Am I the only one that is a little turned off by how everyone feels they deserve everything for free?
I always thought it was suspicious that all these tech companies survived for decades without being profitable. Now that ZIRP is over and they have to actually be profitable, it all makes sense.
You’re all in violent agreement. Maybe drop the ad hominem.
1. Am I the only one that is a little turned off
2. how everyone feels
3. they deserve everything for free?
It's complicated the fact that some of these are negating statements where agreement is expressed by a "no."
If something was feasible, surely the people who hang out on HN would be all over it trying to build something. Even if something does get built, it will go the same route eventually.
Whats the alternative?
Why then should we leave such important services in the hands of a handful of investors who's only interest is increasing the profit margins?
> Incentives matter, if you want good products you need to incentivize making them.
Speaking about incentives, for-profit products have the worst ones. Would you rather use a twitter-like product built by people earning the more time you spend on it, or by people who keep their jobs if they manage to achieve a positive societal effect?
No, I don't think incentives are the issue here.
One issue is probably the slowness of public institutions in embracing change, which is also a good thing in some cases, but doesn't help when the goal is to build new tech products that enable societal change. It seems that private initiative works best when it's about inventing stuff, but not when it's time to implement it in a society. Although that could be changed, if governments weren't so hellbent on delegating so much to private initiative.
Do you have an idea about how much does it cost to run a website like YouTube?