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The solution to income inequality is not going to come from venture capitalists and private companies. I have an idea for a non-profit that tackles a systemic

• mythrwy 7y ago
  The solution to income inequality probably isn't going to come from governments either sadly.
  • maxxxxx 7y ago
    It has to come from politics. Capitalism unregulated will pretty much always lead to a few accumulating more and more and increasing their power.
    • toomuchtodo 7y ago
      Indeed. Want to fix government? Run for office or work in government. Anything else is polishing brass on the Titanic. Hat tip to the USDS and 18F [1]. Hard working people making an impact. YC: Why not consider hiring lobbyists to enable existing, impactful teams more velocity? [1] https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/444159-congress-should-grow-the-digital-services-budget-which-more-than-pays-for https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/444159-congress-shoul... (Congress should grow the Digital Services budget, which more than pays for itself)
      • atlasunshrugged 7y ago
        What about a solution that makes it easy for any small group to hire lobbyists? Something like Kickstarter campaigns for cause areas where you want to get something done (eg. prison reform) so you create a campaign and get people to contribute; it hits a minimum threshold and the platform hires a lobbying firm to work towards the goal. Of course, with lobbying there are no guarantees anything happens, but would be interesting (sorry this isn't very thought out, I'm just reading the threads here and this came to mind)
        • toomuchtodo 7y ago
          Stripe Atlas for Political Action Committee creation and maintenance essentially? I would throw money at that. I don't entirely agree that money is speech, but I also don't believe in bringing a knife to a gun fight. Or perhaps Upcounsel for lobbyists.
          • atlasunshrugged 7y ago
            Not exactly but pretty dang close to Stripe Atlas for PACs, but I think a big part of doing that well is having someone that has connections so there probably either has to be some marketplace of lobbyists attached or some mechanism to guide you to the right lobbyist/team to hire based on the cause area
    • youeseh 7y ago
      > Capitalism unregulated There isn't a country on earth that allows for unregulated capitalism.
      • maxxxxx 7y ago
        For good reason.
    • mythrwy 7y ago
      What you say is true. Likewise government unrestrained appears to lead to the few accumulating more and more and increasing their power.
      • maxxxxx 7y ago
        That's why we need balance.
• Kalium 7y ago
  To be sure I understand you clearly, are you making the claim that making sure people don't forget or lose track of court dates will help literally nobody avoid going to jail?
  • lumens 7y ago
    People for whom forgetfulness is the reason they'd miss a court date are likely solve their problem with a normal calendar reminder. Literally nobody is probably close to accurate.
    • Kalium 7y ago
      One of the things I've learned is that a non-trivial number of people never acquired what some might consider basic life skills. Like keeping track of upcoming future events or adhering to a schedule. For all the important systemic problems that parent rights points to as very important, most of them have also proven to be rather intractable. Helping a few people whose major problem is that they never learned how to schedule strikes me as much more tractable. Sometimes helping people means having to choose between a minor-but-addressable aspect of a large problem and a major-but-intractable one. Just because someone thinks they've found somewhere small where they can make a difference doesn't mean they have earned scorn for not being intimidated by poverty and hopelessness. Small changes can add up. They certainly do a lot more than giving in to despair.
  • smacktoward 7y ago
    Nobody starting a venture-backed company is doing so on the premise that their product will be only useful in a few edge cases.
  • nabnob 7y ago
    I'm not denying that it might help people, it just seems like a half-assed bandaid solution given the breadth of the problem.
    • Kalium 7y ago
      If you have an idea for an app that will directly tackle poverty and hopelessness, I think there are a lot of people willing to listen. This isn't an attempt to bandaid over the whole problem. It's an attempt to address a minor contributing factor that is much more tractable than hopelessness.
• mwseibel 7y ago
  I honestly disagree. There are many people in jail now pre-trial because the government is worried that they won't appear for trial. As a result these people often lose their jobs and their housing -- even if it turns out they are not guilty. Better software and technology can help address this problem.
  • blang 7y ago
    Or we can change bail laws as they exist now: https://whyy.org/articles/n-j-officials-have-finally-released-data-on-bail-reform-their-conclusion-its-working/ https://whyy.org/articles/n-j-officials-have-finally-release... >Yet new data shows only modest increases in two of the main measurements of success since 2017. In that year, 26.9 percent of defendants released from jail before their trials were charged with a new crime — either an indictable offense or a disorderly persons charge. That number increased from 24.2 percent in 2014. Some 89.4 percent of defendants appeared for their court dates in 2017, down from 92.7 who showed up in 2014. Analysts cautioned that “small changes in outcome measures should be interpreted with caution and likely do not represent meaningful differences.”
    • rkho 7y ago
      Somehow I get the feeling that building software is easier than changing laws around here
      • sjg007 7y ago
        How about, “build software to change laws” ?
• ericb 7y ago
  > It's ridiculous to suggest that an app that sends reminders of court dates will make an impact on any of these problems. I listened to a podcast with the founder. She was impressive. In terms of the impact of reminders, you'd be surprised. One of the student loan guarantors tried a model where they were paid more if they kept people paying their loans. Their program was very successful with just well-timed reminders and calls. It was pretty amazing.
  • travisjungroth 7y ago
    Not surprising that she was impressive. I’d argue that’s the biggest trait being a founder selects for.
  • ericb 7y ago
    Source: https://www.asa.org/about-us/ https://www.asa.org/about-us/ "...By proactively reaching out to borrowers at risk of delinquency and default, ASA helped to avert more than $120 million of loan defaults before the program was eliminated by the Department of Education."
• pcmaffey 7y ago
  You think YC/VC's are searching for a solution to income inequality? Check @pg's twitter feed... The government is already stricken with profit-seekers extracting value from the public. SV wants its piece too. And it will, if it can make VC money out-impact the status quo of entrenched lobby money.
  • nabnob 7y ago
    I agree with you, I’m just hoping other people see it.
  • mythrwy 7y ago
    I'd say most VC's are probably very interested in solutions for income inequality. In the direction of getting their net worth equal to Bezos that is. In the other direction not so much perhaps. But really what is people's obsession with "income inequality"? Ya, the rich shouldn't run governments or be able to evade laws or abuse the poor (which is why we have governments who also perhaps should do more to care for the disadvanted), but other than that, if you have 10 dollars and I have one dollar it's preferable to both of us having 50 cents. I just don't get the obsession with "equality". Seems counterproductive. I truly am just confused by the obsession with it.
    • boucher 7y ago
      There is a wealth of literature on the subject, no pun intended. Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the 21st Century" (or, more practically, summaries of it) offers one interesting perspective. A different take can be seen in books like "Winners Take All" by Anand Giridharadas. On the most basic level, you should question your own premises. The reality of extreme wealth inequality is that rich people do have a substantially outsized say in running the government and exercising other forms of power, and they are often able to evade laws as well as engage in activity that is harmful to the poor.
      • mythrwy 7y ago
        But the problem in that case is the way government is set up (folks can "buy" government etc.). I don't think the best way to solve that problem is saying people can have less money but rather fix the systemic issues (lobbyists, opportunities for corruption, the campaign contribution circus etc). And manifestly not allow abuse of the poor by those with money. What seems to happen the other way is sort of like what happens in China (or other parts of the world). Becoming a bureaucrat is an income producing commodity. And that has a worse outcome than Bezos buying a newspaper in my opinion. But I also agree with the problems you point out. They are issues with the way things are running right now in the US for sure that should be addressed and it is hard to do because monied interests stymie attempts.
• Jun8 7y ago
  You're absolutely correct that good approaches to social problems (don't want to use the term "solution" which is ill-suited, I think) will not come from VCs: It will come from naive entrepreneurs, naive in the sense that they don't quite appreciate the problem they are tackling, because if they do they would never take it on. A simple fact I learned in volunteering that's applicable here, too, is that in tackling these issues money is not the bottleneck, it's finding people who want to be involved. If you have a good idea in this space it's not hard to secure money from many different foundations and sponsors. You have focused on a single idea to criticize. It's true that some who venture in this space may be young, privileged, out of touch, etc. I don't think this negates the approach. Many times what happens with non-profits is that they start great with founders' motivation but have a tough time turning that into a sustained operation.
  • mwseibel 7y ago
    Great reply! We don't expect to be the source of solutions. We just want to help founders who are brave enough to take these challenges on.
  • hitekker 7y ago
    > It will come from naive entrepreneurs, naive in the sense that they don't quite appreciate the problem they are tackling, because if they do they would never take it on ... I'm not even sure where to begin.
  • llamataboot 7y ago
    As someone who spent my first career in both high-level policy analysis and research into social interventions and also consulted with and helped run multiple non-profits doing direct work with measurable outcomes the idea that it is easy to fund this type of work is ludicrous to me. The lengths I've seen small-medium size non-profits go to stretch a dollar would humble any VC talking about maximizing a runway.
• SRasch 7y ago
  I think you're making a category error by thinking of companies and countries as completely different. In the global world countries can be seen as sort of quasi-companies that happen to have monopoly control on a particular area (a monopoly that is slowly dissolving with the internet) + force. There are many ways a company can help solve problems that we tend to think of as government problems. 1. Government also buys services. 2. Startups can fix the services government does badly as an additive product, e.g. Gusto or TurboTax. 3. Startups can solve government problems directly, e.g. Fedex vs USPS. The only real difference between the two entities is the power of force that government can apply to make you people their services. Which is sometimes useful, but doesn't make voluntary efforts at solving the same problems a bad thing. It is also not in competition. Whenever I see these arguments being made I see people who would rather limit their work on these problems to voting once a year, instead of actually trying to solve the problems themselves.
  • boucher 7y ago
    But they are completely different. On the most basic level, governments are responsible to their citizens and their only purpose is to serve those citizens. Companies are responsible only to their shareholders, who may or may not be their customers. Their only goal is to earn money for those shareholders. Companies get to pick their customers, governments do not. The examples you give are instructive. Intuit spends a tremendous amount of money lobbying against improvements to the American tax system that would benefit everyone, because that would mean fewer profits for them. Fedex competes in some ways with the USPS, but USPS provides a government mandated service to every remote region of the country, which a private company would not do, because as a country we decided that service was an important function of government. Plus, Fedex actually uses USPS for a significant percentage of their deliveries.
    • nickpsecurity 7y ago
      "On the most basic level, governments are responsible to their citizens and their only purpose is to serve those citizens." In the US, the default is to appear to support citizens while doing a mix of what lobbyists pay for and actually serving citizens. The mix favors the rich folks' lobbyists whenever there is a conflict. The leaked Citigroup memos called this a plutonomy, a capitalist form of plutocracy.
• visionaryturtle 7y ago
  I think the solution to income inequality will come from the blockchain and AI.