> Meta: How is such a low quality post getting so many upvotes?
I think a lot of people are missing the point of this post. Let me explain how I read it and why I've upvoted it.
I think the essence of the piece is this: So, what’s a smart person to do to avoid pauperism? Well that’s obvious, isn’t it? Create your own job! Start a new business in a day! Making… well… this is the part where it gets tricky. If it were apparent what businesses need started already, they’d be started already. The first “job” today’s kids have to answer is, what the hell am I going to do that anyone is willing to pay me for? And each kid, increasingly, is expected to answer this alone as an individual.
On the one hand, I think this is true, and well said. The economy is changing in such a way that we are being increasingly forced to find our own way, as she says, individually. Anyone who wants to be successful needs to identify and develop their own unique talent.
Where I disagree with her is whether this change is salutory in the long run. I believe that it will be: that it will unlock human potential in a way the world has never seen.
But I understand that this process is discouraging and scary for many, and that there will be losers as well as winners. I think it's good to be reminded of that, and I think this post expresses well what many people are probably feeling.
> So, what’s a smart person to do to avoid pauperism?
Entrepreneurship should not be a generally advisable path for young people. It's high risk and requires some uncommon traits (resilience, resourcefulness, and hard work more than being "smart"). If you're leading average college students into entrepreneurship you're causing a lot of unnecessary misery.
Individuals have a lot of control over their economic value through their choice of what they study. There are still large portions of the student body which choose majors where empirically the graduates end up working in low paying service jobs. If you're choosing what to study, it should be a function of both what appeals to you and what is economically valuable. The average student seems to only consider the former, which leads to lots of people who think they are increasing their economic value in college, but are not (at least not by much).
Energy determinism is one of the worst theories of civilization.
I remember that book "Hubbert's peak" that came out around 2000, to his credit he did say that the bullet could be dodged if somebody figured out how to deliver energy into shale in such a way to get the trapped oil and gas out and you know somebody did.
Some other guys had a site called "dieoff.com" that predicted that electric grids would go down circa 2013.
The one thing that is predictable about energy pricing is that it is volatile in the short term and remarkably stable in the long term.
We have enough energy in the nuclear waste that is already above ground to run our civlization for a few centuries, we may not have the will to use it yet, but that will will materialize if things get dire enough. Fukushima set things back a few decades, but it is not a story about nuclear power being dangerous as much as it is the operators being too cheap to spend $1M fortifying the diesel generator installation a bit.
Decreasing use of fossil fuels isn't a problem of having no alternative.
As the article alludes, it is a political problem. Many powerful governments are controlled to some degree by fossil-fuel tycoons (including the US), and these vastly wealthy people won't allow their governments to switch.
It is literally a problem of not having good enough alternatives. Fossil fuels have an energy density of 30-40MJ/kg. Also they provide power on demand. Ignoring climate effects, they are pretty close to ideal. Lithium ion batteries have less than 10% the density. Teslas only work by making up for the horrible inefficiency of passenger cars, and by devoting significantly more of the car's mass to energy storage. So far I haven't heard much at all about battery powered freight transportation.
Those all have significant hurdles to be overcome. Wind and solar both require significant infrastructure along. Nuclear has political issues and even without them the build out would/should be slow. Hydrogen is horribly inefficient. Hydro is very dependent on the terrain and has environmental impact problems.
I'm not saying they aren't part of the solution. But, we need to recognize the scale and complexity of the problem. Solving or at least weathering it will require multiple angles of attack, significant time, effort, engineering work and quite likely scientific advancement.
By that argument, chemical companies would not have allowed the switch from CFCs to HFCs and then the switch from HFCs to fluoroketones.
Actually the chemical industry made huge amounts of $$$ from each transition. For instance, you can't get a generic asthma inhaler now because all of the CFC-free formulations are patented and by the time those go off patent they will have finally determined it is safe to puff fluoroketones and they will ban HFCs and there will be another decades of paying extra for asthma inhalers.
Not quite the same. In the switchover from CFC to HFC, it was mainly the same companies making both chemicals. In the switchover from fossil fuels to renewable/green energy, you are moving production from one group of well established suppliers to a group of mostly newcomers. While many of the larger energy suppliers are invested in numerous energy plays, the bulk have a singular focus on one energy source. (Source: family in petroleum industry).
My argument wasn't absolute. Many, many incumbents have blocked important social change. Exxon is a classic energy example (covering up climate change once they knew it was happening). Another is the maker of TurboTax blocking reforms to the US tax filing system because it would have killed their product.
Sometimes big industries suffer due to policy decisions. Sometimes they take advantage of change and make money. Sometimes they use their money to fight the change instead.
Oil companies happen to fall into the last category with no sign things will change.
If Exxon is covering up climate change, they are doing a pretty damn poor job of it considering the hysteria in most media about it.
The tax system was insane long before Turbo Tax came on the scene. Sure they may have a vested interest in the status quo but they didn't create the insanity and they are not the primary cause it's not being reduced.
Occam's razor. Getting off fossil fuels is expensive. Alternatives cost more. Many governments have invested heavily into green energy, and face resistance from the public about the best high energy costs - come to Ontario where the highly visible wind generators have become a scapegoat for the fact that we went from having the cheapest power in Canada/USA to the most expensive (they're a small part of the reason, but they make a good scapegoat). The government recently floated the idea of moving new houses to electrical heating and was pilloried for it.
The public wants to go green, but only if nobody has to be inconvenienced with it.
Fossil-fuel tycoons have never exerted significant* control over the government in most of the US, and I doubt they've any more control outside the US. At least in Europe, the Green Party effectively nulls the voice of energy executives ( with the possible exception of those who have significant revenue from the North Sea ).
*There are cases, but they're mostly in the past and in the wake of the rebalancing during the post-WWII era.
It is a problem of alternatives; the alternatives aren't really in place yet. Ironically, the wealthy can afford them.
decreasing fossil fuels is merely one step in reducing some types of impact on the environment; not all of which are bad. The impact of cement creation is still immense and during China's building spree it likely rivaled fossil fuels. Throw in all the energy spent to raise livestock into the mix as well.
its this simpleton idea that fixing fossil fuel consumption is a magic bullet. when I see these articles I usually get part way through and think, okay it would be nice if he read more than the top to search results in google before writing this tripe
Commenters giving this post way too hard a time. Look at some of the other posts on this blog (the Unnecessariat piece from a few days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11765581 is them)
This is not a Medium post about why Startup.ly failed and what they learned. This a person who is fundamentally different from the typical HN poster. They're very much conscious of a bifurcation of the economy in which there are "winners" and "losers." We would generally be called the winners and the author one of the losers. (I'm not insulting them, I think they would agree with that assessment). They're not in a situation where most people are doing great, but there are a few exceptions. Most things and people they know are deeply broken.
The current system that lead to that bifurcation is the one we'd be betting our hopes for getting off fossil fuels on. It hasn't been all cupcakes are roses, so maybe don't bet everything on it.
Is there any quantitative study of this winners/losers bifurcation? In my own anecdotal experience I see a bifurcation, but it's more of a "big winners" vs. "everyone else" split. Most of us are "everyone else," but if you're on the internet every day looking at the "big winners" you feel like a loser.
By definition, innovation is looking for the next solution to today's problems. We've arbed everything away, exhausted most of the gains from globalization. Now maleate are sophisticated, many more people are qualified and educated than there are jobs, and housing scarcity in the areas where there are jobs is putting downward pressure on potential lifestyle gains for those lucky enough to get a good education. Entrepreneurship doesn't mean I give up, it means that it's our only hope. The alternative will be another round of dictators. I'll side with innovation over populism any day.
I greatly appreciate this blog for breaking up the monotonous techno-optimism native to HN, but I don't know that the author has thought through this particular position very well. He's right that, strictly speaking, our odds of preventing climate catastrophe would be better if we would at least consider the idea of substantial reductions to our energy budget; but, the reason that we don't generally think that way is that meaningful reductions to our energy use would entail tremendous suffering.
Speaking personally, my gentrified urbanite lifestyle wouldn't likely be too changed- I don't own a car to buy fuel for and the electric bill for my tiny apartment isn't irksome, the price of groceries would go up but even a 2- or 3-times increase wouldn't meaningfully impact my budget. My job is sufficiently abstracted from physical industry that its not going to be rendered uneconomical by any sudden change in global circumstances. But my lifestyle is very strange in this regard (and I'm probably missing some ways in which I would be meaningfully effected.)
If you're living out in the boondocks (requiring a car to get anywhere) far inland (so all your food and etc is shipped in likely via truck) and working a blue-collar job (in an industry or context that can be outsourced, rendered unnecessary, or simply done without, in case of economic downturn,) a 2x rise in the price of oil could absolutely destroy your life. The vast majority of humans on this planet don't have the sort of economic buffer that they could tighten their belts to cope with the economic retraction entailed by decreasing energy availability. The governmental and economic elite have "given up" that approach because no one wants to be responsible for that sort of catastrophe.
It is valid, I guess, to be of the opinion that "since the world might literally end otherwise, needs must", but I don't get the impression that the author is of this mentality. In either case, they would likely agree that in the face of this extreme option, ways to cheat around it ought to be explored.
> Even the modern replacement careers- nursing schools, medical schools, which, contrary to the American legend, are calibrated to turn out very few brilliant practitioners in favor of a large, reliable number of perfectly adequate practitioners and a vanishingly small number of screwups- are becoming more lottery-like. Specifically, the ratio of medical school “slots” to the number of residencies waiting for those students once they graduate is going way up… but I digress.
Wut? I'm pretty sure the AMA would never let Med school seats exceed the number of residency positions.
Core issue I see is that there are different types of innovation, some are in the right direction, some are in the wrong direction, and most are just something new.
First step to an innovative culture is to not trying to make everyone the same, which is likely one of the most basic ingredients of real change. Next is to help people be innovative in a way that's what is need; mainly see thinking like this at successful advance R&D labs.
Ok so is this talking about fossil fuels being extracted from the ground and pumped into the air?
ALL of the accessible fossil fuels will be released eventually. Whether you have carbon credits or anything else. It's just a question of how fast. So we may as well assume that it's all going to be released. And the next question is: what should we do about it?
The answer is planting more trees and plankton to capture the carbon from yhe atmosphere but not burn it!!
Honestly, while that's a good suggestion, I think it's only part of the answer:
1) Trees used to be a lot more abundant before fossil fuels were a big a thing, but now people are using the land the trees would need for other things (e.g. farming, cities) that are unlikely to be displaced.
2) At some point organic carbon sinks will hit equilibrium as the organisms that compose them start to die and decompose.
Well the assumption is that we will develop alternative energy sources byt STILL eventually release all the fossil carbon.
And then it won't matter if te carbon sinks hit equilibrium. I am actually surprised how for most of the planet's history there was an equilibrium, when the gases distribute so globally. How does the system adjust without collapses? I think there was once a great oxygenation event, which killed off most anaerobic life on the planet. But since then there's been equilibrium...
There seem to be parallels with academia here. In fact, what she is describing is the academic grant-giving method: Fund a million independent ideas, profit from a few. I suppose that method trickled down from academics to policy, and now it's become the current world economic plan.
The problem is that this model is not guaranteed optimal. In academia, centralized big projects have sometimes reaped great rewards.
A common misconception among young people in America seems to be that all majors are equally economically valuable. What you study matters more than whether you have a college degree.
Outside of certain fields - law, medicine, engineering - getting a degree is becoming a pure market signal.
Get a degree from [top tier school] and it probably can be any degree because the school itself is a filter that gets "the best" however they define it. Get a degree from [2nd tier or worse school] and it better be something that demonstrates academic or intellectual rigor.
But outside of a degree, another market signal is relevant experience. Considering the teenage and young adult unemployment rate, that is harder and harder to get.. which means they start their professional/productive years that much later, which means responsible adulthood comes later, which means family, house, etc, etc comes that much later.
Eventually (already?) it can put an entire area, city, region, or generation on a lower trajectory for their lives, negatively affecting everyone.
"What would you do if you could do anything with your life." Is such bad advice. Of course most people would like to paint or dance or ride motorcycles.
I think you're underestimating most people. Everyone knows they have one life. If they were given a chance to really do whatever they want to do and were asked to think about it, they will always decide to go with the decision that fulfills the top level of maslow's hierarchy which is self actualization. The problem is most people live lives without being aware of this, so I think "Do what you want" is a good advice because it at least attempts to make people stop and think about it.
Agree with both of you - it's a valuable thought experiment that everyone should run throughout their lives, and it's also missing the critical check of economic reality.
You can do what you love even if it's not economically valuable... just put your focus on something that is economically valuable and use that as a foothold.
This article is made up of 95% fluff and 4% content, and 1% the word "Keynesian".
And even that 4% content has no logic, just trying to deceive readers using lots of confusing/dubious expressions.
"Since then I’ve gotten a college degree, come within striking distance of finishing grad school, and acquired a number of practical and social skills I simply didn’t have as a teenager."
> So basically if you trim it down it means "I became and adult and went to college". (I had to re-read to realize "come within striking distance of finishing grad school" means nothing. "Acquired a number of ..." also means nothing because that's the definition of growing up. I acquired number of practical and social skills too. And so did everyone else.)
As for the content itself, this person needs to learn a lot more than some esoteric economics theory books and some blog posts about startups, before criticizing how startups work. It's all based on shallow understanding of how things work.
I love comments like this because it saves from wasting time reading the article. it is the reason I check the comments before reading the article. That's valuable to me.
I normally do when I comment on HN. But honestly there's nothing to "counter" because like I said there's no substance to the article. I could criticize all the little details but that also doesn't feel right. It would be like a professor trying to grade a student's report and having no idea where to start because it's just a long rambling about nothing and has nothing to do with the suggested topic. In these cases they will just say "Rewrite".
It needs more than a rewrite. The author has misspelled Entrpreneurship (sic) in the title itself. I usually try to look past typos, but that one (and the others sprinkled throughout) make it difficult for me to take it seriously.
If the only valid way to reject an erroneous mathematical theorem was to offer a valid one to replace it, mathematics today probably would be stuck in an unnavigable quagmire of he-said she-said.
Fortunately, mathematicians managed to reject the rhetorical approach to truth-finding. Will the rest of us follow?
This is very poorly researched and written article.
We don't need "Zero point energy", we need a more efficient form of energy compared to Fossil Fuels which have been the driver of the economy. It's quite likely that leaps in Solar, Battery and Nuclear will allow us to "upgrade" civilization.
Energy is also only one part of the society/economy, the other part is cognitive/computation. The emergence of networked world along with AI and Sensing, will provide civilization with another leap in terms of efficiency.
The idea that "if there was something to be discovered (or businesses that would need to be started), it would have been already discovered" is completely wrong. Rather technological inventions allow us to build more efficient system that would not have been previously feasible.
This article reminds me of the socialists who despise Green Revolution, claiming it was a "Technological Solution" to problem of hunger (and inequality) in India, etc. and would rather have preferred mass revolutions and social change with "equitable" distribution. All the while enjoying privileges that come with living in a developed country.
The stupidest point of this article is the phrase "these businesses would have already been built". No, that's the point of the whole startup thing.
You can invest the same amount of money into 100 startups, or 10,000 mom&dad shops. Which choice is better depends, among other things, on big can such a startup get. And in todays connected world, it's possible to scale to levels unthinkable just a few decades prior — and bring more value to humanity as a whole while you're at it. 100 years ago, mom&dad option would've been the most beneficial to society and the most rational from economic perspective — now its the startup one.
I can answer that - initially I had a couple more sentences in my comment which in retrospect came across as condescending and gross. People stopped downvoting after I deleted them. (I had said something along the lines of "My guess is the article is connecting with people's emotions. Please upvote more thoughtfully.")
> poorly researched
> Energy determinism
> What was your major?
> Meta: How is such a low quality post getting so many upvotes?
I think a lot of people are missing the point of this post. Let me explain how I read it and why I've upvoted it.
I think the essence of the piece is this: So, what’s a smart person to do to avoid pauperism? Well that’s obvious, isn’t it? Create your own job! Start a new business in a day! Making… well… this is the part where it gets tricky. If it were apparent what businesses need started already, they’d be started already. The first “job” today’s kids have to answer is, what the hell am I going to do that anyone is willing to pay me for? And each kid, increasingly, is expected to answer this alone as an individual.
On the one hand, I think this is true, and well said. The economy is changing in such a way that we are being increasingly forced to find our own way, as she says, individually. Anyone who wants to be successful needs to identify and develop their own unique talent.
Where I disagree with her is whether this change is salutory in the long run. I believe that it will be: that it will unlock human potential in a way the world has never seen.
But I understand that this process is discouraging and scary for many, and that there will be losers as well as winners. I think it's good to be reminded of that, and I think this post expresses well what many people are probably feeling.