171–180 of 265 posts
I gave up using Federal Reserve Notes, on principal, and have dedicated my life to improving a small ranching community. By limiting my use of money to less than $100 a month (hopefully soon $0), I've had to build connections with human beings that would have not been possible otherwise. It was really eye opening to realize that the universe wants to play and it will help me in the strangest ways. I've set up a commu…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Dismantle the nuclear family” ... “currently one of the stated goals of BLM” This is patent nonsense. Why would you ever believe that’s the goal of any widely supported organization? What happened to Occam’s razor? The absurdity of this claim inspired me to “do my own research” on the matter. The notion that this is a “goal” seems to stem from this portion of the “what we believe” page here: https://blacklivesmatter…
...please don't feed the trolls. Flag, downvote, and move on.
Bill Gates and Elon Musk are two of the best examples of effective social entrepreneurship. Bill Gates made the money and then spent it socially on vaccine research, reducing disease, improving education, etc. Elon Musk's efforts are more directly social-entrepreneurial. He's helping to move the entire world away from gas powered vehicles (Tesla/Solar City), reducing urban congestion and improving rural life (SpaceX/…
Most people can't become Bill Gates or Elon Musk. There's not enough births of the computing age, or births of online banking to go around. There's a lot of people seeking to do social good within the confines of capitalism.
So while most (all?) techniques may be less impactful than Gates and Musk, we shouldn't hold back people trying to find other strategies (dare I call them entrepreneurs) by confining them to being ruthless capitalists who later grow benevolent or build Wayne Industrieses.
I don't identify myself as a social entrepreneur but we built Cloudron around 2014 for personal reasons. When Google Reader shut down, we realized the importance of self-hosting and data ownership. Initially, we started writing our own apps but mid-way recognized that there is already a plethora of self-hostable (especially opensource) software out there. It's just that those apps are really hard to deploy. So, we no…
It is awesome. You might also be interested in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24171800
I gave up using Federal Reserve Notes, on principal, and have dedicated my life to improving a small ranching community. By limiting my use of money to less than $100 a month (hopefully soon $0), I've had to build connections with human beings that would have not been possible otherwise. It was really eye opening to realize that the universe wants to play and it will help me in the strangest ways. I've set up a commu…
Yes, we work with farmers in India - we teach them organic and natural farming and we find ways to sell their produce to customers in the cities. www.unifield.in
Are there existing centralized communication systems to know which farmers are growing which crop in a state or country at what rate?
Centralized and vertical farming doesn't work with small farmers and there are too many of them but it's hard to get them to lease the land and start your own hub afaik.
With ground water depletion, lack of storage facilities, distribution channels, capital and good tooling. It's a hard problem.
Would it help/work to have a federal level planning system that farmers can use to decide which crops to grow and how. Get support through a hedge fund and be able to reuse tools.
Bill Gates and Elon Musk are two of the best examples of effective social entrepreneurship. Bill Gates made the money and then spent it socially on vaccine research, reducing disease, improving education, etc. Elon Musk's efforts are more directly social-entrepreneurial. He's helping to move the entire world away from gas powered vehicles (Tesla/Solar City), reducing urban congestion and improving rural life (SpaceX/…
Defining the boundaries of social entrepreneurship would require a whole separate thread.
YC has a nonprofit programs : List of the YC non-profits: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_VuERKGdeFU_VnsJpybvpwuF... see more: https://www.ycombinator.com/library/4k-what-y-combinator-loo...
So it puts you in a somewhat weird spot since you will never be potentially worth a billion dollars (which is the guideline for the for-profit track of YC) nor are you a pure non-profit.
It'd be cool if they added such a track or loosened the non-profit restrictions so it's not necessarily a 501c3 structure.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just wondering, how do you vet the people that apply? I can imagine a lot of people would love to "earn" a free 2k a month and would happily play along doing the bare minimum amount of work required. I contemplated doing something similar in London (not paying money per-se, but providing a location & good hardware for the students to use) but was kind of worried about ending up with an office full of freeloaders that…
> Just wondering, how do you vet the people that apply? I can imagine a lot of people would love to "earn" a free 2k a month and would happily play along doing the bare minimum amount of work required. I think people that never worked in the public sector, particularly in something like social services, overestimate the goodness (for the lack of a better word) of average people. People that do this usually come from…
The reason why folks working in social services might have a different impression is that they’re primarily coming into contact with people who are in failure mode for a variety of reasons: addiction, health-issues, mental illness, etc. They are not representative of the poor and working classes in general, and their failure to maintain a strong work ethic is often impeded by their life challenges.
Also, the small percentage of freeloaders out there are very good at sniffing out opportunities for taking advantage of the system. That may make them seem more common than they actually are.
> but the reality is that social mobility (particularly in the West) is at a historic all time high
No idea about global social mobility, it’s entirely possible it’s at an all-time high. But you’re definitely wrong about social mobility in the USA. It’s been declining for many, many decades:
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/1/251
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_th...
A few studies show that the decline in social mobility may be leveling off, but if that’s the case (and even that isn’t clear-many studies show the opposite), then almost certainly the financial crisis and COVID will reverse that trend.