It’s Time to Build • Hacker News Board

Re: It’s Time to Build

#701

Post by fxtentacle » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:23 AM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #577

david927 wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, America has long given up the notion of what is "for the good of society" in favor of making money. Walking around SF (until recently) meant literally seeing both millionaires and people defecating in the street. It's extreme. Marc wants to know how to use capitalism and growth (building) to overcome this, when the best outcome might be just realizing how broken capitalism in America is.

There exist a culture of people who are happy sleeping outside and living on the streets. Even if all the homeless who don’t want to live on the street have a bed, there will be street people. It’s a lifestyle preference where the weather is nice, like beach bums.

I certainly enjoyed the time when me and my friends slept outside on a beach :) but my criticism of the article isn't so much that people make bad choices, but instead that some choices are blocked for financial reasons.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#702

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:27 AM UTC

coffeemug wrote: post #658

Fede_V wrote: post #598

I'm quite sympathetic to a lot of what's in that blog post but... A16Z directly invests gobs of capital, and, indirectly, shapes the outlook of other VCs who follow their investment decisions, and they plow way more money into software/bitcoin than physical companies. Why? Because they are really good at what they do, and they realize that building physical stuff is really hard, and they'd rather invest in areas that…

I don't think "put your money where your mouth is" is a good argument. A16z can be subject to prisoner's dilemma of our collective cultural decline and simultaneously have genuine desire to get out of this predicament we're all in. He says it right there in the blog post-- the problem is desire. For example, someone is reliably making tons of money in China stamping cities into the ground and building thousands of mi…

> I don't think "put your money where your mouth is" is a good argument. A16z can be subject to prisoner's dilemma of our collective cultural decline and simultaneously have genuine desire to get out of this predicament we're all in.

I think it's ultimately the only argument. The best way out of a prisoner's dilemma-like situation is for the central authority above the participants to resolve it unilaterally for them[0]. The next best thing is for one of the players to try and force the new equilibrium, hoping they'll be able to survive the disadvantaged position for longer than it takes the situation to reach that equilibrium[1].

Does A16z have enough money and clout to unilaterally push the market until a better equilibrium, one of "building", establishes itself? I don't know. That would be "putting your money where your mouth is", but maybe they know they can't pull it off.

I guess the next best alternative is to take it slow and do a soft push. Write pieces like these, in hopes their message will resonate with other market players. Or maybe it already does? Maybe this article is a mating call[3], a test for whether other funds think the same and will follow suit if A16z decides to put their money where their mouth is, so that everyone can stop funding bullshit software startups and start pouring money into securing a future?

--

[0] - In a prisoner's dilemma involving actual prisoners, you could have a mob boss declaim that they'll kill any prisoner that defects.

[1] - A possible example would be Tesla, which initially faced ridicule for pushing the electric cars; fast forward couple of years, and it managed to force the market to accept the viability of electric transportation, and now all major automakers want the piece of that cake. Which, from Musk's point of view, is Mission. Fucking. Accomplished. [2].

[2] - https://xkcd.com/810/

[3] - See this excellent comment that introduced me to the idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22798808. In that case, a mating call is a "publicly executed conspiracy to fix prices", but I think it can be generalized as "a method to for coordinating in cases where doing so overtly could be illegal". Which may not always be a bad thing.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#703

Post by jka » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:27 AM UTC

pmarca wrote: post #480

dodobirdlord wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, law is not code and it’s very important that it’s not code. Law is subject to interpretation, and that’s great. When bugs are discovered in law, they can be retroactively corrected.

Are bugs discovered and corrected faster today in law or in code?

In each case it may depend upon the 'application'.

For easily-understood fields undergoing well-scrutinized legal code changes it's (presumably) likely that legal drafting issues can be caught and fixed early.

Conversely, in software projects (even open source ones) where the users and authors are few and/or fail to pay attention to mistakes and errors, it could take years to report and fix issues.

All that said, in the presence of a mindful, careful and effective engineering team with responsive users, it does seem that software - or at least software processes like source control, code review and the democratized ability to contribute code changes - has an evolutionary advantage.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#704

Post by ebcode » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:28 AM UTC

coffeemug wrote: post #665

dmode wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The high speed rail is nothing to do with bureaucrats (not sure what the term means anymore), but is delayed due the really difficult task of land acquisition, while maintaining property rights, and address thousands of lawsuits about communities objecting to various routes. It is easy to comment on the abstract, but I bet even Marc Andreseen won't be happy if a high speed rail runs in his backyard in Atherton

We used to be able to accomplish things like raising of Chicago[1] over 150 years ago but we can't move a few tiny communities in the middle of I-5 to build an infrastructure project of enormous economic value in 2020? I think that's case in point. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago

>> The lack of drainage caused unpleasant living conditions, and standing water harbored pathogens that caused numerous epidemics including typhoid fever and dysentery, which blighted Chicago six years in a row, culminating in the 1854 outbreak of cholera that killed six percent of the city’s population.

I think that's the key point right there. Action was taken only after six percent of the city was wiped out. I'm sure we could (and will) be able to do any number of things when faced with an existential crisis of that magnitude.

My hope for the present crisis is that it gives us enough pause to reflect on what we are capable of when our lives are on the line, and extend this into tackling our other social ills -- healthcare, or lack thereof, homelessness, poverty, education.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#705

Post by bambax » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:29 AM UTC

> But the harsh reality is that it all failed — no Western country, or state, or city was prepared

This is absolutely untrue. What Americans mean about "the West" is the US and the UK. And indeed those two countries reacted absurdly and fared and will continue to fare bad. Many countries in Europe are in the same situation (including France, where I'm from).

But one country did and still does very well: Germany. One of the most urgent tasks should be to understand what they did that worked so well.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#706

Post by novalis78 » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:29 AM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #588

novalis78 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it starts with the financial system. The current system incentivizes bureaucracy, regulation and stagnation in part due to the cantillion effect but also indirectly because it destroys capital, increases debt and prevents a savings / capital asset accumulation desire in the populace. Say what you want about the gold standard but it did lead to the great industrial revolution in such a short period of time pro…

Another benefit of a hard-money system (bitcoin would be better than gold nowadays) is that governments can only wage war by spending hard money. And they can only get hard money by extracting it from citizens. It puts a very strong limitation on the government’s ability to wage war, when they need to convince us all to pay for it rather than printing money. Another common trope is that deflation limits the economy.…

Exactly. As it stands wealth is drained away from the people with skills to the people with quills. Thus we end up with mountains of strangulating regs and no bullet trains or hyperloops. I remember Germany, early 2000s, same story: they had their beautiful maglev train on a test track run in a circle for 11 years. They couldn’t build it anywhere. Environmental, political, regulatory ‘uncertainty’. Finally the Chinese invited Siemens on a joint project to build a real track for Shanghai. There is still no maglev train in Germany but several in China...

Re: It’s Time to Build

#707

Post by dunkelheit » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:34 AM UTC

oxymoron wrote: post #70

I'm in the process of reading _Why Nation Fails_. The central thesis is that the rich and poor countries are separated by inclusive vs extractive institutions. The extractive institutions are characterised by elites that attempt to defend their own wealth and status by maintaining the status quo and resisting the creative destruction that may threaten that position. It seems to resonate a bit here, when Marc speaks o…

I don't get why everybody is raving about "Why Nations Fail". Their definitions of inclusive/extractive institutions seem hopelessly muddled. It is almost as if they've collected all the stuff they liked in prosperous countries and called it "inclusive" and then did the same with all the stuff they disliked in impoverished dictatorships and called it "extractive". If you try to distill a succinct definition of these concepts and then apply it, you run into contradictions such as (borrowing an example from Fukuyama): "The Indian political system is so inclusive that it can’t begin major infrastructure projects because of all the lawsuits and democratic protest, especially when compared to the extractive Chinese one."

If the thesis is "institutions are important for prosperity", it is kind of obvious. But the book does little to explain exactly what kind of institutions.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#708

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:46 AM UTC

pbourke wrote: post #620

mkolodny wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly how two of the biggest startups of the past 15 years - Airbnb and Uber - were built. Airbnb and Uber built products that were in a legal gray area. Lawmakers are still catching up to them.

Key to their strategy was having deep enough pockets to fight many simultaneous legal and PR battles.

Which is enabled by VC funding, which IMO makes them complicit on a systemic level. It's arguable whether you can blame a particular investor for Uber's thoroughly rotten and antisocial business model - but once you see more of such startups getting funded left and right, it's fair to ask the question, "why such business model is even a possible option".

Re: It’s Time to Build

#709

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:48 AM UTC

Jommi wrote: post #403

freeone3000 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an American doctrine, that there must be an "actual case or controversy" - Canadian courts can and do issue advisory opinions to interpret regulation.

Which are still usually advisory and not legally binding advice.

I would hope they go a long way towards reducing your responsibility if you follow one and then run into a legal problem because of it.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#710

Post by jakub_g » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:53 AM UTC

Really well captured. It's like we all want to have nice things, without having to make them ourselves.

I'm not in US but in Europe, and I feel like many countries are like a 50-year 100M LOC codebase with fragile dependencies on module boundaries. The inertia is massive and refactoring even a small part of it requires enormous effort, and there will always be people unhappy about any change and a maze of laws making stuff difficult.

You need to really think big and have that inner energy to persuade people to change anything. Most people (me including) just don't have, most of the time, enough mental energy for thinking big about the world around after doing their 8h of busywork and 2h in commute to make ends meet.

Most people at their (non-tech) works are not told to think big either; hell, they are probably discouraged to, and are told to juggle an infinite backlog of low-impact "JIRA tickets" and keep the status quo.