Solving All the Wrong Problems | Hacker News Reader

Solving All the Wrong Problems

nytimes.com

14 pointsjackgavigan5 comments

People solve all the problems that can be solved. The rest are blocked by too many barriers to entry or government regulations. If you want to see real innovation: the type they'd like to see - you need the government to make it legal. Currently, there's so many needless regulations on housing, trying to innovate in that area is a complete non-starter. There are many other areas that could be innovated in, with some (lots) loosening of regulations: transportation, health industry, education, etc. Until we get a better government and a smarter voting public, things will remain the same, and we'll continue to attempt innovation in the tiny subset of problems that we're allowed to solve.

In case you're wondering why this obviously interesting and relevant article gets no attention, I have no idea. This is the 8th submission in the past 10 days[0], and none of them have got significant votes or discussion.

It's a mystery.

[0] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Solving%20All%20the%20Wrong%20...

One of the first major US industries spawned by industrialization was candy manufacture. It's hard to reconcile candy's importance with the fact that it's -- you know -- candy. The personal computer has a similar trajectory. It seemed sort of frivolous, no strike that, it was frivolous and home computing was a hobby.

Internet video was a waste of precious bandwidth. Chat was lightweight socialization on AOL. A webpage was Geocities with frames, tables, a blinking text scroll, and an icon of a dude digging a ditch.

I found the article interesting and it seems relevant, but I'm not sure it is all that important idea and fear it might be flat out the wrong way to look at things. I upvoted it before, despite my intuition that the discussion will tend to look like the rest of internet.

Perhaps because this exact article gets rewritten and republished every 3 months or so. Sort of just out of things to say about it.

Also all these services that try to make your life convenient frees up more time so you can pursue things that matter more.. Things that can have a bigger positive impact.

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