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It’s Time to Build

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501–510 of 1001 posts

Re: It’s Time to Build

#501
Should we send more money through the supply chain to people who just infected the world?

--- --- ---

I saw a documentary about a chimpanzee sanctuary. There was one albino chimp getting all the crowd's attention, all the treats went his way. If you looked in the background, a couple of normal chimps were always watching ominously.

One day, the albino chimp took the gorilla's favorite toy, a simple clear water bottle he liked to squeeze to make a sound. The crowd screams! The albino chimp is being dragged screaming! The gorilla looks to the side nonchantly, just to add insult, and flings the chimp against the wall. Everyone thought it died, but a few minutes later it woke up like nothing happened. He was fine! A normal chimpanzee then walked on camera.

A few days later, the albino chimp was dead. A fall from the trees was the official cause. We can only speculate that the other chimps lured it to fatal heights and pushed.

--- --- ---

A more humane cultural conflict forces change in others with the nature of the world. The people who infected the world do not like consumption imbalance. All that's gone in just a few weeks.

Your changes are petty. Waking up. What we do. And it's all just intrigue.

For a mutual alignment, all that up there is gone. Your world, gone. Matter waves in orbit. The photoelectric effect here on the ground. All that up there is from what we do here on the ground.

There's us. Nothing else. We are far from petty and puny. Death is no escape. I keep you alive, forever.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#502
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. It's like it was written to be the perfect example of SV myopia for the rest of the world. Some examples: >Even private universities like Harvard are lavished with public funding; why can’t 100,000 or 1 million students a year attend Harvard?…

>>You see it in transportation. Where are the supersonic aircraft? Where are the millions of delivery drones? Where are the high speed trains, the soaring monorails, the hyperloops, and yes, the flying cars? >Because none of this stuff is economically or physically practical. He seems to want us to live in a science fiction fantasy world. I'm pretty sure most of that stuff is highly illegal. Make things illegal, and…

Supersonic flight is inefficient and noisy. Drones are noisy, a hazard, and significantly more limited due to lithium density than electric cars. High-speed rail is not illegal, but requires huge capital. Uber may not be economically viable, and there are serious concerns about middle-men marketplace corps socializing the liability, benefits, and wage instability costs the gig economy brings with it.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#503
I like the angle, and mostly agree with it, but I have a hard time believing our system isn't already so deadlocked that none of it will ever happen.

Like, it's not as if "the left" wouldn't love to make over institutions like the VA, but has such a thing been politically realistic in ~the last 2 decades?

Re: It’s Time to Build

#505
post #470
post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This overlooks the fact that Marc is in fact one of these folks who has a profoundly outsized role in deciding what he wants. He says what he wants, but then he expects someone else to build it. He's rich: if he wants these things, why doesn't he just pay to get them built? Sure, not all of them, but just pick one and pay to get it built. But, as you point out, he's not interested in long term investments--and that…

I doubt Marc has anywhere near enough capital to get these things done (by himself). 2 trillion is on a completely different order of magnitude. That said, maybe this post is a call for help and the billionaires will unite?

> I doubt Marc has anywhere near enough capital to get these things done (by himself).

He probably has enough to make a good start on one of them.

> maybe this post is a call for help and the billionaires will unite?

If enough people in his position each pick a problem and start on it, that in itself would be a big help.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#506
I think it's telling that in this conversation so far the one thing not mentioned has been the I-word: Ideology. Though there has been a bit of the C-word: Class.

Talking about what's best for the country is _by_its_very_nature_ s political, whether we choose to acknowledge that or not.

"Politics (Greek: Πολιτικά, politiká, 'affairs of the cities') is the set of activities that are associated with the governance of a country, state or area. It involves making decisions that apply to groups of members and achieving and exercising positions of governance—organized control over a human community ...

... In modern nation states, people often form political parties to represent their ideas. Members of a party often agree to take the same position on many issues and agree to support the same changes to law and the same leaders. An election is usually a competition between different parties"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics

Re: It’s Time to Build

#507
post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find this essay to be extremely frustrating Thanks, I was worried I would find HN readers to be largely in agreement with it and I'm glad I was wrong about that. I also find that "we need to want these things" is the key problem with the article. I agree with your conclusions, but I think you've understated the case a bit. I believe that all of this has happened the way it happened because we live in a society --…

> This is what you get when you build your whole system around the optimization of one variable -- profit -- and put essentially religious faith into the unproven idea that the Invisible Hand of the Market will make everything work. But this isn't what the whole US system is built around. That's (at least part of) the problem. As others have pointed out elsewhere in this discussion, many of the things Andreessen says…

Interesting distinction between "capitalism" and "free markets".

Re: It’s Time to Build

#509
post #298

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…

>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. It's like it was written to be the perfect example of SV myopia for the rest of the world. Some examples: >Even private universities like Harvard are lavished with public funding; why can’t 100,000 or 1 million students a year attend Harvard?…

> Because the main purpose of Harvard and other elite schools like it is to pick out the best ~18 year olds and set them on the course to be leaders in business, government, law, and other areas. Harvard isn't Harvard because they're better at education. Harvard is Harvard because they get the pick of the litter. Extending their enrollment to a million doesn't mean we get a million more elites.

It doesn't even do that. Harvard doesn't pick out the brightest 18 year olds to become future leaders. It picks out the most competitive kids who care about going to a place like Harvard.

If all you wanted to do was prove your intelligence, an IQ test is much cheaper and quicker.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#510
post #367

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…

Anyone who builds a new product is creating supply ahead of demand.

Drop me a line, help me get these PPEs in clinician hands.
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