I think the writer goes too abstract and in the meantime ignorea several points. It's not like people, companies, and politicians don't want to build. It's because they are voices from both sides that delay creations. And going in bluntly will only make things worse. Going on to undertake big tasks without proper plans and rules will sooner or later cause harm.
It’s Time to Build
651–660 of 1001 posts
Re: It’s Time to Build
#652Tech bro with the wisdom.
Re: It’s Time to Build
#653Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
As a Californian, I resent the accusation that we have anything in common with other Californians.
Re: It’s Time to Build
#654We do want to build things. Our government has rotted from the inside and people inside of our government contribute a large amount of their effort to protecting their own wealth. Look at the senator insider trading story from a few months ago for proof.
We tried to build this thing called "medicare for all". It would have freed people up to take greater risks in their employment because our physical health would not be tied to our employment.
That idea was run into the ground by an all-hands-on-deck media ( the media that is owned by billionaires ) and DNC blitz to shut it down. Because that would cost the 1% some of their money, and the 1% are the ones WITH all the money, so they have the power to write the checks and make things happen.
Healthcare is something everyone needs at one point. We cannot take a risk because our healthcare is insanely expensive and tied to our employment.
We would love to build things. Building things costs money. Most people do not have much money. The 1% do not let us spend "their" money to build things. They take a larger and larger slice of the pie, while everyone else is fighting for crumbs. The ladder is pulled up for labor to fight back with "right to work" laws, and other anti-labor policies. So nothing ever gets built.
Re: It’s Time to Build
#655I'm quite sympathetic to a lot of what's in that blog post but... A16Z directly invests gobs of capital, and, indirectly, shapes the outlook of other VCs who follow their investment decisions, and they plow way more money into software/bitcoin than physical companies. Why? Because they are really good at what they do, and they realize that building physical stuff is really hard, and they'd rather invest in areas that…
That's a valid criticism and something that ran through my mind when reading the article. But keep in mind that there's orders of magnitude difference in what they invest vs. the federal government. According to these 2 articles, it could be around THREE orders of magnitude -- ~4 billion in for them in 2014 vs. ~4 trillion for the federal government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreessen_Horowitz https://www.cbo.g…
Both of you make excellent points. My only comment is that it seems like the government (or at least the current administration, despite its multitude of shortcomings) wants to revitalize the American manufacturing industry. They are just failing in their approach (e.g. tariffs & trade wars). I believe with some guidance from the private sector or simply a good pitch, the feds could be quite receptive to the idea of funding programs aimed at building-up next gen manufacturing in the U.S. (particularly if project proposals can be expressed in # of manufacturing jobs that would be created).
As a side note, I haven't heard of "Elon Musk’s alien dreadnoughts — giant state of the art factories producing every conceivable kind of product, at the highest possible quality and lowest possible cost" but I share the enthusiasm for such gigafactories. Next gen factories should certainly bake-in flexibility. Machines that act more like 3D printers than injection mold-ers(?), and have the ability to switch from making, say, car parts to ventilators and N95 masks without a massive effort (or simply switch from making product A to product B depending on consumer demand trends).
Lastly, just a thought, I'm sure VCs have been pitched hundreds of times on specific 'market disrupting' products from wearable tech, to drones, to personal jetpacks. But I wonder how many times they have been pitched an idea for funding company that could make all of these things, and aims to significantly lower the barriers to rapid prototyping of physical goods. meh?
Re: It’s Time to Build
#656Earlier quoted context omitted.
>GOP put party win before a nation by agreeing to nominate an unfit individual for office. They failed as gatekeepers. Trump won the primary because he took positions that closely follow the article being discussed here, anti-war, anti-outsourcing (additionally he took an anti-immigration position) while all of the other 18 GOP candidates had the same pro-war, pro-free trade, pro-immigration positions that the party…
Why don’t you think people elected Trump because he was the only GOP candidate?
Donald Trump was not the only GOP candidate, and he was the candidate with the least internal party support.
>Trump used ideas of populism to persuade the average American throughout the election process.[139] In mid-September, the first two major candidates dropped out of the race.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Republican_Party_presiden...
Re: It’s Time to Build
#657Seriously, whilst I agree, what can I do about it. I can't raise the capital to start any business that could challenge these things. I work too many hours to sustain my family to do anything serious as a side project. I can't find anywhere more progressive to work than where I am, if I could I would move. I have a set of skills which seem to match what Marc wants, yet I earn less than the sales and marketing people.…
Learn a new skill that allows you to build something that is meaningful to you. If you give up, you've already lost.
Working more is not a guarantee to becoming wealthier or living a better life.
And "learning a new skill" can take an interminable amount of time. Leisure time that we have less and less of as our commute get longer, due to housing costs, and as our jobs cut more and more jobs and put more and more work on individual workers.
"Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!" We need to build the boots first.
Re: It’s Time to Build
#658I'm quite sympathetic to a lot of what's in that blog post but... A16Z directly invests gobs of capital, and, indirectly, shapes the outlook of other VCs who follow their investment decisions, and they plow way more money into software/bitcoin than physical companies. Why? Because they are really good at what they do, and they realize that building physical stuff is really hard, and they'd rather invest in areas that…
I don't think "put your money where your mouth is" is a good argument. A16z can be subject to prisoner's dilemma of our collective cultural decline and simultaneously have genuine desire to get out of this predicament we're all in.
He says it right there in the blog post-- the problem is desire. For example, someone is reliably making tons of money in China stamping cities into the ground and building thousands of miles of high speed rail. Why can't we? Doing these things is hard in a sense that we seem unable to get collective wherewithal to do it. It's not hard in a sense that a cure for cancer is.
They can't invest in things nobody will let them build. Who in their right mind would invest in high speed rail from SF to LA knowing ex ante they'll deal with twenty years of regulatory quagmire for the project to eventually be killed by a thousand bureaucrats?
(And I think the bureaucrats are the symptom, not the cause. If we wanted things built the bureaucrats would be out on the street in three months. The cause is cultural decline.)
Re: It’s Time to Build
#659Earlier quoted context omitted.
Getting an answer from a court (is X legal?) takes a long time: at least a few years and several hundred thousand dollars. Far too long to wait before building a business around X. Asking people to build the business first and then find out if it's legal isn't how a society of laws is supposed to work. Fast courts would be a huge benefit to society.
This is also a failure to build. We just accept it as a given that courts take too long, judges are too lazy to get their opinions out in a timely manner and the legal profession too often gets fat fees for slow-walking legal proceedings when technology exists to make expeditious dispute resolution much faster. For example, I can think of no reason why we can't mandate that discovery must use electronic format unless…
> We just accept it as a given that courts take too long, judges are too lazy to get their opinions out in a timely manner
Is it being lazy or rather having tons of work that needs to be done too?
Re: It’s Time to Build
#660This is the mindset we need in order to change.