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It’s Time to Build

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Re: It’s Time to Build

#481

Post by deanCommie »

Jommi wrote: post #410
deanCommie wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like all the replies comparing legal system differences between the US and the EU miss a crucial element - the difference in the characters of the people participating in each society. I'm now going to make a couple of broad generalizations. Note, that I'm aware they do not apply to every person, or even state in the US, or member nation of the EU. However having lived in both for a number of years, I do have…

I think trying to put all of Europe into one EU in your argument is already where it breaks down. Europeans don't live in a cohesive society. Italians, Germans, Swedes live in a cohesive society in their small california-sized countries.

Neither do Californians, Alaskans, Alabamans, Montanans, or West Virginians.

But they all have more in common with each other than Europeans, and vice versa.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#483

Post by pmarca »

Spooky23 wrote: post #253
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…

Answer is pretty easy. People are assholes. Those rules and regulatory frameworks exist for a reason, and with something like health insurance you don’t see better outcomes in states with lower regulatory burden. Same with the financial burdens that companies cry about. Enron, GlobalCrossing, etc all demonstrated that corporate governance required the federal stick to behave. Anderseen’s article is pretty lame with r…

The system is working great except there isn't enough censorship?

Re: It’s Time to Build

#484

Post by joshvm »

Animats wrote: post #406

You see it in education. We have top-end universities, yes, but with the capacity to teach only a microscopic percentage of the 4 million new 18 year olds in the U.S. each year, or the 120 million new 18 year olds in the world each year. Why not educate every 18 year old? Because the US has too much college education now. About 45% of the people with college degrees are working in jobs that don't require them. The pa…

I think it's more nuanced than that. America in particular has incredibly high education costs and a mercantile payback system. This is coupled with companies making ludicrous demands on qualifications so people feel they need to have a degree. In turn, graduates are branded as failures if they don't land "college level jobs" because they're saddled with debt that needs paying off.

Lack of jobs seems like an equally important problem here. It's not like if you didn't have a degree you'd be in a better situation. The only difference is that because you have a huge loan, having a low paid job is now a problem. Maybe a better question is, can you survive on a low paid job if you didn't have student loan repayments?

This could be fixed with means-tested payback, like the UK system (also student loans don't affect your credit here). Or simply by making education free, like most of Europe.

There are large intangible benefits to college education. One of them is it strongly promotes mobility (getting out of your home town) and cultural/diversity tolerance. Overwhelmingly in the UK, college towns voted to remain for example. For many people going to university is their first time away from their parents, and it's a transition period between living at home and true independence.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#485

Post by jahaja »

epistasis wrote: post #473
jahaja wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You separate democratic procedure from capital Uhm, that's very easy to say, but how is that even possible? Even here in Scandinavia, where money interests isn't as blatantly involved in politics as in the US, most of the media are aligned to corporate interests and vast amount of money are spend by corporations to fund and campaign for right-wing business parties and policies. Why would Biden need money in competi…

When voters in South Carolina go to vote, did they listen to money, to their own hearts, or to "the establishment"? In any case, they did not listen to capital. And this is one way that politics is separated from capital. There can never be perfect separation, all of society is connected to all of its parts in tricky ways, but part of maximizing that separation is to discover and acknowledge where capital has control…

Alright, so you're telling me that people of the US actually democratically doesn't want healthcare, paid vacation, parental leave, sick pay, etc etc. that's been available for decades in Europe? For me this is obvious evidence of out-sized corporate control of the political process.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#486

Post by adamsea »

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…

Isn't Uber kind of the opposite kind of building the OP refers to?

Uber externalizes so many costs to its drivers. It relies on someone else's healthcare system to care for its drivers. Someone else to pay to maintain the cars.

So far the gig economy is maybe, half building something which has potential social benefit,half building something which clearly does not.

Now, if Uber was lobbying hard for universal healthcare, then that'd be a different story :). But IIRC they mainly avoid or flout the law altogether.

In summary I don't think Uber is a good example of a company that has tried to 'build' in a prosocial way.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#487

Post by zelly »

This was one of the best posts I've ever read. Thinking about printing it out and framing it. It's more inspirational than anything I've read, and it articulates the elephant-in-the-room problem we all know but aren't talking about.

No one is innovating anymore. Everyone copies each other. Even in the YC crowd, every other thing is a dumb CRUD app or AI snake oil project that has been rehashed since the 80s. Where's the thorium reactors? Why does it still take 3 days to wire money? Where's the brain-computer interface? I never imagined people would be so lazy in the future. The idea of passive investment in an index fund has analogized to every part of our culture. We have come to expect things to magically grow on their own without any effort. Just showing up is supposed to be a sufficient condition to reaping the rewards of growth. You would have thought the 2008 financial crisis would have put an end to this mentality, but it actually made it worse because now everyone who invested in anything in 2009 is now a millionaire without having lifted a finger. Faith in the System restored. Why build anything when your survival doesn't depend on it--the System will take care of you automatically.

All you have to do is "get in"--we see this in the heavy credentialism/careerist people. We are a culture that shows up to the race and starts celebrating at the start line. We are more interested in proving status with fake competition trophies (e.g. degrees, medals, CVs) than doing that which the status was meant to predict.

None of this happens when you're actually on the frontier. In the late 1800s, America was really on the frontier. Large parts of this country had untapped natural resources. There was no shortage of mystery.

Now people believe that there are no new problems to solve. "Someone else is already working on that." This is demonstrably not true--otherwise we would all be living in post-scarcity Neptune colonies--yet everyone acts as though it is true.

People by and large do not work to fulfill their curiosity; they work to survive. They do the minimum to survive. In frontier eras like the late 1800s in America, curiosity and survival happen to align. The principal problem in all this is how to inject curiosity into a jaded populace who believes there is nothing new to discover or accomplish.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#488

Post by pmarca »

decasteve wrote: post #138

I like the sentiment. I like the impassioned tone and the call to action. I'm sitting here thinking: where can I go to help run some machines, lathes, 3D printers, CNC, etc? How can I roll up my sleeve and help build what's needed in these times? How can I help move humanity forward through this pandemic and climate change? In these times I often turn to the wisdom of Buckminster Fuller, who was more prescient about…

Well put!

Re: It’s Time to Build

#489

Post by svskeptic »

pmarca wrote: post #476
svskeptic wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great observation and speculation on what could happen and where would it come from. I've had multiple conversations with top-10 VC firm partners during our unsuccessful pitches where one of the sticking points is 'unfair-advantage'. 'How can you lock $user_group/$partners into this transaction/partnership?' Peter Thiel: "Monopolies are a good thing for society... The opposite of perfect competition is monopo…

Most of the companies we fund are trying to go disrupt someone else's "dominant market position".

And none of them try to lock customers, partners or decision makers from going away in any underhanded way, right? Just pure offer-the-best-and-they-will-stick-with-us. And if someone does it better than us and takes them away from us, shame on us!

Re: It’s Time to Build

#490

Post by adamsea »

epistasis wrote: post #438
jahaja wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

You separate democratic procedure from capital. This is why the Citizens United ruling was such a disastrous decision for the US. However, capital doesn't necessarily mean election wins or regulatory influence, even now. Bernie Sanders raised immense amounts of money, more than Joe Biden did, but Sanders still was not able to win out in most states. There's more to politics than money, though money can definitely rai…

Yes and no.

I agree there's more to politics than money, but, I think it is fair to say that, whatever legitimate reasons many Democratic Party voters may have had for not voting for Sanders, there is a general media and institutional bias against the Progressive political movement Bernie Sanders represents.

And, not surprisingly, the root of much of that bias is money, in the form of industries which stand to lose (healthcare comes to mind) if the U.S. elected a politician with a Progressive agenda.

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