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I see your points, and what your goals are with this, but I think that you and Cuban are getting in on the wrong level. He wants to make sure that tech entrepr
by mixmax 18y ago
I see your points, and what your goals are with this, but I think that you and Cuban are getting in on the wrong level.
He wants to make sure that tech entrepreneurs are heard in the new government - which I certainly agree is a good idea. Both for the entrepreneurs and the economy. My grudge with the post is that he finds it perfectly reasonable that tech entrepreneurs should be represented at the very top level of the economic advisers to the president. My argument is that the tech entrepreneur expertise should be represented one level further down. Both because, as I've argued before, that the expertise that's needed is very different from doing startups, but also because tech startups don't account for that large a portion of the overall economy. Cuban's arguments could just as well be applied to mom and pop stores, which are probably more underpinning of the economy than startups, the biotech sector, the defense industry, the automobile industry, agriculture, advertising, aerospace, big oil, clean energy, food products etc. etc. These are all important, but none of them, including startups, are big enough in an economical sense that they should be represented at the top level.
Yes, an argument could be made that startups are the future of America. But the same argument could be made of mom and pop stores, clean energy and many others.
- yters 18y agoWhat drives America's economy? Investment or innovation? Where has the most influential innovation come from? Macroeconomics is a step removed from the people who really make it work. So, to get the best macroeconomics we need to make sure we get things right at the micro level. I don't see this happening with people who've spent their lives at the macro level. EDIT After reading the article, I also see you've set up a strawman. Cuban is not arguing you stick a lone group of tech entrepreneurs in Obama's advisory board. He says Obama needs to directly talk with them to see what they need, explicitly including non tech people in this by his mention of Joe the Plumber. Instead, Obama has insulated himself from these people with his advisory board. I agree with Cuban that this is a bad sign.
- mixmax 18y agoI just reread the article, and you're right about the strawman. Got a bit carried away in the discussion apparently :-)
- yters 18y agoNo prob, happens to me plenty:) Now, if Cuban was only arguing for a tech entrepreneur, I'd completely agree with you.
- vlad 18y agoThat was the whole point of my response. :) It would have been a lot simpler had I not edited out the first line of my post, which called your original post a strawman and linked to the definition. Since I had read the entire article carefully, and within the context of Mark's posts that I had read in the past, I thought Hacker News would appreciate knowning the actual views expressed in Mark's article.
- vlad 18y agoYou're correct, the OP made a strawman argument. However, Cuban is not exactly saying that he wants non-technical people on the team. He's saying an entrepreneur should be represented, as there are lots of them and they drive the economy (he then proceeds to list examples of many professions that are entrepreneurs.)