Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy | Hacker News Reader

Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

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443 pointscraigcannon391 comments

Education should be on this list.

The root of all these problems stem from a lack of effective education.

1) The current methods are highly ineffective for teaching

By getting more effective at teaching children, and helping them to self educate, we get better informed citizens who can interpret news more accurately and effectively participate in democracy.

2) The current goals for education do not align with current & future needs

Our current system is designed to produce factory workers for the industrial economy, which was adapted to produce knowledge workers for the information economy. But we are moving towards full automation of most of those jobs.

We will need to prepare people to be adaptable in a fast changing automated world: more entrepreneurial type skills are needed.

There's been a YC RFS for Education for a long time; it's #7 on the list. YC has had some success in the space with companies like Clever, and for awhile had a sister-program dedicated solely to K-12 startups.

While nice, neither of these strikes me as truly disruptive. The downside is that to achieve the best educational environment, you'd have to open a school which doesn't scale nicely unless you plug into existing "world APIs".

I guess you could start by opening a co-working space with a supervising adult (not teacher, this adult will be there to ensure that the kids aren't killing each other).

There would be teachers accessible via video calls but most of the time would be spent reading or doing work, not passively listening/watching. If you pool these teachers together, you will be able to teach even the most obscure subjects.

In this system, everyone is literally going at their pace.

I think that fundamentally the main objection to this system is that some people learn better in a classroom setting, to which I reply: 21st century education needs to make a transition to turn graduates into self-learners. This can only be achieved with a system that fosters self-learning from very early on.

It's not like you can create self-learners by making students go through a process that's fundamentally as anti-self-learning as possible.

This will also make switching schools extremely painless. You will transition to a new desk. It's like a gym membership, you can totally have two if that's convenient for you for whatever reason.

I think you're exactly right in that the "world APIs" for education are the limiting factor. The major issue is that the assessment process is directly tied to the learning process within a single institution, leading to both being done incredibly inoptimally. It leads to the necessity of standardized tests and exams, and accredited institutions, which limits the potential learning opportunities available to the very few that are recognized on national or global scale.

If a "global assessment API" was decoupled from learning institutions it could capture educational experience as generated by any environment, from standard public schools to non-traditional schools, and we'd see a much more diverse set of educational experiences arise and be able to coexist fairly, meaning that individuals could better shape their individual academic paths without compromise and still be able to operate in the greater academic network.

A universal assessment system can exist in a very scalable way if its built upon social consensus. It would be absolutely impossible given our current models of assessment, especially the ones used on a national or international level. They are just simply far too expensive to begin to capture the breadth or depth of potential experience in academics in a meaningful way.

Today though we have the technology (i.e Ethereum and other decentralized technologies) to (relatively) easily design and deploy incentivized _secure_ systems for social consensus. It would enable systems like the one you're talking about to actually enable not just the teaching of the most obscure subject, but the _recognition_ of them too.

This is something I have been working on building for a while now. I truly believe its the answer to the flaws in our (global, not just American) education system and will be necessary for a truly effective, and universal, one.

> The major issue is that the assessment process is directly tied to the learning process within a single institution, leading to both being done incredibly inoptimally.

Very good point. There are no feedback looks between the two subsystems which makes them both suck.

One point I'd like to raise though is that I'm not sure if it's really optimal have 'assessments'. I have some fundamental issues with assigning numerical values to things that are sometimes hard to judge numerically.

I think that a much better system would be that each student's work is stored in the cloud where it's accessible and everyone can judge for himself.

And I think that we should move away from test to projects that are largely designed by the student under the guidance of teachers.

I don't think assessments are fundamentally numerical. Assessing is at its core simply about recognizing experience and I think systemized ways to do so would be incredibly valuable, as opposed to an ad-hoc system where everyone builds their own judgements. While that is more flexible its also far far less efficient. Companies hiring, other educational institutions, all need a way to efficiently parse experience without having do it themselves, and so a systemized assessment network I think will be necessary.

Experience could even just be a boolean value, has or doesn't have, instead of anything numerical. Or there could emerge separate numerical systems for each area of knowledge. The important part is that the system is based on social consensus of people who actually possess the experience, so that its the most relevant and applicable system possible.

"A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer", perhaps?

For those that have not read the book - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age

It seems like that reference always pops up in discussions about education. Is anyone aware of any attempts at tackling the idea in reality?

I don't know whether either of these set out with the idea of creating the Primer, but they seem similar.

Osmo - https://www.playosmo.com/en/ - seems pretty cool. Uses the iPad camera and packets of materials for interactive learning experiences. It could evolve into something like the Primer.

"One Laptop per Child" has/had similar goals while not being nearly as advanced/cohesive as the Primer.

For sure, but the point is that YC is welcoming to educational disruption even if the submissions so far haven't been very impactful.

I grew up in a very traditional system that would remind most Americans of the 1950s, and it hasn't impacted my self-learning ability at all. I'm fortunate in that my parents liked books and I was able to read by age 3 and as long as I can remember I had firm opinions about what I wanted to read. I'm not altogether convinced by your vision of students as intellectual tabulae rasa that can be variously configured as drones, autodidacts, or innovators.

A student's home and socioeconomic life can have as much or more impact on their intellectual development as the kind of school they attend, and the idea that perfecting education will automatically nullify other factors is a rock on which many would-be reformers have come to grief.

Poor people's children self-teach. They definitely learn. They don't necessarily learn the culture and values that would allow them to function gracefully in the modern economy.

People's subculture/tribe and actual community are a tremendous part of who people are and how well they can access resources and knowledge in the world. Religious and various civic organizations understand this. Often governments only understand this as a source of strength for their "opposition." Opposition movements and rebellions understand this.

Most significantly, school reform programs like Harlem Children's Zone understand this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem_Children's_Zone To fight poverty, you have to involve the whole community on your side. If your initiative is fighting the community, it cannot fight poverty.

Good point.

But I think its worth bringing up again as it is seemingly at the root of all the issues surfaced by the Trump presidency, which is the main driver of this new RFS

I agree 100%. Let's talk about how to get there.

Yeah education is the root of our future. It's importance is often undervalued.

Agreed - we're in the middle of an education bubble, as the growth in student loan debt has fast outstripped the growth in income for graduates.

As technological automation continues, there is demand for a system that is capable of retraining displaced workers, and doesn't create modern indentured servants in the process.

As others said, education was already on an earlier RFS. But it's still important, maybe more than ever.

As you stated, I also believe that education it's the root of most problems. Today, almost everyone learns the same way as they did 100 years ago: A teacher going through a non-customized textbook that was written by a small number people. It's a linear learning path and highly ineffective. It's also inefficient, as teacher to student ratios are mostly around 1-to-20 (I am talking about K-12, not college or MOOCs).

I believe that we can overcome a lot of problems of education by applying technology. More concretely, we should be able to provide more customized, higher quality content for people at young and old age. This, while creating more genuine excitement for science and scientific thinking. This means, we have to rethink the current teacher/student paradigm. And I don't mean by merely providing tools to teachers or copy/pasting textbooks to online videos.

I mean by curating content that excites, using some ML to create an optimal and dynamic learning path per student and making it fit to the busy daily lives of people who don't have time to watch 1 hour lectures every week when they get home from work. This might seem like advertising, by I am working on exactly such a project and thought it would be ok to mention it here, because it is relevant for the discussion and other startups were mentioned in the comments, too. It's called Humbot (humbot.io) and I am happy to hear your comments and start a discussion on what the radical improvements in education must be over the next decade.

Education and News are two sides of the same coin. At some point the majority of the adult population makes the decision to learn about the world from entertainment companies. We should reanalyze what news and continuing education mean, relative to each other.

https://theconversation.com/ and http://www.worldcrunch.com/ make good starts, as do aggregators like http://www.aldaily.com/ and https://redef.com/

As far as pure education companies, we need more software platforms for building curriculums collaboratively, some combination of wikia, github, wirecutter, and khanacademy.org. You may be thrown by my inclusion of wirecutter, but concensus based consumer reports type information, leading to populations making better decisions, helps cut through the paradox of choice. It also teaches people HOW to make decisions, and how to evaluate choices. It should be easy for anyone to fork, remix, contribute, or request corrections. Even collaborative documentary editing software, or the ability to sift through ALL the worlds lectures on a topic, and assessable the best bits. As long as teams of strangers can collaborate and fork, the world will have more shoulder standing giants, and less reinventing of the wheel.

As a teacher, I would kill for a collaborative curriculum and assessment tool. A "backend" service for creating, managing, and personalizing curriculum materials would go a long way to mitigate the absolutely astounding amount of redundant labor that goes on in schools (you're really creating a comprehension quiz for To Kill a Mockingbird from scratch?).

Contrary to popular belief - even here on HN - teachers are chronically making known sub-optimal instructional tradeoffs because they lack the time to complete tasks as they should ideally be completed. Very little seems to be done to create tools to improve the instructional process (that doesn't involve removing the teacher from that very process - e.g. MOOCs, Khan Academy, Knewton, etc.). Those digital alternative absolutely have a place, but there's a lot of opportunity to fundamentally improve the instructional work being done by teachers in classrooms every day.

Your suggestions are a great place to start:

- network instructional materials and lessons so they can be accessed in their entirety by other teachers

- network assessment materials that are tied (on the question/answer level) to standards and common goals (e.g. comprehension quip above).

Email is in profile if anyone would like to continue this discussion in a more detailed manner outside the thread.

dont you think at some point the optimul remix of Roman History 101 University lecture clips, might exist, and then it becomes a process improvement task to make it a little better all the time, rather than constanly recreating a nearly similar lecture for each school.

I really believe forking is important. People might disagree with concensus and have a better way to do things that is looked down upon by the mass. One curriculum for all sounds like every egg in one basket.

(i decided i like optimul better than optimal)

I think there's massive scope for improving the delivery of educational material, but most of my ideas have been related to later secondary education and university and to what I as a learner have wanted, not what the teacher/educator has wanted.

It's been an open question for me how to improve education in earlier years where there's probably less scope for self-learning, and more focus should be on how to improve the teachers' efficiency and effectiveness. Since my own kids are starting school now, these earlier years have taken on new significance, but since I don't have a background in education, I haven't known where to start. I'm more at the point of "How can I help?!", since I have very little visibility into the frustrations that teachers experience on a day-to-day basis, but I can build software, if software can be part of the solution.

Sent you an email, but I'm sure there are others who would love to be involved in the discussion...

Thanks for the comment. I'll get back to you this evening.

Hey check out Common Curriculum [1] they are part of the way there.

[1] http://www.commoncurriculum.com/

how do teachers who have never met each other find each others work and collaborate?

this product looks like only people within the same team can work together. that means thousands of teachers all repeating the same steps.

I have a very specific vision for how to reform education. Would be happy to partner up with people who feel similarly:

http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158

I have a platform that can be used to build it all but could use a good business partner and extra JS/Mobile developers can't hurt.

The business partner would help make pilots in schools and colleges. Just maybe a class here or there at first, then prove it out.

Please see http://qbix.com/blog for how we could partner together. If you are interested to talk, see my HN profile.

I agree with Bernie that college should be free but disagree that it should be free in its current state. It can b made much cheaper if you flip the classroom in the way I indicated above. That is what should be made free (ie paid for by the government).

In Primary School (everything up to High School) we need to reform the terrible top-down dynamics. I know about them secondhand because my mom is a teacher. School is a daycare center for parents who work. Kids are overdiagnosed with ADHD. Paul Graham wrote about school being a veritable prison back in 2003 (http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html) Things only got worse in the last 20 years.

We can start moving toward an education system that works once we agree on some core values.

Someone else said that the goal of education is to produce factory workers. I disagree. I think the goal of education is to allow one teacher to effectively babysit up to 30 children at once. With both parents working, it simply isn't possible for them to give kids the attention they need to keep them healty and sane, let alone educate them on how to be part of society. Schools are supposed to do this instead, but the primary goal is training the children to be manageable at a ratio of 30 to 1.

Before we can do anything else, we have to acknowledge that the first goal is getting the kids out of their parents hair. This is the fundamental truth that everyone knows but refuses to acknowledge when they're debating policy. After that, we can make other decisions that make more sense. The lecture-hall format really only makes sense when the number of students is unmanageable for a single adult. If was only 10 kids per teacher, they would actually have time for more useful activities, applying knowledge, giving guidance to students who are ready to strike out on their own.

Tripling the number of teachers is going to cost some money, and application-type lessons costs more than lecture-type lessons. Some ways to deal with this - as a society, acknowledge that creating educated, well informed citizens is not a fuzzy, feel-good liberal goal, but a necessary factor for everyone's safety, including the permanently child-free. I think most people agree with that already, but since many people voting are full grown adults who still aren't properly educated, not everyone will come to the same conclusion, and therefore a massive infusion of public money for this idea isn't likely to happen. So I think a successful, disruptive idea will be one that gets around the cost problem of a much lower student-to-teacher ratio. I don't think remote teaching is going to be the answer here.

I've rewritten my comment three times so far ...

My wife and I are fortunate enough that she can be a stay at home mom. I grew up the same way. Were middle class, though increasingly probably slightly mid to upper these days. We don't need the babysitter, and want our kids to be educated, so that is the focus. We help them with homework, etc. We're lucky.

So from my perspective, having both parents working is the root issue. It's an economic necessity for probably 80+% of the country, which I suppose is really the root issue.

Ultimately it all boils down to resources, time and money, and there is never enough to go around. I don't have an answer for that :(

I agree. And some men want to be stay at home dads, and sometimes both parents want to work, and sometimes there's a single parent who's falling apart trying to do everything. I wish we could agree that all those choices are valid, and allow some social safety nets that make it possible.

> I agree. And some men want to be stay at home dads, and sometimes both parents want to work, and sometimes there's a single parent who's falling apart trying to do everything. I wish we could agree that all those choices are valid, and allow some social safety nets that make it possible.

I think it goes back to what you said first. We need to agree on some core values.

I don't want any more of my money going to people who mocked the MSNBC host[0] when she said "children belong to the collective". It seems pretty obvious to me. If we are all paying for your children, I better have a say in how we raise OUR children.

Clearly, a lot of people do not see it that way. Why should we have tax deductions for people to have children? Why should we have tax breaks for people to put money away for their children to go to college? I for one support an end to these tax breaks. Lets send a clear message: If your children are your own and do not belong to the society, then you can raise them by yourself. If you can't afford to do so, we'll simply put you in a debtor's prison.

[0] https://youtu.be/sjczwQOnMqg

>"children belong to the collective"

I grew up in post-communist Europe. In the past, we had state propaganda that told children to turn in their parents[1], among other wonderful products of that line of thinking. So I'd be very careful with ideas like this one. (I still support mandatory vaccinations and/or sane defaults.)

>Lets send a clear message: If your children are your own and do not belong to the society, then you can raise them by yourself. If you can't afford to do so, we'll simply put you in a debtor's prison.

This would undo a lot of progress that has been made on the human rights front in the past century.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlik_Morozov

It's fine, let's send these people off to Venezuela to live happily ever after.

I think the sentiment is better expressed by the greeks: "It takes a village to raise a child".

One possible model may be to enlarge the "nuclear family" to groups of friends. Get five couples who enjoy each other's company together, and everyone can work 80% (4 days) while two people are home each weekday for childcare/housework etc.

Many other models are possible and it would be best to make it as easy as possible to experiment. Relevant factors may be:

- a universal right to flexible work schedules, at least for larger companies (10+) where changes balance out

- Mixed-zoning housing allowing the creative use of space. Which also helps with:

- Neighbourhoods designed for street life, where you can actually meet neighbours and build these (real) social networks, and where children can explore. When I was 6 or so, I became friends with two families in my neighbourhood. One owned a bookshop which became my personal library. The other was a graphics designer and a racing car driver where I learnt computers and mechanics (and got to drive in a Formula 1 car). I was often invited for dinner at these families, or just hung out when they had guests, and I learned more from listening to adults debating the topics of the day than anywhere else.

Babysitting a single child is economically very inefficient. Its something teenage girls can do while they watch tv. A full grown adult with skills is worth considerably more to society working than babysitting.

Its not an economic necessity that both parents work, the incentive to do it is extremely large and probably pure conservatism had been keeping it at bay, if at all.

This perspective ignores the drastic difference in the quality between one caretaker and another. Among middle-class parents, the cost of an engaged preschool provider or nanny with a good teacher:child ratio that can match the quality of care of an invested parent meets or exceeds the median salary.

Especially for parents with multiple children, it is economically rational to have a parent at home to provide that customized 1-on-1 care with the child. The benefit is improved learning and opportunity for experiences (daily trips to museums, sports activities, classes) at the expense of less structured socialization with a peer group and a loss in net household profit.

Though the tax break afforded for day care should not be disregarded, there are plenty of situations where it makes sense to have a parent stay at home with children.

Most parents choose to have children so they can spend time with them. Maximizing this at the expense of some net household profit can be rational, given certain living situations. One could argue it is a luxury, and they would likely be right. Having children at all in advanced industrial societies is, in the individual case, usually a luxury.

Society underestimates the long-term economic value of a child raised by a full-time, invested parent. Parenting and babysitting are apples and oranges.

No it doesn't. Otherwise, every single teacher, caretaker, would quit their jobs as soon as they had a child and would get the same economical benefit.

If it were a productive investment it would be common because those that do it would easily outclass the rest.

They don't do that because they can't afford to do that. That's sad and unfortunate.

Or because its simply inefficient, and you must bear the price of doing it if you want it.

Not everything that matters in life is captured by our economic system. If you have kids I can only hope this will become clear to you.

It's not inefficient. It's not efficient. It's got nothing to do with efficiency.

? Of course it is. If every man and woman spent 18 years without producing anything at all to take care of their children, we would probably go extinct. Having 1 person take care of 10 at a time increases productivity by 19 people!

Of craouse we would all like to have the option to take as much time as we want to take care of our own, its akin to wanting to amass enough wealth to never have to work again.

Being a parent is not babysitting.

Its mostly babysitting. You can divide the effort to raise a child as nursing, teaching and babysitting. The parent is most invested into doing it, but he cannot get very good as a nurse or a teacher (if its not his profession) and babysitting is very low value. You definitely cannot spend 8 hours a day teaching a baby things, and most of the things you teach are quite low skilled (exercise, playing, reading, etc).

If the parent can earn a lot more income by delegating responsibilities he will do it, or rather, most will do it.

The nuclear family is not always going to be viable in every scenario though and we really can't control all of the economic factors that go into that effectively. But we can effectively control a lot of what happens in schools. Things like curriculum, money spent, facilities used, after school offerings, etc. Even if the incentive existed to be a stay-at-home parent, there will always be parents who would rather have dual incomes for a variety of reasons.

> having both parents working is the root issue... resources, time and money, and there is never enough to go around.

> a massive shift toward automation... in the next five years, 5 million jobs in 15 economies will be lost. (from YC post)

We don't have enough workers. We have too many workers. When will we realize that our current economic system is doing a lousy job of allocating human resources?

We can't get enough teachers, but we have tens of millions of people and hundreds of billions of dollars allocated toward things that add, to be generous, questionable value to the world.

If you account for all the money that's gone into Products that have no real human value, and add on top the fact that the companies making them avoid taxes like the devil, we begin to see the scale of the tragedy.

Yeah, that whole "5 million jobs in 15 economies will be lost"... it's such a weird thing to say, that a job will be lost. Some kinds of jobs have to continue forever. Other types of jobs are tasks that will eventually be complete and the workers will have to move on to the next thing.

There is TONS of work that needs to be done though. Teachers like you said, health care workers, psychologists to help us deal with the inevitable mental problems, mountain bike trail maintainers, pickers of plastic trash out of the ocean, people to design apis for distributing government transparency data, designers of infographics to help the rest of us make sense of that data, and on and on and on. There's so much to do, when you stop thinking of a "job" as something provided for you by the government or a company, and rather as value that you can contribute to the world. Another disruptive business is going to figure out how to make it possible to pay people for contributing that kind of value.

It's not just about money. Even if parents can afford to have one of them be stay at home, neither parent might want to be the one staying at home.

Being a stay at higher parent is an incredibly difficult, stressful and under appreciated job so to many well educated couples, it's not appealing at all.

True that - not to mention tedious, mentally understimulating, and comes with a perceived lack of social status. Even for people who love it and can afford it, there are many downsides.

How about having one of the parents work part-time?

True, not all jobs can be offered as part-time, and working part-time limits your career growth if you work for a big corporation, but still, it is a viable option.

I don't think the 30-to-1 ratio is the problem. From my own experience the main problem is grouping by age. Children should be grouped by skill instead. [1] I was always top of the class in math and held back by the slow pace dictated by the national education plan for my age. At the same time there were other topics like Russian language where I didn't learn as fast as was expected of my age. This meant that as the years went by I understood less and less of the new material that was being taught because my Russian fundamentals were weak. I imagine other children experienced something similar in math. I think we could do much better if children advance in classes based on how much they've learned, not based on when they were born. Also advancement in different topics need to be decoupled from eachother as much as possible [2], because I think it's completely expected that everyone will have their own personal strong topics and weak topics.

[1] I think schools teach much more than just what's on the national education plan. Making friends, making enemies, dealing with puberty etc are all valuable lessons that have less friction when the group of people you're around have similar amount of experience with those things. Thus being grouped with people with wildly different experience levels in these areas can be detrimental. While the primary grouping factor should be skill, there's probably a good case for secondary range limits by age, which is a decent estimative measurement of children's experience in these social areas.

[2] I understand that full isolation isn't possible, because physics requires math knowledge, which in turn requires writing & reading skills. Still, even with these dependencies we could do a lot more decoupling than what is being currently done.

This is a fallacy inherent to the modern mentality of obsessing over your child's safety that is likely counterproductive on average.

Children of school age DO NOT need babysitting. When I was a kid, everyone's mom worked and we kids just stayed at home or played together and were perfectly fine. There were zero kids who had a babysitter when they were 7 years old. Zero. Never heard of it. This was the late 80s / early 90s during the breakup of socialism. There was even a war going on for a few of those years.

I can't even imagine the level of ridicule a child would have endured if their friends had found out they had a babysitter.

Children don't just randomly burst into flames if they're left alone.

And I seriously doubt 30:1 is a significant part of the problem. Look at countries with successful school systems. Ours also used to be, but slowly got worse with time as we adopted western attitudes towards children and parenting. The schools themselves didn't change significantly, yet the outcomes became worse.

True, but you were still in school for most of the day, right? You were probably alone for a couple hours in the evening and busy doing stuff with friends on the weekends, but don't you think it would have gone all Lord of the Flies if you were alone all the time? I remember staying home alone from age 10 or so and I was fine, but I also remember that bullying seemed to be a much more serious problem then than it is now.

Parents would be away for 4-5 hours at most while I was at home I guess, but we'd be without parents for more than that because we'd go out and do stuff with friends even when parents were home. Parents were kind of there to fulfill your basic needs, not your social needs. I think my parents would have probably loved to spend more time with me but kids prefer to be with other kids.

To be fair, it did go a bit lord of the flies on occasion, in the sense that we engaged in "wars" with kids from different streets and so on, sometimes someone would get a thrown rock to their head or get a beating, but nothing too serious. Also we were constantly getting injured while playing from falling, stepping on sharp shit, etc but kids are incredibly resilient, they recover from anything and quickly. The important thing is to teach the kid not to fuck around in traffic, that's where the real danger is. And if there is a war not to pick shit up that might be explosive.

For sure, but it's not like all other projects are being auto-rejected, I think YC will always be interested in forward-looking educational proposals. One other thing to bear in mind that educational is a multi-generational undertaking; every little helps, but short-term thinking brings you cheap PCs in schools one year and iPads the next. Long-term thinking requires a vision going out 25 years into the future and a plan to respond to and either incorporate or resist outside criticism, depending on how well founded it is.

Education is a great long-term solution, but we need a PSA/Marketing solution for rational thought today. Similar to the TRUTH anti-tobacco campaign. Make it 'cool' to use logic and base your decisions on rational thought. I'm not advocating any particular policy issues, but a lot of problems can arise if people can't tell the difference between real and fake news, and don't bother to. They don't bother because thinking rationally is not something we encourage.

TRUTH make me, quit for 10 years now, want to light up. That kind of half-truth fearmongering to kids is the posterchild of ineffectiveness. Moreover is sows distrust of the very channels to use to provide valuable public info. Calling it 'truth' was just the hypocritical icing on the cake.

Using public education for any form of job training is one of the gravest mistakes that has put us in the current position.

The reason for public education is to have an informed citizenry able to participate fully in society. Using it as job training is just corporate welfare, that is using tax money to pay for something businesses should do themselves.

There is often overlap in the skills needed in an informed citizenry and employees (e.g. reading, computer skills, etc.), but not always.

Trying to chase what business or the marketplace wants is a fools journey that create citizens poorly prepared to be fully empowered citizens with a solid understanding of the world.

I suspect entrepreneurial skills would be well covered by this approach as it should emphasis skills of leadership, self-reliance, consensus, and creative thinking.

Thanks for saying that; it's essential to reframe the discussion. A few thoughts:

1) The Obama administration's college rankings (I don't know if they are still around) at one point were using the earnings of graduates as a basis.

2) Often you hear people evaluating college based on their first job. Not only are employment skills not the goal, as you point out, but consider the absurdity of valuing education based on what is probably the least important, worst paying job you'll ever get, with a payoff of probably 1-2 years.

3) Looking at the shocking political and environmental problems in 'advanced' countries right now, perhaps more education in the non-vocational fields of liberal arts, including history, political science, and literary criticism, and in the sciences, providing an understanding of nature and scientific method, is more important than ever.

4) A useful way of looking at it: [0]

"The Yale Report of 1828" -- an influential document written by Jeremiah Day (who was at the time president of Yale), one of his trustees, and a committee of faculty -- distinguished between "the discipline" and "the furniture" of the mind. Mastering a specific body of knowledge -- acquiring "the furniture" -- is of little permanent value in a rapidly changing world. Students who aspire to be leaders in business. medicine, law, government, or academia need "the discipline" of mind -- the ability to adapt to constantly changing circumstances, confront new facts, and find creative ways to solve problems.

I'd add that it's not just leaders, but everyone who needs these skills.

----

[0] Richard C. Levin, President of Yale, in "Top of the Class: The Rise of Asia's Universities"

https://www.foreignaffairs.org/articles/china/2010-05-01/top...

At one point, we had more trade schools. Somehow they fell out of fashion as the 70s became the 90s. Perhaps we should bring back publicly funded trade schools (including IT!), and allow universities to morph back into pure education.

I have found the current education methods to amazingly effective. I can literally sit down and choose any subject of interest and become well versed in it with not much more than a time commitment. And since you can get up to speed on a whim, you can stay as current for job market purposes as necessary. In fact, my current educational interest of the past several months, which wasn't even career motivated, has already generated one completely unsolicited job offer.

I'm a bit jealous of the younger generations, as these methods were primitive/not available when I was younger. I could have learned so much when I had more time to learn it. The old school system I grew up with was quite ineffective, but thankfully we've improved the options well beyond those days.

Not everyone is proactive as you are, and having skilled professional teachers who can engage students to motivate them to learn something they may not on their own, is a collective good.

Uneducated people (and I am distinguishing education from intelligence; uneducated most emphatically does not mean unintelligent) are bad for society. Witness climate change denial, Trump and his ilk, etc.

I'm not sure it needs to be mutually exclusive. While it is true that teachers are not strictly necessary to utilize our modern educational methods, there is no reason a professional cannot motivate a needing student in using the same tools to the same end.

Access to knowledge is not at all the problem.

Lack of "soft skills" is the problem. We are taught or force fed knowledge, but not taught how to be well adjusted people.

You were lucky, for some reason you came to understand the value of personal development and self education. This is something that needs to be taught to everyone. In the world.

Education which help creating people ready for the future is not education but to educate yourself dare I say in almost anything as long as you become really good at it.

The last thing we need is a bunch of people who have learned the same things, references the same books and inspirations. (yes there are obvious exceptions but even within those the landscape is normally so vast.

The first thing we need is people to start taking education on by themselves in todays world there is no excuse.

As long as education is controlled by government, directional decisions will be made politically. Try bringing up the idea of shrinking class sizes by eliminating the football program at your next town-hall and see what happens.

The only lasting solution will be to allow true market competition for education to replace the centralized top-down system we have. Yes, it's a libertarian pipe dream. No, I don't want to hear about how "poor people will not be educated" by such a system. You cannot know what a free market in education would look like, because we've never tried.

We've never tried what? Private schools? I don't see how this would work since schools are always expensive to run by nature and the working class is getting poorer (for those still having a revenue), I don't see this working very well.

Private schools are required to compete with "free" public schools.

> I don't see how this would work since schools are always expensive to run by nature and the working class is getting poorer (for those still having a revenue), I don't see this working very well.

That's why in my comment I said I don't want to hear this comeback. It's as predictable as sunset that every time someone mentions a free market in education, someone else can't imagine it working for educating the poor.

How well does the current system educate the poor?

So you don't want to hear about this argument but you have nothing else against it than "we never tried it"? It's does not seem to be very convincing.

It's already difficult for the working class with a free school so I can't imagine it would be better with a non-free one, the alternative to no public schools is simply no schooling at all for some people

> How well does the current system educate the poor?

You need to ask the US government for that, most public school systems are working well in western Europe so the US must be doing something wrong somewhere.

I love the idea of a "free market in education" in theory but I do think that we have enough data to know that '"poor people will not be educated" by such a system.'

Every implementation of a freer market for education that I've read about has had a significant amount of scamming and kids left behind.

We have a free market for food, we subsidize food for poor people, and the market for food is much 'thicker' and 'fluid' than the market for education -- but we still have food deserts. If the free market + subsidies can't make healthy food available to everyone, what chance do we have with education.

We also prop up US agriculture against foreign competition, so prices are not set on a free market.

Also, many of the poor don't get a good education with the current system.

Imagine if the current school system was completely free-market, and we were seeing the same performance as the public schools. There would be complete outrage and calls for nationalization. But somehow government gets the benefit of the doubt, and the only comeback is "but, but the poor."

Government schools do not respond to consumers, since the process is political. Thus, we have our current mess. There must be a better way. We've given the government over 100 years to get things right. Why don't we try something different?

> Yes, it's a libertarian pipe dream.

Yes, yes it is.

> No, I don't want to hear about how "poor people will not be educated" by such a system.

Libertarianism summarized: have you ever tried hating poor people... on weeeeeed?

>You cannot know what a free market in education would look like, because we've never tried.

Why doesn't the time before public schools existed constitute a try? Seems to me humanity had centuries to millenia of a free market in education: anyone was free to offer or purchase as much education as they could afford.

It wasn't very nice.

To fix education, our first priority should be to empower teachers. They're the ones who care the most about kids' learning and know the best how to make it happen. Teaching shouldn't be a low-paying, low-status profession. I'm not sure how you could change that with a YC startup.

Why not empower the people who pay for the product? The consumer? (students / parents)

> They're the ones who care the most about kids' learning

Sad that some parents care less than their teachers, but that's probably the root of 75% of education problems.

For the same reason patients aren't empowered to make their own medical diagnoses. Trained teachers can be much more effective than untrained parents.

See, I hear techies grumble about education constantly. Our education system is teaching the wrong skills or not challenging students or just an elaborate babysitting racket.

I hear teachers, on the other hand, complain that after decades of trying everything they can, they've realized that they cannot help students unless those students have safe, stable, supportive home lives.

It's easy to say we should introduce children to programming early, even easy to do. It is easy to complain about critical thinking skills and kids these days. It is easy to see that overtesting schools and overreacting to those test scores wastes resources and the time of children and teachers.

It's hard to find a way to ensure one in six children in the US subject to food insecurity always get three good meals a day. It is hard to figure out how to provide stability in a single family, let alone all families. It is hard to say a child shouldn't drop out of school and work whatever job they can when their parents have been unable or unwilling to provide for them.

We have been talking about and trying to fix "education" my entire life; maybe we should try fixing some of the underlying problems first, even if they are hard.

You can aim at other models that aren't trying to improve the 18-year batch model. The great stratification that happens at the end of that, where you're either raised to the great meritocracy in the sky or cast into the abyss, would probably still be unconscionable if it were done fairly, and it's not.

So focus on the parts that happen once you're an adult. MOOCs aren't a panacea but you don't have to miss a class because your shift moved. If the objection is they aren't taken seriously by employers, my objection is that's still playing the old prestige and rank game, and there is always going to be someone at the bottom of that anyway. So make them useful to themselves if employers don't want them.

(I believe fixing childhood poverty involves the US Government doing things it's not going to do soon, and that private business isn't going to do it. We must cultivate our garden.)

> they cannot help students unless those students have safe, stable, supportive home lives

As someone from a teaching family, this is absolutely true.

That said, the underlying problems can only be fixed by a combination of economic improvement and education. Education empowers in the future, but economic status empowers educational opportunities in the present.

And when it comes down to it, the government can't afford to replace the future wealth created by an educated citizenry.

Yes this is a problem that certainly deserves attention.

But the education issues also apply to the other five in six children who do have food security. The education problem is one that affects anyone who does not have access to the best private schools.

When I say fix education, I don't mean teach people programming or whatever skills or knowledge that might give them a marginal leg up. Those things are becoming increasingly less valuable.

I mean teach people how to be well adjusted people, teach them soft skills of empathy and understanding others, teach them why and how to continuously improve themselves, teach them how to identify areas where they can contribute to society without waiting for a teacher or boss to tell them exactly what to do.

Without these abilities, more and more will fall into the poverty trap as the need for worker bees diminishes.

None of those are particular hard. Start by ending snap and using the money to increase the number of meals in schools to three a day. Second those meals must be some protein, some veggies and potatoes, pizza, etc are not food.

One of the difficulties in guaranteeing adequate childhood nutrition is that children are only in schools for about 180 days a year, in the US, but need to eat approximately 365 days each year.

Agreed, education is probably the most high leverage investment out there for society. That being said, I'm highly skeptical that it will be fixed by a profit-driven, venture-backed business.

Much like healthcare, education's goals dont fit capitalisms mold.

I believe the curriculum has always been based on the ideal of the "well-rounded citizen" aka a liberal arts education. That includes the sciences, math, philosophy, government, history, languages, art, and sports.

None of those subjects are particularly relevant for factory work. Even at the height of manufacturing, high schools were geared towards universities – because 10 is not the age where you want to make the decision that someone has or doesn't have the potential to be a judge/chemist/artist.

Calls to more closely align education with the perceived needs of the future economy seems misguided:

- You don't actually know what will be needed 15 to 20 years in advance (including the time it takes to develop a curriculum and teach teachers)

- It reduces citizens to their role in the economy

- It doesn't work. History is at least somewhat exciting. Teaching the filing of tax returns (a staple of such discussions) is completely removed from a 16-years reality. When it becomes relevant after college, it will be completely forgotten and possibly obsolete.

The current system is very much geared towards teaching modes of thinking, learning and similar meta-skills. History and philosophy, for example, are possibly the most important to understand current affair (but have often been decimated by a drive towards the sciences). Throw in a bit of statistics and you'll also have a good foundation for entrepreneurs.

No! education should definitely not be on this list.

Education is a red herring, and the first thing people reach for.

But education is always misunderstood, and all research shows that there is vast amount of variability in things ranging from understanding to retention.

For example

1) Level of nutrition impacts grade outcomes

2) Level of food consumed on that particular day impacts retention/learning

3) Level of reading of parents impacts student scores

4) Level of grand parent nutrition impacts student health and nutrtion

5) Race and discrimination impacts educational outcomes

Leave aside things like bullying, student interest, intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation, learning style and so on.

And this may or MAY not impact job and future outcomes either.

Education is NOT an easy fix, and a tool which magically does fix this is a tool too powerful to create because if it were misused it would be an indoctrination tool beyond any other ever developed.

Education must be solved with other efforts

> The root of all these problems stem from a lack of effective education.

Does it? Many people with a college degree hold political beliefs one would consider unwieldy; Bannon went to Harvard.

It seems startups themselves are part of the problem, so one can doubt they will bring the solution. "Disruption" is another word for tearing society apart, ignoring legal norms designed to protect citizens from corporations.

The shift to online shopping -- actually, to online everything -- let people do most things from the comfort of their homes without ever meeting anyone.

"Fake news" were never a problem before Facebook and the bubble economy, where money is made by keeping people in a safe environment.

A better request would be: how to make people quit Facebook and stop using smartphones.

I wouldn't consider college to be effective education. It's a credential factory, and the bar is low.

Bannon is the leader, not the follower. He takes advantage of those who are less informed and less likely to accurately judge fact from fiction.

If they were effectively educated, they would 1) be less susceptible to propaganda, 2) have better economic prospects and not be so pissed off.

When I gave my first college lecture, I actually started wandering off half way through in my head wondering how this model of me talking, them listening ever worked or even lasted. By the end of the semester, I was "flipping"lectures and trying to engage my students more instead of just me talking.

The current model doesn't need to be destroyed and rebuilt, just remodeled as you said for a different future

I am a little ambivalent about this. On the one hand the intent is probably good but on the other hand companies like YC and Silicon Valley are drivers of a lot of developments that led to the current situation.

- Silicon Valley is a great example of growing inequality. Most of the rewards go disproportionally to a select few at the top

- A lot of VC companies are killing a lot of previously relatively stable jobs. Uber is giving its drivers a job for a while but it's pretty clear this will not be sustainable and they will soon be out of a job again

- The biggest companies like Facebook and Google are pretty much aiding "fake news" because in the end the only thing they care about is impressions and fake news sells better

Don't want to be too negative but technology is not only a force for good but also causes problems for a lot of people. Maybe these people are looking at the wrong guy for solutions but their concerns are valid.

I don't think we can halt progress just because it negatively impacts some people. At the same time you are right that it is "not only a force for good" and there are things that can be done to mitigate that negativity. I think this is an appeal to entrepreneurs do to just that

When "progress" continually lowers wages of the lower class and concentrates power to fewer and fewer people, I think the way of doing things needs to be reevaluated.

Technology provides massive amounts of consumer surplus and deflation.

What if we need less money and lower wages are actually fine?

Edit: Do the people down-voting this actually think technology doesn't provide consumer surplus and deflation? Or do you have a problem with my question?

That's easy to say for someone with a good income. For a lot of people wages go down while cost of living goes up.

That's not what I'm getting at. I'm referring to technology specifically. Cost of living is dictated predominantly by the cost of housing, healthcare, education, and food. Food cost as a % of income has decreased significantly since 1960 according to the USDA [1].

Technology and globalization have impacted food a lot. Education, and housing? Not nearly as much. Healthcare is more complicated, and I'm not an expert, so I'll refrain from speculating there.

One might argue globalization has hurt people, but so far, technology seems to be making just about everything it touches cheaper for everyone.

[1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery...

The problem is that the benefits of globalization are offset by the centralization of the remaining jobs, and is adding to the inequality seen in America. There are some parts of the country doing fantastic, but a lot of the Midwest is seeing lower wages, fewer jobs, and a lower quality of life.

That's largely a false narrative.

What do you mean by this? What did I say that was false?

You're right that certain parts of the country have been hit hard by automation and globalization but the idea that the hard hit people are the Trump voters is not particularly true.

From what I've read, you are wrong. Of course there are a lot of factors that go into an election, but here's the site that tells me it's definitely a factor: https://econsnapshot.com/2016/11/14/how-trump-won/amp/

In the future, if you could provide a source for your argument, it could give more substantive discussion.

Yes, but why is it making things cheaper where it touches? Usually it's because it allows production with fewer people or by people with lower wages than before. Thus things get cheaper because some subset of people lose jobs or wages. That's fine as long as those people are able to find new jobs or supplemental income sources (many do), but I think the point here is that it's not a universal benefit. I have to agree with the parent post here - for some portion of people, technology has led to lower wages while cost of living decreases (food, products, etc.) are offset by increases in things you need to lift yourself up (healthcare, education, housing).

> Cost of living is dictated predominantly by the cost of housing, healthcare, education, and food.

> so far, technology seems to be making just about everything it touches cheaper for everyone.

You say this, but only provide a source for 1 out of 4 key indicators of cost of living. Can you provide the same evidence towards housing, healthcare and education becoming significantly cheaper as a % of a budget of an average household?

Otherwise that statement is just incorrect.

I fully agree that there are multiple forces at work here and globalization and technology are not a universal benefit to the western poor and middle-income.

I just wanted to expose something commonly left out of these discussions, which is that technology is generally deflationary. More technology in the areas of healthcare, education, and housing might be the solution, not the problem.

@antisthenes: I did not say technology has made housing, education, or healthcare cheaper. Please read what I said again.

> That's easy to say for someone with a good income. For a lot of people wages go down while cost of living goes up.

Bullshit. Technology brings down the cost of living by making the supply side more efficient. What goes up is the cost of the way you'd like to live as you have more options to choose from.

Obviously there's disruptions along the way (ex: automobiles lessen demand for horse breeders) but when capitalism closes a door it opens a window (ex: mechanics).

You have no idea if you think technology magically brings down prices. Tell that to the 100 million people living in/near poverty in the USA alone.

The "efficiency" increases in recent years have more often than not been various ways of cutting labor costs. It doesn't matter if things are cheaper in a nominal sense if your ability to earn a living is eroded.

> You have no idea if you think technology magically brings down prices. Tell that to the 100 million people living in/near poverty in the USA alone.

I suggest you go do some basic math on the cost of producing consumer staples like rice, beans, milk, and meat. Technology has brought down the cost of all of them.

Similarly, efficiency gains in MPG and durability improvements have lowered the price of owning and maintaining a vehicle. Uber, Lyft, and other ride sharing apps have lowered the price of it even further to remove the capital outlay.

> The "efficiency" increases in recent years have more often than not been various ways of cutting labor costs.

Which is bad because why exactly? Is the purpose of the corporate sector to produce goods and services or to provide a place for people to go?

> It doesn't matter if things are cheaper in a nominal sense if your ability to earn a living is eroded.

Sure it is. That's the definition of makes things more efficient: being able to be produced more cheaply

You make fair points, however the cost of living is dictated primarily by: transportation, education, housing and health costs. Has technology made these significantly cheaper for someone in poverty?

> You make fair points, however the cost of living is dictated primarily by: transportation, education, housing and health costs. Has technology made these significantly cheaper for someone in poverty?

I specifically cite transportation costs in my prior comment. Housing is also cheap if you don't live in (expensive) cities. There's an abundance of housing in the suburbs and if you're willing to share a place with others (like everybody seems to take for granted in the city) it's insanely cheap.

Education and health are interesting beasts. On the one hand technology has brought the cost of education to near zero through remote learning and internet courses. There's more knowledge available at a person's fingertips than at any point in history and the cost is cheaper than ever. The cost of a formal higher education has gone up but I don't think that's driven by technology. It's from the availability of "easy money" for student loans. Healthcare (in the USA) is uniformly fucked and needs to be scrapped and rebuilt though government programs like Medicaid do cover the people your describe (poverty line).

Housing is cheap if you live in a part of the country with a bad economy.

The increasing polarization of the economy is also spatial: the remaining good jobs are congregating in fewer and fewer metropolises where the cost of living is skyrocketing.

Tell that to people whose salaries haven't kept up with inflation while other costs like housing, health care and education have been going up. Yes, in the long run it will maybe/probably work out but it can take years or decades for things to adjust and in the meantime a lot of people will suffer.

I downvoted you. My problem with what you said is that you acknowledged that technology creates surplus, but didn't acknowledge that many of the efficiency gains aren't going to the consumer, but to the owners of the company.

Technology creates massive consumer surplus. I'm not sure if you don't know what that means, but it means exactly the opposite of what you said.

For example: Apple sells an iPhone for about $750. This phone contains the equivalent of (roughly) $3,000 of disparate technology from the 1990s, including a cell phone, camera, tape recorder, etc. Not only does it contain all of that for less money, all of that is better quality than what was available for that $3,000 back in the 1990s.

That is deflation and consumer surplus in action. The consumer can spend a fraction of what they would've in 1990 for a better product.

Another example: Apps on the App Store. Everyone expects everything for free because there is so much competition enabled by technology. The marginal cost is roughly zero, so most apps are free. If most of the gains were being kept by the producer, apps would cost a lot of money.

My previous post was poorly worded. Technology has automated so many jobs that the oversaturated labor pool means wages are dipping. Cheaper goods don't mean much when you can't afford a house or car. Meanwhile, the investors are reaping the benefits of this efficiency with insane returns, and the CEOs are running off with millions. When we're living in the richest country in the world with a GDP per capita of over $50k, the idea that there are those unemployed or making $8k/yr while others are making millions or billions per year is ridiculous.

That's not a good thing to down-vote for, but props for explanation.

Down vote for trolls and other destructive posts, not just because you have a problem or disagreement with what's expressed. OP is legitimately trying to contribute to the conversation.

That depends on how you define progress.

Just to play devil's advocate: what if you define progress as "that stuff" that will increase the general well-being of the greatest number of people over the next 20 years? With that definition, does technology-powered automation still count as progress?

It would count as progress if the automated means of production were owned by the labor that is put out of work. Oh wait, that sounds like communism, and we could never ever have a reasonable discussion about that amongst a group of people who thrive off of a system that is the opposite.

I'm down-voting you, here's why:

Instead of claiming that we can't have that discussion, why not try to have that discussion?

Okay, I'll bite. How do the workers so recently unemployed by the automated machines gain ownership of those machines in a way that does not entirely remove the incentive for building them?

Something of a loaded question, but more, a super hard question.

Your question is loaded because it assumes that ownership of such machines is the best solution for those made unemployed by them - I think this is probably flawed, because management is a different skill set than direct contribution.

The problem is that the worker's skills have lost value. They need new skills - management skills for owning the machines, or different skills that haven't been automated yet.

Or maybe a refinement on their existing skills. My understanding of Japanese factories is that it's commonplace to have one of the fabrication lines done by people - the thinking goes: "If you do not know how to do it better, how can you make machines do it better?". I also remember a story of, I think it was GE, getting their designers, engineers, and assemblers (the people literally putting the pieces together) all together to improve the design. The assemblers noted a particularly difficult step, and in making that step easier, the engineers removed a number of parts. Everything got better.

Let's look at the other part of your question - incentives for building the automation. It seems like the R&D incentive comes from the end-user value, so let's skip to that - I want an automated machine for a number of reasons: Quality consistency, up time, wage cost reduction, safety. Eventually, all of these do boil down to "profit", but the routes taken are important. QC means you can sell more and/or charge more; but you could make more and charge less in ways that make more or less profit.

I don't think I can answer your question, because I don't know why you think that the incentives for building them would be removed; and in my head, the first blocker for the recently unemployed to own such machines is wanting to run a business. I don't think most people want that.

I blame the grandparent post by eevilspock for loading the question.

I don't think it can even be answered with that assumption included. Let's say you have a cobbler, who makes shoes. He recently lost his job to the burgomeister's new Elfbot 4000, that can make the same quality of shoe, but turns out 2 dozen pairs in a single night.

The Elfbot 4k runs all week on a single saucer of milk, without sleeping. The cobbler has to eat 2000 kcal every day, and sleep 8h every night. It is completely obvious that the cobbler can no longer compete in the shoe market with the Elfbot. The value of the cobbler's one marketable skill has been devastated by automation. So the cobbler cannot raise enough money from selling shoes to buy the Elfbot. No matter how hard the cobbler works, his productive output cannot reach a level high enough to equal the value of the Elfbot.

So the cobbler would have to get the money from somewhere else. But the burgomeister is the richest man in town, and the only one with enough money to lend out. Why would he give a loan to the cobbler, to buy the robot, whose production would be used to pay off the loan, when he could just sell the production and get the money without that source of default risk?

So the cobbler could also just steal the Elfbot. But if Elfbots could just be stolen willy-nilly, no one would bother keeping one. The burgomeister would obviously have to defend his property against one-man robberies.

That leaves a torch-and-pitchfork rebellion. After that happens, no one bothers bringing new machines to the village, because they don't want to lose their property.

Or the cobbler could study the machine, and build his own, if it can be done cheaply enough. Unfortunately for him, the burgomeister has a patent, which equates copying with theft.

The only way for the cobbler to own an Elfbot is if he is the first to build one. And that just puts all the other cobblers in his shoes for the above scenarios.

The displaced workers just can't get the capital in a capitalist society through the use of their obsoleted skill, and the capital is not created as quickly or as easily in a non-capitalist society. They would have to acquire a different marketable skill to be able to afford one, but once they have that skill, they no longer have any specific connection to or need for that particular machine. If the cobbler becomes an expert in specialty candle marketing, and makes a pile of cash, he no longer has any need to own the Elfbot. He could buy the Dribbler Deluxe instead.

Ah! I hadn't noticed that you weren't the question's author.

I really like your summation that "can't get the capital in a capitalist society through the use of their obsoleted skill".

Arguably, the benefit of the cobbler could be a) highly custom small batch work, b) expertise to maintain the Elfbot, and c) a thinking mind behind the task. Elfbot will not improve by itself, the cobbler would.

But you have to remember that the one machine has put a large number of cobblers out of work, and you need very few for the tasks you listed, so the total displacement is still problematic.

The Elfbot was likely built by a cobbler, and sold to the burgomeister for immediate cash plus an Elfbot servicing contract. The machine owner only needs to rent a tiny bit of one ex-cobbler's labor to program new shoe construction techniques into the machine, and the person creating new shoe fashion patterns for it might not even be an ex-cobbler at all.

The human labor requirement has been slashed and burned for shoe-making, and the 99% of ex-cobblers that can't find work reprogramming and servicing Elfbots are busted back down to the pool of unskilled laborers.

The modern economy is increasingly asking unskilled laborers to retrain themselves to a different category of skilled labor at their own expense. Those categories of skilled labor may not even stay viable long enough to pay off the (re-)education loans, so those people may even be in exactly the same situation ten years later, except instead of just being broke, they will be broke, still in debt, and unable to borrow more for additional retraining.

As production costs approach zero, many industries will resemble intellectual property with it's 0 marginal costs more closely.

In the IP space, we have an example working perfectly with the communist maxim "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need": Open Source Software.

RangerScience, many people, myself included, have. And guess what? We are down-voted. And then our future posts are automatically pro-actively ranked lower (A penalty has been attached to my account. See my history. Do I deserve that?). Politics is discouraged and even banned[1]. HN prides itself as being "a place for civil discussion", but it achieves that through effective suppression of dissent and criticism of SV culture. It's worked. I rarely comment here anymore.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/05/hackernews-calls-for-polit...

How are you distinguishing from suppression of dissent and criticism, and suppression of uncivil discussion?

From what I've seen, contrary opinions that are well expressed are rewarded (even if controversial - I've got a few that ultimately got more up votes than down, but it was a ride). Contrary opinions that, well, presume a fight? Not so much.

Communism seems like an idea from the 19th century shoehorned onto economic discussions in the modern age.

Is it really necessary that the means of production be owned by the labor put out of work? Or is the real problem not inequality (which has some very nice incentivizing benefits) but desperation at the lower end of the economic scale which lead to extortion like transactions? And if that is the case, is a full scale distribution of wealth necessary or can we have the best of both worlds by redistributing just enough wealth to guarantee that everyone has their survival needs taken care of?

Silicon Valley is a great example of growing inequality. Most of the rewards go disproportionally to a select few at the top.

That's a good thing: http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html

"Decreasing economic inequality means taking money from the rich. Since risk and reward are equivalent, decreasing potential rewards automatically decreases people's appetite for risk. Startups are intrinsically risky. Without the prospect of rewards proportionate to the risk, founders will not invest their time in a startup. Founders are irreplaceable. So eliminating economic inequality means eliminating startups."

>That's a good thing:

No; that essay might argue that inequality is a necessary side-effect or condition of startups, but that is not the same as arguing it is a "good thing".

For comparison: pollution might be a necessary result of the industrial revolution, and perhaps a cost we pay gladly; but that doesn't mean pollution is good. If we could get industry without pollution, we would.

That's probably of Graham's worst essays. Nobody is talking about removing all rewards. The question is how much reward is needed. Did CEOs do a worse job when they made 20 times the average worker income or would Zuckerberg do anything differently if he had made $500 million instead of 20 billion? What was his risk? Wasting a few years of his life? Plenty of small business owners go under after years of work and have nothing left. Silicon Valley founders don't take an extraordinary risk.

the question is how much reward is needed

Who decides that?

Society. It was society that decided to have the current reward system. It is society that can change its mind.

That's a somewhat naive view. It presupposes that the current system is just, because (1) all members of society had an equal hand in shaping the current system, (2) that it was designed to serve the interests of society as a whole (rather than those who benefit most from it), and (3) that it would be easy to change the system if a consensus emerged among a majority (or even a vast majority) of society that such change was desirable. I disagree with all three presuppositions.

I made none of your 3 presuppositions. Society is society whether or not it is democratic, fair or wise. But usually it changes its mind as it becomes more democratic, fair and wise.

This is... very wrong, at least if you're talking about CEO pay. Who decides CEO pay? The Board. Who is the Board? Well, it's usually guys who are CEOs at other companies. Boards have every incentive to make this pay as high as they can get away with, so they will get the same quid pro quo, and "society" has nothing to do with it.

You're interpreting my comment too narrowly. I agree that the concentration of power is a big problem, in fact, the biggest. But most everyone is complicit, both through their actions and inactions. Nearly everyone is putting self-interest first and foremost, including most liberals/progressives. We are complicit when we vote for people like the Clintons into power to represent progressive values. We are complicit when we take higher paying jobs at companies that put profit over people and society (and thus act behave just like those CEOs). We are complicit when we try to handsomely reward ourselves via SV get-rich-quick schemes building products that no one is willing to pay for except the advertisers who bombard us with self-serving messages in turn turning the web into click-bait, fake-news viral hell.

Also see my other reply.

Congress? Someone should. Society has decided that a greater good is promoted when someone decides on a minimum wage. Why can't someone decide on a maximum wage?

Monetary rewards are far from the only rewards. Ability to effect change is a broader version of that reward: Elon Musk doesn't have as much money as Zuckerburg, but there's an argument to made that he's wealthier, since he's able to enact more/different change in the world.

(Of course, Facebook has had such a ridiculously large effect on the world that argument is probably hard to win, but it illustrates what I'm trying to say)

The way Elon was able to get into a position to affect the world was by acquiring a pile of money. It was a necessary first step. If you imagine a scenario where society enforces a cap on how rich someone is allowed to get, it's possible that Musk might not have passed the threshold of money needed to get into his current position.

More broadly, when a society won't let people become as rich as the market will let them, founders will tend to move elsewhere.

It's also possible that the threshold for innovation would be lower because of the cap.

You mean like Galt's Gulch? That would be great. We'll be better off without people who only doing things for personal gain, to amass the greatest share of the world's wealth and power that they can.

Inequality as a driver of innovation is maybe arguable based on the idea of risk/reward. But what about, for example the CEO of any large bank or established corporation. Those people aren't taking any significant risk, but their compensation packages would indicate otherwise. The organization that concentrates wealth towards the top is already in place. They profit from the success of that organization, but in most cases the worst case for them if things go wrong is losing their job. Not losing their life savings, not ending up living on the street, etc. So since the risk is so low, there shouldn't be a need to incentivize people to such an extreme to do that work.

This actual analysis from The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which uses long running public (easily accessible) data from the Census Bureau, the BDS report[1], suggests that income inequality hurts startup creation rather than helping it.

Note: The specific relationship that they find is that startup creation is associated with home prices. This makes sense in the US, as home prices are a good proxy for middle class wealth. Here's a quick not fully vetted interpretation of this finding: When the middle class is relatively rich, they start businesses. When it is relatively poor, they don't. The aspirational income inequality that Graham posits doesn't immediately jump out when looking at year by year new startup numbers on a graph. I'm currently analyzing these numbers, but it's pretty clear that they don't support Graham's assumptions.

Note 2: The FRBoSF analysis isn't perfect for answering this question, but at least it's a good start, unlike the pure logic approach (despite the easy availability of good longitudinal Census data on the subject) that Graham published.

Note 3: The Graham essay is an essay on income inequality that came out before the atomic bomb that Picketty dropped on the subject. It really shouldn't be dragged out now because the research landscape on the field has been completely changed since it was written.

Final Note: I know that every time the word startup is used on HN, it spurs a 'No True Scotsman' debate about what qualities invalidate a new business from the label startup. Not remotely important. The FRBoSF article notes that new businesses have faster job growth than older businesses and that's the larger subject in question. Trying to throw companies out only serves to move the conversation from fact based to conjecture based by throwing out a perfectly good source of facts relevant to the matter.

[1] http://www.census.gov/ces/dataproducts/bds/

The specific relationship that they find is that startup creation is associated with home prices. This makes sense in the US, as home prices are a good proxy for middle class wealth. Here's a quick not fully vetted interpretation of this finding: When the middle class is relatively rich, they start businesses. When it is relatively poor, they don't. The aspirational income inequality that Graham posits doesn't immediately jump out when looking at year by year new startup numbers on a graph. I'm currently analyzing these numbers, but it's pretty clear that they don't support Graham's assumptions.

He addresses this line of logic in a separate essay: http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

"A surprising number of people retain from childhood the idea that there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world. There is, in any normal family, a fixed amount of money at any moment. But that's not the same thing.

When wealth is talked about in this context, it is often described as a pie. "You can't make the pie larger," say politicians. When you're talking about the amount of money in one family's bank account, or the amount available to a government from one year's tax revenue, this is true. If one person gets more, someone else has to get less.

I can remember believing, as a child, that if a few rich people had all the money, it left less for everyone else. Many people seem to continue to believe something like this well into adulthood. This fallacy is usually there in the background when you hear someone talking about how x percent of the population have y percent of the wealth. If you plan to start a startup, then whether you realize it or not, you're planning to disprove the Pie Fallacy."

A couple things you should do, if you want to have better discussions:

First, you should stop quoting pg's essays as though they were infallible sources of truth. It's not helping your argument. I like some of his essays; others are misleading or dead wrong (for example: http://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm). Empirical evidence always beats philosophical pondering; shawn-furyan provided data that pg was wrong, and you did nothing but post another data-free essay.

Second, you should stop assuming your ideological opponents are idiots who don't understand simple concepts like growth of wealth. We do; of course it is possible to "grow the pie". But since the 1970's, the majority of GDP growth has translated to income gains only for the top decile. And in such a regime, why should everyone else bother to grow the pie? What income inequality has done is create people who make a rational, and perfectly valid, calculation that "growth" is pointless and not worth fighting for, since they won't see any of it.

You're reading much too far into my comments. I posted the quotes to see what other people think of them, nothing more. If the response is that data beats logic, then that's a fine point.

you should stop assuming your ideological opponents are idiots who don't understand simple concepts

This is a personal attack, though. Please don't do that.

> He addresses this line of logic

He doesn't, and it's not a line of logic, it's an interpretation of the evidence. Graham didn't even look at the evidence, and came to a conclusion that becomes very hard to support once you've had a glance at a chart of the available evidence (i.e. deep analysis isn't required to recognize that his proposed mechanism is flawed).

Also, you should really heed my 3rd note. You cannot speak effectively on income inequality without having read Picketty. It is by far the most significant treatment on the subject. It goes far beyond my simple counterpuntal analysis here to bat down a poorly thought out and completely unresearched pure logical argument. At least read a couple informed reviews of Picketty. I seem to recall FT, the Economists, Mankiew and Krugman having worthwhile, messy and conflicting thoughts after it was published. Graham just is not a useful resource on income inequality.

To address your point: Yes, Macro 101 makes it clear that trade multiplies wealth, thus wealth is non-static. The Graham argument you cite is incredibly elementary, and he is not the source to be citing on the topic. That particular question is miles more elementary than any discussion of the impacts of income inequality on macroeconomic factors. Bringing it up when talking about Income Inequality is kind of like citing a clunky explanation of Newton's 2nd law of motion in a discussion about time dilation effects of supersonic flight (which relies on non-Newtonian physics). To wit, analysis of Income inequality requires going beyond the overly simplistic macroeconomic models that have led Economists to mispredict the effects of income inequality for so long. Macro 101 is not useful here. The current evidence in the field is conter-intuitive and difficult to reconcile for expert economists.

Also, again, Graham's essay is very outdated and has, to be charitable, been surpassed by more careful and thorough resources on the topic.

Technology is also inevitable. Nothing you mention can be stopped. So standing up even more technology to help balance things is at the very least a noble effort.

Is Uber technology or is it a Ponzi scheme? I admire their technology at the same time as I have absolutely no faith in their ability to ever turn a profit, and more particularly, ever be a net benefit.

No, the technology label is not sufficient. It isn't an immunity necklace. It doesn't mean inevitability. I say this as an engineer.

A company isn't a technology, it's a business model built on technology. Uber's technology (mobile-enabled P2P networks connecting service providers to customers) is definitely unavoidable. Uber's business model isn't.

Global nuclear war will quickly and reliably stop everything. There are powers which are very unhappy about the way technology is making them irrelevant and they see it as a fight for survival.

Civilisation is at a crossroad: continue building a high-tech society which makes humans irrelevant according to the current social/philosophical/moral norms (1) OR go back to the Dark Ages and let the powerful run the show (2).

If we want to continue with (1), we also have to quickly redefine the whole meaning of society, citizen, work, job, leadership, democracy, etc. This has to be done fast and it has to be done globally.

This will be very hard to do.

> Don't want to be too negative but technology is not only a force for good but also causes problems for a lot of people.

Technology is a tool. Effects depend on who handles it / with which incentives. It can naturally facilitate wrongdoing (intended or not) but it also can – and it would be irresponsible not to use it – to counter said wrongdoings.

you have just succinctly justified arms races and the development of new weapons and counter-weapons.

A category of applications that I'd like to see YC helping along are those things that could help ordinary people run for office. The things off the top of my head I can see technology helping with:

* Leveraging social networking to generate social permission for people to stand for office, which I think is the most important obstacle facing people who might consider running --- far more so than money.

* Using technology to bypass the expensive outreach vectors traditional candidates are stuck with.

* Informing constituencies and potential candidates about the local offices available to run for.

* Crowdfunding campaigns with Kickstarter-like dynamics to make it safer to commit funds to speculative candidates.

* Capturing the stories of people who have or are standing for election, so that we can all compare notes and see what the challenges (or lack thereof) are.

* Building informal parties and coalitions of officeholders in states and major metro areas, to build tickets and slates of candidates around common ideals.

* Building common platforms for constituent services, so that fresh new officeholders can outcompete incumbents both in responsiveness and in making their newfound influence available to their constituencies to pressure other parts of government.

I've been calling my Senators about the Sessions nomination nonstop for the past 2 weeks and I've gotten calls through just 3 times. I haven't the slightest clue how to reach officeholders in my Chicago suburb. Clearly there's room for major innovation here.

Incidentally, if you're building things like this, I'd love to help in any way I can. I'm easy to contact. I've set a goal for myself to get a specific number of friends and acquaintances to run, and I'm happy with the progress I've been able to make and pretty excited about the concept.

> Using technology to bypass the expensive outreach vectors traditional candidates are stuck with.

This is a huge frustration of mine. It is nearly impossible to get the attention of politicians unless I'm willing to spend a vast amount of my time on the phone, because they don't pay attention to email, social media, etc.

It would be awesome to have a social media platform that is dedicated to political communication. And with ample features related to communicating about policy. Like for example:

1) The ability to search for a pending bill based on the text of the bill, highlight text, and comment directly on it.

2) The ability to +1 someone else's comments in a meaningful way.

3) The ability to publicly challenge a politician's claims through research, data citations, or other types of analysis.

4) The ability to find the appropriate politicians/appointees for a specific concern.

5) The ability to facilitate directional communication from politicians on specific issues. It would be great if a politician had a common platform to explain in detail why they voted yay/nay or abstained from voting for something, with quick crossreferences, data visualization, etc.

I have a feeling part of why they don't use tech solutions is that the 'cost' of making a statement is valuable information: if a ton of people are willing to spend 10 minutes to make a call, that tells you something. Having 100 people, half of them Russian bots, click on a "+1" button, might not tell you as much.

I know this to be the case. But then, that suggests to me that this is another place where tech has a chance to make a dent, not by short-circuiting the "proof of work", but by coordinating the effort so that people know how and when to put it in.

It's a costly signal [0], that's for sure. But what is unfortunate is that it is a signal that is far more costly for some than it is for others. It's the reason why minorities, immigrants, renters, etc., are underrepresented in local politics...angry white-haired retired homeowners with nothing better to do than complain about other people parking in "their" space are the ones that can show up to meetings. Everybody else has far more pressing things to do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory

Like you say, that's especially true at the local level.

So I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think it's "just" removing the "costly signal".

Having worked myself as a constituent contact in a Congressional office, I can tell you from experience that you are exactly right. Someone who's willing to hand-write a letter and pay for a stamp is seen as a more motivated constituent -- more likely to care enough about the issue to have it decide how they'll vote in November, in other words -- than someone who makes a call; and the caller is more motivated than someone who clicks "send" on an email; and the emailer is more motivated than someone who signs a Web petition.

For a long time, in fact, this mindset meant that a really effective way to "hack" the Congressional contact system was to send your message in a telegram -- because if you were willing to pay to have a messenger run your message across town and deliver it by hand, you were assumed to be very motivated indeed!

(I doubt that's true anymore, of course; not least because I'm not sure you can send telegrams anymore. But now I'm wondering if you could get the same effect these days by sending your message via FedEx's most expensive service...)

I asked this elsewhere, but does being a donor matter at all for calls/letters? If so they check the dollar amount?

They legally aren't allowed to check but if a staffer or politician recognizes someone's name and remembers that they met at a fundraiser, it obviously influences them, at least subconsciously.

I was never asked to; Congressional offices and campaign offices are supposed to be legally distinct, and that information would have all been held by the campaign.

That being said, once the sums you contribute get large enough you will almost certainly get to be known around the office -- either explicitly (e.g. the Chief of Staff tells all the people who handle correspondence "Bob Smith is a good friend of the Congressman's, if you find any messages from him bring those straight to me") or implicitly (e.g. the staff of the Congressional office notices that when Bob Smith comes in to meet with the boss he's ushered right in and stays for a long time). So large contributors' messages can easily get special attention, even without that kind of direct connection to their contributions ever being made.

Yeah, I'm sure if you're a Big Donor that's one thing, but that's not what I want to do. Was just curious if by saying you're a donor on your phone call whether it might make a difference.

Surely these offices still have fax machines?

> It is nearly impossible to get the attention of politicians unless I'm willing to spend a vast amount of my time on the phone, because they don't pay attention to email, social media, etc.

Mail them a letter. Yes, a letter, on paper. They take those very seriously -- especially when so many of them come in that their office is filled to the rafters with them.

It is nearly impossible to get the attention of politicians unless I'm willing to spend a vast amount of my time on the phone

I almost hate to reveal this "secret" since I thought it was pretty well-known, but if you contribute to your Representative's campaign, there's a pretty good chance you can get a one-on-one or at least attendance to a dinner event. This is much easier with state politicians.

I wonder if they listen more to phone calls or letters if you're a donor. And if so, what kind of dollar amount makes your call 'matter'? I'd happily donate $5 to the local Republican congressman if he'd take my calls more seriously.

My understanding is that the staffs keep their bosses informed about the volume and tone of constituent feedback; if many people are calling in with similar views on an issue, the congressperson will do whatever the constituents want. Being a big donor, or even better, a representative of big donors means that you can influence the congressperson when there is no strong public sentiment, or if you have a very strong policy point.

Five dollars? No. Just search for "[your representative's name] dinner event" and you can find the typical cost of access. For instance, my Rep has required 500 dollar contributions in the past. If you're actually interested, just call up the local party HQ and ask for the next event.

I know that $5 isn't going to get you "real access". It's a token amount so that you can truthfully say you're a donor. My thought was along the lines of "Hi, I'm a donor to XXXX's campaign, and I feel YYYY about ZZZZZ". Make a difference, or not?

All good suggestions.

Legislating is an information processing task. They're just doing triage. It's your job to get their attention. The only way I've ever gotten my way is when I show up with a crowd. Then whoever's sitting in the chair will do whatever it takes to make you go away.

Politics of Attention https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Attention-Government-Priorit...

>I've set a goal for myself to get a specific number of friends and acquaintances to run

Do you plan to run yourself?

Nope. I have the wrong hair for it. But what I've learned in the past few weeks is that a suggestion to a friend that they run for office is almost always met favorably; it's a compliment, like "that's a nice jacket", so your worst case scenario is still a positive interaction, but your best case scenario is a small but real chance at changing the world. I'll take that bet any day.

You (and everyone here looking to engage their technological skills in the democratic process) should consider putting some time into the PROGRESSIVE CODERS NETWORK (ProgCode)[0]. They are a non-profit that helps organize and direct volunteer coders, programmers, designers into open-source political projects. They are about connecting and facilitating projects, not dictating what projects should be. They are party-neutral, but seek to empower the people and provide tools for running successful campaigns and being engaged as a citizen.

If you can take away the need for millions of dollars to run a campaign then policy makers aren't beholden to the few wealthy supporters that helped get them elected.

Many of your points are already being worked on and the projects would love more support and input.

[0]http://progcode.co

The UK startup https://www.mysociety.org/ is very active in this space.

e.g. https://www.theyworkforyou.com/ (Hansard prettified), https://www.writetothem.com/ (case study at https://www.mysociety.org/democracy/writetothem/ )

Lovely list. I'd add ways to address problems with "congressional fund raising" as discussed by John Oliver (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ylomy1Aw9Hk), so congress members can focus on the needs of their constituents rather than those who pay for their re-election run.

All worthy suggestions.

TLDR: Replace current campaign managers, consultants, fund raisers, etc.

Which I totally support. But how?

Please ask candidates (past, present and future) about running for office. Better yet, run for office. See what it's like. I highly recommend the training from http://wellstone.org and http://democraticfuture.org. I'm sure there's others.

Also, join some local campaigns and do the grunt work. See how the game is played. Especially fund raising and endorsements.

---

This is not a technical problem.

Like the nerdtopian legislative information systems (https://www.govtrack.us) before, geeks making fascinating tools without deep knowledge won't make a dent.

Source: ran for office, activist/lobbyist.

I don't think the actual running is much of a technical problem. I think getting people to run is.

I could go on and on about this.

My direct observation is that (most) successful politicians are careerists. They started as pages, legislative assistants, etc. Makes perfect sense.

At the same time, most of the lowest rung (entry level) offices have a ridiculous number of candidates. Most first time candidates are walk-ons, having no idea how to play the game (me, for example). Most aspirants wash out after their first loss.

I'd be interested in your opinion on this initiative: https://sites.tufts.edu/gerrymandr/

Just saw this. Belated response. Sorry.

Excellent link, thank you.

Redistricting is my #1 issue. I've been long

I'm slowly warming up to the idea of voter efficiency. It'd likely moot the geometric based techniques, like compactness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasted_vote

http://election.princeton.edu/2016/11/24/a-lower-court-win-o...

http://gerrymander.princeton.edu

Politically, I work on local issues. We recently formed a local working group. So far we're researching and networking.

My personal policy goal is to have an open, transparent redistricting process. Regardless of the heuristics used. Modeled loosely on Iowa's system. Though I'm super partisan, all gerrymandering (disenfranchisement) makes me sick. I want to prevent scenarios like Ohio and Maryland.

I do not yet know how voter efficiency standards will change my plans, goals.

Thomas, I've been thinking about this as well. Here are some additional mechanics that could be used to build a "YC" for democratic candidates:

1) 8 week Training Program - an eight-week training program targeted at lawyers, entrepreneurs, and others who are interested in serving as state and federal legislatures. Candidates have their training and expenses paid for, and they learn all of the key things they need to know to win. It's an open process, where people all over the country can apply, and the program becomes prestigious over time, like Echoing Green or YC.

- Public Speaking Training - Social Media Growth Hacking - Fundraising and Donor Management - Policy Issue Training

2) Shared News: A hacker news type site for democratically minded people to share political articles. Builds inbound attention to the accelerator.

3) Blog: Articles about what it is like to become a politician. It features lots of examples and profiles. Shows everyday people they can do it as well. - What does the career path look like for someone who joins the House of Representatives? - How do state senators support themselves?

4) Funder Network: Candidates get introductions to top funders from the state who can help. Each candidate gets a certain amount of intros, and the accelerator manages the process.

5) Fundraising Tools: the candidate is trained in how to use tools, such as a CRM, to manage the process. I've seen a lot of startups struggle with setting up the right infrastructure, and I'm sure candidates have the same challenges.

6) Public Speaking Training: Politicians need to be electrifying. Have politicians train with TV media experts to become compelling in front of the crowd.

7) Digital Profile: Help candidates set up a website, volunteer management tools, and social media tools. Create a standard set of tools for candidates.

9) Growth Hacking Team: a small squad of growth hackers who devise strategies for growth hacking political candidates. This team builds software and strategies, and these tools are disseminated to candidates through the training program. Think of it like a consulting firm within the program.

9) Intern Pool: Many early-stage state legislatures rely on interns to provide the manpower needed for the procedural aspects of campaigning and running office. The accelerator can help recruit thousands of interns from different sources, and it can provide each candidate with a constant stream of interns to provide the manpower needed to win. Interns are given credit for being part of the fellowship program (like YC fellows) and are part of a cohort with shared events, message board, hr people they can talk to.

10) MOOC: make a public MOOC to let people view the training program. This makes people excited about the program and interested in applying. It also helps scale the program, similar to How to Start a Startup.

If you'd like to follow up, my email is in my username.

Along with Crowdfunding/Kickstarter, a platform that allows for the White House's petition signature mechanics for city/state offices (with a lower threshold for "response required" correlated with population for the candidate's office/area) might be a good way to engage constituents: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/about

You could also possibly allow constituents to place donations that would go through if the petition succeeds and a response is given.

Check out liquid democracy.

The thing that is needed most is a laboratory of ideas for what will replace the neoliberal order. A corporate democracy that increases inequality and only panders to justice by gestures towards identity politics is seemingly over. What we're faced with now is either devolving into an Ethnic Nationalist state on par with Russia, or something entirely new that has yet to be described.

What needs to be recaptured is a vision of the future based on science, health, the arts, and shared prosperity. And it has to be described in actionable political terms.

We can do this. We have the majority of scientists, engineers, philosophers, and artists behind us. But we have to move quickly because returning to the kind of managed democracy we had before is no longer possible.

> What needs to be recaptured is a vision of the future based on science, health, the arts, and shared prosperity. And it has to be described in actionable political terms.

We need a Star Trek: TNG for the (pun not intended) next generation...

If someone is willing to start a movement that wants to create United Fedration of Planets, count me in.

Right I agree. The command and control framework of the Star Trek universe will be unpalatable to American biases, so it would have to be something more networked along the lines of the federalism we already have. But given our technology, building a more directly democratic system of feedback should be possible. Trump's success is using Twitter to transform himself into a disruptive avatar of his supporters. The next generation of politicians has to do the same, but with democratic impulses as opposed to authoritarian ones.

We also, as much as possible, must try evenly distribute the future. For example, if we want to defeat climate change, we have to rally manufacturing and technological solutions in places like the rural Midwest. In even the reddest of states, their are bastions of support for future-oriented ideas, and we should begin networking these places togehther as forward bases of operation.

I wasn't really even thinking about "command and control framework". More about the culture of Star Trek universe - "the future based on science, health, the arts, and shared prosperity", where people respect science, competence, teamwork and humanitarian values.

One thing I always loved about Star Trek worldview is that characters in the show always believe people they meet are competent at what they do, instead of assuming that they're working with morons. Ditto for the bureaucracy of the UFP - it's assumed competent until proven otherwise; not like in our world, where the government is always assumed idiotic by default.

Right, but framing is desperately important in this context. If you say we want to build a Star Trek future, in no short order you'll have people jumping all over you about how it's an authoritarian communist fantasy. I've seen this exact thing happen on this forum.

If instead, its framed as expanding the idea of American Federalism, diverse entities working towards vision of the future rooted in these ideals, I think it will be more successful.

I understand now. A good point, I agree.

We just need 2 things to make it happen. The replicator (far closer than most people think) and a way to deal with the people who will inevitably decide that replicators can only be used with their permission (so, so far away).

+1 If someone is willing to start informal group that would work on making something like that a reality - count me in. :)

> corporate democracy that increases inequality

"democracy" makes the sentence an oxymoron.

You're right. Corporate republicanism would have probably been more accurate.

"Corporate oligarchy" would be a less partisan way to say this.

I think they mean replubican in the representative democracy sense, not the GOP sense.

Yes, that's what I meant. Thanks for clarifying.

There are quite a few energetic people out there devoted to worker cooperatives and generally developing strategies for the democratization of wealth/capital. The nice part is it doesn't require electoral politicking or lawmaking, just a voluntary change in how people interact and associate economically.

http://democracycollaborative.org/

http://geo.coop

http://fair.coop

Alternative economic arrangements will not be able to survive under an authoritarian kleptocracy. They'll just be moved out of the way through some form of corruption. Even under the neoliberal order, they were only barely tolerated. Think about what happened with Tessa and direct sales in many states as the mildest precursor to this kind of future.

Whether we like it or not, the country is shifting back towards the 19th century notions of "political economy." These existed in a diminished form under neoliberalism, but were largely swept beside by the triumphalist end of history that reigned. Appeals to fascism and authoritarian communism have already entered the Overton window, so the only option now is to outcompete those explicit political-economic fusions with something new.

Kind of sounds like the hypothetical "technocracy" [1]. I'd be wary of too much science at the same time - needs some balance. What stirs the beating hearts of people on HN likely does not do so for everyone.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy

I know this is a risk, but I think science and tech have to be at the center because of their association with forward looking narratives. Part of the reframing has to be positioning science and tech as being at the service of constituencies that have been left behind in the past order. Trump has been able to conflate them with elitism because they have thrown their political weight behind a neoliberal political order. Since that's on the its way out, the door is open to align them with a new, more democratic political narrative.

Democracy can be improved by having democracy in the workplace.

Modern corporations are run like totalitarian, authoritarian regimes with top-down orders being barked down. If you disobey, you're out.

People in Western democracies are no longer putting up with non-democratic control of their political institutions, but are completely oblivious to non-democratic control of their economic institutions and are perfectly willing to take orders where and when it matters most -- every day, 9 to 5.

When employees can directly vote and democratically elect the CEO/CFO and other executive and managerial positions, across the wide range of industries and in majority of organizations, it will be a huge win for democracy, and that will spill into a much more engaged population politically as well. Also, at that point, employees are no longer employees.

You don't have democracy in the workplace because democracy is inefficient. A company that expends great amount of money and resources on constant political shifting and backstabbing, and that can't present an unified vision on the market will soon get outcompeted by one that has its shit together.

We can tolerate authoritarian regimes in companies, because they're small (relative to countries) and compete in a heavily regulated space. If you want to leave or they fire you, you can generally find a new workplace. Companies play thier game by selling stuff (and doing accounting magic).

On the other hand, when two countries enter fierce competition, it's called "war". People on both sides end up dying. Even a less fierce competition ends up being miserable for everyone. The game has no bounds. And you can't easily quit it and move elsewhere.

That's why we prefer countries to be run with inefficient democratic process - because too much efficiency in a country will make many, many people very miserable.

> A company that expends great amount of money and resources on constant political shifting and backstabbing, and that can't present an unified vision on the market will soon get outcompeted by one that has its shit together.

That already happens anyway. You don't need to have a democratically governed workplace for constant political shifting and backstabbing to occur.

> If you want to leave or they fire you, you can generally find a new workplace.

Which will also be non-democratically governed, so that doesn't work.

> because too much efficiency in a country will make many, many people very miserable.

Can't you make the same argument at organization level? I'm sure many Amazon warehouse workers would agree.

>> because too much efficiency in a country will make many, many people very miserable.

> Can't you make the same argument at organization level? I'm sure many Amazon warehouse workers would agree.

Honestly, I think you could. Actually, this is something I was thinking about a lot in context of employee rights. Making workers happy - good office conditions, paid leaves, healthcare benefits, regular schedule, etc. - is a cost for a company, and creates inefficiencies that, if eliminated, would let the company do more while spending less[0]. So many companies are indeed happy to make employees as miserable as they can get away with[1]. Enforcing worker rights is purposefully introducing inefficiency, in order to avoid the market optimizing away all human values.

So let me rephrase my original point: you can get away with much more efficiency in companies than in countries without making a lot of people miserable.

[0] - subject to dynamics of market competition, in which all the gains you earn by introducing a change are quickly cancelled out when competitors follow suit.

[1] - not a problem for companies that don't need specialized workers for which there's more demand that supply - i.e. not a problem for most companies and a huge problem for most people.

Interestingly, Thiel (of all people), has argued that companies in a monopoly position tend to treat their employees well, focus on fundamental research, and focus on delivering the best products for their customers. He argues that businesses with a thin profit margin can't afford to do any of that and so are more brutal and authoritarian and they can't afford the long term investments necessary for real innovation to take place.

Consider that in a private company, surpluses are paid out to executives and shareholders. How is that not "inefficient"? Meanwhile, workers are paid a subsistence wage of however low the company can get away with paying. In a worker-owned, worker-managed business, those surpluses could be spent on higher wages, lower prices, or increasing productivity. Without having to generate profits for investors and shareholders (who contribute no labor to the enterprise), wouldn't that make a firm much more "efficient"?

I would never work at a company structured like this and if you're implying we impose rules on companies to operate like democracies then that's even more dangerous than Trump.

Do you mind expanding on why it's even more dangerous than Trump?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler#Semco_1990.E2.8...

Watch Ricardo Semler's TedTalk.

Thanks, this looks interesting, I ordered Maverick to learn more about Semco.

I'd also add that this isn't nearly as insane as it sounds. Something quite comparable works well in Germany (see Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?), and to an extent this is just the principle behind co-ops on a larger scale. Distributed ownership of capital tends to lead to greater efficiency, better productivity, and better worker engagement, and it's a bipartisan issue: see syndicalism on the left, distributivism on the right.

> Modern corporations are run like totalitarian, authoritarian regimes with top-down orders being barked down. If you disobey, you're out. People in Western democracies are no longer putting up with non-democratic control of their political institutions, but are completely oblivious to non-democratic control of their economic institutions and are perfectly willing to take orders where and when it matters most -- every day, 9 to 5.

This sounds strikingly socialist.

As a small business owner, the one who took the risk to start it, invested my own savings, and put things together so I could coordinate selling products with paying employees, you're damn right it's my regime. If I didn't think it would be mine, I never would have started it. The future rewards would be non-existent, relevant to being a cog somewhere else. And my customers would never get the added value of what I make from the business I never would have started.

Instead of having increased ownership, autonomy, and earnings potential, I have to negotiate and play politics with other people who I know aren't as intrinsically motivated as myself? Forget it, that's entirely unrealistic. Think about what you're saying - this is not how value, wealth, and prosperity is created. Nobody is going to vote me out of being CEO, because if that were possible I wouldn't have put in the tough work (and created the value) that goes along with being a CEO.

And the capitalist system works fine, because if these employees think I'm doing a shit job, they do have a vote: leave and start their own company. The parts that don't work are actually the more socialist parts of the system, such as bailouts for big behemoth, and regulatory barriers to starting competitors.

Sorry pal, but surface-level idealism doesn't square with real-life incentives and rewards. What I'm in favor for is reducing regulations and other burdens so that you or any employees in general have the option of starting their own companies and competing with me. That's a much better way for them to "take" the value of my shares, rather than just voting it to themselves with no work done.

It sounds socialist because it is textbook socialism.

Your assertion that value, wealth, and prosperity are created through the hard work and sacrifice by business owners is of course disputed by socialists. You're begging the question here. If you stipulate that value in society is created by the very process that socialists want to dismantle, then of course being a socialist is irrational. No real conversation can be had when you define socialism to be irrational from the outset.

Further evidence that no real conversation can be had follows from your dismissive "sorry pal, surface-level idealism" remark. Why are you so snide and dismissive? Do you think it helps your credibility? (It doesn't.)

Socialists argue that value is created by all working people, most of whom are not in it for the profit incentive. Value in society is created by teachers, whom get paid poorly. By PhD students, who get paid poorly. By parents who raise their children well for no compensation at all. By all the millions of people who get to work every day and don't get compensated handsomely for the effort. If there are so many people willing to work hard and sacrifice for the good of society without any chance of striking it rich, why should business owners be the exception? That's the fundamental question socialists ask. And there are no snide answers to this question that are remotely satisfying.

If I'm dismissive it's because we've had a lot of field tests of socialism throughout history, as well as in economic studies, and the results are always poor. It's a dangerous mindset to not examine critically because it is a slippery slope towards communism, the most inhumane type of society responsible for the most deaths in human history (much more than religion).

> Value in society is created by teachers, whom get paid poorly.

Many teachers (pre-college) are essentially babysitters who recite state-certified textbooks. This not value in itself, but it does free the parents to work to create value. Value is also created by the students who go on to create exceptional things. Some are inspired by good teachers, yes, but this seems to be the exception than the norm.

> By PhD students, who get paid poorly.

Apprentices in older times got paid poorly too, but many went on to create value who wouldn't have otherwise without the extensive training. It's an investment. You don't get paid well while in training because you're still an unknown quantity for the most part.

> By parents who raise their children well for no compensation at all.

The purpose of capturing value is to be able to start a family and pass on your genetics (for most people). And those who raise their children well often do get compensated later in life, if not with direct support, than with higher probabilities that their children will be successful and continue passing on their shared genes.

> By all the millions of people who get to work every day and don't get compensated handsomely for the effort.

You don't get compensted for effort, you get compensated for value. You can dig a ditch with a spoon for a lot of effort, guess what, it's not valuable.

> If there are so many people willing to work hard and sacrifice for the good of society without any chance of striking it rich, why should business owners be the exception? That's the fundamental question socialists ask.

As I showed above, hard work a.k.a effort is not, and should not, be a determining factor of one's wealth. Many people work hard but are using "spoons" so to speak. This doesn't create value. Planning the logistics of a digging operation (tool equipment rental, worker recruiting and scheduling, end customer sales, planning real estate builds, etc) creates value, even if it means I only plan these things for a few months then sit back while other people do the digging.

Now not everyone can do that simultaneously. For one, not everyone is smart enough to do higher-level planning. Intelligence is rewarded economically, and we see this with IQ-income correlations. Secondly, even if everyone were the same intelligence level, we can't have everyone be a planner/developer and nobody be a digger (or excavator operator). But then guess what happens, the worker class becomes rare and so the free market will start paying it much better as demand increases. If physical labour becomes scarce, that's what gets paid more.

Because we can fight neither the reality of scarcity driving value, nor the reality of greedy human nature, we ought to design systems whereby these forces can be put towards good. That's what capitalism does, and there's many examples of everyone being better off as a result (e.g. 600M+ Chinese people eating a lot better in the last few decades).

Finally, to emphasize human nature again, none of the examples you listed are exclusively for the "good of society". Being a teacher is a job with decent pay and good vacation, being a PhD student is an investment towards your future (earnings), being a parent and raising children well is how you pass on and secure your genetic lineage, and work is for economic survival, and eventually gives one the power to pass on their genes.

> If I'm dismissive it's because we've had a lot of field tests of socialism throughout history, as well as in economic studies, and the results are always poor. It's a dangerous mindset to not examine critically because it is a slippery slope towards communism, the most inhumane type of society responsible for the most deaths in human history (much more than religion).

This one sentence already demonstrates that you don't know what the words socialism or communism means.

Please do share.

Socialism = state with social ownership of the means of production Communism = hypothetical end goal of society where the state "whithers away" and class divisions no longer exist

Note that people describe themselves as communist since that is their end goal and states describe themselves as socialist since they have not ceased to exist yet.

I can try as well.

> If I'm dismissive it's because we've had a lot of field tests of socialism throughout history, as well as in economic studies, and the results are always poor.

While this may sound like a no-true-Scotsman argument, the most prominent example of a failure, USSR, has quickly (within a few years) moved off course from socialism to totalitarianism and state capitalism [1]. There were never democratically governed workplaces in the Soviet Union. This happened for a variety of reasons, including constant military threats from capitalist countries that naturally pushed the population to rally around autocratic leaders. Same is true for many others. There were successful-looking democratic attempts as well, but those were crushed by capitalists pretty quickly.

North Korea's full official name, for example, is Democratic People's Republic of Korea. However, nobody is seriously arguing that democracy doesn't work because North Korea is democratic. However, the same logic somehow fails to apply to communism.

> It's a dangerous mindset to not examine critically because it is a slippery slope towards communism, the most inhumane type of society responsible for the most deaths in human history (much more than religion).

Citations needed here. Putting aside the fact that no countries in history have actually been communist yet, most claims of "millions deaths under communism" are pretty dubious, counting many deaths without establishing causal effect. For example, Chinese famine deaths are counted as directly caused by communism. If the same methodology were applied to capitalism, you can count many more deaths throughout the world until today -- famines, starvation, easily preventable diseases in capitalist Third World, etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism

Yes, as a small business owner, it's a tougher concept to come to terms with. You can try looking at it from different perspectives though.

For one, I'm sure a 12th century monarch or a lord would have a host of reasons why you're damn right it's my regime. Or a modern-day King Saud for that matter I guess. After all, it's his father who built his kingdom, and he has all the risks and responsibilities of a monarch. But for most Western observers, that is no longer defensible and most would elect to live somewhere with a democratic government.

Same goes to modern day dictatorships like North Korea. If not for international borders and internal controls, most North Koreans would probably prefer to leave their country. So, to continue the analogy, one could imagine a day in the future where as a small business owner, you are no longer able to attract any employees on the terms you're used to now -- not unless they are not employees, but co-workers with all equal rights and votes. And just as it's unimaginable and laughable in modern America for someone to start claiming that he's now a lord of XYZ county, and all those living within it are his peasants, it's not too hard to imagine a similar reaction to your proposal of employment for wages.

You can also look at it from another angle.

Why exactly is it that you want to have your own totalitarian regime within the organization you started? Is it just because you enjoy the power over people? Most people wouldn't say so. Besides, if you are the founder and know the business better than anyone, and have good leadership qualities, why wouldn't you be constantly re-elected as CEO?

And if your coworkers indeed approve of you as CEO, you would still get your greater earnings potential, although without being able to exploit your workers as much.

> Same goes to modern day dictatorships like North Korea. If not for international borders and internal controls, most North Koreans would probably prefer to leave their country. So, to continue the analogy, one could imagine a day in the future where as a small business owner, you are no longer able to attract any employees on the terms you're used to now -- not unless they are not employees, but co-workers with all equal rights and votes.

Again, I welcome whatever reality the free market thrusts upon me, and will react and adapt accordingly.

However this is incredibly far from reality because people actually like being employees. You don't have nearly as much risk. You don't have to make tough executive decisions with far-reaching consequences. Your levels of stress are lower. Etc. Those things are worth $$$, and we price them by CEO/founder compensation. It's not going to be perfect pricing, but it's the best we've got.

> Why exactly is it that you want to have your own totalitarian regime within the organization you started?

Because I believe that my decision making and skills with regards to a particular type of business in a particular type of market will yield me big returns, and so I want to put my money where my mouth is. Hence I saved up and founded my business.

> Besides, if you are the founder and know the business better than anyone, and have good leadership qualities, why wouldn't you be constantly re-elected as CEO?

Injecting this type of politics into a company is a fantastic way of slowing it to a crawl. Even if it's possible that one of my employees could be "better" than me at my job, we're not practically going to find out ("let's all try each other's job for a month!"). Or rather, it's not my responsibility to ask them -- if they think so they're free to go start their own company/competitor (subject to whatever non-compete clauses they may have signed, which you could argue is burdensome regulation, and I might be inclined to agree).

Besides, who says elections give us the best candidate? ;)

Unlike the North Korea example, the employees really do have options here. At least ideally they have as much choice as possible for who to work for, remember it's not like I put a gun to anyone's head when I asked them to join (or stay). A counterexample might be the H1-B's that are tied to their employer, but I don't have that particular relationship with any of my employees.

> And if your coworkers indeed approve of you as CEO, you would still get your greater earnings potential, although without being able to exploit your workers as much.

Just to wrap up, as I said above it's not worth the time for me to "poll" everyone. There are serious business consequences to injecting such a high level of politics into a company. What keeps me from exploiting my workers primarily are competitors, with competing potential offers, and the flow of information on the internet, e.g. 'this type of engineer makes X a year'.

> However this is incredibly far from reality because people actually like being employees.

Really? Why don't you offer your employees equal partnership with no strings attached and see if they'd just rather stay employees. I call bullshit on this.

> Injecting this type of politics into a company is a fantastic way of slowing it to a crawl.

Not true. Taking one day a year to nominate candidates and vote is hardly a burden. It's less of a burden than any normal employee turnover process in non-democratic companies. And I'm not even talking about large bureaucratic corporations with layers of management and their constant "re-orgs".

> Besides, who says elections give us the best candidate? ;)

Elections where most people are apathetic and don't even bother to vote because they think the entire system is corrupt are a bit different from elections in a 50-people organization, where everyone knows everybody else.

> Unlike the North Korea example, the employees really do have options here.

You missed my point. If all other organizations out there were democratically governed, then you'd probably have had to put a gun to someone's head to stay.

> There are serious business consequences to injecting such a high level of politics into a company.

Again, this is untrue. You might be projecting American election process onto this and may not be aware that everywhere else election cycles don't actually last 2 years. Most normal countries don't spend more than a month on an election cycle. A small business wouldn't spend more than a day.

> What keeps me from exploiting my workers primarily are competitors, with competing potential offers, and the flow of information on the internet, e.g. 'this type of engineer makes X a year'.

I think again you're projecting your own bubble here. Fast food industry is fiercely competitive, correct? Do you think a Burger King employee would get a vastly superior competing offer from McDonald's?

> And the capitalist system works fine, because if these employees think I'm doing a shit job, they do have a vote: leave and start their own company.

I didn't know it was this possible to be so non self aware.

> The parts that don't work are actually the more socialist parts of the system, such as bailouts for big behemoth, and regulatory barriers to starting competitors.

Socialism is when the government does things, and the more things it does, the socialister it is!

I didn't know it was this possible to be so non self aware.

No matter how ignorant you may think another poster is, it's never okay on HN to be uncivil. Particularly with contentious topics, it's even more important to raise to level of civility to ensure constructive discussion.

This isn't uncivil. This is pointing out that OP's statement is factually ignorant of the economic possibilities for 99% of the population.

If you believe the poster is missing important facts, and you're willing to take the time to do so, let them know what it is you think they're missing in a constructive, non-combative manner. Claiming someone is heretofore unimaginably non self-aware is a direct personal insult, which is never appropriate on HN. Please contribute substantively and civilly, or refrain from doing so.

Yes please add some substance to your criticism. There is nothing wrong with criticism of ideas and I welcome it for my own.

Perhaps I should have mentioned that I live and work in North America where GDP per capita is something like $54K USD or more. This context makes a difference for your "99%" comment.

> I didn't know it was this possible to be so non self aware.

Or leave and work for a competitor. I don't put a gun to anybody's head, unlike various socialist governments.

Feel free to expand on this thought though. Note that I work in North America and so my expectation of an employee being able to 1) leave and work for someone else, or 2) leave and start their own company, stem from this.

> Socialism is when the government does things, and the more things it does, the socialister it is!

So what do you call it when the government props up certain businesses (that they prefer) by redistributing my tax dollars thereby shielding them from market forces? I can't think of a libertarian government doing this.

And yes, socialism must imply a bigger and more intrusive central management body (aka government) because that's how you "democratize the means of production". You have to enforce such actions with the gun.

> Or leave and work for a competitor. I don't put a gun to anybody's head, unlike various socialist governments.

Only socialist governments put guns to people's heads?

> Note that I work in North America and so my expectation of an employee being able to 1) leave and work for someone else, or 2) leave and start their own company, stem from this.

Yeah, it's not so easy for most of the world's population. Since you seem to be aware this, note that a less obvious element of this fact is that the reason things seem largely not so bad in the US/Europe is due to the large scale extraction of economic value from less developed countries. That power law is now coming around to bite the US/Europe middle class, and Trump/Brexit is the result.

> So what do you call it when the government props up certain businesses (that they prefer) by redistributing my tax dollars thereby shielding them from market forces? I can't think of a libertarian government doing this.

Cronyism? Corruption? This really has little to do with economics but is a political problem. The same thing happens in capitalist and socialist countries.

> And yes, socialism must imply a bigger and more intrusive central management body (aka government) because that's how you "democratize the means of production". You have to enforce such actions with the gun.

Yes because of people like you fighting it... grumble grumble

There are actually a lot of "libertarian socialist" theories out there. It's like a blend of anarchism and Marxism.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. Your workplace is the government that you're made to obey most of the time, and unless you have a lot of leverage your position is very similar to a Medieval serf.

One benefit that I feel may happen, is to generate better buy-in for management decisions if the workers feel they have a hand in making said decisions. They might also care more about the health of their company, rather than maximizing the value they reap.

As I've said in another reply, make sure to checkout Ricardo Semler's TedTalk. An awesome example. I won't post a link because everythings is blocked here, next week I'm back at a much more democratic company I've worked before, pretty satisfied.

I think an important question to ask with regards to Democracy is "why do people believe the things they believe" or "how do they acquire their political beliefs?" The biggest influencers are likely 1) their family and 2) their friends. Essentially, they come from social interaction.

People need a (fun) way to increase the number of real social interactions they have with other people. What's really dangerous right now is that many (including Liberals) are socially shunning those who don't share their political beliefs (or are not pure enough in their beliefs). Pushing people to the fringes of society will just force them to find a home in the most extreme among us.

For a long time, Americans relied on social clubs that allowed people to engage in diverse political discussions but also build friendly relationships with others. I would like to see startups try to revive long lived, persistent social organizations that are aimed first at building a friendly community among its members and second at making people listen to different points of view.

I don't think this is going to be possible until the basic arguments over what information sources are factual is resolved. Over the past decade I've seen the social structures that I grew up bifurcate because discussion between the two sides is basically impossible.

I don't think the basic arguments over facts are going to be resolved so long as people shun those who don't agree with them politically. Especially in the current social media climate, false claims spread like wildfire while the debunkings languish because people only spread or listen to stuff that supports their existing beliefs. My Twitter feed is probably typical for HN and I've been seeing this multiple times a day. There isn't even any media panic over it like the one over conservative "fake news" because it supports their existing beliefs too; often journalists are helping spread the claims on social media like everyone else.

I've been thinking about Robert's Rules of Order [1] for some time now, and the idea that it would be nice if it were updated for today's world of discussion forums, in which the interactions are more drawn out, rather than conducted with all participants active at the same time. I think it would be nice if there were a discussion forum that implemented some sort of policies that had been as well thought-out as Robert's rules.

What I was thinking is that some policies regarding responsibilities incurred by posting a comment in an asynchronous discussion forum are needed. For example, one should not be able to simply post a comment then leave the discussion. The persistence of their comment should be tied to whether they continue to participate, and respond to refutations and the like. Similarly, I see a lot of specious reasoning and appealing lies get posted, rapidly upvoted, but only eventually debunked: the people who upvoted should be notified of the refutation.

It would be nice if karma could actually be useful, and this always reminds me of PageRank [2]. Surely there must be some way to normalize the weights of highly-voted comments in less populated but serious subforums (like subreddits) so they are not overwhelmed by the karma granted to silly jokes in unserious but hugely populated frivolous subforums (again, I'm thinking of reddit here).

I think all of these things would do something to counter the fake news and echo chambers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert's_Rules_of_Order

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

I've played in this space! A few years ago, I half-assed the world's worst startup for asynchronous political debating that focused more on identifying and understanding opinions as opposed to expression and dialog, because dialog necessarily breaks down to dichotomies and outgroup homogeneity which are exactly the problem. I never really figured out how to elevator-pitch the damn thing, but here are some blog posts I wrote back in the day: http://blog.agreethepeople.com/ If you do follow that link, start at the bottom and work your way up. And let me know what you think!

This is a great move by YC! I'd also love to see the "left behind" Americans addressed. There's a lot of people hurting in America who need training and jobs for the new economy and investment opportunity. I suggest opening YC branches in a former coal mining states and former manufacturing hubs in lake states. If folks can get their stability, hope and pride back, they'll be less likely to turn to fake news, placing blame on outsiders and divisive politics.

> If folks can get their stability, hope and pride back, they'll be less likely to turn to fake news, placing blame on outsiders and divisive politics.

Hear, hear, I think this is the key. Happy people tend toward stability for the societies they're in. I'm all for education, for anyone who wants it, as much as they want it (price and payer to be negotiated). That said, I suspect that education by itself will not fill the job supply-demand gap, nor that those educated jobs will be well-matched to the places where people live. And, if there's more to life than jobs, then maybe the jobs need to move to where people are, rather than making people move to where the jobs are. I think answers that will work will have to work for, say, everybody in the 'Rust Belt' as they are today, not as they might be if they jump through all the right hoops. For an example some people will dislike, a government run single payer health care system would take the financial burden off of employers as well as being cheaper for employees, supporting small business growth and entrepreneurship. Don't like that example? Fine. Bring on your favorites.

About news: Back in the day, Groklaw did a phenomenal job covering the SCO v. world court cases (and, more broadly, the intersection of law and technology). It was run by a semi-anonymous paralegal who really cared about the cases, about the law, and about technology. ("Semi-anonymous", because her name was known, but it was a fairly common name, and her city and state were not known.)

Groklaw became the source of authoritative reporting about the SCO cases. It had analysis from lawyers, paralegals, and technologists. It had (voluntary, amateur) reporters attending hearings and giving in-depth reports, and then thorough analysis from a wide variety of people. People cared enough to voluntarily take vacation days to go to the courthouse and attend hearings, and then spend the next 2+ hours writing it all up and posting it. People voluntarily gave money to keep it all going. It was amazing.

It also was subject to significant attack, both from SCO and from trolls. It consumed the life of the paralegal running it for a decade. It was probably not sustainable.

I think that moderation is essential for any online community that isn't going to fall to the lowest common denominator, but sustainability is an issue. (HN at least has multiple moderators, so hopefully they won't burn out.) For news, multiple reporters are needed (Groklaw didn't report on a hearing until multiple reports came in, because sometimes trolls sent in false reports.)

I think the answer may be multiple small sites that each care about a focused area, and attract enough of a following that there are multiple reporters available when needed. (This probably won't work for something like foreign policy. I can attend a court hearing in my town and write up a report, but I can't get an interview with the Secretary of State and start asking uncomfortable questions.)

This isn't really a firm idea, just some thoughts and observations...

> We’re looking to fund... new revenue tools that can bolster and sustain independent media organizations.

Dear YC: I wholeheartedly support this and strongly recommend these books as required reading for anyone seeking to change how media works in our society.

1. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Noam Chomsky & Ed Herman[1]

2. Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty by Alex Carey[2]

I realize these have an "anti-corporate" bent to them but they are truly good analyses and well worth reading with at the very least a critical eye. As Carey documents, it is the corporate sector that has developed much of the modern tools of manipulating mass opinion.

More than mere fact checking, I think you will find that the chief challenge to achieving sustainable independent media is the business model. Advertising necessarily biases media towards at least the class interests of advertisers (if not any particular one), or else it would go out of business. Meanwhile it has trained readers to not pay the full price of quality content. This is a fundamental problem.

Another challenge is that companies have business models that support their own PR and lobbying while ordinary citizens do not. That is unless they are organized and combined resources, but with the dissipation of unions there is no strong popular economic counterpoint to corporate PR. This is part of our news system as well.

I very much hope some good work can be done here, with a sober and clear understanding of the fundamental challenges.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Risk-Out-Democracy-Communicati...

> News: We’re facing two major issues with news. The first is fake news. The business model for online media rewards the people who get the greatest number of page views, clicks and likes. That results in a system that prizes virality over truth.

This is insanely difficult as interpersonal trust is expensive and getting first-hand information/data is extremely non-trivial. I agree that "mainstream media" (quotes because that phrase makes my mouth taste like ash) has happily devolved into BuzzFeed-style clickbait, but another parrot of AP isn't progress.

Paul Graham suggests that the best way to come into a good startup idea is to become the sort of person that has them, which I think applies to informing the public at large -- I don't think it's realistic to expect to build a revenue model off of people that will only give you their eyeballs for 20 minutes a day in the hopes of finding something to have an opinion on. I think this is a much larger, nearly intractable, problem of making societies into the types that are interested in nuance and dry detail.

Paul Graham is right that it has to be something you want to do, but it is possible to build large new media sites on short attention spans -- if your site is designed for them. My site, an actual working solution to the problem of both fake news and bias, is doing great (Over three million page views last month). However, we most likely won't apply to YC this time, or ever again, due to Sam Altman's anti-Trump bias.

No offense, but looking at your website, you've solved the problem of fake news by not showing any news. Unless you're talking about no bias in UFC news specifically.

No offense taken. See my answer above.

> My site, an actual working solution to the problem of both fake news and bias, is doing great (Over three million page views last month).

How is crowd-funded media a solution to the problem of bias and factually unsound reporting?

I found a link to your site from your profile and it appears to be a gossip and tabloid site with a focus on UFC.

It's early days, so we haven't filled out a lot of our content. While our main newsline is on Conor McGregor, the UFC fighter, there is not much fake news or bias surrounding him. A far better example is to look at the newsline for Emma Sulkowicz, the so-called "Mattress Girl" [1].

Ms Sulkowicz, at that time a student at Columbia University, claims she was raped and in protest at what she saw was the University's lack of action, decided to carry a mattress around the campus for a year. The problem for readers wanting to find out more about her story is that the media is highly polarized. They are either written by feminists, or their opponents. There is no middle ground. If you try to get an overview of the case on Wikipedia [2] you will encounter that site's systemic bias, where the most powerful group on the page "owns" the content. In this case the page is controlled by people sympathetic to Ms Sulkowicz claims and reflects their bias. There is also the issue that Wikipedia does not allow embedded content such as documentation or videos.

Newslines fixes the problem of bias by allowing people to build up the page by adding news events. Each news event comprises only the factual information in the source article. Even if the source is highly partisan we can still extract non-biased information. In effect, we are converting articles to data. As each factual summary is added to our system it builds up an unbiased account of the topic, and the reader can then decide the result. Compare this with a traditional news article or biography where the writer starts out with the conclusion in mind. Also, because each post goes through editorial review, the potential for fake new is minimised.

[1]http://newslines.org/emma-sulkowicz/?order=ASC [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattress_Performance_(Carry_Th...

Thanks for responding. To be sure, I'm asking the following questions in good faith as I want your site to work.

> Newslines fixes the problem of bias by allowing people to build up the page by adding news events.

If people are just citing existing biased sources, isn't this just trading half-truths? Is the idea that somewhere in the middle is typically the truth? This sounds like it's prime to create middle ground fallacies.

> Each news event comprises only the factual information in the source article. Even if the source is highly partisan we can still extract non-biased information.

Who is "we"? If it's your staff (or you), then I'd need to trust you. If it's the collective "we", then we're back to bias, but worse because it's masquerading as impartial.

> Also, because each post goes through editorial review, the potential for fake new is minimised.

Which makes it sound like the prior in the previous issue -- this sounds like closed source Wikipedia.

>If people are just citing existing biased sources, isn't this just trading half-truths? Is the idea that somewhere in the middle is typically the truth? This sounds like it's prime to create middle ground fallacies.

We don't simply cite the source. We extract the factual information in the source into the post. When New York Times reports "Evil Trump is coming to the UK" and Breitbart reports, "Our friend Trum is coming to the UK", the news event that Trump is coming to the UK is the same in both cases.

Now, the facts may be misreported, but that's a different issue. We do some tagging for obvious rumors, and we hope to improve our tools for labeling the veracity of how each new event is reported. But we belive we have a solid base to work from.

>Who is "we"? If it's your staff (or you), then I'd need to trust you. If it's the collective "we", then we're back to bias, but worse because it's masquerading as impartial

We use a combination of paid and crowdsourced staff. It doesn't really matter who "we" are, because the process is the same in either case to extract the factual information. You only need to trust that we are transcribing from the source correctly, and readers can always go back to the original source to check. So you may wonder, what's the value in that? The value is the creation of the unbiased timeline when all the summaries from diverse sources are compiled.

>Which makes it sound like the prior in the previous issue -- this sounds like closed source Wikipedia.

While Wikipedia acts like a news archive, its software and policies are not up to the task. There are similarities to what we do compared with Wikipedia and at first we considered ourselves to be a "Wikipedia for news". However, we take a more formal approach to adding sources that Wikipedia, which leads to more consistency in the final result. You may want to read my analysis of Wikipedia's failings: http://newslines.org/blog/wikipedias-13-deadly-sins/

About news - I think this recent tweet by Elon Musk is particularly relevant: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/825936326264360961

"Reading the source material is better than reading other people's opinions about the source material"

It'd probably need a few iterations to get it right, but I'd be willing to pay somewhere in the range of $25/mo for something that published or linked directly to the source material that is driving the current news cycle along with a succinct summary with no commentary.

Something vaguely HN-like but for all current news topics, not just tech news.

I applied to Y combinator with an app that addressed both points raised under news section three years ago and didn't get accepted.

Back then we were facing the same issues in Turkey. Ultimately, we had to close down the site because Turkish government was silencing every opposing voice.

Funny how you guys are now thinking this is a big issue NOW.

Funny how you guys are now thinking this is a big issue NOW.

How is this sentiment useful? Sorry, guys. Whatever you do now is invalidated by what you didn't do before. The past is only useful as something we can learn from. Focussing on what can be done now is something we can actually grapple with, change, and improve.

That is your interpretation of my comment. Notice how you are twisting it with the "Sorry, guys".

I support YC's effort. After all, I spent many hours of my life on solving this very problem through my non-profit startup.

Fake news has been a big problem for a long time for many countries. It would have been great if YC took an action before it became USA's problem. Think about the impact they could have made! I guess hindsight is 20/20.

Indeed, that's how I interpret it. I generally try hard to avoid snark myself in responses, as it rarely is effective at engendering sympathy or support or understanding. I'm getting exhausted at all of the accusations of "why weren't you concerned then?" that are being thrown around HN the past couple of days. They're absolutely not constructive. I apologize for letting it slip this time.

Funny how you guys are now thinking this is a big issue NOW.

It's hard to interpret this charitably. On the face of it, it's a sideways, snarky accusation of hypocrisy. I have a hard time reading it any other way.

People are human. People grow and change. People pay more attention when things affect them directly, or at least are closer to home. Is that really wrong? Or just realistic? It's wonderful but mistakenly idealistic to think that everyone can be concerned about everything that's wrong all the time. People have limited resources.

Of course people should be held accountable for their actions, but we also have to allow for the possibility of change, of becoming better. Sometimes it takes a significant kick to get people moving. Are we going to begrudge them the fact that they're moving now?

And as a sibling comment pointed out, I'm sure there's a lot that goes into the evaluation YC candidates.

Maybe the problem being addressed wasn't the reason for rejection.

That was probably the case with my application. They are smart investors.

In the big picture, my application is insignificant compared to the problem. I am questioning the reactive behavior.

Conventional Wikipedia-quality news outlets are doing well at present, btw - the NYT reported in November that subscriptions had skyrocketed since the election. http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/17/new-york-times-says-subscript...

I've been very pleased to see in the past couple of weeks that journalists have discovered actual journalism again, the sort that doesn't go for false balance and instead paints obvious BS as BS. Which is heartening to see, if a year late.

Having the customers be the readers, not random advertisers, appears to be a way to get the right things happening. So if you want to do a news startup, work out ramen profitability in the era of adblockers.

I might note also: my Facebook two weeks ago was "here's fun stuff your friends are doing, here's their funny cat pictures" and now it's 24/7 "LATEST DISPATCHES FROM THE WAR AGAINST THE INVADING HELL DEMONS". My wife boots her brain every morning reading Facebook on the tablet and I've asked her to keep it to only the worst news from overnight. (I used to read my Facebook to get a rest from that sort of thing on my Tumblr. I must admit I'm not doing so well at making my own FB anything other than LATEST HELL DEMONS news.) I mean, this is understandable - a lot of these people are seriously worried for themselves and their loved ones. So there's a market of pissed-off liberals who've newly discovered radicalism and would like it without BS, that present liberal-pandering outlets aren't quite feeding. What would something that works for that look like? How would you get their $3/month?

I'm happily engaged in a DevOps startup and won't pursue this idea, but I proposed a new kind of news format shortly after the election at https://joshpadnick.com/2016/11/25/a-proposal-for-a-new-type.... Personally, I'd love to be a consumer of something like this, or to know if there are startups working on this.

I'm unfortunately otherwise occupied at the moment so I won't be jumping on the occasion right now, but I favourited your comment for further reference. There's lots of good thoughts you put into that post, and I'd love to help - time allowing - if someone is going to take responsibility for making this happen. Thank you for writing that post!

Reading what you wrote... It almost seems like facts in news is a dependency management issue?

I mean, it's going to be a way more complicated dependency situation than with code - imagine a fact determined by a study which had to make decisions about categories - but the gist remains:

An interpretation of facts depends on those facts, some of which themselves are collections/transforms on facts, but ultimately, there's a physical reality from which they stem.

I am now running my own news startup (oko.ai) and have secured a deal with the biggest news agency in Portugal. And fact-checking is on our pipeline of features, thank you for the share.

Also do you think we are in the right spot to go for this YC call?

If you're concerned about jobs and democracy, open an office in a swing state. The way the us electoral system is organized, every young educated person who moves from the heartland to California is a vote for Trump.

Alternately find some way to get uneducated heartlanders to move to Fresno or something.

Also it would help if you show just the smallest amount of empathy people in the U.S. who don't live in one of two half states. (i.e. people whose tax dollars benefit Stanford and the origin of Silicon Valley in defense contracting, people who buy your products, whose stock market investments make it possible for you to get rich, etc.)

"uneducated heartlanders"?

It should be clear from that term that the parent is hostile to anyone not buying into their progressive extremist ideology.

I apologize.

I'm going to pass along something my wife told me about, that happened when she was living in Idaho with her first husband. It was seriously suggested by some of the locals that she should undergo an exorcism. The evil spirit allegedly possessing her, that was to be the target of this procedure: her university education.

There are lot of people in rural areas in the US who not only do not have a lot of education but who have an active antipathy to it.

One shouldn't let this observation degenerate into a stereotype, but I don't think one should dismiss it either.

I try not to let the anti-vaxxers, hippies, or the Hollywood stars brand whole areas, or my experience in San Francisco in 1988 with a broken down car and told to go find a tow truck.

"a lot of education but who have an active antipathy to it."

An yet, I live with people who cherish it right here in rural America. Parents sacrificed to get kids in college. Doctors are listened to (yep, get your shots).

Its ok, really. It is socially acceptable to degrade and demonize all us NFL & MMA watching morons. You can feel superior based on one story, and frankly, most in these parts don't go in for the trouble to correct you. Its not like TV treats people much better.

The funny part is the little digs. The NYT article[1] on TV shows by region claimed folks in rural American liked "Walking Dead" because it is "for people worried about immigration". I'm more thinking that its a fun show and frankly most people here can imagine there survival a lot more than those goofballs in the show.

Oh well. As the graphic floating around Twitter said "you spent 8 years weaponizing the federal government" then you get this.

I guess, I ask if someone had the same story about say, a racial group, would you be passing it along on a board like this as an example of why "uneducated X" would be true?

1) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/26/upshot/duck-d...

The attitude you're responding to is a big reason for why Trump had so much support per David Wong:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-on...

I find his analysis good on top of being entertaining. Echos a lot of what I've heard living in Red states. Forgot to add that most people around here are just down-to-earth, working-class people who go to work, raise kids, have fun with friends, etc. Normal people.

You're right. I'm sorry.

> There are lot of people in rural areas in the US who not only do not have a lot of education but who have an active antipathy to it.

When a farmer's interaction with "educated folk" are people such as yourself who look down their nose at him because _he's a farmer_ and you have a degree in _gender studies_ ("I mean gawd, that poor hick doesn't know anything!"), can you blame them?

Your wording could have used some improvement, but I think you're onto something about the regional concentration of influence and money being a negative thing for the well-being of the nation.

We need to stop writing off states that aren't progressive enough as places unworthy of investment or business. Part of the problem is that "founder culture" isn't big in smaller cities away from the west coast. Some time and investment towards teaching students at state colleges and community colleges across the nation, along with some actual investments could go a very long way.

Of course, most VCs already have a deluge of bad ideas that will come to them, so they don't think there is much to be gained from seeking out new sources of ideas. But that's elitism and laziness. There are talented and driven Americans who may not talk with the same lingo or approach the same problems the same way, but leaving them out (or requiring them to move and be surrounded by others who do think how VCs want) will only entrench the existing divide.

It is more exit culture than founders culture. SV may not be the best place for a company with less than $500k in funding (say you want to start Twitter) but it probably is the best place if you need to scale up fast and seek progressively larger rounds or get acquired by a big player.

I don't think you understand how tolerance works. It goes both ways and is hard for a reason. If you demonize all the people not living in cities or west coast, no wonder they reject the ideas that come out of these places.

If anyone wants a free idea for a "deal with fake news" startup: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13TK_uYpXRc3cODePnfV16Kzl...

I literally do not have the time to build this, as I'm busy trying to make PHP secure.

I just spitballed an idea and passed it along hackers who gave me feedback.

I don't want to be contractually tied to VCs either.

Just, if you like the idea, take it. Run with it. Make it successful. Use modern crypto. It's yours.

Maybe see if the folks that run Snopes are interested?

Hey, cool idea! We could add this to it: https://nochio.com/?kind=bad

Building tools for fact-checking and helping people decipher fact from fiction will become increasingly important to keep the electorate informed

Sadly the electorate doesn't care about being informed. They seek out news that confirms their world view. Any information that contradicts their world view is deemed "fake news".

People usually believe what their friends believe - information is used to make social objects and ways of doing social signalling, not to get at hard facts.

A lot of bullshit starts to fly around when you have two or more stable "positions" around a subject in a society. People divide into sides and keep using information only to signal to which side they belong.

This leads me to (maybe a pretty dumb) idea: what if we found a way to destroy such stable positions? Destabilize them, so that people couldn't stubbornly signal their support for a single side? Of course all sides would end up using such a tool to destroy their "opponents"; I feel like this could lead to two outcomes: a) (bad) there aren't any stable positions anymore, and b) (good) the positions keep getting disrupted until they rearrange into one that is actually aligned with the facts.

In many respects, Y Combinator, or really, start ups more broadly, seem uniquely ill equipped to solve this problem. Startups seem to be especially incompatible with the business challenges that face media companies right now. While perhaps the S curve of user growth could be attained by a media startup, the S curve of revenue isn't. And if it was, the quality of the journalism it produced would be terrible. Viral content is almost invariably superficial, frivolous and uninformative, or has an emotional quality very different from the impartial, sober thinking that we now need.

Americans have so many prejudices against publicly funded media. There's a widespread belief that if the government funds your media, its editorial perspective will reflect the government's interests. It's a completely misguided assumption in the case of, say, the CBC. The insulation from competition, and, therefore, not having to optimize content for sharing or views is necessary for producing quality, informative content. The New York Times seems to be holding onto at least a sliver of its integrity because it doesn't use such metrics, and instead is funded by subscriptions. But government funding could be valuable too (although there'd be hurdles).

That being said, the person who cracks the code for how to run a lucrative content/journalism business will make a lot of money.

How about starting a new political party? Is that too crazy to consider? Maybe this is the time to do it.

I think one thing that happened recently is that we saw a desire for change. The number and enthusiasm of Sanders and Trump followers points to that. Maybe there is a place for a party to represent the views and values of those who followed Sanders.

Just thinking about it, there was a previously unknown, old, white, male politician who had such a tremendous following from so many people. What happened to that crowd? Those people are still out there, young, many in college, new graduates, minorities. It probably includes factory workers from Rust Belt and so on. There were so many followers despite media ignoring them in-large, despite the main DNC establishment disliking them and they still got so many votes.

I think doing the same thing over and over with the DNC as before, is probably not going to work. How feasible is to take all those invested billions and create a new movement instead of fighting fake news, why not generate good news. Instead of forgetting about the workers whose jobs are being automated away, perhaps talk about basic income in the way that would be accepted and not be seen as a humiliating hand-out.

What better to improve Democracy by creating a more parties to represent and replace the crusty old one with all their baggage and corruption.

New parties are hard. Still, I've found it interesting to think about a group that was only active in 3-5 evenly contested states, that collectively controlled a few percentage of the vote in those states.

This small group might have tremendous power to set the agenda, either as a distinct party or one that influenced the presidential candidates.

I agree that more, equally influential, parties are better for the health of US politics...but there are many systemic traits that I believe are prohibitive to new parties becoming equally influential.

To even begin addressing the multitude of these issues would require passing laws through our current political system and I am convinced that would be near impossible.

Hmm, we applied with our non-profit tool, Umbrella App, for managing the physical and digital security of journalists and activists (https://www.secfirst.org) a few years ago when we were only getting started but didn't get in. It seems like it's needed now more than ever, so we might look at making another application to help bring us to the next stage of our development.

Oh boy, fake news is just getting started! People are scared now? Wait until an entity can generate your voice saying whatever they want it to say, generate your body doing whatever they want it to do, generate scenes and events which never happened.

Fake news now is less effective against well-educated, smart, skeptical, scientific people. It just so happens that fake news is dumb enough to only fool 80% of us. As the methods for generating false information ("fake news" is not a general term) get more advanced, people will need to be more and more educated to resist falling into machine dependency.

If you're gonna get on the fake news train, do it now, as fake news is easy right now. Bots are still dumb, etc. In the future it won't be so easy to combat fake news. It will be a much, much more grave problem. If there are people who are uneducated enough to be influenced by fake news now, they will be sheep in the future even more so, when they are told lies of events, audio clips, video clips, etc. that never even happened.

Fake news, or more generally, false information, is going to be a big problem in the 22nd century. As our machines get smarter, so do our deception methods. At some point, humans will begin to place trust in machines because we will no longer be smart enough to figure it out ourselves. Currently the non-savvy population (maybe, ~80%?) has begun to do this already. At what point will our scientists begin to fall on the same side of that partition, until only a few scientists in the top of their field actually get it. We have already observed this God-Effect in esoteric fields.

God-Effect: Where a piece of technology, mathematics, or code becomes so complicated, eventually only a few people (or zero) actually understand it. E.g. complicated edge-physics, library implementations, encrypted data, etc.

We have an epistemological crisis. Tech can't fix that.

Are there any resources out there for tech folks that might be interested in working full-time for a non-profit, backed by YC or not?

I have a strong interest in these areas but not really in the zone for building a team to apply for YC. Increasingly interested in a career pivot towards working with an organization in these areas however. Where should I look?

Look at companies the fast forward accelerator features on their website (mobile or would link otherwise).

Good tip. Thanks ;)

If YC is serious about fixing "online media [that] rewards the people who get the greatest number of page views, clicks and likes. That results in a system that prizes virality over truth," it should open up Hacker News itself for Hacking. What better way to stimulate experimentation and facilitate the testing of ideas for better collaborative news filtering?

I believe many potentially world-changing ideas in this area never see the light of day because the barriers to entry are too high. Innovation is hindered by a chicken-n-egg barrier to entry: you need a successful site like HN to be able to run useful tests and experiments. Imagine there were only four chemistry labs in the world. Only a fraction out of the world's chemists could run experiments. The only labs we have are Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and HN.

Hackable Hacker News. Doesn't that just make sense?

One of my favorite "public good" websites is in the UK and called "theyworkforyou.com"

The workflow is that you punch in your postcode and get a list of all the people who represent you. From house, senate, european parlaiment.

You can then fill in a form and send a "constituent letter" to all the correct people for whom your opinion should have an impact.

After a reasonable wiating period, a survey comes to your email asking if they replied and some other questions.

Those "roll up" into a report on the member's responsiveness to their constituents.

Of the times I used it when I lived there, I always got responsiveness and only once was the response rude / unsatisfactory. (a member of european parlaiment was a total dismissive jerk)

Anyways - as far as ideas go, I think that would be a useful "start" - I also think there was more they could do to improve that further.

Check out the "Congress" app. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sunlightla...

That's really great - though I do think a web page is more inclusive. Additionally the phone-call aspect is something really cool which I hadn't thought of, but I believe the form would allow a letter to be posted directly to multiple representatives.

The return address would clearly indicate "I live in your constituency" while a phone call might not have that same impact.

I think there's also room to improve on the formula of TWFY like allowing an option for users to post their letters "openly" and allowing them to upload photos of the responses.

Though open-source on the congress APP makes it a really exceptionally cool foundation.

Check out https://whoaremyrepresentatives.org

Is the application page out of date? It's still referring to Winter 2017, and a deadline of October 4. However, this post says YC apps are reviewed on a rolling basis.

Yes, I wondered about that too. Have they switched to reviewing all applications on a rolling basis? Or is it just applications in these particular categories?

I assume the same rules apply.. have to move to SF..

I can't help but comment that we did have a great democracy machine (& education) with something called Television. Virtually free. So much potential. I guess before that - radio. Even newspapers. Before that word of mouth. Each machine had it's masters who rose to the top.

We are in the beginning of phase 2 ( my def.) of social media. We are all in the middle of the 5 layer cake while it's cooking and because of Donald Trump we already don't like the recipe.

This phase of social media too will deform into something less than we thought it was going to be. Just like television. It is fun to watch but clearly it is too late to save it.

I doubt the next 'newspaper,radio,tv,social media' will be created by those inside of it.

The best technology we can apply to democracy is to have our elections be conducted entirely by pencil and paper with a completely open, public and full count of all votes.

And of popular votes with no shenanigans on registration or voter ID's.

What do you think about a following evolution of the advertisement network idea that could support higher quality content creation?

A company Foo connects content creators, consumers and businesses.

Creators can join the 'Foo' network and display a short 'join the Foo to support this site' info on their pages without any other ads. Consumers can join the Foo network to have access to deals offered by businesses. Businesses can reach to the Foo network members offering discounts for their products.

A part of such discount is transfered to the consumer, giving an incentive to buy on the Foo network. A part goes to the content creators. After each purchases a consumer is asked to which creators the money should go. A small part from each transaction goes to Foo.

Unlike with ads network today, the user is in full control of which sites receive money from the user transactions, so the incentive to create useless clickbait sites is gone. Content also no longer needs to be cluttered with ads, because there is a separation between content consumption and business transactions that support the content.

Yikes. The idea that any kind of news should be handled by a Ycombinator startup does not make me comfortable at all.

reddit, now frequently a primary news source, was in the first class of YC companies. I don't think there's any inherent contradiction, though I would be concerned that HN would only want to promote news sources that had reddit-like audiences and outcomes.

I have some loose interest and IMO some relevant experience in creating a next-gen reddit, would like to try it some day. I have no intention to apply to YC.

I think we need something a little more revolutionary for news than holding current news sources to account, or fact-checking tools. Most of the problems we see in our news outlets are around the competition for attention as the article says, but also around old business models for newspapers/tv which still haven't changed to adapt to a world in which anyone can report from anywhere live using a simple phone and anyone in the world could contribute to a story, if only they'd let them.

Better something that encourages primary sources on the ground to contribute (video, text audio), and puts them in context chronologically, geographically and perhaps socially, but is not based on an advertising business model.

Difficult to know what it could look like to but we need something fundamentally new which uses the internet not just as another medium.

It's an interesting idea, and one I've been thinking about for a while.

Issue is, I think that's kind of what social media is meant for. Anyone can contribute news as a primary source and share it with others online via sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.

So my worry is that any system like this would basically be just another social media service (albeit with a 'news slant' in the marketing material) and therefore be very difficult to promote.

User created news is an idea that seems obvious and logical in theory, just very hard to promote in a world where it's competing with thousands of other services offering (in your user's eyes) very similar functionality.

Yes sure, Twitter (moments) and fb (live) are converging on this to some extent.

I'm thinking of something less social and more verifiable source of info though. You'd need incentives to keep it real, probably some form of verifying in a local web of trust, and incentives to read/watch so grouping by geography and interest.

I'm thinking more make your own local newspaper than share videos to your friends. Probably you'd have to start in a niche like school news and expand out.

Twitter is really interesting here because they are making and breaking news and being used as a broadcast medium in spite of huge failings for that use (spam, trolls), I think they're the closest thing but still a long way from something letting people publish verified info to the world in chunks bigger than a procrustean tweet.

Thanks for clarifying on this. Such a system definitely needs a way to verify news, though I'm not quite how a web of trust might be integrated here.

Grouping by geography and interest is definitely needed (Medium/WordPress style tags can help with both here, especially if users can follow/subscribe to them).

Making your own newspaper sounds interesting as well. You mean like a sort of blog or Medium publication? Or a social network type feed?

I think you need the feeds from verified individuals first, then you need some new way to integrate those resembling neither Twitter nor newspapers but tailored to specific audiences who know their stuff and can contribute/correct too. There should be no comments section, the article should be made of comments with context and commentary. For example some people do stats, some do a map some do commentary from the ground, and maybe someone ties it together.

What are your thoughts on the way news should evolve, I'm genuinely really interested in this area.

As far as truth is concerned, there can be no algorithm that can take care of that for a very simple reason. Media has an inherent bias all the time, be it geographical, cultural, political, etc.

Read an article in the BBC about the Russian Federation or China, and it will always have some sort of, oh but check this bad thing these guys are doing, or they are weird in some way.

Do the same with Fox News and you will come out with a view that Democrats are ruining the country.

I could go on and on, but the most effective way to get your daily fix is, read both sides of an issue by their promoters. Read what the bigot and the gay guy are saying. What the jew and the muslim are saying. What the Chinese and Japanese are saying.

Make up your mind, choose sides, but at least you will have tiny pieces of info that were conveniently left out by the other side.

Fake news is going to be hard to address.

Imagine a browser warning for fake news. Every article about religion or God would need to be accompanied by a warning: speculative, no concluding evidence available, too many competing theories.

I guess that wouldn't gain many users.

When I hear "fake news", I understand "news about fake facts" and not "opinions which may be erroneous".

The issue is to favor the true debates, with different points of view, and to remove the noise which prohibits and prevents from speaking or hearing others.

I realize this is incredibly naive of me, but I've always thought that there must be something unskilled or lightly trained laborers can do that would scale infinitely and reliably for the company hiring them, something that had to be done in the area for which it provided the service (to prevent the global market from driving price down).

The gig economy stuff is interesting, but it's still somewhat limited, and at least partially physical. I am thinking more like M Turk but... somehow localized. Not sure, maybe I'm sniffing up the wrong tree, I dunno.

I have a very specific idea on how to improve democracy. Make all public spending easy to search. Let me elaborate: Via direct and indirect taxes democratic governments take and redistribute between 30% and 50% of our income[1]. Yet we usually have no idea how exactly is it the money spent. This has two effects:

1) many disenfranchised people think state spending is somehow secret therefore "all politicians steel" and "the system is evil". This leads to low participation in election, populism etc.

2) even if we try to be good citizens we make uninformed decisions. Specific example from UK: how should we decide whether to keep a fleet of nuclear Trident submarines or axe 30,000 teacher jobs? Is the cost even comparable?

During the Brexit campaign someone once posted financial hoax on my FB feed - how much we spend on X. I went to verify the facts only to discover it is absolutely impossible to find how much we spend on anything. After hours of researching all I could find were perplexing .gov websites, unsearchable PDF documents, CSVs too big to open in excel and that obfuscated by impenetrable accounting jargon.

Compare it to this: if I ask you what were the earnings of the second movie produced by whoever produced Angelina Jolie's last movie you could probably find the answer on IMDB in less than a minute.

And I don't mean only government spending, I mean the whole public sector. States, departments, bureaus, agencies, offices, cities, towns, courts, libraries, schools, hospitals, public benefit corporations. In the end public finance is by definition public and the information should be available to everyone. If you think of it there are only 3 ways a tax dollar could leave public finance: as a salary to employees, as a payment for goods and services from private sector or as a transfer to another organisation or individual.

Build a website, get all the data, make it extremely user friendly, easy to search, navigate and share and people will start fact checking each other in FB conversations a participate more in local politics.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Freedom_Day#Tax_Freedom_Da...

I support transparency in government spending, especially financial information in a standardized format. However, I don't share your optimism regular people will be able to make sense of this data.

Just take the financials for public companies for example. Because all public companies report their financials in GAAP formats you'd think that therefore it would be easy to look at a company's balance sheet and cash flow statement to figure out what's really going on, right? Except it isn't. Despite standardized accounting rules and a standardized reporting format it's still very difficult to tell what's really going on behind the numbers. With the stock market there is a huge incentive for analysts to figure out what the numbers represent, for obvious reasons. And yet, more often than not, analysts get it totally wrong. There won't be similar army of analysts for public spending disclosures, just a couple of dedicated individuals, think tanks, and PhD students.

I still support full financial transparency for the public sector, but I don't think it will have a huge impact because numbers by themselves say very little.

> numbers by themselves say very little.

They may say little but in the age of "alternative facts" it is more than all the words.

There's some interesting ideas in this link, about people wrangling data to show information about Putin's information warfare.

I'd be intrigued to see these techniques of analysis applied to Trump and democrats.

http://index.hu/kulfold/2017/02/04/orban_is_a_tool_for_putin...

I have a startup idea I've been working on for quite a while, that I stopped when I realized I needed to reexamine the technology from the ground up. I've since learned a lot which will allow me to proceed -- this election and mainly the political climate has me wishing I could work on it full time and I would absolutely love to apply. Should I apply late or wait for the next funding cycle?

YC is more than halfway through the Winter batch. Start working on your company now and you'll be in good shape to apply for the Summer batch.

I have a pretty good idea for an app that I'd like to make and I'd like to apply. However after reading through the article it seems as if the deadline has already passed?? Would I be applying for Spring 2017? Also, any advice on what constitutes a strong application (in other words: I don't yet have a working product, can I still apply? )

The problem of "fake news" is the same as the age old Koan of truth vs. falsehood. Truth is subjective and relative to the time period and cultural mythologies, and is always changing. How can we even begin to solve this apparent problem if we can't even objectively define our variables, lest we become digital Don Quixotes?

"1 + 1 = 2" is true and objective for an infinite time period.

But if you want to share that truth it relies on a mutual understanding of what those symbols mean.

The language of math is near universal, but political language isn't.

That's cool if you're trying to program a rudimentary calculator.

However, "Truth" in the sociological sense is not constrained to mathematics.

@sama I'm heartened to see "Jobs" included in this list, but can you clarify whether this is a change in investment focus - will you be giving priority to startups which have greatest potential for job creation? If so, how would you qualify / prioritize those jobs (ie., part-time, full-time, educational requirements)?

I wrote up some free startup ideas around digital work. http://blog.kirigin.com/digital-work

tldr: smartphones are a platform to learn skills, to facilitate a network of contractors, and to do work. Put that together for something powerful.

I've been working on a project that makes data-driven reporting more transparent: https://thegamma.net, which might very well fit with the accountable news theme. Any feedback on how to make it better would be much appreciated :-).

A creative associate of mine has been talking about founding a new US Political Party, which, while not really in-line with this call-for-submissions, can probably benefit from reading the context of what YCombinator is looking for and intending to benefit a large population. Hmmm...

Here's a question: What secret sauce do [you think that] we, as software people, bring to this table?

Speaking about the Future of Work:

http://qbix.com/blog

Check out this compensation model. It is an evolving experiment in transparency which I believe can power the future of work. Would like some feedback.

For startups working on improving democracy, I'd suggest you start helping these three groups in any way you can:

http://www.fairvote.org/

https://represent.us/

http://www.wolf-pac.com/

Creating a more fair representation in government that doesn't only involve the duopoly parties as well as getting money out politics should be the two main priorities before anything else. Unless these two things are fixed first, everything else will continue to be broken.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw2z9lV3W1g

Regarding news, can someone please re-make the original concept of the fantastic news app Circa?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circa_News

So it can fail again?

What about a new media organization focused on covering politics in a way that contributes to strengthening democracy? Is that something YC would be interested in?

I'm exploring this idea and trying to figure out how to make it work.

What we don't need is another "Spotify for Truth". Recommendation engine tech, reworked, is laregely responsible for the siloed echo-chambers we tribaly inhabit.

You like that fact? Here's another one just like it.

This seems kind of hypocritical, given what Thiel did to Gawker.

I've had shower thoughts about "transparency as a service" before, but putting together the business case for this has proved difficult.

This is what business leadership looks like. Truly inspiring to see the corporate world embrace civic responsibility like this.

This RFS isn't listed under "which RFS are you applying under" on the application page.

Really happy to see new jobs on this list. UBI seemed like a lazy way of addressing job loss

Given Sam Altman's recent statements, will pro-Trump founders be discriminated against?

It doesn't matter anyway. Even though I am building a social news search engine that aims to minimise bias and eliminates fake news, given @sama's statements I don't think there will a culture fit. So I'm not going to apply this time, or ever again.

> given @sama's statements I don't think there will a culture fit

Could you summarise those differences?

There are several issues, which overlap 1) Credibility: Altman's call to fix the fake new problem is ironic, because Altman's most recent statement [1] propagates the very fake news he decries. For example he refers to Trump's travel executive order as a "Muslim ban" and bases his thoughts on that false premise. 2) Woolly thinking: His statement that "most of them [Trump voters] voted for him for reasons other than the promise of a Muslim ban," is not only false because it's not a Muslim ban, but false because increasing security at the border was one of the main reasons they actually did vote for him, and the actions Trump has taken have high approval from his followers. 3) Being a smug liberal: See point 2. The idea that Trump voters are misled fools is a common theme of liberals. Altman is determined to try to show Trump supporters the error of their ways instead of making any attempt to understand their concerns. It's useful to note at this point that Trump flipped states that had been previously held by Obama. 4) Hypocrisy: Where was Altman when Obama was actually bombing Muslims? I know where he was -- organising a YC fundraiser for Obama [2] 5) Hyperbolic: I'm all for reasoned arguments, but his previous post [3] bordered on hysteria, saying Trump is "irresponsible in the way dictators are" and making outlandish comparisons to Hitler. 5) Poor business decision: It's surprising that Altman would damage his business by creating a culture of intolerance for founders who have political views from him. How must Trump supporting founders, employees and investors inside YC and beyond feel when Altman claims the moral high ground? 6) Emotional: When emotion takes over business, business fails. 7) Evasion: Despite numerous requests Altman has not clarified his position regarding the status of pro-Trump founders.

Put all of these together and I just lost respect. I thought he was smarter. And I certainly I don't feel the need to justify my support for Trump to any investor. So, no, I don't think there's a culture fit.

[1] http://blog.samaltman.com/time-to-take-a-stand [2] http://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2014/05/obama-fundra... [3] http://blog.samaltman.com/trump

Please please please remember that any tool created can and will be used against you.

I wonder if Democracy has anything to do with the move to accept ACLU today.

Democracy in the US sounds like a great idea. Republicans have won exactly one of the past 7 Presidential elections (viz. 2004) but took power in two more thanks to the Electoral College.

The electoral college was designed so the highly populated states don't have too much leverage over the rest of the country, and worked as was intended. There are many areas of the country seeing a declining quality of life, and those areas happened to vote for the candidate who spoke of economic issues more.

The electoral college was designed so that slave states, who got extra seats in the House compared to their population of citizens through the 3/5 compromise, would have Presidential electoral power proportional to the degree to which they were overrepresented in Congress, rather than in line with their number of voting citizens. It is designed as a positive reward for the remaining enfranchised population for disenfranchising a portion of the population counted for apportionment.

It is, indeed, working as intended, the problem is that the intent was ill from the beginning.

Don't race bait. The issue was a lot more nuanced than that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_%28United_St...

How the bloody hell is his comment "race baiting"??

It's race baiting by implying the only reason the electoral college was created was to leverage the slaves. It creates a false narrative that amplifies racist thoughts against the government.

I'm not race baiting, its really not a lot more nuanced (the popular alternative explanation is the sales pitch made to New Yorkers to get them to buy off on the scheme, because we've taken 18th Century campaign propaganda as unvarnished truth as part of our national cult of veneration of the four ding fathers), and your source doesn't even address the motivations (well, it briefly addresses one participants description of the reason of the change from the Virginia Plan, which had the same salient features and served the same purpose, to the EC, but that doesn't address why the basic alignment with Congressional representation underlying both the Virginia Plan and EC was chosen; the reason, like the 3/5 compromise and the express protection of the slave trade.in the Constitution, was to overrepresent the slave states and alleviate their fears that the long term course was toward abolition), only the mechanics and the history of operations under it.

I provided a source that says there were more considerations than slavery. Can you please provide a legitimate source that proves otherwise?

> I provided a source that says there were more considerations than slavery.

You provided a source that does not address the motivations for the particular feature at issue at all, much less ascribe them to "more considerations than slavery".

Nonsense. The EC was designed to give extra power to slave states. Nowadays, it's used to give Wyoming voters six effing times the voting power of Californians. That's not democracy.

Reputation. Reputation is the problem.

Care to extrapolate?

Two hundred years ago if you stood up and told a pack of lies, someone would challenge you, and you would either have to back down or face them in a duel. Nowadays you just repeat your lies.

How can we know who is trustworthy, who has a past record of doing things well and honouring his word and who doesn't.

I want to take an alternative route. I want to start a company that generates fake news. I believe that AI could be used to analyze social media and determine the popularity of various threads or which stories get the broadest circulation in social media circles. Then analyze the content and wording to determine transmissibility; what makes something "go viral". Obviously a lot of this technology could be used to tag other fake news, but I'm in it to make money. Lies, deceit and deception; "Alternative Facts" and "Signaling" if you prefer, are the name of the game now. Nobody ever went broke underestimating the gullibility of the American public.

That being said, I think it would be a huge challenge for AI to comprehend all the nuances, inferences and subtle hints in many tweets or facebook posts and dig out both the explicit and implicit meanings.

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