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It’s Time to Build

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Re: It’s Time to Build

#941

Post by jzer0cool »

> "Part of the problem is clearly foresight, a failure of imagination. But the other part of the problem is what we didn’t do in advance, and what we’re failing to do now. And that is a failure of action ..."

The case of being reactive vs proactive.

1. No one is rewarded pointing out problems. Thus no one wants to be that guy. 2. Reward constructive ways to points out issues / problems. 3. Listen & Acknowledge or disregard. Rewards solutions, goals, and resources (e.g. timeline) for resolution.

Accountability — management/upper leaders fail when failing to document the decision (brush away complaints with no record of decision and does not welcome hearing the issues through the management chains). Document the decision making.

Must have positive culture that every issue/problem pointed out is welcomed so that it can be looked at. Someone should be accountable / responsible for those issues whether deferred or not.

Was it a failure to imagination? Or a failure to take action on such conceived idea, once upon a time? Leaders must lead which includes partnership/collective efforts outside their own organizations...

Re: It’s Time to Build

#942

Post by viraptor »

battery_cowboy wrote: post #439
viraptor wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by severity being 10/10? The issues we had in recent times were fairly mild. As long as they're not hidden and acted on quickly, we seem to cope well. Sure, people die, but it seems like severity 10 only because it all happens in one go. Take the deaths from air pollution, resources transport, mining, production, etc. involved in coal/gas/solar/wind, and put them in one day at the same rate as we had…

You still don't understand that it's not financially feasible, for many reasons. I love nuclear, I fucking operated nuclear plants, but until we have passively safe designs that are tested and proven, it's not an option. You're totally correct on the facts, but no one is willing to fund it, that's the fact that killed nuclear.

I was not questioning the financial part. Just the severity of issues.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#943

Post by Meekro »

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…

If it was just health insurance and similarly "risky" industries that required the 6000 pages, it wouldn't be so bad.

Earlier this year Lambda School (an online school where you watch videos and learn things) got fined $75k by a California regulator for the crime of teaching without a license. One single state license application required "2177 pages and weighed 25 pounds," and they're having to do this for many states.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20555351 [2] https://twitter.com/Austen/status/1153450365712388096

Re: It’s Time to Build

#944

Post by m0zg »

georgespencer wrote: post #932
m0zg wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always find a crazy example of something or other and choose to blow it out of proportion, while ignoring positive developments on the ground. Blood and gore sell newspaper subscriptions. In the meanwhile I'm glad Trump ignored the political damage Cuomo was inflicting, and did not send the entire stock of vents to NY. Doing so would be utterly disastrous to other hotspots.

> You can always find a crazy example of something or other and choose to blow it out of proportion, while ignoring positive developments on the ground. So to be clear, you believe: Cuomo deliberately ignored credible data from his people suggesting that the state would not need 30,000 - 40,000 ventilators in order to attempt to do political damage to Trump? > In the meanwhile I'm glad Trump ignored the political dam…

> Cuomo deliberately ignored credible data

Ummm. Yeah? Politics is certainly not be the main reason why he did it, but are you going to argue that it did not factor into Cuomo's initial, confrontational tone? He (and Newsom) seems to be pretty pleased with the federal government now. Trump aired a clip of Cuomo today during his presser which you will never in a million years see on CNN. You should watch it. They at first botched it in the live stream, but then played it again a little later. Had I not told you about it, you wouldn't even know it exists. Think about that for a second before you read further.

> One could argue that the silly video he aired last week

You people still don't see that he does this on purpose. He's not speaking to you, anything-but-Trump voter. He speaks to his base, and swing voters, and he successfully penetrates the confinement the mainstream press tries (unsuccessfully) to put him into. He really has no other choice.

Look, I'm not a fan of his public speaking skills, and I wish he tweeted less, but I can see that it works 100% of the time. Whether you like it or not, this is why he won, and this is why he's going to win again. You can't deny that whatever it is he's doing is effective, even if you don't understand it.

Shit, the dude maneuvered the DNC into nominating a gaffe-master with dementia and a closet full of extremely damaging skeletons before the real race even starts, while dealing with impeachment (successfully) and then with a country-wide disaster (also, so far, successfully - see the projected vs actual casualty counts).

I agree with WSJ, Trump is rewriting the book on responding to country-wide disasters. This is the biggest disaster the country has ever faced, by any reasonable measure. Instead of responding with centralization and authoritarianism (like pretty much all previous presidents), Trump responds with decentralization and constitutionalism. Even DPA is not used willy-nilly. This is what an experienced manager does: he delegates. It wouldn't even occur to a lawyer to do this. We'd get Stalin-style "prodrazvyorstka" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodrazvyorstka) bullshit with that. It'd all be on manual control, and fucked up beyond any recognition because manual control does not work at this scale.

> inability to ignore political damage from folks like Cuomo

There's punching back (which Trump will do 100% of the time) and being guided by political pressure. Those things are different. Watch what he does, not what he says.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#945

Post by tlb »

thu2111 wrote: post #744
KirinDave wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems to resonate a bit here, when Marc speaks of things like regulatory capture. 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. Sure, but is this actually a high o…

We're actually not running out of ventilators anywhere. Existing installed base is sufficient and moreover, it turned out the federal government had a large stockpile anyway, which rather invalidates the central thesis of the article re: lack of preparedness. The claim about ventilators was one of the first dodgy claims I noticed but really the entire first part of the article is a pack of lies. Andreessen says: "We…

The number of tests done so far is about 4 million. Aren't you surprised to find we didn't have 4 million cotton swabs? Barely 1 swab per 100 people?

For reference, Q-tips come in packages of 500 for about $5 at your local pharmacy. They sell around 20 billion per year. Test swabs are somewhat more special and individually wrapped, but 4 million shouldn't cost a lot.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#946

Post by pmarca »

justicezyx wrote: post #262
betocmn wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why Nation Fails" is a phenomenal book. I'm sorry, but I have a hard time to think of US institutions as reasonable examples of how the author portraits creative destruction and extractive institutions. I understand there might be some broken things in your nation's systems. Still, the fact you're able to discuss them here or work towards changing them through legal methods, shows the US is far off on the right trac…

Any recent example of a societal issue affecting American lives got fixed in American system?

A bunch are changing in real time right now. For example, telemedicine being full legalized and paid by government insurance, same as in person doctor visits.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#947

Post by pmarca »

buss wrote: post #929
fierarul wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

"Being able to live near high-income jobs is the most direct path to the middle class in America." 100%

Re: It’s Time to Build

#948

Post by pmarca »

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.

I have a harder time believing this after 2016.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#949

Post by pmarca »

closeparen wrote: post #521
tekdude wrote: post #388

Regulatory capture is indeed a major underlying cause of a lot of the issues, but who will actually do the political work to fight against it? Someone spent money to capture the regulations in the first place, through lobbying and campaign donations. Who will spend the money to lobby and donate for the cause of undoing that? The "builders"? No, their focus and limited capital is spent on whatever it is they are worki…

Milton Friedman did his thing from a university founded by John D. Rockefeller in a Department of Economics that is now named for Kenneth C. Griffin of Citadel Securities. I think it's safe to say that capital does spend on its policy interests, and quite effectively.

Was he right?

Re: It’s Time to Build

#950

Post by pmarca »

akiselev wrote: post #513
pmarca wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the companies we fund are trying to go disrupt someone else's "dominant market position".

So that they can take over the dominant market position, eventually using the exact same tactics to keep entrants out. Anything less would run afoul of shareholder primacy so unless VCs take an active role in promoting ethical behavior from their portfolio, those words are empty as this blog post. Anyone who wasn't born yesterday knows that human beings won't do something that is in direct opposition to their interes…

You'll never guess what happens next.
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