Comment by vannevar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vannevar | Hacker News Reader

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In this case, the same exact thing could have been accomplished by entrepreneurs. In fact, entrepreneurs are incentivized to seek out these opportunities because there is profit involved.

The first assertion is not true, and in fact the second assertion is the reason. Entrepreneurs are incentivized, but it is an incentive to get rich quick. If I as a VC can make 10x my investment in 2 years by investing in a 'Hot or Not' web app, I'll do that rather than invest in a fundamental technology that produces a 10x return in 15 years. The market is very focused on web apps now because there are great opportunities for viral growth at the expense of existing businesses. This is cannibalization, not real wealth creation. We should really stop referring to web businesses as tech companies: few of them produce any more real technology than your average McDonalds.

Government plays a valuable role precisely because it invests in technologies that are unlikely to produce a return but nonetheless could provide the basis for new businesses that can in the future. The Internet itself is a good example.

Is getting rich a bad incentive? In order to get rich you must provide people with goods/services that they want at a price they can afford. It's win/win.

If the general public wants Hot or Not apps that is what they will get. Who are you to decide that their money/resources should instead be used on something that you want?

Is getting rich a bad incentive?

Is advancing the technology of a civilization a worthy goal?

If yes, then getting rich only accidentally contributes to advancing knowledge and technology.

It could accidentally (because the goal is to get rich, not anything else) make a huge contribution. It could also contribute almost nothing. Plenty of people have gotten rich by finding a slightly cheaper way to either make or distribute (or both) a commodity. We can look at webapps as a kind of commodity.

The general public almost never wants the early or even medium term benefits or a world changing technology. So if you only ever advance by what the public wants today, you would not get very far.

This is why R&D has always been a long bet.

Over time fewer large corporations have decided to make this kind of long bet (you can even think of it a long trading position) and more R&D has moved to public institutions like universities and government labs.

Government is just plain terrible at most of the things it does, but when it pours a ton of $ on R&D there are results.

It may not be the most efficient use use of $. I am certain startups quickly iterating over business plans can do A LOT more with a lot less. But I am also equally certain there are a lot of high tech things which require far more $ over farm more time then startups usually have.

But then again how much $ constitutes a startup is changing.

The recent Y combinator deal where you simply throw $150K at everybody is fascinating. This could be a way for Y combinator to fund biotech startups.

I am not saying that I think hot or not apps are more important than advancing the technology of a civilization, but I do think that these decisions should be made by the market.

If someone makes money it is because they provided the rest of us with something that we value. It isn't our business to tell them exactly how to spend that money, it is theirs.

I may have different priorities than other people, but it is wrong to tax away their money that they could have spent on what they value, and to spend it on what I value.

I agree a lot of the companies VC's invest in are pretty stupid. However, the reason they are investing in a lot of these companies is because companies like Google are willing to pay large sums of money for them. Given this, it makes sense for them to invest in these companies.

Most of these acquisitions of web companies for millions of dollars are by most standards a complete waste of money. But it is not my place to tell Google or anyone else that they should not be offering to buy companies like Path for a rumored $100m because I have a better use for their money.

Google can afford to make these acquisitions at a loss though because they provide people with other things that are of value.

I'm not saying I disagree with your priorities, but I think it is wrong to tax others to pursue them.

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