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It’s Time to Build

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Re: It’s Time to Build

#71

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

covidacct wrote: post #46

> I expect this essay to be the target of criticism. Here’s a modest proposal to my critics. Instead of attacking my ideas of what to build, conceive your own! What do you think we should build? There’s an excellent chance I’ll agree with you. What we need to build is the capacity to make investments in building backstops against low-prob, high-risk, collective risks. For almost all of those risks, the problem isn't…

The federal government continued to spend trillions of dollars a year during this period of austerity you're referring to. Any liquidation of emergency stocks was not motivated by financial need.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#72

Post by pedalpete »

mrfusion wrote: post #7

This is great. We are really playing the victim with this virus. I think we should be attacking it on all fronts. Let’s spend the next ten years building a system that can produce a vaccine in three months. Maybe have a national reserve of people standing by to participate in vaccine trials during a crisis. Don’t have some of the technology? Invent it! Rules don’t allow it? Change the rules!

This is very much how the world was built.

How many people do you think questioned the Queen of Spain's logic in paying for Columbus to go yatching? But it lead to the "discovery" of America and massive amounts of European expansion. Ok, debatable benefit...

How many people questioned the validity of the space race? Which the entire world now benefits from the knowledge and technology created during that time.

To pmarca's own history, how many people questioned the resources put into developing the internet, or why the University of Illinois was wasting their time with students building a "web browser"?

Private Public partnerships for the most part, seem to be the only things that can really drive these huge changes. The only counter-example I can think of (and I'm probably wrong) is the computer revolution, which was a grass-roots development.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#73

Post by nerfhammer »

trimbo wrote: post #42

> Why shouldn’t regulators and taxpayers demand that Harvard build? Wait, wut? Last I checked, Harvard is a private institution. Besides, Harvard produces its graduates because they can be picky on who they can admit. Why would we assume that Harvard can scale to provide a "Harvard education" to someone who didn't qualify to make it in today?

Andreessen's point might not be that the government should force them to do anything necessarily, but that no one even expects them to do anything. They have 40 billion dollars in the bank. No one expects them to do anything with it. The government, donors, anyone in Harvard, the proverbial man on the street, none has an expectation that they should try to do anything greater than whatever they're doing now.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#74

Post by wbl »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #63

> The problem is desire. We need to want these things. The problem is inertia. I agreed with most of the essay until I got to this point, at which point I rolled my eyes and briefly skimmed the rest. It's akin to people who say that the reason there are so many overweight people is that they lack willpower and motivation. Look at pictures from middle-America in the late 1940s - virtually everyone is thin, whereas tod…

Germany also faced the China shock and Japan. They didn't deindustrialize. Policy choices matter. Leadership matters. And the social factors that lead to devaluing competence and doing things matter.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#75

Post by oxymoron »

covidacct wrote: post #46

> I expect this essay to be the target of criticism. Here’s a modest proposal to my critics. Instead of attacking my ideas of what to build, conceive your own! What do you think we should build? There’s an excellent chance I’ll agree with you. What we need to build is the capacity to make investments in building backstops against low-prob, high-risk, collective risks. For almost all of those risks, the problem isn't…

A global capital levy is Piketty's central proposal in _Capital in the 21st Century_.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#76

Post by nopriorarrests »

covidacct wrote: post #46

> I expect this essay to be the target of criticism. Here’s a modest proposal to my critics. Instead of attacking my ideas of what to build, conceive your own! What do you think we should build? There’s an excellent chance I’ll agree with you. What we need to build is the capacity to make investments in building backstops against low-prob, high-risk, collective risks. For almost all of those risks, the problem isn't…

Honest, no snark question -- what exactly US government did in last 30 years that should warrant providing more money to it? Is there any guarantee that another trillion dollars will be used more efficiently than blowing up another Middle East country?

Re: It’s Time to Build

#77

Post by fastball »

wbl wrote: post #49
kortilla wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think there is evidence of European governments being any more competent during this pandemic.

All of them started late but Germany seems to be on top of the situation. Singapore and Taiwan are much closer to them then the US.

I don't know, it looks like Singapore has missed a step somewhere. Adjusted for population and looking at the curves logarithmically, they're not doing so well.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#78

Post by cactus2093 »

Ok, assume I'm bought into this idea - where would I even begin?

What are some companies working on these kind of fundamental building things problems? I know of the Boring Company, though haven't really heard anything from them since the flamethrowers a few years back. Sidewalk labs was doing some cool things in Toronto, but I think they've been running into big regulatory issues too and it one point it sounded like their plans were completely on hold. The YC New Cities idea sounded intriguing, but as far as I know they never talked about a single thing to come out of that program and it's now been shut down.

I really haven't heard of very many companies at all doing these kinds of things (which is Marc's whole point), and the ones that I have been casually following, I check back 5 years later and they don't seem to have made any tangible progress. Is there just no way to iterate quickly at all in the physical world?

Then of course there would be the challenge of trying to actually get a job at one of these places, I'm not sure what experience would even be required for this kind of work. Maybe a Civil or Mechanical Engineering degree? As a software developer I'm not sure how I'd even get my foot in the door.

I guess that would leave trying to start something myself, but there too I really have no clue where to even begin. It doesn't seem like you can just start tinkering on construction innovations with minimal upfront investment on your nights and weekends like you can with building an app. On this front someone like Marc Andreesen could offer a ton of advice, I'd love to see him follow up on this post with more thoughts about this. Or even announce a program to fund new companies focused on this type of fundamental building.

Anyway, I'd be really curious to hear if anyone knows of either 1. more examples of companies working these spaces to look into or 2. resources to even just learn more about the problem space and which areas might be ripe for innovation.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#79

Post by monocasa »

fastball wrote: post #48
trimbo wrote: post #42

> Why shouldn’t regulators and taxpayers demand that Harvard build? Wait, wut? Last I checked, Harvard is a private institution. Besides, Harvard produces its graduates because they can be picky on who they can admit. Why would we assume that Harvard can scale to provide a "Harvard education" to someone who didn't qualify to make it in today?

Harvard is a private institution that is widely funded by government-backed loans. They are also a "non-profit" and so don't pay property taxes even though they have a ludicrously-sized endowment fund which certainly accrues a lot of "profit".

And perhaps more importantly, government grants for research.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#80

Post by fastball »

tathougies wrote: post #69
multiplegeorges wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regulatory capture is something the right is adamantly against usually. I mean, most right-leaning politicians in America are into reducing regulation. Getting rid of regulation is the ultimate regulatory capture.

Can you explain rather than simply state? Regulatory capture typically refers to regulations entrenching current players and increasing barriers to entry. By definition, less regulation, lowers barriers to entry of new participants. You surely cannot actually believe that no regulation increases barriers to entry of certain industries?

Presumably they are talking about how monopolies are hard to compete against, and that monopolies are a fairly common outcome of no regulation.
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