6 ms·

In Andrew Yang's recent panel at Monetery Tech Summit, he was making the case that most of these are problems that the free market doesn't reward solving: http

In Andrew Yang's recent panel at Monetery Tech Summit, he was making the case that most of these are problems that the free market doesn't reward solving: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhNpbPhFwRc&t=957 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhNpbPhFwRc&t=957 These are all important problems, but there have been people working on them for decades already without much progress. What we really need is for either government to tackle these problems itself, or else to put in place market mechanisms that are able to better reward entrepreneurs for solving them.

mwseibel 7y ago
I agree - it would be great for the government to tackle these problems. But looking at the current US government that doesn't look likely. I agree it feels almost impossible for a startup to actually fix some of these problems. But we fund startups who try to do the almost impossible all the time. And sometimes they succeed :)
- kaushikktiwari 7y ago
  I guess a lot of blowback is coming from the fact that you decided to call it Government 2.0. It seems a bit presumptuous, guilty of the same hyperbole tech is always accused of...changing the world etc...but at the same time it's a title I would click on. It's outrageous, but serves a purpose
- jakelazaroff 7y ago
  Are the startups listed actually fixing these problems, though? You say that Promise, for example, is attacking mass incarceration — but it's basically just a dashboard for lawyers. Maybe lawyers could be more efficient, but that's a way easier problem to solve than radically changing our justice system so that fewer people get pulled into it in the first place. What's worse, given that Promise appears to be a for-profit company and you're investing in it to make money, you now have a financially incentive against fixing the systemic issue. It's better for you if the justice system is bigger and less efficient, because you'll make more money selling us a band-aid. So count me in with the GP and Andrew Yang: it's not that the problems seem too hard for startups to tackle, but because they are fundamentally not problems that the free market rewards solving. YC mostly funds profit-seeking companies. That's okay! But I am skeptical that there is profit to be made in e.g. dismantling the justice system.
  - kaushikktiwari 7y ago
    not sure if I agree with your point about promise--especially with the implied "moral hazard"--if they are trying to solve the inefficiency in the justice system then its better for them that the system remains inefficient-- def seems like something beyond their control that they had no role in creating, and they are trying to help as best as they can. There is a bigger problem for private prisons---not promise
marknadal 7y ago
Incorrect. The free market can reward this, with certain incentive structures ( https://hackernoon.com/wealth-a-new-era-of-economics-ce8acd785441 https://hackernoon.com/wealth-a-new-era-of-economics-ce8acd7... ). It is Capitalism that doesn't. Neither does Socialism. :/
berberous 7y ago
I didn't watch the linked video, but aren't things like education and affordable housing also problems that governments have been tackling for decades without much progress and even often making things worse? For example, economists are almost uniformly against rent control, which many cities try to implement. And the flood of government money encouraging educational loans seems to have made college costs spiral. Personally, I think both the free market and the government can do good and can do bad. Sensible policies and entrepreneurs can help these issues, and bad policies and bad companies can worsen them.
- Alex3917 7y ago
  The government is in charge of determining what types of businesses are profitable though, so even areas where the government hasn't been effective usually still require better government policies in order for the markets to be able to offer solutions. There are certainly problems that businesses can ameliorate given current government policies, but it just isn't realistic to think that we can solve every problem on our own by routing around government.
  - ibeckermayer 7y ago
    Exactly right. I can give you a perfect example from a project I'm working on: http://openinsulin.org/ http://openinsulin.org/ We're working to make medicine more affordable, focusing on insulin in particular. Insulin has been around for decades, it's easy to make. Technology has been improving, things should be getting cheaper. Instead, insulin continues to rise [1]. People with diabetes need this stuff, if they don't have it they'll literally drop dead. The left wing "solution" to this problem is to force taxpayers to subsidize it, and perhaps impose price controls. The right wing "solution" is to puke some cookie cutter line about the "free market" and America's incredible "innovation" in drug development, exposing his skin-deep understanding of what those terms mean. (Later, he'll throw a fit about how so many millenials want socialized medicine). So our startup idea is to create cheap small-scale insulin production hardware, except the second we try to pay back investors and become "for profit", we get regulated like any other drug manufacturer. That means we need to hire an army of lawyers, go through a multi-year multi-million dollar FDA approval process for all the production equipment etc., and open ourselves to patent lawsuits and other weapons of corporate thuggery that the big-time drug companies are so willing to wield. If we manage to make it through that gauntlet of fuckery, god knows if we'll actually be able to sell it for any cheaper than the status quo. I'm open to being told I'm wrong about this problem, but from my understanding there's simply no way to solve this problem without massive regulatory reform. [1] https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/11u1Lqm70xFl0kWTtrt6kAEhrSE=/0x0:1903x757/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1903x757):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8500453/ioi150073f1.png https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/11u1Lqm70xFl0kWTtrt6kAEhrSE=...
tacosx 7y ago
Having a bunch of white tech dudes show up with a startup to "solve" something like mass incarceration is just absurd, and reveals both the massive naivete of this project and the extent to which startup funding has become a meaningless ponzi scheme with no expectation of profitability. It's also just insulting to activists and others who have been in the trenches fighting these problems for decades.

mwseibel 7y ago

I agree - it would be great for the government to tackle these problems. But looking at the current US government that doesn't look likely. I agree it feels almost impossible for a startup to actually fix some of these problems. But we fund startups who try to do the almost impossible all the time. And sometimes they succeed :)

kaushikktiwari 7y ago
I guess a lot of blowback is coming from the fact that you decided to call it Government 2.0. It seems a bit presumptuous, guilty of the same hyperbole tech is always accused of...changing the world etc...but at the same time it's a title I would click on. It's outrageous, but serves a purpose
jakelazaroff 7y ago
Are the startups listed actually fixing these problems, though? You say that Promise, for example, is attacking mass incarceration — but it's basically just a dashboard for lawyers. Maybe lawyers could be more efficient, but that's a way easier problem to solve than radically changing our justice system so that fewer people get pulled into it in the first place. What's worse, given that Promise appears to be a for-profit company and you're investing in it to make money, you now have a financially incentive against fixing the systemic issue. It's better for you if the justice system is bigger and less efficient, because you'll make more money selling us a band-aid. So count me in with the GP and Andrew Yang: it's not that the problems seem too hard for startups to tackle, but because they are fundamentally not problems that the free market rewards solving. YC mostly funds profit-seeking companies. That's okay! But I am skeptical that there is profit to be made in e.g. dismantling the justice system.
- kaushikktiwari 7y ago
  not sure if I agree with your point about promise--especially with the implied "moral hazard"--if they are trying to solve the inefficiency in the justice system then its better for them that the system remains inefficient-- def seems like something beyond their control that they had no role in creating, and they are trying to help as best as they can. There is a bigger problem for private prisons---not promise

marknadal 7y ago

Incorrect. The free market can reward this, with certain incentive structures ( https://hackernoon.com/wealth-a-new-era-of-economics-ce8acd785441 https://hackernoon.com/wealth-a-new-era-of-economics-ce8acd7... ). It is Capitalism that doesn't. Neither does Socialism. :/

berberous 7y ago

I didn't watch the linked video, but aren't things like education and affordable housing also problems that governments have been tackling for decades without much progress and even often making things worse? For example, economists are almost uniformly against rent control, which many cities try to implement. And the flood of government money encouraging educational loans seems to have made college costs spiral. Personally, I think both the free market and the government can do good and can do bad. Sensible policies and entrepreneurs can help these issues, and bad policies and bad companies can worsen them.

Alex3917 7y ago
The government is in charge of determining what types of businesses are profitable though, so even areas where the government hasn't been effective usually still require better government policies in order for the markets to be able to offer solutions. There are certainly problems that businesses can ameliorate given current government policies, but it just isn't realistic to think that we can solve every problem on our own by routing around government.
- ibeckermayer 7y ago
  Exactly right. I can give you a perfect example from a project I'm working on: http://openinsulin.org/ http://openinsulin.org/ We're working to make medicine more affordable, focusing on insulin in particular. Insulin has been around for decades, it's easy to make. Technology has been improving, things should be getting cheaper. Instead, insulin continues to rise [1]. People with diabetes need this stuff, if they don't have it they'll literally drop dead. The left wing "solution" to this problem is to force taxpayers to subsidize it, and perhaps impose price controls. The right wing "solution" is to puke some cookie cutter line about the "free market" and America's incredible "innovation" in drug development, exposing his skin-deep understanding of what those terms mean. (Later, he'll throw a fit about how so many millenials want socialized medicine). So our startup idea is to create cheap small-scale insulin production hardware, except the second we try to pay back investors and become "for profit", we get regulated like any other drug manufacturer. That means we need to hire an army of lawyers, go through a multi-year multi-million dollar FDA approval process for all the production equipment etc., and open ourselves to patent lawsuits and other weapons of corporate thuggery that the big-time drug companies are so willing to wield. If we manage to make it through that gauntlet of fuckery, god knows if we'll actually be able to sell it for any cheaper than the status quo. I'm open to being told I'm wrong about this problem, but from my understanding there's simply no way to solve this problem without massive regulatory reform. [1] https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/11u1Lqm70xFl0kWTtrt6kAEhrSE=/0x0:1903x757/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1903x757):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8500453/ioi150073f1.png https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/11u1Lqm70xFl0kWTtrt6kAEhrSE=...

tacosx 7y ago

Having a bunch of white tech dudes show up with a startup to "solve" something like mass incarceration is just absurd, and reveals both the massive naivete of this project and the extent to which startup funding has become a meaningless ponzi scheme with no expectation of profitability. It's also just insulting to activists and others who have been in the trenches fighting these problems for decades.