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Future Searching

dilbert.com

29 pointsalexandros13 comments

No matter how easily resources are made available, capitalism won't break down When resources are freed, there is a new playing field for entrepreneurs to add value, for instance the availability of information and the profitability of search.

There will always be more significant barriers to embracing capitalism. Many people are comfortable with the existence of a welfare state and will never be capitalists no matter how easy it is to acquire resources and minimize risk. There is unprecedented opportunity today succeed in the game of capitalism, either as an entrepreneur or a skilled worker, but there is an obvious lack of initiative among large segments of the world's population. I doubt this situation will change no matter how low the barriers to entry are.

> Example: What is the most profitable LEGAL cash crop that an inexperienced farmer could plant on five flat acres in Northern California?

There's a reason he has to emphasize legal, and that's because the obvious cash crop isn't. The market of capitalism has decided, and has found the best use of the land possible.

> Suppose you want to find a turnkey web site management company...

A listing site of vetted companies providing X service, unbribe-able by ad-dollars, would have to be subscription-only to be sustainable. Unfortunately charging for online content doesn't have the best history. Facebook and LinkedIn are positioning themselves to find said company 'close' to you that people can recommend.

> Think of it as Match.com for startups.

This one has gone around a couple of times here before, and ranges from an actual web app, to that google spreadsheet that comes up every once in a while. So, the need's definitely there. Arguably, meetup.com meets that need rather successfully.

> There's a reason he has to emphasize legal, and that's because the obvious cash crop isn't. The market of capitalism has decided, and has found the best use of the land possible.

What makes the "obvious cash crop" so profitable is the fact that it's illegal, and therefore requires a high premium to cover the risk involved. There's nothing inherently super-profitable about growing pot.

You're right, and it's actually kind of interesting that Prop 19 has opposition in Northern California, because it's widely accepted that its passage will severely bring down prices, and thus profitability.

This reminds me of "Rainbow's End" by Vernor Vinge: A "coordinator" is someone who combines the efforts of multiple people and this is where the "biggest and most famous money" will be (has been?) found. See page 50-51, http://books.google.com/books?id=WT-OXLZE2m8C&q=combine#...

That's "Rainbows End", actually. A statement, not a noun phrase.

Yeah, I wondered what a coordinator's work would look like concretely and imagined a kind of freelance product manager. Do you think that's way off?

In my mind it would be a combination of recruiter, product manager, and maybe architect

Suppose you have an idea for a startup company and you don't want to quit your job yet because you don't know if you could bring together the other talent and resources to pull it off. Wouldn't it be great if you could perform a "hypothetical" search that collects people who would, in theory, be willing to make themselves, or their money, available if you can pull together all of the other parts of your startup? That way no one has to take the first risky step until the company is fully formed in a virtual way. You and your team of conditional future employees can work out the business model details before anyone takes the first risky step. Think of it as Match.com for startups.

Don't some people (many?) people put up a site with a 'buy now' button and count the number of clicks and gather email addresses to validate their concept before spending time coding up the solution? Or post the idea to HN? It seems possible to do some of what's being described already.

Yes, but its not turnkey. It takes a certain level of skill to put up a landing page and track clicks on your "Buy now" button. I think he wants all of these things to be super simple.

it isn't a search per.se. he is asking about. It is a data analysis, expert system like. He wants a computer, not a search engine. Network/Internet is a computer. Or Google search engine farm in this case would be a pretty good replacement/approximation for the Internet. In this case if Google let some user-specified business logic (ie. something more complex than "search_term1 AND search_term2") to run over its digested representation of the Internet.

Cash crops profits [ordered desc] = {P(C1), P(C2), P(C3)}.

Legal cash crops = {C2, C3}.

Successfully plantable by inexperienced farmer = {C1}.

... without C1 the expert system refuses to continue further :)

Quora is pretty good for this kind of searches

Wolfram|Alpha?

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