4 ms·

"Think banks have an unfair advantage? Then be a bank. Think corporate radio is keeping your music from being heard? Then make a radio station." A willingness

by tylo 17y ago

"Think banks have an unfair advantage? Then be a bank. Think corporate radio is keeping your music from being heard? Then make a radio station." A willingness to oversimplify the world certainly makes it a lot easier to write the kind of motivational drivel that this post aspires towards.

pcc 17y ago
Whoa there. You're not even mentioning that he gives an example for each of these. Besides, he himself is an example of this; as he says, instead of complaining about music distribution, he started a distributor. Is it not the case that our minds often like to tell us bleak stories that turn out to be far removed from reality? So maybe, reality doesn't necessarily need to be as complex as our minds might try to make it?
- kmak 17y ago
  Hate the game, not the player? ;) Seems to make sense, just take the better side of a trade. Think the market's going to crash? Short it. Might be trickier to buy CDS if you don't believe in the mortgage market, but apparently someone did that!
- demallien 17y ago
  Exactly - plus of course, when you run into something that is stopping you from doing what you want to do, it is highly likely that other people have the same problem - you've just discovered a potential market! Of course, if you are not an entrepreneur, this discovery may not interest you very much - you just want to do your thing...
aswanson 17y ago
Right, better to recognize and bitch about the complications of accomplishing than taking an abstract cue and running with it. Far more productive.
mortenjorck 17y ago
Granted, not everything works this way. Far from everything. But it's a start, right? You can't change the system overnight, but you can change how you view the system in an instant. Maybe your new approach will fail. With a big and complicated enough proverbial stick, it's nearly assured. But once you've taken the step of removing the arbitrary obstacles from your path, only the real ones remain. Which may sound a little depressing, but hey, once you're this far, why stop?
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
staunch 17y ago
This kind of comment makes me wish we had a moratorium on signups or a $5 fee.
- lsc 17y ago
  because that worked so well for K5.
  - staunch 17y ago
    Metafilter?
  - mquander 17y ago
    K5 was already toast by the time that came in.
    - lsc 17y ago
      You have a point. But the $5 for new accounts only helps if moderators ban undesirable accounts. The $5 is a way to give the banhammer a bit more meaning. are you prepared to ban people for commenting like the above? Personally, I don't think that harsh criticism is necessarily a bad thing. (I mean, the aforementioned comment was perhaps written without reading the article, I mean it doesn't make much sense in the context of the author actually doing those things... but I personally don't think that negative comments are always bad things.) One thing I hate about the real world is that nobody ever calls me on my bullshit. I'm not saying I think K5 is the optimal form, but in many ways it's better than a place where everyone is always encouraging me and telling me what a great guy I am.
      - mquander 17y ago
        I think it's a bad thing given two things: - You're really trying to inspire some kind of substantiative, rational discussion and not just verbal sparring. K5 sort of was and sort of wasn't. It was both a discussion-place and a playground. HN is supposed to be much more a discussion-place. - The harsh criticism doesn't give the poster any means to fight back. "Motivational drivel" isn't a criticism that someone can argue against, nor is "This kind of comment makes me wish we had a moratorium on signups or a $5 fee." So that criticism is useless for promoting discussion, or even for promoting any kind of further on-topic thought at all. It routes the conversation toward more flames. I strongly prefer total Mad Max flamewar arguments, but it tends to drive away a lot of people who have a (well-meaning) tendency to try to take any criticism, and deal with any critics. I mean, you see threads on here complaining that people downvote things without explanation! Obviously the posters of those threads would be gone in an instant if trolls started outright insulting them all over the place.

by tylo 17y ago

pcc 17y ago

Whoa there. You're not even mentioning that he gives an example for each of these. Besides, he himself is an example of this; as he says, instead of complaining about music distribution, he started a distributor. Is it not the case that our minds often like to tell us bleak stories that turn out to be far removed from reality? So maybe, reality doesn't necessarily need to be as complex as our minds might try to make it?

kmak 17y ago
Hate the game, not the player? ;) Seems to make sense, just take the better side of a trade. Think the market's going to crash? Short it. Might be trickier to buy CDS if you don't believe in the mortgage market, but apparently someone did that!
demallien 17y ago
Exactly - plus of course, when you run into something that is stopping you from doing what you want to do, it is highly likely that other people have the same problem - you've just discovered a potential market! Of course, if you are not an entrepreneur, this discovery may not interest you very much - you just want to do your thing...

aswanson 17y ago

Right, better to recognize and bitch about the complications of accomplishing than taking an abstract cue and running with it. Far more productive.

mortenjorck 17y ago

Granted, not everything works this way. Far from everything. But it's a start, right? You can't change the system overnight, but you can change how you view the system in an instant. Maybe your new approach will fail. With a big and complicated enough proverbial stick, it's nearly assured. But once you've taken the step of removing the arbitrary obstacles from your path, only the real ones remain. Which may sound a little depressing, but hey, once you're this far, why stop?

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

staunch 17y ago

This kind of comment makes me wish we had a moratorium on signups or a $5 fee.

lsc 17y ago
because that worked so well for K5.
- staunch 17y ago
  Metafilter?
- mquander 17y ago
  K5 was already toast by the time that came in.
  - lsc 17y ago
    You have a point. But the $5 for new accounts only helps if moderators ban undesirable accounts. The $5 is a way to give the banhammer a bit more meaning. are you prepared to ban people for commenting like the above? Personally, I don't think that harsh criticism is necessarily a bad thing. (I mean, the aforementioned comment was perhaps written without reading the article, I mean it doesn't make much sense in the context of the author actually doing those things... but I personally don't think that negative comments are always bad things.) One thing I hate about the real world is that nobody ever calls me on my bullshit. I'm not saying I think K5 is the optimal form, but in many ways it's better than a place where everyone is always encouraging me and telling me what a great guy I am.
    - mquander 17y ago
      I think it's a bad thing given two things: - You're really trying to inspire some kind of substantiative, rational discussion and not just verbal sparring. K5 sort of was and sort of wasn't. It was both a discussion-place and a playground. HN is supposed to be much more a discussion-place. - The harsh criticism doesn't give the poster any means to fight back. "Motivational drivel" isn't a criticism that someone can argue against, nor is "This kind of comment makes me wish we had a moratorium on signups or a $5 fee." So that criticism is useless for promoting discussion, or even for promoting any kind of further on-topic thought at all. It routes the conversation toward more flames. I strongly prefer total Mad Max flamewar arguments, but it tends to drive away a lot of people who have a (well-meaning) tendency to try to take any criticism, and deal with any critics. I mean, you see threads on here complaining that people downvote things without explanation! Obviously the posters of those threads would be gone in an instant if trolls started outright insulting them all over the place.