This article should be stapled to the top of Hacker News, next to
new | threads | comments | ask | jobs | submit | to-do
The Unexotic Underclass
111–120 of 154 posts
Re: The Unexotic Underclass
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Michaelo Church or Michael O. Church, I don't know who you are, but this is a great comment on the article. Thank you for this perspective. As someone once in VC, I laughed when you said what is true: most VCs are not actually putting their own money behind the investments. Indeed, it's only the 9-figure celebrity ones. My only quibble was your line about not making money. Your first year associates/analysts are pull…
Your first year associates/analysts are pulling in 6 figures which I think is pretty decent dough, even though it may feel like a middle class wage in the "star cities" you rightly mentioned. Rent burns it all, and VC-istan and Wall Street both have ageism problems. It's the same thing as for athletes. A typical major-league professional athlete (which means we're already in the top When you consider how tight our wi…
To where goes the rent money? Is this all just making landlords richer?
Re: The Unexotic Underclass
#113I noticed that devs on HN often sneer at CRUD apps because they're boring to build, but meanwhile a simple CRUD app could do something like make all these veterans' medical benefit claims paperless so that they can get filled out and approved in minutes rather than months , and they could get the care they need sooner. One could do a lot of good by just making CRUD apps for people who need them and can't afford to pa…
I think I've noticed a pattern with these kinds of systems: its not a software problem; it's a policy problem. When designing (evolving, inventing) rules, regulations, policy, exceptions, limitations, audits, checks, balances, the bureaucracy's princes seem to ignore the bigger picture of what it's all become: a mess. It's not just government systems either. There's a reason why people joke about their phone bills be…
As someone working on a healthcare startup, a thousand times this.
More than the technical disgust of building a policy-laden system, marketing is terrifically difficult under regulation. Consumers get scarred by inconsistent regulatory rules and stop being willing to change processes because it's too frightening to possibly run afoul of policy.
This is, by the way, a great opportunity for organizing regulatory consultants. Such a service might be an important forerunner or partner to ventures trying to change heavily regulated industries.
Re: The Unexotic Underclass
#114Good article, mostly well written except for the painful intellectual insecurity of the writer. It is, in fact, possible to write a scathing, stylised essay without doing backflips to use archaic or obscure vocabulary. Sometimes that's what's required to get a point across, but when it's thrown in so haphazardly (my eyes nearly rolled out of my head when I saw "catholic" used as a synonym for "universal").
Take a deep breath, get your point across, and emphasise the stuff that's important. Don't drag me out of your flow just because you want to show off.
Regardless, the writer is going to be awesome once they mature a bit.
Re: The Unexotic Underclass
#115On What I Think the World Should Do - By Sir Grandiloquent
Re: The Unexotic Underclass
#116It's pretty simple. The Unexotic Underclass Doesn't Have Cash. In 2007, the bottom 60% of the country had 4.2% of the country's wealth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Distribution_of_Weal... Frankly, it doesn't make sense to target anyone but the top 40% of the country. Roll a 20 sided die. If you roll a 1, put in the pile that goes to the bottom 60%. If you roll a 2-20, put it in the money that goes to the…
My family and my wife's family are, to a certain degree, I suppose, part of the "unexotic underclass". They usually don't live check to check, but they don't have months and months to live on saved up, usually. And the fact is, they don't have piles of disposable income, and never have.
So in order to sell to my family, you need to make things cheaper and/or more reliable and/or unneeded. For product ideas, examine these sorts of stores: Cabela's, Walmart, Costco. The target demographic is one which drives everywhere; it's wholly suburban to rural. Biking doesn't really happen, and cell coverage can be spotty. Computers might well have been bought last in 2003 and be using Windows Me.
If you can figure out how to make essentials cheaper or non-essential (by redesigning how other things work), then their standard of living goes up and their income effectively increases.
So. Things you can think about include: grills; furniture; carpets; clocks; microwaves; vacuums; cleansers; etc.
Things You Buy At Walmart, in other words. The challenge to the American businessperson is to be able to sell to the Walmart crowd, things they buy at Walmart.
I would bet that you can charge a bit more for things than Walmart, if you can double to quintuple the quality. Imagine not having things that break quickly. Or, like I said, a new product that obviates other products would also be good.
Re: The Unexotic Underclass
#117And here I wrote a similar critique of Silicon Valley something like two days ago. Nice to see the perspective of "the 99%" getting more play.
Re: The Unexotic Underclass
#118It's pretty simple. The Unexotic Underclass Doesn't Have Cash. In 2007, the bottom 60% of the country had 4.2% of the country's wealth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Distribution_of_Weal... Frankly, it doesn't make sense to target anyone but the top 40% of the country. Roll a 20 sided die. If you roll a 1, put in the pile that goes to the bottom 60%. If you roll a 2-20, put it in the money that goes to the…
I want to argue this.
A bunch of years ago I read about "Passivhaus" insulation in the New York Times. The wiki page is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house
Basically, invest 14% more in construction up-front, and save 86% on space-heating costs over the long term. THAT'S FUCKING HUGE! These things are a major hit in new construction in Central and Northern Europe.
More, these things are pretty much exactly what you would want as a new, high-tech business for the bottom 60%, or at worst the bottom 80% or bottom 90%. I mean, everyone wants to save 86% on heating, and America has a whole lot of people who live in cold, temperate climates.
So here's a Big Idea for the Unexotic "Underclass", and the middle class, too: how do we bring down the up-front cost to the point where people start being able to afford investing in energy-efficiency, particularly in cold areas that can really use this kind of thing?
(Because this kind of stuff doesn't even really matter to the capitalist/upper class: their utility bills are negligible versus everything else they do.)
Re: The Unexotic Underclass
#119This article is completely false. There has been an exponential increase in the number of start-ups in America to specifically serve the underclass. What the poor want is money, and the market has responded with almost every conceivable solution. Some examples, Gold for cash stores, Payday Loan stores, Auto Title Loan stores, increasing number of pawn stores, new high risk credit cards offering 29.9% APR, rent-to-own…
You're confusing "serve the underclass" with "rip off the underclass."
Re: The Unexotic Underclass
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
All the technology in the world won't make those veterans' benefit claims go through any faster. The problem there isn't the technology (it's not all that hard of a problem) but getting it into the right place, past all the gatekeepers who want to keep it out. It's not that nobody is building the technology because they're concentrating on other things, but rather nobody is building it because they know it won't sell…
You're right, you're right. The VA thing is a bad example. Enterprise software is expensive because big companies make themselves expensive to sell to. And the government is the biggest company of all. I'm sure they spend seven to eight figures on the cruddiest of CRUD apps from companies like Oracle. On the other hand, something like a basic CRUD app could really help out a charity or non-profit that serves disadvan…
Not so sure abotu the charity market. one example back in 2000 I worked on a cheap and cheerful Paperless direct debit so that any Charity could quickly and easily set up a system to take donations.
The trouble was each flipping charity/bank wanted a bespoke version some of the changes required by the banks where absoluty nit picking.
The product had some good press for the Minister but could we get charity's/banks to hold their nose and just use one form! NO
Wonder if any VC in old street/silicon roundabout want to try again I still have few contacts form my days at Poptel