YC: Requests for Startups

There are two factors to consider though.

On the one hand, you're correct that it does nothing for the American worker to bring manufacturing back if it means huge buildings with skeleton crews and machines that effectively run themselves. I don't particularly have a solution for this. Americans have gotten used to the price of goods being artificially low because of inexpensive labor in impoverished countries. Unless we want to take a manufacturing approach akin to Germany or the Nordic countries, focusing on high quality precision built or luxury items, we simply can't produce goods at commodity prices while both paying people enough to live well on and producing the kind of profit that is required by investors. So that's where YC sees machines as solving that conflict, at no benefit to working people.

That said, there is the advantage that we have seen how fragile the global JIT supply chain is to disruptions. Either political, environmental or just plain Acts of God like COVID. Having goods produced much closer to where they're consumed is something I think every country needs to invest in. Especially for goods that aren't just nice-to-haves but necessary for basic functioning of society. Things like construction and repair materials, medicines, medical devices, etc. I support building up a greater local resilience over global dependence, especially what with climate change on the horizon.

I wish we could do this in a way that meant good blue collar jobs with strong benefits and union wages. But you can't ever expect a investors YC to take that path.

Countries want US dollars. They want dollars to use to buy goods, which are usually priced in USD, and for debt interest payments.

Countries sell services (tourism) and goods (products and commodities) to earn dollars. However another major source is by creating their own local currency (i.e. Brazilian Reals), inflating it (5 to 10% common in Brazil), and banning citizens from holding foreign currency (i.e. citizens cannot hold USD). So if you want to pay someone in Brazil from the US, you send them USD, which is then stolen by the government and converted into shittier local currency (Reals).

A better option, as employees I have in Brazil will attest, is you pay them in stablecoins (i.e. USDT or USDC) which they then convert at their own leisure to Reals when they need to pay bills. This allows them to earn interest on the stablecoins and protects them from the shitty local fiat currency.

This theft of wealth from citizens via the local shitty fiat currency is a global phenomena. See Argentina, Lebanon, Venezuela, Turkey, and on and on. This is a major driver of global stablecoin demand, because everyone wants USD, especially retail, but until crypto the ability to receive and store USD was very limited by governments.

You can see my other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39372942

"Eliminating middlemen in healthcare"

Unless YC is looking for a startup that lobbies against for-profit health insurance this is more like "eliminating middlemen and replacing them with our own in healthcare"

"Uber for healthcare" now pivoting to "OpenAI for healthcare"

I've been thinking about whether investors should be consumer brands, to develop a reputation accross different companies, to encourage the companies they invest in to put ethics above profit to maintain that reputation.