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Imo Education is overvalued, Capital is under appreciated, And, Because Capital is trapped into networks, that Capital is squandered among an infinite array o

• wallace_f 7y ago
  Why should the federal government do this? 'The founding fathers intended the states to be social and economic experiments.' I find it frustrating that anything remotelt consistent with the scientific method is effectively shunned in economic policy and politics.
  • eaenki 7y ago
    Well the US is the major superpower in good part because of Cisco, Bell Labs, Fairchild, Intel, Apple, Lockheed, Google etc.
    • wallace_f 7y ago
      Are we speaking military expenditure, basic research, or entrepreneurialism? I'm also uncomfortable of this suggested idea about American exceptionalism. We have been bested by foreign competition despite our superior economic resources and liberty. I mean, we had to completely begin shifting gears away from public, politicized development in the launch market when our best option became hitching rides with one of our worst enemies.
      • eaenki 7y ago
        Even Lockheed (or some other aerospace company) at some point was a risky venture developing far fetched tech, doing basic research So I’d answer: all of them
      • inimino 7y ago
        That's because we suck at politics, not space. America is not just exceptional, it is unique.
      • kortilla 7y ago
        It’s odd that you use a government-funded program as an example of US liberty and poor economic resources failing. Isn’t SpaceX a shining counter example in the fact that it is successful without involuntary taxation as its entire operating budget?
        • TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
          SpaceX is built on the original state-funded R&D that allowed NASA to create a space program in the first place. Likewise for the entire computer industry, which would never have existed without government funding for Whirlwind, TX-0, SAGE, and other critical seed projects.
      • TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
        The US has been bested by foreign competition which has flooded innovation markets with cheap money. The US could have done the same, but chose to use cheap money to skim profits from its economy instead of investing in real invention and innovation. And US "liberty" is a self-serving myth. Try hawking a truly revolutionary invention around potential funding sources and see how far you get if you don't have the "right" social background. Conversely, try hawking a terrible non-working idea around and see how far you get if come from that background.
• toyg 7y ago
  Capital is not underappreciated - it is hidden by owners. Because their power and wealth comes from control of a scarce, hidden resource. If everyone had access to capital, nobody would be “on top”, and that’s unacceptable to the owning classes.
  • eaenki 7y ago
    Mhh, I simply suspect that a family would rather fund their son’s projects and their friends because of human’s nature, and since one can’t ask a stranger to fund him, and not everyone can be bff with rich dudes, this is probably a problem better solved by the gov
    • smkellat 7y ago
      “...and since one can’t ask a stranger to fund him...” That’s been a solved issue since at least the 17th century with joint stock companies. What else is an IPO but asking strangers for money so you can do business?
      • TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
        Sometimes it's a substance-free scammy marketing exercise.
      • eaenki 7y ago
        Name one company that raised its first million with an IPO in the last few decades. Let alone one that did so while producing something like Google
        • kortilla 7y ago
          Last few decades? You do know that includes the dot com boom that was filled with tech companies doing early IPOs with basically nothing to show? Also, the only reason early IPOs aren’t popular anymore is because capital is so easy to get from VCs, despite what you’re suggesting. The difference is that you want money without a business plan or a plan to grow, which is not how private, nor public, money should be squandered.
• easytiger 7y ago
  Unbelievably childish idea which would be trivial to gamify. You only have to look at the industrialised corruption of public tenders for legitimate needs in Africa for a glimpse of human nature.
  • eaenki 7y ago
    While this is just a very basic idea I put out, still, corruption is rampant everywhere anyway. I suspect it would be a net positive to have a ton of Brilliant students getting money for their projects even if half of the money are corrupted away.
    • jjoonathan 7y ago
      You can't satisfy corruption by throwing money at it and hoping it only takes its share. It won't. It will take it all, and then it will find a way to take more besides.
      • eaenki 7y ago
        Well, a lot of the budget of any given government is corrupted away, regardless of what you put that into. But some inevitably goes to what it was meant to address. It won’t take it all, or no one would have any access to healthcare facilities and public transport. But we do.
      • ta1234567890 7y ago
        So what is the solution to corruption? It does seem like it's getting worse, or maybe media coverage about it is getting better. Has any country in the world successfully fought corruption in a peaceful way? (ie. no revolutions, no guillotines)
        • buboard 7y ago
          Most of the west is not corrupt. You have to visit eastern europe, latin america, middle east and east asia to experience it The solution is not throwing more free money in public coffers. It definitively exacerbated corruption in greece for example
• claudiawerner 7y ago
  >Education is overvalued, Capital is under appreciated, In today's world in which capital appears to assume an autonomous form itself, in which every goal of civil society gradually becomes subsumed under it, this statement must be read ironically - there is no other possibility. Capital can only appear underappreciated in a world truly dominated by capital.
  • eaenki 7y ago
    There’s way more people complaining about expensive or poor education around the world than lack of growth capital for their far fetched science research / companies So I would deem it to be under appreciated by the general public
    • claudiawerner 7y ago
      Wouldn't that follow from the fact that there are way more people concerned with the state of education (because everyone must be educated) than there are people who have ideas for far fetched science research and companies? Education is viewed (rightly in my opinion) as an intrinsic good. Somebody's far fetched idea for a company isn't.
      • eaenki 7y ago
        Well, it could be equally appreciated if all those humans longing for better/cheaper education realized how much better their life because they can learn literally anything for free with a tap/click because someone runs Google/YT, which to take off required some growth capital (an ironic example in this context, yes)
        • claudiawerner 7y ago
          They don't underappreciate capital in that case, they underappreciate the value of online education for various reasons (doubts about quality being one), the weight of tradition on higher education, and the fact that many (perhaps even most) people who go into higher education want a degree to show prospective employers (this is of course itself showing the appreciation and necessity of playing the capital game in their lives).
• criddell 7y ago
  If I had been given $1 million when I was 22 to build something, the world would have a pretty awesome Honda Civic with a flamethrower on the front, a 40" subwoofer in the hatch, and a dial to change the camber angle of the wheels on the fly.
  • eaenki 7y ago
    That doesn’t sound far fetched tho, which would be the main requirement
    • chii 7y ago
      What is far fetched in your opinion?
      • eaenki 7y ago
        Anything that’s meant to bring a x10 improvement in how fast or far humans move, how fast humans can learn and communicate, how long humans live, any creature’s freedom, environment cleanliness
        • criddell 7y ago
          That's an impressive list and it's entirely different than what mine would look like. My list would be entirely focused around quality of life and happiness which would mean significant funding for artistic endeavors. It also might lead to slowing the rate we communicate, living healthier (not necessarily longer) lives, building stable communities which might lead to less long distance movement (which would likely be better for the environment - so on that we agree).
          • tempguy9999 7y ago
            I'm going to be a bit bolshy here. Every time I see or hear the word Art, my back goes up. I'd never say that art is worthless, it might be one of the few valuable things in life, but a lot of Art that gets done seems to have no value, even aesthetic. What art would you say is a valuable artistic endeavour? To note, I can quite consider science to be largely artistic (as well as applied philosophy), so it's not a clear area.
• journalctl 7y ago
  More money for the rich people. Groundbreaking.
• ecorithm 7y ago
  This sounds similar enough to the SBIR/STTR program that many federal agencies already have from the NIH and Department of Agriculture too DARPA. Basically a company pitches an idea to a federal agency which if accepted will give you something like 100k (phase 1) to explore the initial idea and place in you in a pipeline that can lead to much more money if the idea seems valuable and doable (phase 2 and phase 3). This program has led to the development of all types of cool technology and has supported a bunch of small businesses. However it is not the silver bullet you are suggesting it is.
  • ericmay 7y ago
    Primarily not a silver bullet in this case because it takes like 6 months and it’s a pretty involved submission. A VC firm just writes you a check. I have personal experience with this. The issue comes down to speed and decision making. The government can’t ever let a single person be responsible for something like this, so there is a lot of CYA.
    • ecorithm 7y ago
      Phase 1's are really not that hard to get, and the process is not nearly as stifling as you are alluding too. Most people without prior funding or reputation don't just get instant money from VCs. Convincing them to give you money can take a decent amount of time too. Especially if you are trying to do something actually out of the box not just something like "Its like UBER but for ..." Just speculating, but I would bet if you are a just starting out and are not well connected getting a phase 1 would be easier than getting VC funding. Another major plus is that SBIR's don't have to be the next google. You can get funded for a product with fairly mild potential. VCs only seem to care about the 100x investment.
      • eaenki 7y ago
        Well, I don’t think it’s a given that a mild potential product or a x100 investment product add anything. I feel like only far fetched products do, which usually resolve in a x100 ROI, but that’s a random byproduct
• sterileopinions 7y ago
  >Education is overvalued, Capital is under appreciated Is this HN satire?
• sidlls 7y ago
  Often, getting a prototype is the costly part. I do like your idea. And I'm not some starry eyed millennial or whatever. I'm a crusty gen-Xer who has seen what our parents and peers have wrought and can't help but think we need to do something drastically different.
  • spurdoman77 7y ago
    I also like the idea of free money from government. There seems to be a lot of like minded people who like free money, maybe we should develop a political party around that?
    • eaenki 7y ago
      This isn’t free money for personal use, this is money that you legally have to spend developing that far fetched idea.
      • briandear 7y ago
        And how is that enforced? Are we going to arrest people that choose to spend the money developing some far fetched idea at a cantina in Cabo?
        • eaenki 7y ago
          You enforce the law on your citizens just like with any other citizen for any other financial crime. Usually one shows up at your door, then you go to court, etc.
        • jlokier 7y ago
          Grant agencies are able to enforce it (to some extent) when giving grants to R&D businesses. Through auditing and reporting. If you're just blowing it all on holidays and fun, you're going to find it difficult to pass an audit for long. Maybe you'll have some fun for a while, but the grant tap will slow and eventually stop if you do that. Fraud charges maybe, if you push it.
• dteiml 7y ago
  Isn't Peter Thiel doing that with the Thiel Grants? Pretty successful so far (projects Ethereum, Aragorn... founded by grantees).
  • eaenki 7y ago
    I once regarded Ethereum as the the only successful project out of it. But is it? Did it create anything meaningfully better? Not really. Anyway, yes. And Peter Thiel’s fellowship is great. It’s just that he doesn’t have $30B a year to spare on that
    • davidajackson 7y ago
      Decentralized scripting that large numbers of developers know how to use is powerful. Entire parts of the internet could shift to that in the long term. Obviously, it's a long way away... but that's a given. Even if you choose another crypto and say it has a better approach because of x, y and z mining or other infra, you can't argue with the fact that Ethereum has increased the competition in the space.
      • eaenki 7y ago
        It’s nice as I said, but it didn’t impact anything, and most likely never will. Even if the whole internet switched to that, there’s no x10 improvement in anything interesting. Unless you think airplanes are as good as owning your data and not having a few big entities owning the major services (which btw, you’d still have, because the oracle problem is basically impossible to efficiently solve).
        • davidajackson 7y ago
          >there’s no x10 improvement in anything interesting Don't you think trusting code to transmit and trade assets is a x10 improvement over trusting people? I'd rather trust code I can audit than people. Even if you don't call it an x10, I would definitely call it a success.
• mindentropy 7y ago
  The problem with pitching an idea is that person should have exposure to a particular field if the field is already developed. In my opinion the low hanging fruits are mostly taken. To have exposure it falls in the same trap where the person should be given an opportunity which is simply not there. Personally I have the same problem where it is difficult to get opportunity because people already present are simply blocking it.
• paulcole 7y ago
  > My solution is: take a piece of the federal budget and give $1-3MM to anyone with a far fetched idea that has a prototype to back it up So giving millions to people who are already privileged enough to have access to the tools/resources/education to make to a prototype?
  • eaenki 7y ago
    You usually can make a prototype of literally anything with less than $10K. Education on the internet is free. And the internet itself is free at any Starbucks.
    • jlokier 7y ago
      The cost of your unpaid time is often the most expensive thing. Your time in Starbucks costs, at least, the sum of your home's rent or mortgage, food, and the laptop and phone you are using (and their occasional replacements when they break). That can easily reach $10k by the time you've made a convincing prototype.
    • paulcole 7y ago
      $10k is an unthinkable amount of money to spend on a prototype for the vast majority of Americans.
    • petra 7y ago
      How ? $10K doesn't go very far in most areas of deep tech, where most significant inventions are usually created.
• buboard 7y ago
  Thats how biomedical research funding works. Its not pretty, thousands of unambitious tiny studies , tons of overlap, millions dead mice , but progress is slow
• marcinzm 7y ago
  >My solution is: take a piece of the federal budget and give $1-3MM to anyone with a far fetched idea that has a prototype to back it up. No long processes. If 30K -mostly students- a year get a mill to develop their thing, I suspect we would find ourselves way into the future in just a decade. And that’s just $30-90B/y Ideas require good execution to be off any value and money doesn't buy that. Look at all the Kickstarters which over-funded and failed because the people running them had no ideas about manufacturing, finances, physics, engineering, etc.
  • eaenki 7y ago
    Well, the twist is those are far fetched and they have a prototype. e.g If you want to build a reusable rocket and you already have something 100 times smaller, kind of working but not really and one contract to be paid upon delivery, that's good enough, most likely, when there are 30 companies building reusable rockets and 29970 more a year doing other far fetched things, in theory
    • marcinzm 7y ago
      Many of those Kickstarters also had or claimed to have prototypes. Let's use your example. I can buy a small reusable toy rocket at a hobby store. It will fly up a few hundred feet and come down by parachute in one piece. I can build a somewhat bigger one from pieces as well, there's college competitions around such things. That provides about 0.0001% of the work, skills, etc. needed to build one that can reach orbit and carry an actual payload. In other words, there is basically no relation between the small scale prototype and the actual useful product. A million is also a uselessly small amount of money for such a thing. SpaceX probably went through at least $200 million before it's first Falcon 1 flight. edit: Btw, parachute approach doesn't scale but it works in a small scale prototype. So you gain little knowledge of full scale re-usability from such prototype. However, you've said minimal bureaucracy so no system for doing such in-depth due diligence.
      • eaenki 7y ago
        Well, that would function as a seed round. And having a breakthrough would mean it’s proprietary. Aka you didn’t buy it at the hobby store. If you have a prototype demonstrating a breakthrough that’s enough imo. I can only recall Oculus from kickstarter and it has been fairly successful
• dahart 7y ago
  Perhaps worth noting that the U.S. government already has a grant program with approximately this budget range. Pell grants give money to students who need money. Is it possible that Pell grants already provide more economic return than is possible with a far-fetched-idea plan for a small number of people? Pell grants do help enable education for millions, and as we see in the article & study, education is absolutely correlated with innovation. I am curious how you propose to vet far fetched ideas in a short amount of time? 30K startups is a lot to review, even if the cycle was continuous and spread out over the year. And far-fetched ideas are difficult to rank and fund. Whether this program works, I imagine, would depend on lot on whether the vetting process reliably allowed in far fetched ideas with real potential and kept out far fetched ideas that have no potential, as well as people who aren’t likely to bring the far fetched idea to fruition.
  • maehwasu 7y ago
    Pell grants force the spending to be allocated to universities. Leaving aside how laughably wastefully the universities spend that money, disconnecting the borrower from the spender of funds is a massive anti-pattern. Awareness of and discretion over spending is an extraordinary effective forcing function.
    • dahart 7y ago
      Pell grants go directly to students, so what do you mean about the universities spending it wastefully? Pell grants are for education, it makes at least some sense they go universities. I’m not sure if you’re implying they should go to 2 year or vocational schools? Private, for-profit non-university schools are a large problem in the U.S. in that they have much lower financial returns for the students who attend them, and much lower quality educations. There’s an entertaining piece by John Oliver about this, among other sources.
  • eaenki 7y ago
    I find most universities to be borderline scams. The ones I deem not a scam, don't draw any benefit from that. I explained in another reply what I mean by far fetched products, which can be valued mathematically
• __MatrixMan__ 7y ago
  I don't think just giving the money to whoever has a prototype is a good idea. Some culturally relevant projects aren't the sort of thing you can make a prototype of, but I like where you're going. I'd amend it like so: Once I've been a citizen long enough (i.e. paid enough taxes) I get to invoke my free year, which is a year where the government pays me enough to cover my bills and maybe a bit extra for projects and stuff. During this year, I am encouraged to make some kind of contribution: maybe I start a business, maybe I do an art project, maybe I try to overthrow the government, it's up to me. At the end of the year, I can provide a presentation about what society gained by funding my free year. If I do, it goes into an archive and part of the voting process means having citizens review these and decide whether I deserve another free year to persue similar endeavors. Maybe voted on free years are actually two years long so you can be more ambitious once proven viable. So if society likes what you do when left to your own devices, they have the opportunity to keep funding it. If not, well you had your shot and nothing stops you from carrying on the old fashioned way. As for yourself, you get to decide when to invoke your free year. Is the idea really ready? Do you have the skills? Should you put a bit more work into it on the weekends before you try to do it full time? These things ought to ensure sufficient seriousness from the participant. You can have a video game year on the government's dime, but unless people really want their tax money funding your gaming, your only going to get one.
  • newdaynewuser 7y ago
    If it is voting contest then I am afraid we will end up with reality shows like Kardashian pretending to be working on idea. Maybe requirement should be voting on projects have to be anonymous. Public cannot know projects owner completion of funding rounds
  • ta0987 7y ago
    That's a cool system. What country, if you don't mind sharing?
  • JPKab 7y ago
    "Once I've been a citizen long enough (i.e. paid enough taxes) I get to invoke my free year, which is a year where the government pays me enough to cover my bills and maybe a bit extra for projects and stuff." I really wish people would stop saying "the government" in these scenarios. It's the taxpayers. Actual humans whose money is taken by force. Not saying it's a bad idea, just saying that we need to be thinking a lot more responsibly about the fact that this is money being taken from people who themselves would rather spend it on their own needs/dreams/business ideas etc.
• __s 7y ago
  Think your solution ends up being a lot more exploitable/costly than basic income
  • eaenki 7y ago
    I see no relation between them and at $30B a year, that’s $10/m per American or smth, so... no?
    • __s 7y ago
      Your 30B number is assuming perfect efficiency. You're not accounting for having to go through thousands of prototypes of perpetual motion machines You might as well've said "The patent office should grant 1M alongside every patent it grants"
      • eaenki 7y ago
        It should be pretty close to a math function. It must be 10x something great. If it’s supposed to 10x the speed of human travel, and there’s some plausible reason to believe there’s a chance it’ll work (TBD what exactly that is) then it gets funded.
• pikwip 7y ago
  That's basically the thought process behind Tyler Cowen's 'Emergent Ventures' program. He secured a few million dollars that he can unilaterally give out to moonshot innovators, mainly to prove that traditional grant-making bureaucracies are inefficient. Site here: https://www.mercatus.org/emergentventures https://www.mercatus.org/emergentventures Info about cohorts here: https://marginalrevolution.com/?s=emergent+ventures https://marginalrevolution.com/?s=emergent+ventures
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• viach 7y ago
  Who will decide what projects to fund? Officials with good networking you mentioned?
  • eaenki 7y ago
    It should come down to a measurable function
• umvi 7y ago
  Actually I think creativity and innovation is best stimulated under limitations and constraints, not with blank checks
  • jlokier 7y ago
    I think it depends on the constraints, and what kind of innovation you hope for. If someone is working at a job most hours, most the remaining hours caring for family, constantly having to chase more work because they are on the breadline, mentally stressed all the time, never getting enough rest and sleep because of the demands on them, cognitively impaired by stress and malnourishment, they may have lots of creative and innovative thoughts, they can be stuck for decades unable to build a prototype due to lack of time, energy, and a place to build it. (Little web-based things may be a relative exception, because people can do those at home, on the side, and while looking after others. Maybe that's why we have so many of them, and so many people trying to make more.) Aside from personal circumstances, at the business level, there is a reason investment is done in business growth, and why many businesses try to borrow, rather than waiting to save up the cash for new investments. For some things, development just stalls without resources and breathing room. Even when successful, it can be greatly slowed.
• macspoofing 7y ago
  >My solution is: take a piece of the federal budget and give $1-3MM to anyone with a far fetched idea that has a prototype to back it up. The problem is that people are smart. This kind of policy would be gamed in no time. >If 30K -mostly students- a year get a mill to develop their thing Today there may be 30k smart, ambitious students with a great idea. With your policy there would be 30k smart, ambitious students and 10 million others pretending to be.
• aj7 7y ago
  There has recently been a similar thread to spread research funds much more uniformly, rather than concentrated among “successful” researchers and “hot topics.” It was pretty convincing to me, and I wish I had the references.
• lemiant 7y ago
  This is basically the pitch for YC
• unreal37 7y ago
  I don't know that I agree that capital is "under appreciated". Capital is infinite. The US just prints an unlimited supply of dollars, and that has no effect on the value of the dollar. Governments around the world are now offering negative interest rate bonds and investors are buying them. The stock market will keep going up and never crash. Money just churns. There's no way to stop it. Basically, there is too much money looking to invest around the world. Billions in hedge funds, pension funds, retirement accounts... Just billions and billions looking for a home. And there's not really a good reason it will ever go away. Investors can't stop investing. They can't just sit there with a pile of cash. So investment will never end. We've entered a time of infinite capital. Borrow $15 billion and we'll pay you to take it from us.
  • sokoloff 7y ago
    The US does not "[print] an unlimited supply of dollars" for if we did, they would cease to be the world reserve currency and be valueless. Dollars are basically a claim on labor or natural resources. That we print slightly (in relative terms) more each year is what causes the slow devaluing of existing dollars in circulation. This is also known as inflation. (The linkage isn't quite that direct, but it's fairly close to it.)
    • unreal37 7y ago
      They sure do. The M1 money supply has gone from 1.5 trillion in 2009 to 3.8 trillion today. That's 2.5X more money in circulation in 10 years. A graph of that is a hockey stick - basically a 45 degree angle. The dollar remains strong. Inflation remains low. Unemployment at record lows. Stock market at record highs. There is no sign that printing $20 billion per month for the last 10 years has had any negative effects. The printing machines don't stop. Won't stop. Can't stop. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/money-supply-m1 https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/money-supply-m1
• danenania 7y ago
  If you offer millions of dollars to anyone with a far fetched idea and a prototype, everyone will have a far fetched idea and a prototype, and you'll need some way to filter millions of applicants down to the 30k you can afford to give the money. It would be extremely competitive, just like VC is now, and picking the winners smartly/fairly would be just as difficult. This doesn't mean that having some public subsidies for entrepreneurs is necessarily a bad idea, but it's not going to be a dramatic cure-all like you describe. The students in the top < 1% that would be getting funded from this system could most likely already raise that money from private investors. I think something like UBI would have a far wider and more equitable impact.
  • eaenki 7y ago
    I don’t know. According to personal experience and to Chamath and Peter Thiel, a lot of great people doing great things can’t raise anything beyond friends and family.
    • danenania 7y ago
      Yeah, I don't dispute that. I just don't know that your plan would help with that much beyond simply injecting more money into the system. Instead of money going to the top < 1% of founders who figure out how to effectively pitch investors, it would go to the top < 1% who figure out how to effectively pitch a government agency. Determining who is and isn't "great" is extremely difficult and I don't see any reason why the government would be any better at it than investors are currently, so you'll still have truly great people getting passed over and others who don't deserve it getting the money.
  • SkyBelow 7y ago
    >It would be extremely competitive, just like VC is now, and picking the winners smartly/fairly would be just as difficult. Except that it would likely become corrupted like much of government contracting already is. At least VC are tossing their own money and don't have the same perverse incentive for corruption when you have government employees handing out bids to taxpayer money.
• friendlybus 7y ago
  I'm no fan of parts of what the evil empire google does, but it's super spying network has the potential to massively accelerate medical research. For better or worse I guess.
• andrei_says_ 7y ago
  In the age of multibillionaires it’s a good reminder that universal no strings attached basic income leads to entrepreneurship, better education, better health, better parenting, and better economic outcomes for the locales applying it. It saves money. See Rutger Bregman’s Talks and research as well as his book Utopia for realists.
• z3t4 7y ago
  Just give everyone enough to cover food, rent and health. So that you can work forever on something, or maybe not work at all. With less people working employment wages would go up alot especially in sectors no one wants to work in.
• WalterBright 7y ago
  > producing products that don’t make you, or the planet, better, healthier, smarter or happier. Business Capital goes towards products that people are willing to pay for. People buy products that make them better, healthier, smarter, or happier. Or at least they believe so. Are you sure you know what's better for them to buy?
  • eaenki 7y ago
    Most products are either chemical addiction (FB, Coca Cola, tobacco), vaporware (Most B2B), non world changing utility (intuit, JPM)
    • WalterBright 7y ago
      Nothing that you've bought you actually wanted?
      • eaenki 7y ago
        A Mac and the iPhone 3G. A Tesla X would also be great. But I already mentioned those companies
• rrivers 7y ago
  Education as a whole is not and cannot be overvalued enough given the trajectory of technology, society, and the nature of work. What can be overvalued is the character of our present educational institutions. Because the system of education that produced many of us was designed for another time. This is reflected in both the character and the quality of education. Education in the U.S. is also unevenly distributed due to a funding model that relies on municipality taxes, creating a multi-generational disadvantage. Capital may be under-appreciated and you're correct that it's "trapped in networks" - but I believe that the solution is to legally tie that capital to real economic purposes. Companies floating billions in cash reserves waste the productive potential of those resources. Same could be said for the stock market, speculation has it's purposes but modern financial markets just churn money to make money. Wall-street was intended to fund the productive agenda of society, not tie up capital in the hands of an isolated few.
• cryptonector 7y ago
  > My solution is: take a piece of the federal budget and give $1-3MM to anyone with a far fetched idea that has a prototype to back it up. No long processes. If 30K -mostly students- a year get a mill to develop their thing, I suspect we would find ourselves way into the future in just a decade. And that’s just $30-90B/y We already do this with grants at all levels of government. And guess what: it's a highly political activity, and prone to corruption. What's a remotely good idea?
• adamsea 7y ago
  I’m not sure this applies if you’re 5, or if you’re ten. Quality education during formative years seems invaluable.
• api 7y ago
  Unfortunately your suggestion will lead to a flood of scam phony prototypes to scoop up grant money. It'll be like the worst of Kickstarter on a larger scale. Deploying capital with discernment is extremely hard. VCs put a lot of effort into it and often fail pretty badly, and VCs are probably better at it than the government bureaucrats who would administer the program you're suggesting. Part of what makes it really hard is that there's often an inverse relationship between appearance and reality. Fakes, delusional nuts, and con artists usually appear more polished than the real innovators. The real innovators are spending all their time and energy innovating while the phonies are spending all their energy on flash and self-promotion.
• dragonwriter 7y ago
  > Education is overvalued, Capital is under appreciated, Capitalists downplay the importance of capital and highlight stories that distract from it because recognition of the importance of capital would lead to intolerance of the concentration of capital.