Interesting essay, but more of a feel good elite speak that anything else. Feels like he skips over the main part on why "building" anything is difficult. That is because we have worshipped at the altars of capitalism for so long that we worship our one true god - SHAREHOLDER VALUE. This is not some rocket science on why we offshore, or why we invest in photo filter apps. Because that generates most returns in capital and creates much larger shareholder value. Building flying cars do not. Looks how much capital was required for Tesla to produce at any scale. And it is still struggling, what 15 years after it was founded ? Now look at Facebook, which was founded at the same time.
It’s Time to Build
681–690 of 1001 posts
Re: It’s Time to Build
#682I don't know why soaring skyscrapers should be viewed as some sort of penultimate view for the future. With remote work tech, we can rid ourselves of the need for dense urban cores, and we can decentralize our population centers more appropriately.
Great idea. Decentralizing would be a very effective way to combat disease like this. It would also make society more resilient to other kinds of disasters.
It may also have a higher footprint.
Re: It’s Time to Build
#683> We should have gleaming skyscrapers and spectacular living environments in all our best cities at levels way beyond what we have now; where are they?
There are lots of dense cities, with beautiful buildings and streets, 5 story high.
Re: It’s Time to Build
#684I'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…
And what would it solve? If you can enter the market but later on you are judged in the court for doing something wrong - you are better to be forced to think about it before you even start it.
The problem here is growing complexity, which governments doesn't recognize as a problem for some reason. There should be some institution in the government body, which primary goal would be to reduce complexity of governance.
Re: It’s Time to Build
#685>I expect this essay to be the target of criticism.
It smells like an utopia. Chasing utopias already ended very bad.
One of the most important points of the communism was that everyone should have all goods and services he needs.
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" said Karl Marx
>Instead of attacking my ideas of what to build, conceive your own!
My proposal would to let people, society and humanity live according to their natural rules and cycles. Trying to coerce people to do something "for the greater good" would never end up well.
Capitalism has it's problems, but we don't know any better system. And capitalism has the great advantage that it's a natural system, fitting society in an organic way.
To be sure that capitalism won't do much harm, we just have to make sure it is fair: no monopolies, fair competition and so on.
Re: It’s Time to Build
#686Marc's essay should come with a personal commitment of funding or some other concrete effort towards the future he wants to see. Without that, it's yet another elite op-ed.
Re: It’s Time to Build
#687Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, law is not code and it’s very important that it’s not code. Law is subject to interpretation, and that’s great. When bugs are discovered in law, they can be retroactively corrected.
Are bugs discovered and corrected faster today in law or in code?
The key part is that the court system can correct for a bug before the law itself is changed; it's a way to fix things as the code is being executed for a particular case, before the developers have even identified how/if the bug applies for other cases and figured out a general fix, much less implemented one.
Re: It’s Time to Build
#688Earlier quoted context omitted.
I may not have expressed that point very well, but it seems like the common law system would encourage less explicit regulation rather than more, so that seems like a bit of a contradiction. Does the need for more litigation drive a desire to be more explicit in how statues are written?
As the parent notes. The issue is if you have a simple law say "Do not dump harmful chemicals into waterways used for drinking, shipping, etc." this leads to a lot of litigation regarding what is a "harmful chemical". If instead you have it all spelled out "harmful chemicals being one of coal ash, hydrochloric acid, asbestos, ..." (don't quote me on these). Business's know what the variables/costs effecting operation…
Not sure that is how the cookie crumbles, rather: it will be decided that chemical X is harmful at a certain dose, which leads to some permissible concentration Y of X, and that Y can then be used for regulation of disposing X.
A place that needs to dispose a certain volume of X with concentration >Y then pays a sort of a mixologist to dilute X to a concentration dumping it all anyway (unless it would be less expensive and more practical to react X away).
Re: It’s Time to Build
#689Earlier 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.
Well then, California is california-sized as well, so if that approach does not work for USA in its entirety then perhaps it can fix the healthcare system in California?
Re: It’s Time to Build
#690Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Elon Musk’s "alien dreadnoughts" I think was just referring to future Tesla factories rather than every conceivable kind of product.