Lecture 9: How to Raise Money - <AUTHOR> http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec09 <comment><USER3> All the top tier VCs (including YC) repeat the mantra "don't sweat the terms". It also appears on Ron Conway's slide in this lecture.

There seems to be a dangerous line between taking a good deal as offered and getting nailed by a bad deal. It's easy for the VC to say "don't sweat the terms", they are setting the terms after all. The advice makes sense if you're working with a top tier firm that has a reputation to protect, but it seems like it could be quite dangerous when applied to lower tier VCs?

<comment><USER4> This is one of several significant conflicts of interest in this lecture series. I'm surprised it doesn't seem to bother people to see VC trying to play both sides of the table. The optimal world for investors (a tiny proportion of huge successes) looks very different than the optimal world for startups (many moderate successes). And the idea of investors trying to coach founders on how best to enrich investors is just nuts.

<comment><USER5> This isn't for charity. In my opinion this startup school is intended to pump college students into the VC environment so that they (Private funds) can capture as many young, smart talents as possible to add to their portfolios.

At the end of the day the "Startup" world is the world of finance, and I think the explosive crop of high risk private equity (Angel, VC, hedge) investors are trying to get as many "makers" into it as possible.

Whether this is good for the new entrants or not is too early to tell. I think it probably is when compared to the alternatives, but my guess is that I am missing something.

<comment><USER6> Is it an advertisement for YC? Absolutely. So is HN.

It's also interesting. I don't think I'd have gotten much out of the class as an undergrad, but a decade later, I'm learning a lot from this lecture series. Among the things I've learned: I probably don't want to start a startup; I'd rather focus on great products and execution in my field.

I view it as more in line with the Graham/Buffett school of giving back as you go. PG (not BG) has an academic bent, and academics like share what they've learned.

Thank you, YC. It's a worthwhile course.

<comment><USER7> Heh! Thanks for the clarification. I read Graham/Buffet to mean Ben Graham ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Graham](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Graham)), not PG so I was a bit confused.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One thing that struck me was that both Ron and Marc said they mostly invest on referrals. Ron said that almost no-one came in unannounced anymore - <USER2> seed investment was a referral from someone he knew. Marc said that almost every A round was a referral from Ron or someone else he knew.

My question is: If you can't get seed funding without already knowing someone in SV, who _are_ you supposed to know and how do you get to know them? Is there no way but to work at another startup first and then branch out once you've made connections with the management/board? Or go to Stanford and hope your professor has connections like Google?

Edit: Obviously YC is an option too ;)

<comment><USER9> YC is a hack around the old-boy you-have-to-know-someone network. It's ingenious. YC implements a better filtering algorithm than the dumb who-you- know filter and sells the companies to VC's at a premium.

It's amazing most of the VC's have not worked out a better filtering algorithm themselves.

<comment><USER10> I'm hazard a guess that YC uses back-channels as well. Firms like SVAngels and a16z get 10-30 deals per day with referrals so they can focus all their attention on making type II errors.

<comment><USER8> Yeah I've been reading a lot of the "How we applied to YC" articles recently and it does seem that even YC use a lot of referrals. Quite a few were along the lines of: Apply to YC, email a friend who knows a partner and see if you can get a referral.

It may only get you to the interview stage, but when you have the mass of 1000's of applicants, it's more than most people get.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How to succeed in life: 1) Be attractive, 2) Don't be unattractive.

How to raise money: 1) Bootstrap, 2) Don't have a need for VC money.

They might as well have said that in the first 20 minutes instead of beating around the bush. All 3 of them say the best way to get money is to not need it to begin with, i.e. be the twitter guys.

</comment><comment><USER12> Notes: [http://jonalmeida.com/posts/2014/10/21/htsas- lec09/](http://jonalmeida.com/posts/2014/10/21/htsas-lec09/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Sam: I'd live to see a discussion on putting together a party round at the seed stage. I'm not sure how common this is, but we have over $1M of interest in our seed round (angels/micro VCs), but we're operating in a space where very few investors have any domain expertise, and so everyone is waiting for a lead. Is this common? Any ideas how to push this through? In the mean time we're taking the Steve Martin approach.

</comment><comment><USER13> Did I miss something? They were talking about seed rounds raising on the order of a couple of million dollars.

I thought seed rounds raised a couple of hundred thousand (at valuations of a couple of million), with series A rounds at about ten times those numbers.

Have things changed, or were they talking about valuations rather than the amounts raised?

<comment><USER14> I don't think there's too much consistency when it comes to dollar amounts and rounds. From what I've seen a seed round is typically 500k - 3m. With series A being 3m - 25m. There's a ton of variability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wrote a quick summary of key points in the talk - it really shows what the "top VCs" are looking for, go big or go home: [https://www.facebook.com/johan.aardal/posts/1015274252107585...](https://www.facebook.com/johan.aardal/posts/10152742521075851)

</comment><comment><USER16> 17 Quotes from Marc Andreessen & Ron Conway each from the lecture: [https://medium.com/how-to-start-a-startup/17-quotes-from- mar...](https://medium.com/how-to-start-a-startup/17-quotes-from-marc- andreessen-ron-conway-on-how-to-raise-money-d0b710f115f1)

</comment><comment><USER17> We'll be watching this lecture and lecture 10 next tuesday in San Francisco [http://www.meetup.com/Ycombinators-Stanford- lectures/events/...](http://www.meetup.com/Ycombinators-Stanford- lectures/events/212289722/)

</comment><comment><USER18> There was a lot of good in Lecture 9; although I watched the whole lecture, I eagerly got, saved, and read the transcript.

The part I liked best was Ron Conway's suggestion,

Ron Conway: But in the process, when somebody makes the commitment to you, you get in your car, and you type an email to them that confirms what they just said to you. Because a lot of investors have very short memories and they forget that they were going to finance you, that they were going to finance or they forget what the valuation was, that they were going to find a co- investor. You can get rid of all that controversy just by putting it in writing and when they try and get out of it you just resend the email and say excuse me. And hopefully they have replied to that email anyways so get it in writing.

This advice sounds a lot like the old technique of writing a _self-serving letter_.

Maybe I'm the only one, but there in Lecture 9, from both Andreessen and Conway, I saw some surprises.

Broadly it seemed to me that some of the messages didn't fit well with some of the other messages. And for some of the messages and examples on some of the questions, maybe there are some better messages and examples.

For one surprise there appeared to be a _theme_ ; maybe we should notice the theme:

Andreessen and Conway get new investments mostly only from people they already know and respect.

Then, with this theme, it would appear that in some ways and to a significant extent Andreessen and Conway are living in a Silicon Valley version of an _echo chamber_.

Then what would be surprising about such an _echo chamber_ is that necessarily what Andreessen and Conway are looking for are strongly _exceptional_ cases:

E.g., Andreessen mentioned

"companies that have the really extreme strengths"

and

"... the venture capital business is one hundred percent a game of outliers, it is extreme outliers".

and

"And so the big thing that we're looking for, no matter which sort of particular criteria we talked about, they all have the characteristics that you are looking for the extreme outlier.

Maybe I'm the only one, but it strikes me that an echo chamber is a poor place to look for strongly _exceptional_ cases. That is, the cases Andreessen and Conway are looking for happen only a few times each decade, Facebook, Twitter, PInterest, and a few more.

Or, for evidence of an _echo chamber_ , there was,

Ron Conway: I think what's interesting is, we don't really take anything over the transome. Our network is so huge now that we basically just take leads from our own network.

So, either (A) Conway's "network" is really small with, say, just Mark Zuckerberg, Dick Costolo, Ben Silbermann, and a few more or (B) so big that most of the _sound_ in the echo chamber is not much like what Conway is looking for.

and for more on an echo chamber there was,

Marc Andreessen: The other thing is, I mentioned this already, but we get similar to what Ron said, about two thousand referrals a year through our referral network. A very large percentage of those are referrals through the seed investors. So by far the best way to get the introductions to the A stage venture firms is to work through the seed investors. Or work through something like Y Combinator.

Then what holds for Conway and other seed investors means that Andreessen is drawing from what came from the echo chamber of the seed investors.

Maybe I'm the only one who noticed this; seems surprising to me.

The people I know and respect in information technology and especially promising for very valuable start-ups likely know no one in either the Conway or Andreessen networks and, really, are not known by those networks. Conway and Andreessen are working hard to separate themselves from the people I respect.

Maybe Andreessen and Conway would respond with the remark in the lecture,

"The key to success is be so good they can't ignore you."

So, then, it would seem that somehow all concerned should try to avoid or circumvent the echo chamber. E.g., get a lot of _traction_ , publicity, etc. and then the investors will call the entrepreneur. Maybe.

But on

"The key to success is be so good they can't ignore you.",

this characterization of success is not very clear if only because, for the big winners Andreessen wants, he also expects "serious flaws" as in,

Marc Andreessen: On the other side of that, the companies that have the really extreme strengths often have serious flaws. So one of the cautionary lessons of venture capital is, if you don't invest in the bases with serious flaws, you don't invest in most of the big winners. And we can go through example after example after example of that. But that would have ruled out almost all the big winners over time. So what we aspire to do is to invest in the startups that have a really extreme strength. Along an important dimension, that we would be willing to tolerate certain weaknesses.

So, for success, have to put up with "serious flaws".

Also there is

Marc Andreessen: Even the big successful companies, even Facebook, all these big companies that are now considered to be very successful, all along the way all kinds of shit hit the fan over, and over, and over, and over again.

So, for success, can expect "serious flaws" and also "all kinds of shit hit the fan over, and over, and over, and over again".

So, here Andreessen admits, say, that the road to success has a lot of bumps. Okay, maybe so.

So, what's the truth,

"The key to success is be so good they can't ignore you."

or

"serious flaws" and the shit keeps hitting the fan?

To add to the confusion, there is

Marc Andreessen: You want to be very precise on what you can accomplish with your A round and what is going to be a successful execution of your A round.

Would be nice! But we already know that, instead, we can expect "all kinds of shit hit the fan over, and over, and over, and over again".

Andreessen seems vacillate between (A) shit hitting "the fan over and over" and (B) being "very precise".

I see some confusion.

There also appears to be some confusion on planning:

So there is,

Ron Conway: What would convince us, is what usually convinces us, is the founder and their team themselves. So we invest in people first, not necessarily the product idea. The product idea tends to morph a lot. So we will invest in the team first.

which sounds like the planning is useless. For more, commonly there are claims that in projects, planning is important but that

"No plan survives contact with the enemy".

To me, this sounds too negative, that is, there have been a lot of complicated, ambitious projects that were executed as planned, on time, within budget. And for military projects, this can also be the case as in the _Mother of All Briefings_ by General Schwartzkopf as at

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKi3NwLFkX4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKi3NwLFkX4)

And, on the air campaign

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6YP5OalP18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6YP5OalP18)

E.g., there we hear that the plan was that the air war would take 4-6 weeks, and it did. Early on several days were lost to some unusually bad weather, but later the got caught up and back on schedule.

The ground war? That was 100.000 hours. Period. The plan was a lot of diversionary efforts and a big left hook "Hail Mary" play -- worked just as planned.

The tank battles? The US Abrams tanks could fire accurately through fog and dust for two miles while moving; the Iraqi tanks could fire accurately only with clear sight, for only one mile, and only while standing still; and the US tank crews were well trained; any doubt about how that _planning_ would come out? The F-117 stealth? Did all the bombing of Baghdad, through all the air defenses, and never got so much as a single scratch -- just the way Lockheed planned it. Similarly for the US F-15c against the Iraqi fighters -- the score was some dozens for the US and 0 for the Iraqis. Net, the planning worked.

Lesson: Planning and then executing the plan as planned really are possible, maybe not usual or common but, still, possible.

I see Conway and Andreessen as asking too little from planning. I can believe that in their echo chamber, they have learned not to think much of plans, but elsewhere in our economy and technology are many cases where ambitious projects were planned and then executed successfully essentially according to plan.

Well, I can believe that Conway and Andreessen were describing their experiences in Silicon Valley looking for the next big thing or at least the next big app to get middle school girls all excited and sell out to Google, Facebook, Yahoo, etc.

And Conway has been at this game for a long time at the earliest stages where the worst of the unpredictability is.

For Andreessen, apparently he likes to argue; or as at

[http://avc.com/2014/10/getting-feedback-and-listening-to- it/](http://avc.com/2014/10/getting-feedback-and-listening-to-it/)

there is

"They definitely keep me on my toes, and we'll see if they're able to convince me. I mean, part of it is, I love arguing.

"The big thing about Twitter for me is it's just more people to argue with."

So, maybe Andreessen is mostly just arguing.

Maybe the bottom line is, often Silicon Valley is not very clear on just what they are doing. That, too, can be a valuable lesson for an entrepreneur and worth watching the lecture.

I'm surprised: If with so little clarity I did my applied math and wrote my software, I'm sure the math would be awash in terrible errors and my software would likely never run.

That's how I see it. YMMV.</comment>


The Feynman Technique: The Best Way to Learn Anything - <AUTHOR> https://www.fs.blog/2012/04/learn-anything-faster-with-the-feynman-technique/ <comment><USER2> They frame it as a learning technique, but it's also a great problem-solving technique.

When I was a kid I made money by helping my dad with his programming. When he got stuck on problems he'd come out and find me, and offer me $20 to solve it. Then he'd explain what he was trying to do in the simplest way that he could, and explain what he'd already tried. About half the time he'd figure it out before he finished explaining it (and I'd get nothing).

<comment><USER3> What you describe is most often called something like "Rubber duck debugging", [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging) . I learned it as "talking to the wall" debugging.

<comment><USER2> This is similar, but I meant figuring out how you're going to solve a problem using code, not figuring out how you're going to fix your code.

One example I can remember is my dad coming out and holding up a pen, and asking me how I would view all sides of the pen without moving my head. I said, "I'd spin the pen around," and my dad yelled, "of course!", threw a twenty at me and ran back to his office.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I still full immersion is the best.

Basically, pick any subject and consume every form of media - podcasts, books, articles, videos, talk to people, Quora questions - and you'll eventually get it on a very fundamental level.

Constantly ask questions and seek answers and rinse and repeat.

No tests too.

<comment><USER3> I think you left out "practice".

What you describe is hard to apply to, say, tango dancing, which requires a kinesthetic learning essentially impossible to get from anything other than practice.

There are also fields where that immersion approach doesn't work well. Think about the topic of "how to lose weight" or "how to raise a child."

There is a huge amount of media on the topic, and everyone has an opinion, but I don't think the immersion will result in understanding those topics on a very fundamental level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 4 step technique:

1) study some topic and write down everything you know / learned about it

2) pretend to teach to somebody or explain to somebody or write down in simple terms

3) when you are explaining use that process to expose the gaps that you don't think you fully understand if you struggle to explain simply

4) simplify the topic further and keep iterating on your explanation and filling gaps you don't understand until you can explain the topic in a concise way or simpler language

</comment><comment><USER6> I am sorry but you cannot teach everything to a toddler. It needs years of learning to understand something. Feynman knew this, he knew science was hard, he would never say those things.

<comment><USER3> And he didn't. The closest I know is the account described at [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Richard_Feynman](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Richard_Feynman) :

> Feynman was a truly great teacher. He prided himself on being able to devise > ways to explain even the most profound ideas to beginning students. Once, I > said to him, "Dick, explain to me, so that I can understand it, why spin > one-half particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics." Sizing up his audience > perfectly, Feynman said, "I'll prepare a freshman lecture on it." But he > came back a few days later to say, "I couldn't do it. I couldn't reduce it > to the freshman level. That means we don't really understand it."

"Beginning students" here means beginning college students. Not toddler.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I do this, it's useful. It helps during meetings as well. I figured on what's being said and can retain the key ideas long enough to jot down afterwards.

</comment><comment><USER8> But where am I going to find a toddler at this hour? Perhaps I could fill the void by training a neural network instead.

</comment><comment><USER9> > In fact, he created a formula for learning

Citation needed. It's a good technique for your toolbox, but people like to stick Feynman's name on their own things: quotes, the "Feynman algorithm", a book titled _The Feynman Processor_...

<comment><USER10> > Citation needed.

There aren't any, I searched the last time the "Feynman Technique" was posted on HN and found that the term originated on Youtube [0] in 2011.

When challenged by a commenter for a source the Youtuber stated:

> The technique is inspired by Feynman, not used directly by him.

> I was inspired by the story I shared in the beginning to formulate

> his more informal approach into a method. You can see him talk

> about understanding the math ideas in his book "Surely You Must Be

> Joking, Mr. Feynman"

From there it appears that "inspired by" has transformed into "created by"

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrNqSLPaZLc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrNqSLPaZLc)

<comment><USER9> Thanks, that's what I thought. The article could be clearer about this.</comment></comment></comment>


Steve Jobs introduced the first Macintosh on January 24, 1984 - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh

<comment><USER2> People remember the commercial.

It was two days earlier.

</comment><comment><USER3> Tell us something we don't know. I think anyone on Hacker News worth their salt knows the entire history of Apple, Steve Jobs, and the Macintosh. But then maybe 1990's kids won't understand the reference?

<comment><AUTHOR> It was January 24th when I posted, so an anniversary of sorts. A time to remember is all I suggested.</comment></comment>


Growth and Government - <AUTHOR> http://samaltman.posthaven.com/growth-and-government <comment><USER4> Many good points, though I'd take exception to this line:

 _incidentally, it should be a big red flag for growth when the brightest young people start going into finance, since they aren't actually creating any more wealth, just redistributing it_

A modern finance system does more than "redistribute wealth" - or rather, perhaps better phrased, redistributing wealth is fundamentally important to growth and wealth generation. Wealth isn't generated in a vacuum - it's a product of capital and work. The capital can be in all sorts of form, and a modern finance system does its best to keep that capital liquid and keep it in the place where it gets the best return.

Having a faulty banking system would be a bit like having a faulty memory allocation system in a computer program. It may not be the most directly related to performance/growth, but if memory is poorly allocated (e.g. a method that should use just one memory allocation call has to use 10 billion calls), performance will suffer.

Of all fields, technology, with its VC, capital-fuelled madness, should have a pretty clear understanding of the importance of capital allocation.

That said, overall the article is very sensible, or seems so to me. I'd only add that this is not just a US problem, it's a world problem. The whole world is connected together now, and any worthwhile solution cannot be purely US- centric.

We must figure out ways to make growth happen on a global scale, for all countries taking part in "the game".

<comment><AUTHOR> Capital allocation is critical, no question. I think venture capital is a great thing, but I think it's very different than HFT.

<comment><USER5> HFT makes markets more liquid and efficient. I think people oppose HFT because it prevents small investors from competing with algorithms and bigger players. However, the function of market shouldn't be job creation, it should be used to determine true market prices.

If all traders are replaced by HFT algorithms, that would be fantastic news. Opposition to that is ludditism.

<comment><USER4> In theory you're right, but in practice, it breaks the mechanisms which ensure that investors actually want to participate in the market.

The function of the market is not job creation, however one of its functions is to incentivise investors to invest rather than store their money under the mattress. HFT hurts that incentive, that's why it's functionally bad.

The purpose of the market is to get all that capital out of the mattresses and into the economy, not to be liquid or efficient. Those are secondary objectives. To get investors' money, it needs first of all to be perceived as fair.

<comment><USER5> Investors can invest in funds which utilize HFT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _A shocking data point about how things are going is that the median real net worth for households headed by someone under 25 dropped 68% from 1984 to 2009, to $3,662._

I remember hearing this on NPR a couple days ago. It's actually 35.[1]

To all who write blog posts: please cite your stats.

[1] [http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/11/07/the-rising-age- gap...](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/11/07/the-rising-age-gap-in- economic-well-being/)

<comment><USER7> Net worth can be negative and quite often is. Quoting percentage changes for values close to zero isn't very meaningful -- a change from $12k to $5k net worth probably has about the same impact as a change from $8k to $1k, but one is a "58% decrease" and one is an "87.5% decrease".

If there's something shocking about this statistic, it's how small the figure is, not the fact that it's dropped by 68%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Quality of life should improve for everyone; the bigger issue will likely be that people are very sensitive to relative fairness._

It seems like such a blasphemous thing to say, that there is nothing wrong with the top 1% of people owning 99% of stuff. But it's true, as long as their ownership has not come at the expense of others. Why is that so hard for most people to grasp?

99.999999% of sports TV coverage and endorsement income goes to the top 0.000001% of athletes, but its hard to argue that the world isn't a better place for it.

<comment><USER9> The thing that causes political instability is not that the 1% derive their gains at the expense of the 99%, but the _perception_ that they do.

In sports, it's pretty easy to demonstrate which athletes are superior. Nobody even argues about it except when it's a close call and "home team" loyalty comes into play.

But for some reason, perhaps a legacy of the Puritan ethos that hard work will produce deserved prosperity, Americans have always felt like their net worth is a measure of their worth as individuals. So when the relative purchasing power of the 99% decreases in relation to that of the 1% (as it has over the past few decades), people tend to feel that the game is stacked against them in a very personal way. If, the thinking goes, they have still been working hard all this time, why are they suddenly valued less? Surely someone must be conspiring to steal the fruits of their labor and allocate it to the 1%.

It's the kind of thinking that revolutions are born out of, which is a scary thought.

<comment><USER10> _Surely someone must be conspiring to steal the fruits of their labor and allocate it to the 1%_

That's not necessary at all, and I think everybody knows it. The thing I think people often perceive as unfair is that there's a level of wealth beyond which you don't have to _do_ anything at all, and you will continue to gain wealth - often at a rate that's much faster than people who do work very hard. I can see that feeling unfair. I tend to think in more pragmatic terms personally - I don't care too much if it's fair or unfair, I care more about whether it _works_ (and on that, I'm undecided).

<comment><USER8> Beyond that level of wealth, you can also lose incredible fortunes very quickly. That's probably more common than gaining without doing anything at all, don't you think?

<comment><USER10> I honestly don't know. My gut feeling would be no - the rich people I know personally tend to be very conservative with the bulk of their wealth, and at least one of them does just pay someone else to grow it for him. I'd love to see more data though!

<comment><USER8> Who is that someone? That would be quite valuable information ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >Robots are going to replace human workers in lots of factories; jobs that do require human labor are going to continue to move to the lowest-cost place. But that's ok, and these sorts of jobs are not what will generate economic growth for us anyway.

This is all very true, but automation doesn't remove jobs just at factories. We will continuously figure out how to automate more and more jobs. Capitalizm should dictate that these jobs would fall into a ranking where the highest paid, easiest to automate jobs should be replaced first, that might mean traditionally very "safe" jobs like Accounting (see: InDinero). What happens to those who are unskilled an can not assume jobs that really promote growth?

I think it is very important that the government can react to these changes quickly, and while entitlement programs may not be investing in growth, it prevents a very large class of US citizens from being very very unhappy resulting in a very harmful situation for all of us. I do think in the end, you are right, if we can hit growth, everyone will benefit. The consequences lead to an extremely complicated problem and every idea I have to solve the problem is pretty porous.

</comment><comment><USER12> > We should understand that as a consequence of technology and an economy of > ideas, the gap between the rich and the poor will likely increase from its > already high-seeming levels.

The gap doesn't just "seem" high, it "is" high. The core reason this is a problem is that higher gaps in income in a society are correlated (not necessarily causal, but they frequently appear) with social instability.

As voters, we currently want more America than we've proven willing to pay for. This means one of 2 things must happen.

1\. We pay more for the America we have

2\. We get less America than we want

"less" in this case could mean really obvious things like less services or benefits of certain types. It could also mean less of intangibles/unquantifiables such as social stability, or opportunity etc, which are hard to value until they're not there (I've spent much of my life in seriously unstable places in the world, and I can attest that little else works when you dont have the basics). Most likely, we'll have to pay a little more, accept a little less, and as OP suggests, buy slightly different things with what we're paying. If we don't make those decisions, gravity will make them for us.

<comment><USER13> I would argue that plenty of "less" is "more". \- less inefficiency \- less duplicate programs \- less intrusion upon personal liberties (drug war, EPA) \- less government power ~= more personal sovereignty.

<comment><USER12> Your argument makes sense insofar as we as a society need to litigate/revisit what our positions are on these things, but, as is typically the case, the answers aren't all that clear. All the things you mention are things that reasonable people can disagree on.

<comment><USER13> My point was that your choices presented an often-heard false dichotomy. Fundamentally, I think it's a mistake to equate "America" with the "Federal Government" or even "Government".

<comment><USER12> Ah - I misunderstood your point, but to some extent, you misunderstood mine. I don't equate "America" with the "Federal Government". I equate the taxes we pay, with a benefit in public goods that must be administered by someone (hopefully someone we choose). That might be the federal government, it might be state and local authorities, some private folks, charities, businesses or some combination (status quo = some combination). For the sake of this discussion, I'm indifferent as to who administers it, but we can agree that public goods cost something - everything from intangibles (social stability) to really tangible things (like roads).

That being said - yes we could be more efficient. I'm doubtful that $1TN in deficits annually are attributable to waste though - are we really overpaying for services to the tune of $1TN? Possible, but doubtful.

<comment><USER13> _I equate the taxes we pay, with a benefit in public goods_

Ah, but there's the sad sad assumption that causes us to put the noose around our own necks. Often times, the emotions and ignorance of voters are manipulated so that the money paid isn't going to "the children" or "healthcare savings", or "defense"... it's going to empower and enrich those in the government. We're actually paying for our own suffering.

 _I'm indifferent as to who administers it_

I'm not. I'm a firm believer that local tends to be more accountable. As with software development, you don't spread authority and concerns all over your object model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "it should be a big red flag for growth when the brightest young people start going into finance, since they aren't actually creating any more wealth, just redistributing it"

God I could not agree more. I absolutely hate the fact that the most lucrative jobs in our country go to those who move money around, not those who create anything of real, tangible value.

</comment><comment><USER15> The post is overall good but it misses one huge question and seems to implicitly assume something that is incorrect.

I agree growth is good, but shouldn't we then ask what causes growth or halts it? The post does not explore this, but Sam seems to assume that growth is caused by government investment in infrastructure, science and technology. This is false. What are real concrete examples of this abstract idea 'economic growth'. Many of the best examples are actually due to individuals acknowledged in the post such as Peter Thiel and Paul graham. Growth comes from individuals like these choosing to invest in entrepreneurs (at various stages) based on their judgment. Those investors who judge right enough accumulate more capital to reinvest and continue encouraging growth as long as their judgment about what should grow is good enough.

Sam seems to suggest that growth is achieved through government investment. I disagree. Every dollar the government spends comes from a Peter, a Paul or an Elon. Who is going to do a better job investing and causing growth? Elon or a government bureaucrat. Elon is one of those rare entrepreneurs who has plowed into areas of deep regulation such as space travel and transportation. Imagine if the government wasn't financing roads with money taken from those accumulating capital, then how much easier would it be for Elon to disrupt transportation and grow that industry through innovation? How many more entrepreneurs would be willing to work in that industry?

Each of the most broken and stagnant industries are most touched by government: education, healthcare, defense, finance, transport, and energy. Growth has happened in software/tech because government is far away meaning it is easier to work on problems free of intervention and more people are willing to. Growth has stagnated in these other areas because government has disincentivized entry (and often teamed with established inneffectivr big cos) by getting involved, regulating, giving away for free, and generally making it difficult to impossible for entrepreneurs to enter and thus undesirable.

So what has caused growth? Individual investors and entrepreneurs exercising good judgment. What has slowed it? Government regulation as government has grown its tendrils into more and more areas. What should we do to promote growth? Shrink government leaving investors their money to invest and opening more industries for potential private investment that won't have to face burdensome regulation or competition against public entities that don't try to profit.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually say that government is bad at picking individual companies to invest in. I do think infrastructure investments by the government are important; go try to do business in a country where the roads are terrible and the trains don't run on time. If we had an efficient system for the private markets to do this, it might be better, but we don't right now.

<comment><USER15> Thanks Sam for the clarification. I think the likelihood of one developing is much greater with less government involvement (because now there is less incentive to start a competing infrastructure business since your competitor can lose money and not die). If government were not providing roads, we would have tolls (likely in aggregate costing us less than what we spend through bureaucracy) and a lot more people thinking creatively how to build infrastructure. It's such a 'schlep' problem (thanks pg) only bc you have to beat a competitor that can't die and can arbitrarily decree that you are not allowed to do certain things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Scary thought: the U.S. is actually going to have to compete going forward. We've leveraged our natural resources for a long time, but we just can't get much more growth out of them.

</comment><comment><USER17> The general points on growth are well-put but the 'anti-science' examples are very poorly chosen. The anti-science population isn't the group of people who want to see GMO labels and drone restrictions, it's the group of people who don't believe in evolution. These groups are distinct, and I think it's very clear that the former isn't the one pushing budget cuts in alternative energy and technology. There are plenty of valid reasons to oppose GMOs in food and the chemical companies who aggressively defend their controversial patents.

"Technology magnifies differences in innate ability."

It also magnifies your inherited financial circumstances. The industry directs much attention to its gender gap, but there is an equally embarrassing lack of engineers from lower class & lower middle class backgrounds and this never gets enough attention.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, I could have chosen better anti-science examples--just picked two recent issues that I think are hurting innovation.

I think the tech industry magnifies your inherited financial circumstances less than most other industries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> _We have, in startup parlance, a high burn, and most of it can't be considered 'investment' but is instead 'expense'. Spending money on things like infrastructure improvement or new technology that are likely to generate more money in the future helps growth; spending money on the so-called entitlement programs, and parts of the military, does not. Of course medical care and defense are important, and we have to have them—this is a tough balancing act. In some cases, the competitive nature of the private sector may provide a better path. Sooner or later, we are going to have an ugly conversation about our national budget—we can delay it for a long time but not forever. The government, when it needs to spend money at all, should aim to invest._

If you have a high burn, you either have insufficient revenue or excessive costs. I have gotten _so frustrated_ the past four years at the demagoguery of the national debt as a result of excessive costs.

These are the data points I want to point to every time someone suggests our national debt is "unsustainable":

\- In 2000, the federal government collected tax receipts of 20% of GDP[0]. From 2009-2012, these tax receipts were around 15% of GDP. This is due to, as you'd imagine, the huge private sector deleveraging that happened in 2008 and the fact that, politically, any suggestion at raising taxes gets you called a Kenyan Muslim Communist. Yet we didn't seem to have a problem with growth when taxes collected were much higher than they were now, as a percentage of the economy.

\- 2/3 of our federal budget is spent on Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and defense. Any issues with Social Security being considered unsustainable is that only $113,000 of payroll is eligible for taxation. It would seem to me that if you made all payroll eligible for taxation, you would only be impacting those well into the upper-middle class, and would ensure solvency for at least 75 years. Legislation to do so was recently proposed by some Democrats in the Senate[1].

\- We spend a lot on Medicare because we spend a lot on healthcare. We spend a lot on healthcare because we are the only first-world country in the world that doesn't put a ceiling on how much health care providers (hospitals and drug companies) can charge, even for basic services. Yet those that have good insurance are completely price-unconscious. We essentially have the worst of both worlds -- not enough free market forces for health providers to price competitively, and yet not enough price controls either. If you have a free 30 minutes, I highly recommend anyone read Steven Brill's recent writeup in TIME magazine[2].

\- _It is a complete fallacy_ that we're living longer, so therefore we have to jack up the age of eligibility of programs like Social Security and Medicare. Most gains in expected life expectancy over the past several decades are due to reducing infant mortality -- in other words, the only change is that we have less people that died before they could even pay anything into SS. Furthermore, most life expectancy gains are concentrated on the wealthy -- those that don't even need Medicare. The life expectancy for working-class Americans is actually _shrinking._ [3]. I'm not really sure why we need to cut government benefits for janitors because lawyers are living longer. Paul Krugman is constantly trying to explain this on his blog[4].

\- If you want GDP growth after a recession caused by massive private sector deleveraging, Keynesian government budgets are exactly what you want. Beyond stimulating spending when everyone is clinging on to whatever money they have because they're living paycheck to paycheck, with US treasury interest rates under 2% for years, this is the perfect time for our government to run deficits at cheap interest rates.

The OP says "Borrowing money to get ninety growth cents on the dollar does not count, although that may work for a while." But in current conditions mean we'd be getting _much more_ than ninety growth cents on each deficit dollar. Conversely, cutting each deficit dollar results in _much less_ growth than one dollar. This is known as the "fiscal multiplier," and there is a lot of research showing that in depressed economic conditions, the multiplier is much higher than 1.0. The utter economic clusterfuck in Europe is because too many people in controlling the Euro felt the way the OP does, so you have countries like Greece and Spain cutting their budgets to eliminate deficits, yet resulting in such a harsh economic contraction that their budgets end up with even _bigger deficits._ [5].

\- We obviously have a shitload of waste in the federal government. You can't have a $3 trillion budget and not have some dumb stuff in there. But for the purposes of any macro fiscal impact in terms of GDP or unemployment, it's literally _irrelevant._ After Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, you're left with $1.3T in the budget, over half of which is military spending[6]. Yeah, we have too many military bases and we probably have some useless bureaucrats in the Department of Transportation. But for the most part this spending is on core government programs that are helpful and that people like, which is why the only specifics Mitt Romney could give on what programs he would actually cut was Big Bird. I'm sure you could cut $100 billion with nobody really caring, and we should obviously strive to have the least wasteful government possible, but are a few wasteful programs the reason why democracy is going to unravel?

\- In the early 1990s, it was legitimate to argue the federal deficit was crowding out private sector growth. Deficit spending required the Federal Reserve to keep borrowing rates high to fend of inflation, which meant it was more expensive to borrow money for any sort of investment. As George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton passed tax increases in 1990 and 1993 to balance the budget, the Federal Reserve was able to lower interest rates in lockstep, thus preventing any fiscal contraction. In other words, counterbalancing public spending with looser monetary policy can be a good receipt for stimulating growth[7].

However, the Federal Reserve rates have been at zero for _years_ now, because the recession of 2008 pales in comparison to 1991. If you make money as cheap as possible the private sector continues to say "meh, I think I'll just hoard profits" and you don't have any inflation even with absurdly cheap money, then there are no more bullets in the monetary policy gun left, but bless Ben Bernanke for still trying (QE, Operation Twist, etc).

Yeah, yeah, "OMG HYPERINFLATION WEIMAR ZIMBABWE!" The same people have been yelling this for years. Wake me up when the Bureau of Labor statistics reports a CPI inflation over 3%[8].

\- 2% growth isn't great, but it's not going to cause democracy to unravel. It may cause democracy to unravel when 99% of the wealth generated by that modest growth is concentrated in 1% of the population, however[9].

In conclusion: in principle, there's nothing really too controversial about what the OP is saying. We should absolutely be talking about the ways to grow the US economic pie so that our political process doesn't keep grinding to stalemates over who gets what of the pie we already have.

Our government isn't perfect. It could do a lot to improve a lot of things to encourage growth, and many of them aren't even fiscal in nature (e.g. patent reform). But if you're just going to point to the national budget, echo popular political talk-show points about "$16 TRILLION IN DEBT OUR GRANDKIDS WILL HAVE TO PAY" and "WE'RE ON THE ROAD TO GREECE" then I'd argue you're _completely_ missing the forest for the trees.

[0] [http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Doc...](http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=200)

[1] [http://vtdigger.org/2013/03/07/sanders-reid-defazio- introduc...](http://vtdigger.org/2013/03/07/sanders-reid-defazio-introduce- legislation-to-strengthen-social-security/)

[2] [http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/bitter-pill-why- medica...](http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/bitter-pill-why-medical- bills-are-killing-us/print/)

[3] [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/us/life-expectancy-for- les...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/us/life-expectancy-for-less- educated-whites-in-us-is-shrinking.html)

[4] [http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/the-life- expecta...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/the-life-expectancy- zombie/)

[5] <http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2013/wp1301.pdf>

[6] [http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/...](http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/BS_Discretionary_print.pdf)

[7][http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/08/06/w...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/08/06/what- we-can-learn-from-clintons-1993-tax-hike/)

[8] [http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUSR0000SA0?output_view=pct_1...](http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUSR0000SA0?output_view=pct_1mth)

[9] [http://money.cnn.com/2012/12/03/news/economy/record- corporat...](http://money.cnn.com/2012/12/03/news/economy/record-corporate- profits/index.html)

<comment><USER13> _demagoguery of the national debt as a result of excessive costs_

If you look at government revenues as a percentage of GDP (your first link) over the last century, they've actually stayed within a fairly narrow window between 15%-20%. With the expiration of the "Bush Tax Cuts", they're up to average levels.

If you look at expenditures, historically they've hovered in the same range. Recently, they've climbed to over 24% of GDP.

How can you look at historical revenue AND expenditure levels and call the unsustainability of spending "demagoguery"?

We have a spending problem.

<comment><USER19> "We have a spending problem" is a dumbed down, politicized way of putting it.

We have an entitlement problem, caused by a population bump, healthcare cost inflation and increasing lifespans.

<comment><USER13> When the argument is "taxation vs spending" and the spending side is 33% off historical norms while taxation is within 5% of historical norms... calling something a "spending problem" would seem to be objective.

Listing _some_ of the details for why that spending problem exists doesn't make it any less or more politicized. It's just adding details.

<comment><USER19> It's absolutely politicized. The obligations driving our spending were on the ledger 15, 30 years ago, everyone knew it. But now we hear about 'overspending during the obama administration' as if it was his decision to have people get old and collect their benefits. Or as if he didn't try to attack healthcare costs first thing out of the gate.

Calling it an entitlement problem highlights the problem. Calling it a 'spending problem' obscures it. Do whatever you want.

<comment><USER13> _Or as if he didn't try to attack healthcare costs first thing out of the gate._

Because he didn't? Instead of attacking the root causes of health care costs, he implemented yet another Big Government entitlement program that was in keeping with his socialist ideology.

There were lots of good ideas on reducing healthcare costs. Obamacare includes almost none: [http://togetrichisglorious.blogspot.com/2011/04/levitt-on- he...](http://togetrichisglorious.blogspot.com/2011/04/levitt-on-health- care.html)

It's truly ironic that there you are saying that we all knew about the spending obligations 30 years ago regarding SS and Medicare - yet you call yet another government spending obligation that will certainly spiral our of control an effort to reduce healthcare costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > We should understand that as a consequence of technology and an economy of > ideas, the gap between the rich and the poor will likely increase from its > already high-seeming levels. There is good and bad to this, but we should be > careful not to legislate against it, which will hurt growth.

Oh, it was going so well, and then, BOOM!, the whole essay explodes into flames and plummets to the ground in a ball of fire and greasy black smoke.

Hey! Who's going to buy your startup product? Hint: it is NOT people who are working 25 hours per week at Walmart for $8/hour. Government action to put more money in those people's pockets and take it away from these people...

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732466240457833...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324662404578334330162556670.html)

...is purely beneficial for ANYONE who wants to do ANY sort of business with or in the United States. You can't charge $19.95/month to the whole population of North America (or whatever your made-up business plan shows) _if they don't have $19.95/month to give you_.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you misunderstood my point.

I am a big believe that the middle class, not the super-rich, are the job creators for this exact reason. And I'm not saying we should take money from them.

All I'm saying is that everyone can get richer together, but the way that works in our current system is that there will be a big disparity between the rich and the middle class.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Interestingly enough, it appears that the wheels of capitalism (free markets) have run out of the lubrication (purchasing power) that allows them to function.

Wealth inequality is at record highs [1], and is being further fueled as a result of productivity gains from technology. Thus, corporate profitability is no longer coupled to wage growth, and "trickle-down" economics no longer applies.

This is a brave new world indeed, and I'm not sure more startups in the web sector will help. However, applying the lean productivity philosophy of startups to government while simultaneously laying out a new plan for revitalizing the purchasing power of the public, through redistribution mechanisms such as Negative Income Tax or otherwise, may be steps in the right direction.

1\. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5345267>

<comment><USER8> Negative income tax is a good idea _only if it replaces_ all the other forms of redistribution. Otherwise you are just adding another middleman bureaucrat who moves wealth around rather than creates it. It's main benefit is that it _could_ cut out a lot of the bloat in government, while keeping a floor for the least fortunate amongst us.

<comment><USER22> For a sovereign currency issuer, taxation and spending are not operationally connected. Taxation serves to regulate inflation and unemployment. Too much taxation, you get high unemployment and idle output capacity, too little, you get inflation.

In a situation with a general lack of aggregate demand and high unemployment, adding a minimum income would work similarly to a tax decrease on the extreme low end of the income scale.

I'm not sure what the windging about middleman bureaucrats is about. Look at something like Social Security, it's direct payouts to beneficiaries, so the decision making is left to the beneficiaries as to what to buy. No central planning, just let demand and markets do their work.

<comment><USER8> Even without central planning, social security requires administration, auditing etc. The Social Security Administration alone has 57,000 employees.

<comment><USER22> The point was that they're not planning or interfering with production and consumption, merely passing along financing.

<comment><USER8> But they exist, and take a salary and benefits, do they not?

<comment><USER22> Yes, there is going to be some overhead in administering most anything, I'm not sure I see the point you are trying to make.

<comment><USER8> That's exactly the point. Since there is always going to be overhead to administer anything, does it not make sense to have _less things_ to be administered?

<comment><USER22> If you're making an efficiency argument, then it really depends on the details. You could conceivably have 10 programs that are horribly mismanaged, and 100 that are well-run.

<comment><USER8> The more programs you have, the more you have to manage the managing of programs, making it _less likely_ that any one program will be well-managed.

<comment><USER22> Sometimes the virtues of consolidating purposes are outdone by the virtues of redundancy. A single program is a single point of failure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't understand why we can't all be happy with euro social-democratic levels of spending done at the state level, with minimal federal spending for military, justice dept, and programs that 80+% of the population agree with (~10% GDP). You don't hear Scandinavians petitioning for a Euro wide healthcare system (the equivalent scope and scale of Obamacare). This way progressive/liberal states can still be happy with their programs, while conservative states can keep their taxes low. This is the philosophy of 50 experiments on what is good government policy.

I just don't understand why Americans feel like we can impose our values on everyone else. We live in a free country, and people are free to immigrate to a government that aligns with their values. We don't _need_ to solve this at the federal level.

</comment><comment><USER14> "Technology magnifies differences in innate ability"

I hope you are not confusing _innate_ ability with _realized_ ability. I am sure you are a talented, skilled individual, but if you were born in a horribly disadvantaged situation I doubt you would have amounted to as much. I am a fairly successful, and rather bright person myself, but I do delude myself into thinking that my own success are solely the result of "innate ability" magnified by technology. A more complete and accurate statement would have been that "Technology magnifies differences in realized ability."

This type of thinking is dangerous because in a perceived Meritocracy, the poor deserve to be poor and the rich rich.

<comment><AUTHOR> Luck trumps everything else, by a huge margin. Choosing your parents well is the best decision you can make.

For equal-luck people, I stand by the above point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The first half of the article is good, the second half totally miss the point.

You CANNOT fix what is happening in the western world now (not only US, but even Brazil that is not a developed company is facing the same issues) by fixing the economy.

The economic problems we have, are a symptom of something else, that is the degradation of our culture.

You cannot have infinite economic growth like the author advocates, when you population is dwindling, also, the growth that matters is not really GDP, more money does not always translate to better living conditions and power.

Many people say that Malthus was wrong, because now we have a world full of fat people and the "green revolution" that saved us from starving, yet, he was not wrong...

Yes, we have a world full of fat people, we can produce total calories, mostly in the form of carbs, in amounts that are much more than we need, but several other nutrients are lacking, and we are running out of the material that allowed the "green revolution" in first place (for example, natural fertilisers are not enough, and we are mostly mining it, and it already peaked, we WILL run out of fertilisers, at least the one that we can mine on land, and the only option that will remain is figure how to retrieve from seabed the stuff we threw and discharged there).

More technology and better ran economy is not the solution. Yes, it can be part of the solution, but it is not what really matters. What really matters, is the rebuilding of a behaviour that is less greedy and selfish, we need to recover the urge that people felt to help others, specially their family, the urge to seek happiness of other people, not your own at the expense of others.

Yes, we are in a zero-sum world, but because we put ourselves there.

The changes that rippled on the world in the last century, happened because we could change, prosperity allowed them, and not the opposite, it was not our culture changes that allowed prosperity. The cultures that reach the growth that the author wants, are the ones that understand that they must work for future generations, not for themselves.

We need more sex (with less partners), seriously.

<comment><USER24> My post got a couple of upvotes...

Then it went back down to 1 point.

Since you cannot undo upvotes, I guess people are also downvoting me.

Can someone refute my arguments, instead of just downvoting? When you agree, it is easy to just upvote, you agree, thus there are not much else to discuss.

But I urge people to write when they disagree, how can we discuss things, if you just do some drive-by downvoting? I made a very big text, I want to know what you are disagreeing with! I want to see your counter-arguments, so I can argue back! It is this way that I can learn more maybe, or teach.

<comment><USER9> I didn't downvote, but your premise is incorrect. You can have increasing economic growth with a dwindling population. Russia and Romania have experienced this for over a decade. You may discount Russia as a post-Cold War bounce, but there are other examples of economies with negative or stagnant population growth that also experience economic growth.

You claim that our economic malaise is primarily due to cultural problems, but you don't cite any data to support this. I doubt anyone collects statistics on the percent of people who "help others", but there are statistics that contradict your assertion that American culture is declining, e.g. the dramatic decrease in violent crime over the past two decades.

You also ignore the possible causal relationship between a degrading culture (if it is indeed occurring) and national economic problems. Perhaps people would be less likely to help others if they feel less financially secure?

Too much sex with too many partners and a declining stock of fertilizer, as causal factors of economic malaise, is a tenuous connection at best.

If I had to guess, I'd say that most people didn't find enough relevant, substantial claims in your comment to bother replying to.

<comment><USER4> I downvoted. The explanation above is a pretty good rendering of why (though I didn't think about it that long).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> America needs a societal change. You cannot have a celebrity obsessed, self- serving, lazy, first-world problems obsessed, narcissistic society and believe that all the problems can be solved. I'm obviously making a rash generalization but have a look beyond your zip code. It sounds harsh but it is what I've seen as an outsider for the past ~8 years.

<comment><USER26> I agree, but the question is how that societal change will come about. Through individual or group efforts? Via religion, self-study, social engineering. . .

<comment><USER25> That's a $16.7 trillion dollar (and ever growing) question.... I don't know, it certainly should be a collective effort, but looking at Congress I don't have much hope.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't think the type of growth advocated in the article, relying mostly on innovation and technology, is the type that the government can influence effectively. Outside of keeping the population educated and maybe reducing the sting of patents and regulatory capture, it is mostly up to the private sector.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think it's an interesting belief - that democracy doesn't scale/work when there is no growth.

But if you combine it with the belief that we can't have growth forever - <USER2> "Limits To Growth", Donella Meadows, etc - then it leads to the question of: what kind of government form should we have if both beliefs are true?

</comment><comment><USER29> Just a question, how can growth be sustainable and good in a resource-limited world?

I mean, fore sure that everyone is better where we have a lot of lemons to give, but the lemon tree is limited to a number of lemons per year, if the demand increases, how we can producte more lemon if we only have this tree?

<comment><USER23> the limiting resource on our information economy is smart people's time. We don't suffer from a lack of raw materials. The only natural resource I can think that may be limiting economic growth is energy, and that is largely going to be solved with smart people's time.

<comment><USER29> Ok, so with optimizing the process of taking lemons from the tree with technology we can care less of the tree (resources).

But, at the end, the tree is the same, so we can stay X years more using more productive ways to consume this resources, but at the end we life in a limited world.

So isn't logical to thing that a neverending grow is impossible?

I think we have two ways, or stop growing, so we become a world sustainable or we find somehow to produce infinite resources.

<comment><USER23> no, soon we will find ways to travel to the next lemon tree (again limiting factor is smart people's time). We will experience a renaissance like we did when the New World was discovered and explored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The GDP growth rate chart is interesting; The overall trend line does point gradually downwards, but the big spikes in _both_ directions seem to have flattened out a lot, rather than just the positive ones going away. I wonder what would cause that.

</comment><comment><USER30> First blog I've seen on posthaven. Is it literally the exact same as posterous w/ the monthly fee?

Trying to figure if I should just import it to a WP blog or if posthaven is worth it (and will still be around down the road)

<comment><AUTHOR> Posthaven is outstanding!

<comment><USER13> I really like the blog article. You tried to cover a lot of ground, and I think you did a good job being objective. The analysis on growth of GDP was something I haven't seen presented in quite that way.

It got me thinking. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Why is there no date for the post? When I read "last Friday", I immediately scrolled up to check when it was written, but there's none.

</comment><comment><USER16> typo: "It was their number one priority; the put it up on their desks, on their refrigerator, and on the mirror in their bathroom"

</comment><comment><USER32> The US has a military base in Djibouti. It has a military base in Cuba - <USER3> the Cuban government has been asking the US to get out of for over half a century. The US has military bases in Germany. It is now openly bankrolling anti-government forces in Syria. The US has 10 aircraft carriers in service and is spending a massive amount of money to build a new class of supercarriers. No other country has more than 1 aircraft carrier other than Italy which has 2 - and it is unlikely the US will go to war with Italy any time soon.

None of this of course is on the chopping block. I've paid into Social Security my entire life. It's one of the few things my massive federal taxes are going to give to me in this life. Of course, this one "entitlement" (it's apparently an entitlement to at some point pull out some of the thousands I pushed into Social Security) is the only thing really on the chopping block in any form.

There was an economist who wrote a book about a century and a half ago how the economic system would eventually lead to slow growth, with ever larger recessions, depressions and economic crises, with ever higher unemployment etc. The economist was Karl Marx, and the book he explained this in is Capital. It seems the higher unemployment goes, the worse the economic crises get, the less any kind of left prognosis seems to come around, the establishment view from Paul Krugman to the Cato Institute is full steam ahead. Thus for any other kind of answer one must look outside the establishment view.

<comment><USER12> >I've paid into Social Security my entire life. It's one of the few things my massive federal taxes are going to give to me in this life. Of course, this one "entitlement" (it's apparently an entitlement to at some point pull out some of the thousands I pushed into Social Security) is the only thing really on the chopping block in any form.

The bases around the world were how the US bought global security, upon which our economic growth for several decades was premised. Without (what looks like) a sprawling military with bases everywhere, we would have less safe/reliable sea lanes, which means higher prices of inputs and lower value for exports, and we would also have much of the advanced world spending ever more of its money on defense goods (it's called a nuclear umbrella for a reason).

Social Security is one of the few things your massive federal taxes are going to give to you in this life THAT ARE OBVIOUS. The other stuff is just as important, though way less obvious.

<comment><USER26> The bases in Germany were certainly "necessary" after WWII, but 70 years later, do we still need so many and do they need to have so many personnel? Especially with all the "force multiplying" technology that's been developed since WWII.

<comment><USER12> We definitely need to revisit how much of this is "necessary" today. I will say this though, for the populace in Japan/South Korea/Eastern European countries, the necessity of the nuclear umbrella is not theoretical vis a vis China (in Asia Pacific) and Russia (in Eurasia, particularly after the events in Georgia a few years ago)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


An interpretable mortality prediction model for Covid-19 patients - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-020-0180-7 <comment><USER2> The github link is broken in the Nature article. I like that they included the source code for this. [https://github.com/HAIRLAB/Pre_Surv_COVID_19](https://github.com/HAIRLAB/Pre_Surv_COVID_19)</comment>


Is this rotating cube interface user-friendly? - <AUTHOR> http://ux.stackexchange.com/q/11229/15683 <comment><USER2> Amazing. Someone please makes this into a jQuery plugin.</comment>


A community and forum to discuss and learn Agile Project Management - <AUTHOR> http://agile-pm.io/

<comment><USER2> This should be stickied at the top: [http://www.thoughtworks.com/talks/the- death-of-agile](http://www.thoughtworks.com/talks/the-death-of-agile)

</comment><comment><USER3> Why do you need another forum to discuss Agile?

I fear that michaelochurch's point that a taint fire's needed is appropriate.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Agile" is fucking terrible. It's an attempt to patch business-driven engineering, which is like spraying perfume on a turd in an attempt to make it smell good. Fuck user stories and fuck "iterations"/"sprints" and fuck "you can only work on it if it's in the backlog" and fuck story points and fuck all the meetings ("sprint retrospective meetings" that go on for 2 hours; how the fuck is that agile?) and fuck this culture of enabling indecisive businessmen by tolerating incoherent, rapidly-changing requirements and fuck this idea that programmers (even with 5-10+ years of experience) are supposed to be terminal juniors and be fucking happy about it.

I'm all for genuine _agility_ but this cottage industry of developer fungibility and ritualized micromanagement needs to die in a fucking taint fire.

<comment><USER5> Lots of piss and vinegar here, but little that's constructive. What's the alternative? Waterfall? Chaos?

<comment><USER4> Waterfall is a straw man. Waterfall and agile are two possibilities within business-driven engineering (a euphemism for "you just code what we tell you to do, we make the decisions").

I don't think Scrum is that terrible for junior engineers, but it provides no exit. It's the terminal juniorness of it that has me bothered. I'm 31 years old and have been programming for almost a decade and I'm too old to work on "user stories". No, I don't mean "because of age, I'm too good to work on it" because that would be bullshit; if it needs to be done and I'm the best person to do it, then I'm not "too good" to work on anything. I mean that, at age 31, if all I have to show for my time is a disjointed collection of "user stories", no one will take me seriously.

If you're any good, programming evolves into an R&D job after 5 years: exploring new technologies, testing new architectures, building whole products and company-wide initiatives. Ideologies like Scrum are trying to take that away from us. They probably provide some useful structure for junior programmers, but they're alienating to senior talent.

<comment><USER6> How many people have you managed?

How many projects have you conceived and carried through to shipping? How many of them are profitable?

I suppose Fermi estimates would be fine.

Those questions maybe have a snide undertone to them, that isn't my intent with asking them. You post confident rants about how businesses should operate, and I'm curious how much the above experience informs those rants.

<comment><USER7> That is a valid point. If you're so awesome, then why not start your own business and clobber all those people who do stupid stuff like Agile and Scrum?

I am slowly working towards this on my own, trying to get a personal side project to the point where I can do it full-time. I'm just starting and only spending a couple hours a week on it.

They used to be doing poorly-implemented Scrum where I work now, and I'm glad they dropped it. Having a daily 30 minute status report meeting that never started on time was killing almost an hour of productivity per day.

<comment><USER8> "If you're so awesome, then why not start your own business and clobber all those people who do stupid stuff like Agile and Scrum?"

As if it was that simple. My company is 80% waterfall and yet none of our agile competitors can keep up. Is that because waterfall is better in my industry? No, it's because there is a lot more to success than picking the right development model.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hands up whose Trypophobia got triggered by the iPhone 11 Pro camera cluster? - <AUTHOR> https://www.news.com.au/technology/gadgets/mobile-phones/the-iphone-11-pros-cameras-may-look-silly-but-the-photos-they-take-are-anything-but/news-story/69b726347ab58ab0ca0f273e6eccde98 <comment><USER2> The new iPhone reminded me of this camera: [https://light.co/camera](https://light.co/camera)</comment>