulations and leave it to the courts to interpret what adheres to the spirit of it? With the barriers of entry gone, I think we'd see a renewed vitality to many ossified sectors. I agree with your overall point, but you have the regulatory differences between the US and Europe exactly backwards. Europe (excluding England somewhat) has a statutory legal system. Things are…

I may not have expressed that point very well, but it seems like the common law system would encourage less explicit regulation rather than more, so that seems like a bit of a contradiction. Does the need for more litigation drive a desire to be more explicit in how statues are written?

As the parent notes. The issue is if you have a simple law say "Do not dump harmful chemicals into waterways used for drinking, shipping, etc." this leads to a lot of litigation regarding what is a "harmful chemical". If instead you have it all spelled out "harmful chemicals being one of coal ash, hydrochloric acid, asbestos, ..." (don't quote me on these). Business's know what the variables/costs effecting operations are up front. Only reacting and being liable if the list changes through the political process.

The parent was saying the US approach instead define what a harmful chemical is after the fact. Leaving companies to need "insurance"/a cost benefit wager before something is built. Otherwise they could be screwed later after litigation.

IMO, I can see both sides but preferably I would want simpler laws from political processes which are then refined into explicit interpretations by subject matter expert strong government institutions. But we have lobbying/revolving door government employees and trashy textualists in the US so it doesn't work out that way...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textualism

Re: It’s Time to Build

#324

Post by kortilla »

pazimzadeh wrote: post #218
kortilla wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not an idea for building, that’s just an idea for the government getting more money. The government clearly doesn’t actually need the money when it cares to do something (based on the stimulus bill and the last decades of deficits).

The people should have a share of the proceeds if their tax dollars funded the work. I don't think printing money is the answer, if I'm understanding you correctly.

They do get a share already through taxation and it doesn’t matter. Money isn’t a good incentive for the government to care.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#325

Post by oconnor663 »

sanj wrote: post #258
mikedilger wrote: post #192

I'm in favor of building things. But we build in response to demand. Once people need more of something (e.g. PPE), production ramps up. That effect has been in place and has worked quite well for thousands of years. It doesn't require any policy or government, or even a new social movement, it's just an emergent property of humans being free. You might argue that we could be smarter, and that we should build excess…

I've spent the last month setting up a company to build PPEs, so I hope to bring an interesting perspective here. Most importantly: production ramps slowly because of the implications of structural organization. 1. From what I can tell, our supply chains are carefully tuned for efficient output of known, predictable, quantities 2. If you want to suddenly double, triple, or 10x production, it isn't easy: the reconfigu…

I think power grids have a kind of similar problem, super oversimplifying here because this isn't my area: Baseload power plants (e.g. coal) are large and comparatively efficient, but they need to be kept running continuously, and they take a long time to restart. Other types of plants (e.g. natural gas) can start and stop more quickly to meet surges in demand, but they aren't as efficient overall. In order to keep the second type of plant available, but not constantly running, there's a whole separate contracts market for short-notice capacity. What could such a market look like for e.g. hospital equipment capacity contracts? Food growing capacity?

Re: It’s Time to Build

#326

Post by kortilla »

covidacct wrote: post #68
kortilla wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not an idea for building, that’s just an idea for the government getting more money. The government clearly doesn’t actually need the money when it cares to do something (based on the stimulus bill and the last decades of deficits).

From my original post: Governments DID see this coming, both federal and state. California, at one time, was prepared for exactly this crisis. The 2008 financial crisis wiped out state budgets

Well they didn’t really see it coming if they sacrificed it over everything else.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#327

Post by natch »

pmarca wrote: post #16
wbl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't we build the more efficient one in terms of resources?

Solar and wind are great, but they don't provide continuous power. We need them, and nuclear.

Another person who dismisses or is unaware of the existence of grid scale batteries.

Nuclear could help but it is so centralized it really puts all control in the hands of big corporate and government types, with cost overruns and bankruptcies funded by ratepayers and taxpayers. “Too cheap to meter” was a lie yet the same lie continues to be recycled when talking about the next promised generation. No thank you. I’ll take local control, local and individual ownership, and individual freedom and self determination thank you very much.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#328

Post by XorNot »

mikedilger wrote: post #192

I'm in favor of building things. But we build in response to demand. Once people need more of something (e.g. PPE), production ramps up. That effect has been in place and has worked quite well for thousands of years. It doesn't require any policy or government, or even a new social movement, it's just an emergent property of humans being free. You might argue that we could be smarter, and that we should build excess…

The government, and the US, and in fact most countries, are actually really really big places. 300 million people is a lot of people - much larger then anyone can imagine as actual, real human beings.

The government stockpiling and coordinating emergency measures is exactly what a government is for. The US maintains the largest military on the planet for exactly this stated purpose - just in case. Why is the idea of allocating capacity to preventing non-military disasters seem like such an impossibility?

300 million people is a lot of experts, studies, research and development and logistics, which can run simultaneously to plan for multiple disaster scenarios and review those plans continuously.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#329

Post by harryh »

3ygun wrote: post #323
oxymoron wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may not have expressed that point very well, but it seems like the common law system would encourage less explicit regulation rather than more, so that seems like a bit of a contradiction. Does the need for more litigation drive a desire to be more explicit in how statues are written?

As the parent notes. The issue is if you have a simple law say "Do not dump harmful chemicals into waterways used for drinking, shipping, etc." this leads to a lot of litigation regarding what is a "harmful chemical". If instead you have it all spelled out "harmful chemicals being one of coal ash, hydrochloric acid, asbestos, ..." (don't quote me on these). Business's know what the variables/costs effecting operation…

This is a great description. And, to be clear, I"m not really advocating for either system being better. Just pointing out some of their differences.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#330

Post by natch »

jdhn wrote: post #3

While I'm pro nuclear power, at what point do we say that nuclear isn't the way to go? The cost of solar panels and batteries are declining every year, and you don't have to deal with the terrible stigma that nuclear power has. Sure, new reactors are "zero emission", but will people actually want them to be built?

Big construction corporations and bought-and-paid-for politicians will continue to love nuclear.
Post reply on HN