> So, digging in one spot is a dumb strategy for the economy of the individual, but a very wise strategy for the collective economy of all individuals.
First starts with the idea of diversification and why its good. Fair enough. Then an argument how a mining company could "just hire individual miners to do dig in one spot for cheap". While the individual miners are getting poorer you'll get rich! So why don't mining operations operate this way? Because there isn't an unlimited supply of stupid people to do waste away their lives for you to capture all the value.
> This is what happens in a non-ergodic system. We often hear politicians claim that the GDP is growing, but all the gains are going to the 1%. This is the same thing. The wealth of a country could be growing, but almost all the citizens could be getting poorer. There’s nothing inconsistent with this. The average is simply being dragged up by the freak outliers.
I'm fortunate enough to be living in a country with a growing GDP and I can tell you, life is pretty good here, even if you're not 1%. Sure could be better, but certainly great compared to countries with a contracting or stagnant economy. But cool, overstate your claim that the system is rigged.
> One of the bad learnings you get from YC is that there’s a formula for success, and it looks like this: First you do some brainstorming. Then you come up with a good idea that can scale to a billion dollars (otherwise what’s the point of getting out of bed in the morning?)
I was never part of YC but I read a lot of their literature and listened to a lot of their members, and this is opposite of their advice. The gospel is do things that don't scale and solve problems you're familiar with or have felt personally.
I guess my biggest gripe with the post is that the author sees founders as basically dumb diggers, a stupid exploitable resource that places like YC take advantage of. His bar for success is unicorn and only 1.25% of companies funded by YC make it. But would the other 98.75% have been better off working on optimizing ad placement at Google or something similar?
Sure taking VC money doesn't make sense in a lot of cases. If you can build a cash business without it, you probably should. And YC is definitely one of the better VCs from what I understand and have even pioneered the SAFE which was a huge step up from some contracts founders were asked to sign in the past.
> So, digging in one spot is a dumb strategy for the economy of the individual, but a very wise strategy for the collective economy of all individuals.
First starts with the idea of diversification and why its good. Fair enough. Then an argument how a mining company could "just hire individual miners to do dig in one spot for cheap". While the individual miners are getting poorer you'll get rich! So why don't mining operations operate this way? Because there isn't an unlimited supply of stupid people to do waste away their lives for you to capture all the value.
> This is what happens in a non-ergodic system. We often hear politicians claim that the GDP is growing, but all the gains are going to the 1%. This is the same thing. The wealth of a country could be growing, but almost all the citizens could be getting poorer. There’s nothing inconsistent with this. The average is simply being dragged up by the freak outliers.
I'm fortunate enough to be living in a country with a growing GDP and I can tell you, life is pretty good here, even if you're not 1%. Sure could be better, but certainly great compared to countries with a contracting or stagnant economy. But cool, overstate your claim that the system is rigged.
> One of the bad learnings you get from YC is that there’s a formula for success, and it looks like this: First you do some brainstorming. Then you come up with a good idea that can scale to a billion dollars (otherwise what’s the point of getting out of bed in the morning?)
I was never part of YC but I read a lot of their literature and listened to a lot of their members, and this is opposite of their advice. The gospel is do things that don't scale and solve problems you're familiar with or have felt personally.
I guess my biggest gripe with the post is that the author sees founders as basically dumb diggers, a stupid exploitable resource that places like YC take advantage of. His bar for success is unicorn and only 1.25% of companies funded by YC make it. But would the other 98.75% have been better off working on optimizing ad placement at Google or something similar?
Sure taking VC money doesn't make sense in a lot of cases. If you can build a cash business without it, you probably should. And YC is definitely one of the better VCs from what I understand and have even pioneered the SAFE which was a huge step up from some contracts founders were asked to sign in the past.