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

421–430 of 1001 posts

Re: It’s Time to Build

#421

Post by kitotik »

tathougies wrote: post #387
kitotik wrote: post #198

Somewhat related, but The New Deal basically invested 40% of the GDP into ‘building’ and paying Americans to do it. The US in 2020 just invested roughly 10% of the GDP to prop up some corporations, and more or less called it a day.

The New Deal did not end the Great Depression though. World War II did.

Right.

Which is similar to what I think will end this recession/depression: a vaccine.

Now I would ask which path would have us coming out of this current crisis stronger: 40% of GDP spent on a “New New Deal” or 10% GDP invested in attempt to keep the status quo?

Re: It’s Time to Build

#422

Post by tonetheman »

> It’s time for full-throated, unapologetic, uncompromised political support from the right for aggressive investment in new products, in new industries, in new factories, in new science, in big leaps forward.

That is roll-on-the-floor "tone deaf rich asshole out of touch with reality."

The right is anti-science as ever.

The notion to not trust science is part of the Republican party from top to bottom. Over the past few days the President has openly called for his followers to "rise up" and protest. Blatantly ignoring the science we have on the virus, Trump is telling his followers to gather in groups and protest.

It is naive to think the right will ever support anything remotely to due with science.

Dr Fauci needs body guards because of the right.

Republican governors will open their states early and willfully kill people because God told them do so. No science here.

People will die in Florida from the current choice to open beaches way earlier than needed.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#423

Post by jahaja »

tekdude wrote: post #388

Regulatory capture is indeed a major underlying cause of a lot of the issues, but who will actually do the political work to fight against it? Someone spent money to capture the regulations in the first place, through lobbying and campaign donations. Who will spend the money to lobby and donate for the cause of undoing that? The "builders"? No, their focus and limited capital is spent on whatever it is they are worki…

> Regulatory capture is indeed a major underlying cause of a lot of the issues

How is it even possible to isolate capitalism from regulatory capture? Capital accumulation inherently creates power and influence, so regulatory capture is surely just the perfectly logical second phase?

Re: It’s Time to Build

#424

Post by wwweston »

darawk wrote: post #304
wwweston wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Markets build in response to incentives. Most American production choices are determined by markets, including the choices of investors allocating capital. Public institutions build and manage in response to electoral incentives. If we're not prepared, it's because the incentives are wrong. On the market front, once incentives and maybe even insights become opaque at the level of the abstraction of return on inv…

> Markets build in response to incentives. Most American production choices are determined by markets, including the choices of investors allocating capital. This leaves out the most important problem though: regulatory capture and bureaucratic gridlock. Markets would love to build more housing. But they're prevented from doing so by the regulatory state. Markets would love to build nuclear power plants, but they're…

Sure, policy matters. It's important to have people in public leadership who understand it and can work on tuning it to avoid or eliminate unintended consequences.

But complaining about either regulation or bureaucracy at a general level is the policy equivalent of approaching software by making general complaints about how terrible existing code is: sure, some of it is probably sub-optimal and should be rewritten, but anyone who's worked in the field for a while knows that the sweep-it-away/ground-up-rewrite impulse is more often wrong than applying Chesterton's fence (make sure you understand why it's there), profiling, and examine potential alternatives against studied outcomes.

> Markets would love to build more housing.

Sure. And would love to chase the wealthiest end of demand and externalize costs of community displacement or ecological impact.

> Markets would love to build nuclear power plants

And would love to externalize the costs of risk and waste management.

Note that these are not arguments against building more housing or nuclear power. There are many metro areas that do need to build housing. Nuclear power has its merits as well as hazards.

They're arguments about specific incentives absent intentional oversight, supporting the general case that it is often irresponsible to believe or advocate that incentives tend towards optimal on their own, and that the primary problem is oversight itself.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#425

Post by schwibkik »

cs702 wrote: post #334

> We don’t have enough coronavirus tests, or test materials — including, amazingly, cotton swabs and common reagents. We don’t have enough ventilators, negative pressure rooms, and ICU beds. And we don’t have enough surgical masks, eye shields, and medical gowns — as I write this, New York City has put out a desperate call for rain ponchos to be used as medical gowns. Rain ponchos! In 2020! In America! This passage i…

"Tragedy of the commons" is still a thing! Who knew!

Re: It’s Time to Build

#427

Post by tathougies »

kitotik wrote: post #421
tathougies wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The New Deal did not end the Great Depression though. World War II did.

Right. Which is similar to what I think will end this recession/depression: a vaccine. Now I would ask which path would have us coming out of this current crisis stronger: 40% of GDP spent on a “New New Deal” or 10% GDP invested in attempt to keep the status quo?

Alternatively, as we're seeing now, more and more people will ignore government orders until the election (at which point we'll see a huge change in tune from leaders), and go back to work. At some point, like in the past, people stop caring about diseases.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#428

Post by kebman »

Jommi wrote: post #400
tekdude wrote: post #388

Regulatory capture is indeed a major underlying cause of a lot of the issues, but who will actually do the political work to fight against it? Someone spent money to capture the regulations in the first place, through lobbying and campaign donations. Who will spend the money to lobby and donate for the cause of undoing that? The "builders"? No, their focus and limited capital is spent on whatever it is they are worki…

This is a great comment, and hopefully I could add some real life example around this, esp with 1) and 2). Uber did this in Europe. Uber pushed, fought and introduced gig-economy employment laws in every country it has operated in EU, specifically around taxi and for hire transport regulation. Uber employed a huge amount of legal and PR counsel to achieve this, with massive lobbying funding. And what has happened? It…

Nobody want's a new McDonald's destroying their old status quo in their country. People don't want one-world-gov. They want disparate nations, that have charm and local uniqueness. Except that goes directly towards harmonizing international (trade) laws. If you want a lesson, check out how Lidl did in Norway when they challenged local chain stores.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#429

Post by geofft »

pmarca wrote: post #371
trimbo wrote: post #42

> Why shouldn’t regulators and taxpayers demand that Harvard build? Wait, wut? Last I checked, Harvard is a private institution. Besides, Harvard produces its graduates because they can be picky on who they can admit. Why would we assume that Harvard can scale to provide a "Harvard education" to someone who didn't qualify to make it in today?

Harvard is subsidized by the federal government and the American taxpayer several ways. It benefits from federal student loan programs. It receives federal research grants. It is allowed to be a tax-exempt institution. And it is allowed to own a tax-exempt endowment. Normal private institutions in America have none of those.

> It benefits from federal student loan programs.

If by "normal private institutions" you mean companies, sure, that's true. But normal private educational institutions absolutely benefit from this and other similar programs. The University of Phoenix, for instance, heavily recruits GI Bill-eligible students, and their right to do so was defended by Republican US senators.

> It receives federal research grants.

You can do this as a private company just fine. SBIR is a great example. I worked at a startup that got federal research grants less than a year after being formed.

> It is allowed to be a tax-exempt institution. And it is allowed to own a tax-exempt endowment.

These are common for normal non-profit institutions in America and are in no way specific to Harvard.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#430

Post by bsanr2 »

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…

Because a law is a machine to compact thousands of hours of ethical thought into an actionable doctrine. It's designed specifically to take the subjectivity and bias out of executing policy, which is introduced by a single (or small group of) human brain(s) working on a problem for a few weeks, at most. Courts are a last-ditch effort to jury-rig a conclusive plan of action to rectify whatever dilemma come before them; as with similar tasks, they're more expensive and time-consuming at-scale than just planning correctly at the outset.
Post reply on HN