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It’s Time to Build

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Re: It’s Time to Build

#711

Post by jeffchien »

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

You mean CA99, not I5 (unless you're thinking about the segment inside LA county).

Re: It’s Time to Build

#712

Post by TeMPOraL »

catlifeonmars wrote: post #638
atoav wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing uber has built really, is a way to extract more money from workers with less overhead while circumventing existing worker protection by acting as if they were just the messenger between customers and drivers. I have the feeling that the real building of the past two decades lies in ever cleverer bussines schemes focused on lock ins, extracting user data, doing as if you are open while there is no pract…

Ubër has also built a service that I, for one, strongly prefer to traditional transportation services. Customer experience is far superior.

They did what's the equivalent of selling $10 bills for $1. No surprise customers like it, they get decent service priced at well below the market rate. For a while, that is, because it's only a way for them to leverage VC money to kill off local competitors. Once that's done, Uber's service tends to degrade, and it eventually will even more so, once their money runs out.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#713

Post by aguyfromnb »

quietthrow wrote: post #313

Since you are reading why nations fail I would like to recommend a pairing. How democracies die by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky. The central thesis here is parties are the gatekeepers of democracies and when they put party before nation they erode the democracy that eventually fails. More often it’s a slow degrade than a sudden spectacular collapse. The erosion paves way for leaders that are more “spectacular”…

>GOP put party win before a nation by agreeing to nominate an unfit individual for office. They failed as gatekeepers.

Why do we want corrupt politicians as "gatekeepers" to anything? The Democrats did a fine job "gatekeeping" Sanders from the 2016 and 2020 nomination, to what end?

By the way, nothing will ever get done in the US until the bitter partisanship ceases. Most of what both parties do is political theatre.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#714

Post by jakub_g »

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 heard a few years back that a US health insurance startup had to provide on the order of 6000 pages of documentation to be approved. No wonder that there hadn't been another provider for twenty years or so. It seems like some things are hard to build mostly because some people want it that way.

Very often regulation starts lean, then inevitably some assholes take advantage of it to their profit, so the regulation becomes more and more specific and complex. Rinse and repeat.

It starts at individual level. In France, health insurance providers started reimbursing eyewear, with a rule "one pair of glasses each 2 years". Now everyone buys new glasses every 2 years, sharp, because "I'm paying for it", even if they don't really need new glasses. Stuff like this make insurance price go up for everyone as a result, which incentivizes you even more to be an abuser. The rules are now more strict about the how much is reimbursed, because people obviously go for most expensive Gucci frames allowed.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#715

Post by friedman23 »

3xblah wrote: post #674
chubot wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a valid criticism and something that ran through my mind when reading the article. But keep in mind that there's orders of magnitude difference in what they invest vs. the federal government. According to these 2 articles, it could be around THREE orders of magnitude -- ~4 billion in for them in 2014 vs. ~4 trillion for the federal government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreessen_Horowitz https://www.cbo.g…

As I read the parent comment, the point is not that Andreesen could singlehandedly make a difference with his investments. The point is that his words do not match his actions. His work is fostering an industry whose competitive advantage is not having to build anything tangible for the public's benefit and, in the case of companies like Facebook, not having to pay taxes on their profits.

> His work is fostering an industry whose competitive advantage is not having to build anything tangible for the public's benefit

His work doesn't foster this. Being able to sell a product that has nearly infinite margins will naturally be more profitable than the alternative.

> not having to pay taxes on their profits.

The government has enough tax revenue, how about they stop spending it on pointless wars and destruction.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#716

Post by bambax »

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…

> Marc Andreessen kept defending Elizabeth Holmes over and over

Did he really? That's so bad and tells a lot about that man.

If you haven't, read "Bad blood". Fantastic book and great story about real journalism work against many establishment figures.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#717

Post by aguyfromnb »

pascalxus wrote: post #378
avarun wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this make any sense? You wrote this long, neatly articulated response, but your central premise is entirely flawed. Marc Andreessen and Andreessen Horowitz and other venture capitalists don't have a monopoly over the future (or current) direction of our society). Hell, they don't even have a plurality of control. The things that Marc speaks of in this article that are fundamentally broken in the US are housi…

This is exactly why we need innovation in politics. Imagine for a second, that you declare a region, say 1 square mile, somewhere as almost completely free of all regulations. Then, let all the companies that want to build there, go nuts and build whatever they want. This then serves as an innovation incubator, and an example for the rest of the nation as to what can be built, when we allow it to be built. Imagine th…

>FB, had 100,000 apps in less than 1 year.

First of all, Facebook had to start "regulating" those apps in the early days, because they threatened to overrun the platform with spam.

Second, there's a long, long history of corporate malfeasance in un-or-under regulated spaces; you don't have to go back very far (2008 GFC).

Re: It’s Time to Build

#718

Post by mattmanser »

3xblah wrote: post #674
chubot wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a valid criticism and something that ran through my mind when reading the article. But keep in mind that there's orders of magnitude difference in what they invest vs. the federal government. According to these 2 articles, it could be around THREE orders of magnitude -- ~4 billion in for them in 2014 vs. ~4 trillion for the federal government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreessen_Horowitz https://www.cbo.g…

As I read the parent comment, the point is not that Andreesen could singlehandedly make a difference with his investments. The point is that his words do not match his actions. His work is fostering an industry whose competitive advantage is not having to build anything tangible for the public's benefit and, in the case of companies like Facebook, not having to pay taxes on their profits.

I always get a bit conflicted with Marc Andreessen stuff.

Like this article starts out with a bold claim that's...wrong.

Germany have done well. A western country has done well. Elephant in the room, massive 80 million person country, major western power, and the American claims no-one's done a good job because the US hasn't.

And then he goes into talking about having pre-prepared therapies or a vaccine. Again, we already have to an extent. You can't make a vaccine before the virus exists, but you can have a way of rapidly making one. We do have pre-prepared vaccines, like this one:

http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-03-27-oxford-covid-19-vaccine-...

Perhaps, again, he's just talking about the US?

Re: It’s Time to Build

#719

Post by aguyfromnb »

catlifeonmars wrote: post #638
atoav wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing uber has built really, is a way to extract more money from workers with less overhead while circumventing existing worker protection by acting as if they were just the messenger between customers and drivers. I have the feeling that the real building of the past two decades lies in ever cleverer bussines schemes focused on lock ins, extracting user data, doing as if you are open while there is no pract…

Ubër has also built a service that I, for one, strongly prefer to traditional transportation services. Customer experience is far superior.

>Ubër has also built a service that I, for one, strongly prefer to traditional transportation services.

This is a big reason why things are the way they are: despite all the obvious externalities Uber (and AirBnb) foists on the public, the rich support if because it benefits them.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#720

Post by AmericanChopper »

refurb wrote: post #556
Aeolun wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People don’t want one-world-gov Speak for yourself. I would personally love this. We’re long overdue for a one world government.

Will never happen, unless it’s authoritarian. There is way to much cultural, and thus political, diversity in the world. Not everyone wants the same thing out of their government. Hell, even small countries are usually strongly divided on politics.

To believe in a one-world government, I think it’s almost a prerequisite that you don’t care about what people actually want. The only line of reasoning I’ve seen sincerely put forward for creating a central world authority to rule over all people is that some people think they know what’s best for everybody else. Not only does what actual people want not matter, but in order to achieve their utopic vision, they must protect people from themselves when they want the wrong thing.
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