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I felt like I gave that aspect of his post the reply it deserved. I'm not accusing him of not having spent a moment on it, but of missing things a moment's tho

by nickb 19y ago

I felt like I gave that aspect of his post the reply it deserved. I'm not accusing him of not having spent a moment on it, but of missing things a moment's thought should have shown him. It's actually charitable to attribute that to an oversight. And you're right, he does state something close to the central point of my essay. But if you keep reading, that's not the part he tries to refute. Your last paragraph is actually the most thoughtful response I've read about this whole controversy. But I think you're wrong to say that startups glorify the individual. The startup founders I know are on average more idealistic than people working for big companies. They tend to be the ones who want to make the world a better place; though there are of course exceptions, the people working at big companies are the ones who tend to think of their job as something they do mainly for the money.

ncart 19y ago
holy sh*t!!! nickb = pg ????
sspencer 19y ago
Worlds are colliding...
dw 19y ago
Score: -inf, Slashdot-like whining. Well it is his site, deal with it. In the meantime please stop polluting my damn RSS feeds. Please consider the comments feature a side effect of this site's PRIMARY FUNCTION and not worthy of news itself. Thanks!! (GRRRRR)
rw 19y ago
Let's try something else. I claim that founders tell themselves (regardless of truth value) that they want to be: "Making the world a better place (and getting really damn rich)." The justification for this attitude is that one can supposedly participate in a positive-sum game for both parties -- one party is you, the other is the world. This is the altruistic lure of market structures. Whether or not you agree with that non-zero-sum stance (do markets actually tend to produce such situations, all externalities considered?), I think the "making a lot of money indicates I'm filling a truly needed demand" mentality produces entrepreneurs who unnecessarily tie their personal increase in wealth to the feeling of an increase in some greater good. But we do get pretty cool products out of this, whatever the psychology involved.
deleted 19y ago
[deleted]

by nickb 19y ago

ncart 19y ago

holy sh*t!!! nickb = pg ????

sspencer 19y ago

Worlds are colliding...

dw 19y ago

Score: -inf, Slashdot-like whining. Well it is his site, deal with it. In the meantime please stop polluting my damn RSS feeds. Please consider the comments feature a side effect of this site's PRIMARY FUNCTION and not worthy of news itself. Thanks!! (GRRRRR)

rw 19y ago

Let's try something else. I claim that founders tell themselves (regardless of truth value) that they want to be: "Making the world a better place (and getting really damn rich)." The justification for this attitude is that one can supposedly participate in a positive-sum game for both parties -- one party is you, the other is the world. This is the altruistic lure of market structures. Whether or not you agree with that non-zero-sum stance (do markets actually tend to produce such situations, all externalities considered?), I think the "making a lot of money indicates I'm filling a truly needed demand" mentality produces entrepreneurs who unnecessarily tie their personal increase in wealth to the feeling of an increase in some greater good. But we do get pretty cool products out of this, whatever the psychology involved.

deleted 19y ago

[deleted]