It’s Time to Build • Hacker News Board

Re: It’s Time to Build

#921

Post by danimal88 » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:02 PM UTC

sah2ed wrote: post #892

danimal88 wrote: post #834

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Tbh, I didn't really want this comment to be an opportunity to pitch my company or make it too specific about our solution as there are many different types of solutions, categories and problems that could use innovation capital that are second in line. flair.co is us. We have taken money from investors, those that aren't afraid of energy problems, that aren't afraid of energy efficiency, and that invest in mea…

Your post still reads like marketing-speak — it is not immediately clear how you differ from other home builders. Anyway, I’m not really sure the point of your criticism of VCs. That you eventually found investors is good, but your grouse is that you don’t have prominent venture capitalists among your investors? Venture Capital, by definition, has a different appetite for risk than private equity for instance, so it…

We are not home builders and our site seems like it makes it pretty clear what our consumer offering is. I'm not advocating for home builders to take VC money although there are plenty of construction tech companies with unique ideas that have taken VC.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#922

Post by mattm » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:10 PM UTC

jennyyang wrote: post #385

Vomzor wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first official case was in March. The actual first case was at the beginning of January. The shelter in place order means the city failed to anticipate and acted when it was too late. Like the rest of the Western world.

No. San Francisco was the first to act, and put pressure on the rest of the Bay Area to follow, and subsequently California. If SF didn't act first, who knows how long it would have taken for other politicians to have the "courage" to put in such draconian, but effective, measures. As far as I'm concerned, London Breed saved tens of thousands of lives in the Bay Area alone, and I hate her politics.

Actually a lot of large tech companies acted earlier and had already implemented work from home orders by the time the city acted.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#923

Post by mattm » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:17 PM UTC

ImaCake wrote: post #669

>Every Western institution was unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic, despite many prior warnings. This is simply not true. In Australia, New Zealand, and several European countries institutions did act fast enough and did manage to flatten the curve. Go take a look at Australia's epi curve [0]. It is flat. Our case load has peaked, there are less Australians in hospital with Covid19 today than a week ago. There is…

I think a lot of Americans want to believe that there was no other choice and that every other country is in the same boat. The fact is that this was an utter failure. With better preparation, communication and leadership, there didn't need to be an economic shutdown.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#924

Post by marcus_holmes » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

silexia wrote: post #773

jakub_g wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I think the single biggest roadblock to building new things is regulation. How do we eliminate most regulations, and simplify the rest to fight off regulatory capture? What if we had a github for laws and required that anybody who worked on a law use their real name and if they were paid by a company they had to list how much?

Regulation is all about stopping people from getting taken advantage of, or hurt, usually by their own decisions.

Financial regulation is mostly about stopping people from selling dodgy investment schemes that are some variant of Ponzi.

Health and Safety regulation is mostly about stopping people from doing stupid things that might kill them.

FDA is about stopping Snake Oil salesmen. And y'know, making sure the drugs we're sold don't make us worse.

You can see it coming in the Cryptocurrency world - people lose money on stupid bets and then feel that someone else should have done something to stop this. Someone being the regulatory agencies.

So what would a solid set of regulations for crypto look like? What process would you devise that would result in a set of rules that prevented most of the crooks from profiting from their crookedness, while allowing honest folks to make some money investing in crypto?

Re: It’s Time to Build

#925

Post by unexaminedlife » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:25 PM UTC

Sadly I find so many things wrong with this "blog post".

When Silicon Valley embraced Wall Street, you signed your own death warrant, and basically said F* disrupting the status quo.

You can't possibly try to make this message politically agnostic and sound genuine (or informed).

Re: It’s Time to Build

#926

Post by mattm » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:28 PM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #111

aazaa wrote: post #99

> ... The things we build in huge quantities, like computers and TVs, drop rapidly in price. The things we don’t, like housing, schools, and hospitals, skyrocket in price. What’s the American dream? The opportunity to have a home of your own, and a family you can provide for. We need to break the rapidly escalating price curves for housing, education, and healthcare, to make sure that every American can realize the d…

We don't build TV's and computers. Other countries do. We do build hospitals/housing/schools. Maybe if we imported slave labor like say, Dubai, it'd be cheaper to build things.

> Our forefathers and foremothers built roads and trains, farms and factories

Yes, and most of these were also built by slaves or people in slave-like conditions. It's incredibly easy to build things when you have nearly free labor.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#927

Post by buss » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:29 PM UTC

abvdasker wrote: post #909

buss wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In San Francisco, at least, YIMBY is the organization that is organized around ending regulatory capture in housing, and The Neoliberal Project (in SF YIMBY Neoliberal) is organized around broader dismantling of regulatory capture. We mobilize people in support of reform-focused politicians and have even started running our own (Sonja Trauss in 2018 and myself in 2020). Happy to talk more about it -- steven.buss@gmai…

In order to fix regulatory capture at the structural level you have to fix campaign finance in the US. It's the only way.

What do you mean exactly? SF races all have contribution limits of $500 and it hasn't helped.

What campaign finance reform would solve regulatory capture, because low contribution limits isn't helping.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#928

Post by buss » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:31 PM UTC

chriswphoto wrote: post #450

buss wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In San Francisco, at least, YIMBY is the organization that is organized around ending regulatory capture in housing, and The Neoliberal Project (in SF YIMBY Neoliberal) is organized around broader dismantling of regulatory capture. We mobilize people in support of reform-focused politicians and have even started running our own (Sonja Trauss in 2018 and myself in 2020). Happy to talk more about it -- steven.buss@gmai…

Thank you for the work you do! Zoning is the new redlining. This generation has to fight for the right to affordable housing and economic opportunity.

Thanks! 100% agreed that zoning is just redlining. We've given municipalities the ability to discriminate based on wealth rather than race, but wealth is a proxy for race in America: https://www.thebalance.com/racial-wealth-gap-in-united-state...

Re: It’s Time to Build

#929

Post by buss » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:54 PM UTC

fierarul wrote: post #747

chriswphoto wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the work you do! Zoning is the new redlining. This generation has to fight for the right to affordable housing and economic opportunity.

I find it interesting how affordable housing must be very near high economic opportunity. Seems to me it's a fight for convenience too. They built Las Vegas in the desert to avoid restrictions, what's preventing this generation to build new cities? The whole Covid problem will make quests to increase population density more difficult. But perhaps will also spread opportunities around, or move them online, so this zon…

I fight for both market rate and subsidized housing in high-opportunity cities because it's the easiest way to life people out of poverty.

Being able to live near high-income jobs is the most direct path to the middle class in America. If we want people to not live in poverty, then it makes sense to subsidize their access to opportunity. That means subsidizing education and housing.

I've had fun nights talking with friends about starting a city. It's really fun to think about how we'd design the city to maximize opportunity, but there's no getting away from the value an existing city provides. Fixing a city with already high opportunity is just fundamentally cheaper than starting a city from scratch. All we need to do is win a few elections -- we're talking less than $100MM. A new city that is aiming to compete is a $100B+ project.

As engineers we often think the best way to fix something is to build a new version. But this is rarely true in institutions. Think of governments as legacy systems: they've been built up over time and have a ton of hacks keeping it running. Think of Spolsky's generally good advice: "Don't rewrite code" https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

It is easier to fix an old and broken system than to replace it wholesale. Let's focus on fixing government instead of replacing it.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#930

Post by kitotik » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

tathougies wrote: post #427

kitotik wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. Which is similar to what I think will end this recession/depression: a vaccine. Now I would ask which path would have us coming out of this current crisis stronger: 40% of GDP spent on a “New New Deal” or 10% GDP invested in attempt to keep the status quo?

Alternatively, as we're seeing now, more and more people will ignore government orders until the election (at which point we'll see a huge change in tune from leaders), and go back to work. At some point, like in the past, people stop caring about diseases.

More and more poor people who do jobs to serve the rich will definitely have no choice but to go back to work despite the disproportionate risk they take on due to their lack of adequate health care and prevalence of preexisting conditions.

I doubt you will see the ruling class rubbing elbows with the plebs again until there is a vaccine, or at least very comprehensive therapeutics available.