Comment by thejteam | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thejteam | Hacker News Reader

The problem with a safety net is that somebody has to weave it. If a person want to live the life of a start-up, that's fine. Go for it. Just don't expect me to pay for your essentials just because you want to spend a couple of years of your life building a social network or recipe exchange. Sorry, it's just not that important to me or to most other people.

Life is not without risk. I can minimize it by being smart about things. I could get hit by a car when crossing the street. So I look both ways and then hustle across. I want to start my own business. So I read books and running a company for awhile. I find a problem to solve. I come up with a plan. Then I attempt to execute it. I may fail, but that's life. I learn. I get a job to pay off any debts I ran up. Then I try again.

The one thing I can say I did agree with is the need to stop favoring large established companies over smaller ones. These laws and regulations need to be tackled at all levels of government: federal, state , and local. But to do that requires a fundamental attitude change about risk. Small companies are risky. Big companies are not as risky. Ultimately it needs to be about people educating themselves and deciding accordingly.

good points. but i think the notion of having society help provide a safety net for startups exists in the context of, and in comparison to, all the other things society is currently forced to spend money on. personally i'd rather my taxes go to help provide a safety net for an entrepreneur than a truly lazy welfare parasite (important: i'm not saying all welfare recipients, i'm making a generalization to illustrate a point). and i'd rather my tax money went to help entrepreneurs than to fund overseas military adventures. i'd rather subsidize a couple taking a chance on starting a family business than to subsidize a gigantic multinational oil company. And it's not about choosing an ideal world, just one that's perhaps a little better or pragmatic than the alternative.

If you think about it, if jobs are a huge concern, then enormous international war campaigns are guaranteed to give a lot of people employment.

Obviously I'd much rather have that same money spent on making life at home better, but at least you're creating jobs either way.

War campaigns do not create structural employment, only demand shock employment. Id est, we don't need 10e6 jobs next year, we need 10e6 jobs for the next two decades.

You could make the same argument about education. Life is all about risks, why should I have pay for the risky behaviour of parents of poor children. Abolish public education funding.

However, the reason it public school is a good thing (who runs the school - private businesses or public servants is a seperate matter) is because it creates human capital. Startup launching - or entrepreneurial "education", should be included in that human capital creation function that governments provide.

> why should I have pay for the risky behaviour of parents of poor children

It's not a similar argument: people don't chose who their parents are, or where they grow up. The quality of life of a person who receives education (even if our education system isn't perfect) is definitely greater than the quality of life of a person who stays uneducated. It can actually reduce crime rates and improve the overall standard of living.

Startups are a little different, because the risks are optional, and there is a huge reward for success already built into the system. There are already tons of VC's making money helping entrepreneurs make money. It's a system that attracts people, and it's optional.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't teach entrepreneurship and creativity, but the human capital of the startup world is more of a luxury than a basic education. I would prioritize fixing our current education system before adding another layer of complexity.

If we can teach our kids in a way that allows them to be creative and inventive with already-established tools (writing, math, arts, etc.), they will definitely be better entrepreneurs. But they can also be better lawyers, better doctors, or better anything.

Education increases quality of life. So does have a successful startup - it free's from the tyranny of working for someone else. So the "luxury" is really a matter of degree. Cost of startup schooling is the same as public school or state college, roughly 10,000 per year.

Already established tools were not already established when they were first implemented - the three R's. In our modern world we need to add a few more R's - computer programming, marketing/personal branding, and entrepreneurship should be a skill everyone is taught by societal funding.

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