21–30 of 194 posts
> Taxi drivers protesting Uber aren’t saying that they want apps out of their cabs. Of course they aren't saying that, it would be political suicide to say it. But given the stubborn resistance to even using the credit card readers forced on them by utility commissions, do people really think that cabbies are aching to have apps between them and their customers that would thwart their ability to skip inconvenient far…
In the last sixty years, a tremendous amount of money has been poured into education. Much money has been allocated to increase college enrollment. But, IMO, for the vast majority of people, college education is a luxury social club. Spending more money on college is just a wealth transfer from tax payers to upper middle class teachers and administrators. I do not agree with Peter Thiel when he says that kids should start businesses instead of going to college. But I think there is lots of room for designing some sort of adult-life on-boarding process that was far more cost efficient than having the government write a check to subsidize teenagers getting black out drunk every weekend. I'm not sure what this system would be, but there are lots of options - could be some sort of apprenticeship, or a co-op mixed with classes, or a light-weight, low cost online education combined with assigned mentors.
The real issue is that any form of labor that is a commodity, and that does not have union or legal protection, has been screwed over by the trifecta of globalization, immigration, and automation. But, I disagree with both the neoliberals and progressives in that I do not think it is possible to educate the great masses and enable them to find non-commodity career paths. There are only so many content marketers, enterprise salesmen, management consultants, and product managers that the world needs. Those jobs are going to go to the genetically and socially privileged. Therefore, the only solution for the normal person, who will be at a commodity job in customer service or doing sales at a Verizon store, is collective bargaining.
One form of collective bargaining can take is democratic politics. My policy preference would be a law that creating a universal wage subsidy of $7.75 an hour, thus guarantees every worker a total wage of at least $15 an hour. I would couple that with a "job of last resort" program that would replace long term unemployment and disability insurance - everyone who wants to work can get a job, no matter how blighted their city, no matter what kind of disability they have. Even if they are a quadriplegic they can be assigned to monitor security cameras or something else.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that's really the point of al3x's post. I think it's more we should be very worried that someone with such a balck & white, infantile view of society and economy is in a position to throw billions of dollars at advancing his world view. I love technology but fear for the world we'll end up with if people like pmarca are left to pull the levers.
I would sure rather have pmarca pulling the levers rather than people like {politicians, bankers, ...}.
> Well, we’re three decades into an era of systemic deregulation and financialization. The result? Not really, finance and banking are still the most regulated sectors on earth. Hardly deregularized.
Very nice to see pmarca's neoliberal idiocy taken apart so thoroughly. Peter Thiel could do with similar treatment imho.
So things we disagree with now can just be labelled as idiocy? And no matter how much you and other statists hate neoliberalism and how it's taken over the world, thing is the world has never been so rich, so peaceful and people have never lived so long and so healthy in the whole history of humanity. So, if neoliberalism is having a bad effect on the world, I wonder what it would do if it had a good effect. I would…
Also, pmarca's particular interpretation of neoliberalism is what I was referring to as idiotic, not the broader concept as a whole (which I think is also very flawed but can at least respect).
Let's not confuse well regulated free-market capitalism and a dollop of social state support (which I think together represent the best model the world has so far come up with and is the one followed, more or less, by the best economies) with pmarca's extreme interpretation of how an economy should be run.
Edit: Oh, and finally, "people like Andreesen are obsessed with fewer people dying of hunger, violence and disease." It would be nice if his investments better reflected that apparent 'obsession': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreessen_Horowitz#Investments
To my eye he seems to care solely about making money for himself and whoever A16Z's LPs are. Nothing wrong with that (he runs a VC firm after all) but let's not pretend he's a saintly figure obsessing over the plight of the world's poor.
> Taxi drivers protesting Uber aren’t saying that they want apps out of their cabs. Of course they aren't saying that, it would be political suicide to say it. But given the stubborn resistance to even using the credit card readers forced on them by utility commissions, do people really think that cabbies are aching to have apps between them and their customers that would thwart their ability to skip inconvenient far…
Can you clarify what you mean by "the left"?
> Taxi drivers protesting Uber aren’t saying that they want apps out of their cabs. Of course they aren't saying that, it would be political suicide to say it. But given the stubborn resistance to even using the credit card readers forced on them by utility commissions, do people really think that cabbies are aching to have apps between them and their customers that would thwart their ability to skip inconvenient far…
> Well, we’re three decades into an era of systemic deregulation and financialization. The result? Not really, finance and banking are still the most regulated sectors on earth. Hardly deregularized.
Additionally, enforcement of the few regulations that exist is close to nonexistent.
Edit: downvotes, so here's some references:
On Regulatory Capture:
a growing number of respected commentators now argue that regulatory capture of public agencies and public policy by leading banks was one of the main causal factors behind the financial crisis of 2007–2009.[1]
OTS consistently referred to the banks it oversaw as its “constituents.” They favored asking banks to correct problems rather than enforcing regulation, even though the banks rarely followed through on the agreements.[2]
On lack of enforcement:
Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted.[3]
[1] http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/files/chathamhouse/public/...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_and_the_Financial_...
[3] http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-stre...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that's really the point of al3x's post. I think it's more we should be very worried that someone with such a balck & white, infantile view of society and economy is in a position to throw billions of dollars at advancing his world view. I love technology but fear for the world we'll end up with if people like pmarca are left to pull the levers.
I would sure rather have pmarca pulling the levers rather than people like {politicians, bankers, ...}.