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1. A lot of industries are concentrated and monopolistic, which leads to both issues of high prices, control and lack of local resilience. So how do we build a
by petra 11y ago
1. A lot of industries are concentrated and monopolistic, which leads to both issues of high prices, control and lack of local resilience.
So how do we build a more decentralized economy ? What are the missing building blocks ?
2. Our current remote-work isn't good enough from the psychological perspective. No eye-contact, no body language, isolation, etc.
But solving this is one of the only things thing that can bypass politics as a way to decrease housing costs and transportation costs , which are ~50% of our living costs.
3. Is it possible to go to some empty space in the u.s , and establish a city from scratch , a city that would be purposely designed for low living costs ?
4. There was a study , in 2004, measuring happiness, which showed the Amish we're considerably more happy than regular people , and as happy as the "forbes 400" billionaires. How do we create such happy communities, while still living in a technological world ?
- jacquesm 11y ago> So how do we build a more decentralized economy ? What are the missing building blocks ? Venture capital companies are normally in the opposite business, they want to create monopolies. As for '4', this report might shed some light on that: http://worldhappiness.report/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/04/WHR15_Sep15.pdf http://worldhappiness.report/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015...
- petra 11y agoIs this effort as part of the VC arm of YC ? or just the independent research arm ? because open AI doesn't seem like a VC effort .
- liamconnell 11y agoNumber 3 doesnt sound like a good idea. It seems like a way to ghettoize a large part of the population. The fact is that there will always be competition to be living physically close to the best community, so a low-cost urban center in the middle of nowhere would turn into a place like Newark.
- eldavido 11y agoRe (1), I agree there are desirable properties of a less-concentrated economy where every industry isn't controlled by 4 companies and the entire Internet doesn't run on AWS, I just don't see that as the future. If you agree that technology promotes various kinds of efficiencies (e.g. Uber), then companies who can invest the most in their technology platforms will win the market. Net result: when more investment is required for market participation, capital intensity goes up and you get industry concentration. I think about this a lot as a matter of personal career planning. A lot of my friends work at Apple/Google/facebook and I don't, and I can't help but wonder whether many sectors of the American economy are going to be dominated by megacorps vs. clusters of small (inefficient, but where I prefer working) firms.
- petra 11y agoSure i agree, big business will grow. But by just having some market share , decentralization can have a big effect. For example, ebay, a mostly decentralized business, keeps Amazon in check and somewhat limits it's power and offers an alternative - and it probably forced Amazon to become a platform for others. Same goes for solar panels, Android roms, forums/blogs vs news, etc.