These companies exist, but they don't get hyped that much by the VC marketing machine and are probably funded outside of it. In a way, those companies are like Walmart, MVNOs like republic wireless and apps that are popular, but you don't hear about because they don't target that lucrative market with disposable income. How much do you hear about coupons.com?
The Unexotic Underclass
41–50 of 309 posts
Re: The Unexotic Underclass
#42>entrepreneurs have stopped chasing and solving Big Problems What is strange to me is that people believe entrepreneurs ever solved "Big Problems". Who in history falls into this class? Thomas Edison? Alexander Graham Bell? Henry Ford? Guglielmo Marconi? Nonsense, I say. These men didn't solve the "big problems" of their era -- they didn't attack issues that were popular in the public consciousness. They were really…
I'm most sympathetic to your argument, but one part is factually incorrect. There are a few examples of people working on the great problems of the day and succeeding, among them:
Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, who developed the method to produce ammonia for fertilizer still essential today, probably essential for feeding our billions.
And the Wright Brothers, of course.
That said, under appreciated problems are surely worth working on.
Re: The Unexotic Underclass
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not that it's easier to make money scamming poor people. It's just easier to make money scamming people period. Rich people and poor people tend to fall for the exact same scams. The Vast majority of VC's are really running get quick scams to separate people / institutions with money from it. And if you dig into it so is much of the banking sector. EX: Morgage backed security's are really AAA. See savings and lo…
Budweiser is swill that passes for beer in the USA, because it is cheaper than what most of the world recognizes as beer -- until savvy people made microbrews popular in USA, and they are not in grocery stores.
Re: The Unexotic Underclass
#44Deeply left of my politics, but I like the market orientation of the solution. Very well written to get me to agree with a point of view I wasn't inclined to like. :-)
Re: The Unexotic Underclass
#45Let's take a look at the real problems facing America and the rest of the developed world: 1. Mismanaged IT in critical infrastructure. 2. Misallocated funds in programs helping the destitute. 3. Cyclical loops of depression-lack of opportunity-lack of skill building. 4. Health disorders on a massive scale, like metabolic disorder, that can be solved with very simple things like diet and exercise. These places are no…
> Show me the path to get people off of sugar diets. http://www.soylent.me/ I think we'll start seeing a difference when the economics improve making it a lot cheaper than fast food.
Sometimes it's hard to tell if someone on this site is parodying an out of touch techie or actually is one. It's a lot easier and cheaper to just eat fresh, healthy foods than it is to try to invent a new food alternative.
Re: The Unexotic Underclass
#46"Make something people want." - is on Y-combinator t-shirts. It is not about class, it is about solving a want or a need in a sustainable way.
> "It is not about class, it is about solving a want or a need in a sustainable way."
Of course it's about class. YC (and everyone else in this industry) is very good at solving a want that they understand, and very bad at solving wants they don't understand.
And our industry is consisted almost exclusively of upper-middle class white urban men. In fact, this demographic is even more prominent in the entrepreneur class than it is in the general tech worker population.
So quelle surprise when the only wants we seem capable of solving are the wants of upper-middle class white urban men: instant deliver-anything, means of private transport, outsourcing household chores, newfangled ways to display conspicuous consumption...
Deliberately or not, this is all about class.
Re: The Unexotic Underclass
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your assume that poor people are poor because they lack the savvy to be born into the upper middle class. That's a common misconception. Poor people are actually poor because they don't have any money. The easiest way to make money is not by tricking the poor, but by tricking the rich (they're the ones who have most of it, after all). Unfortunately, that same money allows even the dumbest rich people to aggressively…
> no one gives fuck all about the poor. That's blatantly untrue. People care. Ask yourself; how many of your friends "don't give fuck all about the poor"? I find it hard to believe that a majority of people would not wish a better life on poor people. But solving their problems is intimidating, difficult, and probably unprofitable. If the true problem is that poor people are poor because they don't have any money, th…
> some problems aren't best solved through technology, or through "people caring", but simply through better governance.
And here you run up against a religious belief named "The Government Is The Problem", which is utterly intractable and ineradicable in someone with an advanced case, and will never die off because it's founded on either blatant self-interest (A regulatory body is harming my profits!) or soured optimism (I thought everything was perfect until the scales fell from my eyes! Now I think everything is perfectly horrible!).
It's related to cynicism, which has posed as maturity for so long some people honestly cannot tell the difference.
Re: The Unexotic Underclass
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Show me the path to get people off of sugar diets. http://www.soylent.me/ I think we'll start seeing a difference when the economics improve making it a lot cheaper than fast food.
Sometimes it's hard to tell if someone on this site is parodying an out of touch techie or actually is one. It's a lot easier and cheaper to just eat fresh, healthy foods than it is to try to invent a new food alternative.
No, I've tried that, was expensive and didn't work. YMMV.
Re: The Unexotic Underclass
#49I can sum this up so very simply. The way to make the most money is to get as close to money as possible. Hence why finance is such a lucrative career. We are seeing the obvious flaws of capitalism now that capital is no longer tied to low skill labor for manufacturing. Want to make a ton of money 1 year from today and have good credit? Spend your days with an MLS subscription finding under-priced homes to flip in a…
Are you a millionaire real estate speculator? Knowing something about it, your scenario strikes me as neither low-risk nor guaranteed. If it were low-risk and guaranteed, it would be profitably scaled -- capital is available in abundance.
why so much money is flowing into blockchains
It's an asset bubble backed by an extraordinarily sophisticated emergent P2P Internet marketing operation which is a quantum leap improvement over a boiler room. Like many asset bubbles, it is snaring both the rich/savvy and the non-wealthy/non-savvy.
Re: The Unexotic Underclass
#50If it's true that 1 in 10 Americans are war veterans, they could literally revolt. They probably have the numbers and potential support from the military needed to succeed.
Because the VA, and by extension the federal government and the American people, treat them like absolute garbage, and this is not going to get fixed in the current system.
Wouldn't be the first time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army