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

671–680 of 1001 posts

Re: It’s Time to Build

#671

Post by Frondo »

aspenmayer wrote: post #393
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of 1 It used to be very expensive to travel between US cities because a govt agency (forget the name, maybe the board of air travel?) set the who what how could fly planes from a to b, and at what price. Think mad men times, panAm, etc. That agency was eliminated circa 1980 by some stroke of luck and perfect alingment of planets. Ticket prices plummeted and this opened flying to the poor. That was also th…

We might soon have another federal regulatory agency disbanded but considering which one it is I’m not sure if that will be a good thing for anyone but banks. https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/10/justices-to-review-consti... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/03/us/supreme-court-consumer...

If that agency is disbanded, it will also be good for payday lenders.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#672

Post by lotsofpulp »

casefields wrote: post #315
core-questions wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why judges cannot be the highest power - the people still need to be able to hold them accountable to ensure that the legal institutions don't become inaccessible to the common man. (Not that they are accessible now... but it could be worse.)

That was Scalia's point in his dissent of the gay marriage decision: Scalia argues in his opinion that the court is increasingly creating policy rather than serving as a neutral arbiter. “Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court,” he writes. “This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nin…

It’s funny since that specific ruling is what stopped a minority of the US population from imposing their will/“values” on the rest of the country.

Clearly the electoral college and legislature is not setup properly to reflect the will of the people at this point in time, so we have a better chance of it happening from 9 Supreme Court judges.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#673

Post by lotsofpulp »

brigandish wrote: post #345
CyanLite4 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd say the problem is one of competition. "We" cannot choose better legislators unless better legislators come forward for selection, but the incumbents - and by that I mean parties elected or not - have so much money and machinery behind them that to turf them out would be nigh on impossible.

The problem is that each “we” is pulling to benefit themselves at all costs.

Hence giant military fighter jet contracts that span multiple congressmen’s districts around the country, and while being terrible for the future of the country, is untouchable politically as not a single person will vote against their economic interests.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#674

Post by 3xblah »

chubot wrote: post #619
Fede_V wrote: post #598

I'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…

As I read the parent comment, the point is not that Andreesen could singlehandedly make a difference with his investments. The point is that his words do not match his actions. His work is fostering an industry whose competitive advantage is not having to build anything tangible for the public's benefit and, in the case of companies like Facebook, not having to pay taxes on their profits.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#675

Post by louwrentius »

> What’s the American dream? The opportunity to have a home of your own, and a family you can provide for.

It’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.

— George Carlin

Re: It’s Time to Build

#676

Post by lotsofpulp »

TbobbyZ wrote: post #630
karatestomp wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount? Do all the other OECD states have a smaller "amount" of regulation on their healthcare systems?

Of course there is not a shared level regulation among all the states. But generally speaking, the healthcare industry is a highly regulated system, which means higher costs.

It also has something to do with healthcare being an incredibly difficult product to provide requiring extremely smart people to deliver extremely hard to device solutions, which also result in much of the regulation.

Obviously, it’s possible there is too much regulation and resources are not allocated properly, but on its face, I would expect something as complicated and risky as operating on people’s brains and chemotherapy and transplants to be expensive.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#677

Post by shrimpx »

zelly wrote: post #487

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…

I think we’re burnt out by too much thrash. Too much disingenuous work, too much greed, too much friction, too much wasted effort, too many stairs to nowhere. We see the soullessness and greed in our bosses, in founders, in the VCs that fund them, in the elected officials that govern all this. To do something new you’re faced with reinventing this whole structure. But we’re burnt out and myopic. Our best idea is to retire and work on a toy project or something. Maybe that’ll lead to something.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#678

Post by lotsofpulp »

neilparikh wrote: post #574
notacoward wrote: post #417

It seems a bit too easy to challenge the left to show that the public sector can do amazing things ... when the public sector doesn't have the freedom of action we've given to the private sector, and the left isn't even in control of it right now. "Come on, let's fight, you with your hands tied, and see who's better." Cheap shot, Marc. Point the second: of course a VC wants people to build. Of course a VC wants creat…

The left is in control in both California and New York, and many of the problems there are in the realm of state/city governments rather than federal government.

Healthcare, mental healthcare, and welfare for those in the bottom quintiles are two huge problems that are not in the realm of California and New York.

In general, any problem of wealth redistribution (the ones I mentioned above) require a federal solution, otherwise any locality trying to solve them will end up getting an influx of the welfare receivers and possibly an exodus of the taxpayers.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#679

Post by dmode »

coffeemug wrote: post #665
dmode wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The high speed rail is nothing to do with bureaucrats (not sure what the term means anymore), but is delayed due the really difficult task of land acquisition, while maintaining property rights, and address thousands of lawsuits about communities objecting to various routes. It is easy to comment on the abstract, but I bet even Marc Andreseen won't be happy if a high speed rail runs in his backyard in Atherton

We used to be able to accomplish things like raising of Chicago[1] over 150 years ago but we can't move a few tiny communities in the middle of I-5 to build an infrastructure project of enormous economic value in 2020? I think that's case in point. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago

You can view that as a negative. But you can also interpret this as a positive development, where people at grassroots are empowered to protect their own communities, and cannot be simply swept over.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#680

Post by isseu »

camgunz wrote: post #592

There are two problems: rapidly ballooning income and wealth inequality, and ladder pulling. That explains everything. Why are schools bad? Because we disproportionally fund schools for rich people's kids, and there isn't money or regulatory freedom to innovate there. Why is transportation bad? Because rich people have drivers and private jets, and there isn't money or regulatory freedom to innovate there. Etc etc et…

How private jets affects public transportation?
Post reply on HN