New RFS: One Million Jobs | Hacker News Reader

New RFS: One Million Jobs

blog.ycombinator.com

157 pointswasd164 comments

Creating jobs is a strange goal. The effective, simplest and most probable solution is working inefficiently. Working efficiently, on the other hand, typically eliminates jobs.

All politicians talk about creating jobs. 99% of the time it leads to bad regulation that creates jobs through incentivizing inefficiency. People of course will vote for politicians that advocate job creation because people want jobs. The extreme form of this is ludditism.

People miss the whole point of companies. The goal should never be providing jobs but creating value. If a company could be made automatic and all it's employees jobless, then that would obviously be positive. The company would still create the same value to society, but would require less people.

The main counter-argument is that those who advocate job creation only advocate "necessary jobs or "meaningful jobs". In practise that doesn't pan out. It's simply a backwards way of trying to create more products and services.

It is a very strange goal, indeed. I'm reminded of David Graeber's idea of "Bullshit jobs:"

When I talk about bullshit jobs, I mean, the kind of jobs that even those who work them feel do not really need to exist. A lot of them are made-up middle management, you know, I’m the “East Coast strategic vision coordinator” for some big firm, which basically means you spend all your time at meetings or forming teams that then send reports to one another. Or someone who works in an industry that they feel doesn’t need to exist, like most of the corporate lawyers I know, or telemarketers, or lobbyists…. Just think of when you walk into a hospital, how half the employees never seem to do anything for sick people, but are just filling out insurance forms and sending information to each other. Some of that work obviously does need to be done, but for the most part, everyone working there knows what really needs to get done and that the remaining 90 percent of what they do is bullshit.

http://www.salon.com/2014/06/01/help_us_thomas_piketty_the_1...

Its not a strange goal at all. We have a social structure and economic structure centered on work. Its the key basis for how the production of our society is distributed. Increasing overall production doesn't necessarily do anything for the lot of the median person. In a democracy, where the interests of the majority are paramount, a policy that reduces overall production but leaves the median person better off could be rational.

Not sure how you define "improving the welfare", but it's certainly not the function of the USA govt to provide anything but what's defined in the constitution. You may disagree on a philosophical basis, but that's what the constitution is designed to do.

The Preamble to the Constitution says:

> We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

It is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Constitutional scheme to think that the Framers implemented "limited government." The federal government was indeed constituted as one of limited powers, but it was created against the backdrop of the state governments, which were conceived to have inherited all the powers of the British sovereign, limited only by their own constitutions.

You can invoke the Constitution to argue that some particular policy is better implemented at the state level than the federal level, but it is incorrect to say that this or that end is not the function of the federal and state governments taken together. We live, by design, in a democracy: the ends of government are whatever we want them to be, subject only to the limitations outlined in the Constitution.

Unless I'm an idiot but you just contradicted yourself or misunderstand-ed what you wrote. The Federal government is indeed intentionally limited in power. Why would you want it any other way?

I'm more of a Federalist--confusing name for an important concept. But I don't think that's what we're talking about. It sounds like we're disagreeing with what constitutes "general welfare" as you highlighted.

Ok, where do you draw the line in modern society? If you want to invoke the argument "what would the framers have wanted?" then what do you think they meant? Who can limit the definition of "general welfare" now. All you need is a bunch of loud people for any random issue, then it becomes a general welfare issue.

When I used the word "government" in my original post, I was referring to government generally, not the federal government specifically. Thus, your point about the limited powers of the federal government is irrelevant, because by design the state governments have almost all the powers that the federal government does not. If voters wish to achieve a particular end, the government has the power to pursue it, so long as it doesn't violate any individual rights.

There is absolutely nothing in your OP that indicates you're referencing anything other than the Federal government (given the thread's context), and it wouldn't matter anyway. How is that irrelevant? At this point I have no idea if you're even writing what you intend to--I'm not understanding it.

Yes, the state governments should have more power--I assume that was your point.

There's nothing in my OP that suggests I'm even talking about the U.S. much less the U.S. federal government. I was talking about democracies in general.

> Yes, the state governments should have more power--I assume that was your point.

No, my point is that your original statement ("it's certainly not the function of the USA govt to provide anything but what's defined in the constitution") is wrong. That might be true of the federal government, which is limited in scope, but that is not true of the state governments, which are not and were never conceived to be. The state governments can (try to) provide, almost without limit, whatever voters want them to provide.

For what it's worth, Rayiner's comments make perfect sense to me and in context of the broader thread. I wonder if you've approached them with a preconceived intent or argument and, as such, read into them?

You clearly misunderstood.

Since the State (in the academic sense of the word, with capital S) can comprise institutions at multiple administrative levels (eg state and federal), it is entirely possible to have a federal government with limited powers against a backdrop of strong state governments.

Indeed, some legal historians like William Novak have argued that many of today's widespread notions around the historicity of "limited government" and the early republic are largely revisionist myths [1].

[1] http://www.history.ucsb.edu/projects/labor/documents/TheMyth...

Before you downvote me, at least reply. You wrote It is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Constitutional scheme to think that the Framers implemented "limited government."

That is exactly what the framers wanted from the federal government. Your following sentence directly contradicts your entire point. We're talking about FEDERAL POWERS.

I don't downvote people who reply to me, and in any case HN doesn't let you do so...

In any case, there's nothing contradictory in that statement. "Limited government" is a term with specific meaning in libertarian and neoclassical circles. It refers to a society in which the government, which may be democratically elected, has a limited range of powers and can only pursue certain ends. In such a society, the majority cannot vote to pursue a particular end if it is outside the proper scope of government.

The framers did not implement "limited government" in the U.S. They created a limited government, the federal government, but only against the backdrop of the un-limited state governments. In the U.S., the "government" (between the state governments and the federal government), can pursue nearly any end that voters might wish to pursue. It is, together, limited only in scope by certain Constitutional rights. The limited nature of the federal government is just a tool to divide power between the state and federal levels.

Ok, here is my last reply. Clearly, you don't want to consider any opinion other than your own:

1. You said Increasing overall production doesn't necessarily do anything for the lot of the median person.

Prove it. Provide sources. This is contradictory to the past 100 years of civilization.

2. You said In a democracy, where the interests of the majority are paramount, a policy that reduces overall production but leaves the median person better off could be rational.

Have you ever heard of "Tyranny of the Majority"? What if the majority wanted slavery? Would you still agree with your argument? We don't live in a democracy in the US--it's a simple way to communicate public participation in society, which is needed. You seem to be mixing stats and political metaphors with no coherent point.

Finally, I'm confused with your last assertion that policy that reduces overall production but leaves the median person better off could be rational. How is that rational? Then again, humans aren't rational so maybe I'm mistaken.

> Ok, here is my last reply. Clearly, you don't want to consider any opinion other than your own:

I'm happy to consider your opinion, I just don't understand what you're trying to say.

> Prove it. Provide sources. This is contradictory to the past 100 years of civilization.

This is a purely logical statement that does not require sources to prove. Imagine a society with 9 people, and 90 units of production, each person getting 10 units. Then imagine an improvement where total production goes up to 120 units, but the extra units are distributed so that each of the top three people get 20 units. Thus, not all changes that increase overall production necessarily improve the lot for the median person.

> Have you ever heard of "Tyranny of the Majority"? What if the majority wanted slavery? We don't live in a democracy in the US--it's a simple way to communicate public participation in society, which is needed.

You've got it backwards. We don't just have public participation in society, we have rule by the will of the majority, through elected leaders. The phrase "tyranny of the majority" is not synonymous with "majority rule." Rather, it refers to the exceptional case in which the majority uses its authority to abuse minorities. In the U.S. protections exist to prevent such abuse, but those are exceptions to the general rule that the majority is in charge.

In a system of limited government, the majority can express it's will through the government only in certain limited ways. But in the U.S., the "government" (state and local together) have nearly unlimited scope. In the U.S., the majority can express its will in nearly any way it wants, limited only by certain individual rights.

> Finally, I'm confused with your last assertion that policy that reduces overall production but leaves the median person better off could be rational. How is that rational?

Go back to the second scenario above. 9 people, 120 total units of production, with everyone having 10 except the top 3 people who have 20. In the next year, the people vote to change the rules so that total production is 111 units. However, that production is distributed so everyone has 11 units, while the top three people have 15 each. Thus, you have a scenario in which overall production is lower, but six people are better off and three people are worse off than the year before. In a democratic society, this is a totally rational policy.

[That increasing overall production doesn't necessarily do anything for the lot of the median person] is contradictory to the past 100 years of civilization.

Perhaps, but if you consider the past 35 years in the US (and Britain, to a lesser extent), that's exactly what's been happening. It is quite counterintuitive and hard to fathom, but in fact median incomes and wages today have not risen at all since 1980 (!) despite all these years of GDP growth and a steady rise in productivity, which has tripled since then and previously moved in tandem with [1,2].

Put in another way: simplistically, if US household income had risen along with productivity (as it did ever since modern records began), today the national median wage ought to be around $80,000 and median family income around $150,000 (in today's dollars!); and the still ongoing personal computer revolution would have seen people's wages nearly double within a decade.

Sounds preposterous, but that is what robust economic growth typically looks like.

[1] http://stateofworkingamerica.org/charts/productivity-and-rea...

[2] http://stateofworkingamerica.org/charts/real-income-growth-f...

So great it see someone on HN who gets it. It's always about productivity, all the time. Increase productivity bad you increase wealth and quality of life.

Focussing on job creation is the wrong metric because you can do it by employing people to be inefficient, which makes everyone worse off as production falls.

The best way to actually, legitimately create jobs is to find a way to match a need many people have with people who can address it, in a way that wasn't previously discoverable.

One goal might be to shift efficiency towards those who are most efficient. For example, does it make sense for very skilled professional to go to an establishment to get a massage or a manicure/pedicure? I could easily see those two jobs become 100% itinerant. It means that a productive customer doesn't need to travel and that all those people effectively become their own boss and maintain their own equipment. This also cuts out the cost of real estate, and allows for a reputation system where the best masseuses and manicurists do exceptionally well.

Then again, this would be a net gain of 0 jobs, since these people would presumably be leaving employment under the person who owns the real estate.

I can already imagine how the cosmetology boards would feel towards such a start up. Those owning the establishments would start pressuring the cosmetology boards just like dispatchers are the ones pressuring taxicab commissions. Do cosmetology boards regulate the establishments, the people or the people relative to the establishment with which they are associated?

Another market would be disintermediating personal trainers from the gyms they are associated with. I'm curious if personal trainers would earn more if they paid for personal memberships with the 2-4 biggest gym networks in a geographic region and then advertised which gyms they could train you at. This way customers could search for personal trainers that work out of the customer's gym of choice. Right now PT pay a portion of their earnings to the gyms, and I suspect its a large percentage, relatively speaking. This could be extended beyond personal training to sports specific training (running, swimming, cycling, rock climbing, etc.). [sarcasm]Is the domain trainr.com taken yet?[/sarcasm]

Another market could probably revolve around elections, and other regular seasonal/temporary work. Have the volunteers focus on the more valuable labor like p2p evangelism and have the paid labor work on putting up signs (and cleaning them up afterwards).

Also, is there a market for in-home caregivers (elderly, disabled, terminally ill) already and special needs caregivers? Would be great to be able to search for people in an area by reputation, experience, special skills/certifications (registered nurse, experience with children with autism, etc.).

Basically, any job that exists today where there are local establishments "pimping" out the employee (gyms, homecare companies, etc.) and taking an exorbitant cut of revenue because they have a brand name or prime real estate is ripe for disruption from an online P2P marketplace. You can literally flip through the "gigs" and "services" section of craigslist to get ideas here.

I'm also surprised that there isn't a way to hire a cheap paralegal directly to help you find a decent lawyer, negotiate a decent rate and work with that lawyer to make things more efficient. The cost of legal representation could be much cheaper if people needing legal representation could hire paralegals and recently graduated law students that don't yet have a job (tough market) to help you out. Furthermore, it helps out all those out of work law students since it gives them a way in the door with good law firms via their client's pocket books. If a lawyer is particularly impressed with the person helping their client, they may decide to hire them full time.

To truly create 1M new jobs, you'd need to make an entirely new line of work (Amazon mechanical turk type stuff), or enable 1M new people to participate in an existing line of work where previously there were barriers to entry (Uber/Lyft/Sidecar/AirBnB). The latter would have the effect of deflating that market, reducing median income so that achieving 1M becomes more difficult.

>Another market would be disintermediating personal trainers from the gyms they are associated with.

FYI, some dance instructors in the Bay Area work this way (i.e. they are independent but have relationships with various dance studios to teach and/or use the space for private classes.)

Is there a time-consuming accounting/tax/audit task that can be performed remotely on abstracted information (identifying parties removed)?

That's the basic, economics 101 goal of a simplistic capitalist. Until a few years ago, the only people really pushing this notion were people in the resource extraction business.

Efficiency at all costs is something that's great for you to make other people do. Do you take the bus and walk to work? Do you have an padded chair in your office?

Henry Ford was uniquely smart among the "captains of industry" of the past in that he got that his ability to manufacture cars exceeded the economy's ability to consume them.

One of his business objectives was for his workers to be able to purchase his cars.

Yeah, let's imitate Ford, and pay our workers well - as long as they allow their lives to be scrutinized by the company's moral police:

The profit-sharing was offered to employees who had worked at the company for six months or more, and, importantly, conducted their lives in a manner of which Ford's "Social Department" approved. They frowned on heavy drinking, gambling, and (what today are called) deadbeat dads. The Social Department used 50 investigators, plus support staff, to maintain employee standards; a large percentage of workers were able to qualify for this "profit-sharing."

Besides, paying people well and eliminating jobs is not exclusive. Did Ford hire people he didn't need?

You missed he point completely.

Ford was a hard nosed capitalist with fascist leanings. Even so, while living in an era where workers were competely disposable and had virtually no rights, he paid people more than they were theoretically worth.

I just dislike the Ford adoration, but fair enough.

Still, my last statement stands; paying well is not incompatible with hiring few.

I also fundamentally disagree with this post. My goal as an entrepreneur is to eliminate a million jobs. I am reading a book about the Shipping container, and it massively reduced the number of jobs for longshoremen and merchant marines.

I can also say that working at a big company that is people's mentality. They want to manage a lot of people. That's their goal. Not to create value. And imho the results are often poor.

I think it would be great for society if there were less jobs and people were able to pursue more creative endeavors than menial jobs. imho the goal should be to find a way for people to meet their basic needs without needing a job. NOT to create tons of jobs.

The RFS never said one million low end jobs and specifically stated they are not looking for companies that would employ one million people. Maybe creating 1,000,000 enterpreneurs?

It sounds like they are interested in 2 sided markets, like Uber, or airbnb. I get that part, but the "jobs" part is lost on me. Wouldn't uber be cooler if it used self driving cars!!!

YC isn't in a position to invest in deep automation, and are good at building markets. And once you build a 2 sided freelancer market , you are very likely to control it when it's automated.

Uber will obviously switch to self-driving cars once that's viable, shaving the on-going cost of drivers.

I think you are confused with his proposal. YC is looking for any company that can create demand that requires 1 millions workers to fulfill it.

It is not to create a huge company. It has nothing to do with eliminating jobs. It has nothing to do with provide basic living standard.

For example, if a new technology that allow us to regrow part of organs easily, but it requires living persons to carry the organs within their bodies until organs mature to be transplanted. Those people may have a job as 'organ incubator'.

My goal would is (as an investor in Organovo) to regrow organs and it's agnostic to whether it creates, eliminates or displaces workers.

Of course you should not. But in the end, you need other people who are willing to trade something for your investment.

Your investment would be valued 0 if no one wants or needs it. And valuation is how much they are willing to pay for it.

So in the end. I think creating jobs is just a mask for 'creating demand for new things for people have no new creating wealth'. Since total aggregation of time of lives of oligarchs and their families are much limited than total populations. So it is better to create demand for consumer market.

But of course, if one day, oligarchs have technology to enable them to live forever, they will have unlimited time to live and my argument won't sustain under that condition.

This is a bizarre tangent. An oligarch could just enslave people through brute force or more subtle means of mental and psyhcological manipulation into working feverishly in a self-defeating system of exploitation.

Is that "creating demand" for labour? Or for the products?

Is demand for slave labour a good kind of demand?

It is a valid argument. If an oligarch desires to enslave the rest of human being for its own amusement. And the rest of human beings are willing to trade their precious time of lives with the oligarch by being enslaved.

But I feel if the oligarch overplays the enslavement, everyone can choose to commit suicide and having no pain anymore in their lives. Then the oligarch will have no one to play the game with.

So to keep the system working, the oligarch has to fulfill desires of people.

My main point is the most precious wealth for everyone is the time of their lives. And we all trade our time in lives with other people in either products or services. Progress in technologies has enabled us to enjoy growing purchase power of our time and enable us with more fulfillment of desires. But for the moment the whole economy system somewhat gets stuck and we are having problems to figure out what demand can we create to allow people to trade with. Even an oligarch has to trade wealth for desires.

"An oligarch desires to enslave the rest of human being for its own amusement. And the rest of human beings are willing..."

That's not how slavery works.

"I feel if the oligarch overplays the enslavement, everyone can choose to commit suicide"

Again, this is not historically aware.

=====

I will agree with you on a broader point, which I think you've left unsaid: that everything you want in life is almost always in the hands of someone else already.

For example, if you want a thing someone else has already owned it (or its component parts). If you want a friend, someone else has already been in a relationship with them (either earlier friends, or their family etc). If you want to build anything you need tools, and raw materials, and other resources that somebody else has already found, claimed, owned or handled.

And in that logical sense, "success" is nothing more than taking what (some) other people have already got.

But you've over-abstracted the point to much:

*Even an oligarch has to trade wealth for desires."

True, but this is still consistent will chattle slavery.

I may "trade my wealth" for weapons, and food, and the means to keep you chained to the cotton field. But that says nothing of the way in which the threat of violence co-erces you into doing my bidding--that type of coercive consent is an interesting but ultimately tangentially related academic rabbit hole.

While I tend to agree, there's some truth to the saying "Idle hands are the devil's playground". How do non-creative people lead fulfilling lives without being rewarded for their labor? I suppose there's lots of volunteer work to do, but if we could eliminate jobs, we might as well eliminate volunteer work.

There is plenty of stuff to do. hobbies, sports, traveling, socializing. people often do "work" as a hobby. cooking, working in the yard, hunting, fishing.

It's thought that hunter/gatherer societies only worked 15-20 hours per week.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society

We may have different definitions of "fulfilling". I view it as adding value to society. All the things you described are either creative endeavors or just improving one's own life. If non-creatives just played sports, traveled and socialized, then we have no problem. What I worry about are people who have nothing to motivate them to do those things and then resent the rest of society, or use their creativity to harm society. When you have bills to pay, that tends to preoccupy the mind.

Just because your goal is to eliminate jobs doesn't mean another entrepreneur can't aim to do the opposite. I think a lot of the types of companies that would be useful in this direction don't so much "create jobs" as they allow people to get paid to do something they enjoy/want to do. Patreon and Beacon are the two that come to mind for me.

Is creating jobs any entrepreneur's goal?

Increase customers, yes. Create a two sided market, yes. In the case of a 2 sided market the "workers" are your customers.

Uber eliminates the jobs for manual dispatcher at cab companies.

This is interesting because it might motivate some out-of-the-box thinking. If you can't think of a good way to make a ton of money while creating a million jobs, then sure, eliminate some more like everyone else is trying to do. Y Combinator might well even fund you, under their RFS for robotics or the one for levers or infrastructure or AI.

Is creating jobs any entrepreneur's goal?

Absolutely: their own job, for starters!

More broadly though: some of the most oft-cited reasons by people starting small businesses (tech included) is quite explicitly to be able to do stuff they like and be paid for it; or be able to surround themselves with like-minded people working on goals of common interest to them. Other times, family members, friends or colleagues/guild members come together to provide themselves with a steady source of income --that's how most law firms and medical practices get started, after all.

>I think it would be great for society if there were less jobs and people were able to pursue more creative endeavors than menial jobs.

The world is going to have a hard time pursuing "creative endeavors" while homeless and starving - which, if you hadn't checked, is what happens when you don't have a job and people around you support conservative economic policy.

It is not possible to hold this position without being legitimately fairytale-villain evil or a socialist.

They said "the goal should be to find a way for people to meet their basic needs without needing a job."

e.g., if someone has off-grid battery tech and solar (or whatever else), they can knock off their electricity and gas bills. If they can automate the recycling of sewage into clean water, fertiliser and leftovers, and they had water storage, they could ditch their water bill.

If they had underground (think shipping containers) and automated food production, they could cover some of their food bills and still have ground level land free for entertainment.

Of my general costs, I'm not immediately sure how we would ultimately replace council costs (roads, etc) and internet connectivity.

How would they get to own all these wonderful things, and the land to put them on, if they don't have jobs?

The shipping container certainly created one million jobs globally. I have read "The Box" also, and the job creation was in the factories around the world. The job loss was mostly the longshoremen and the break-bulk process that was wasteful in comparison.

Creating 1 million jobs might mean disrupting 100,000 others. Or maybe it will just mean removing waste in large scale processes that we currently do as a society. My friend Mo is doing this http://www.gizmag.com/infinite-pipeline/23762/ which could help bring water to places that it wasn't economical to do previously. This would change the life of those people who need to fetch water every day. Spending half your day getting water is a huge waste of human potential.

The point about the shipping container creating jobs in factories is an interesting one. The effect on jobs is complicated. Even Uber eliminates the jobs for dispatcher at cab companies.

I prefer clear goals. I want to create value and I am agnostic to the effect it has on jobs.

+1 for Mo

My goal as an entrepreneur is to eliminate a million jobs.

Surely your goal as an antrepreneur shoul dbe to provide a million people with a desirable new product/service/ The word 'entrepreneur' means 'between-taker', ie someone that carries things back and forth between suppliers and consumers, like historical traders.

Identifying economic inefficiency and finding something to remedy it is one way of identifying your target consumer, but far from the only one. In your example of the shipping container, you neglect to consider that they're only useful insofar as there is sufficient trading activity taking place to fill the containers up. Labor shortages aren't often a big limiting factor on trade.

I think it would be great for society if there were less jobs and people were able to pursue more creative endeavors than menial jobs.

So do I, but creativity and productivity are wholly different things, especially when it comes to paying the bills.

Yes, I think another way to think of the 'between-taker' idea is that an entrepreneur find ways to use existing resources in a new way that creates more value than those resources could previously create. Sometimes those resources are physical (machines, buildings, etc), but they can also be human beings.

I think it is reasonable for YC to have an investment theory that is something like 'productivity enhancements are making many talented human resources available more cheaply, a business that finds a way to use them could do well.'

But, I think the Uber example is a little unclear. It seems likely to me that driving is going to be automated away in 10-20 years. And, since so many adults drive (even those with other jobs), there is a massive incentive to find a way to automate that activity and make it safer.

I think there is a bit of a paradox - as the number of people employed in a task increases, the incentive to automate that task increases as well. I am not too optimistic that creating large numbers of long-term sustainable jobs is easy, but I think the attempt to find uses for undervalued resources makes as much sense for humans as it does for any other resource.

Well, I think you don't really know what a job is and what efficiency should be.

A job is demand that has to be fulfilled by another human being.

Demand comes from desires of human beings.

We as human beings, can have unlimited desires.

We as human beings, are limited by time of lives.

To create jobs is to create unlimited demand that need to be fulfilled with trading of time of another human beings.

Efficiency is to increase the purchase power of time. Then wealth of lives of human beings.

And wealth has to flow, otherwise prosperity won't appear.

And desires are limited by our imagination.

Beautifully, concisely put!

It is a shame though your downvoters elsewhere in this thread fail to appreciate your effort at explaining the --admittedly quite unintuitive-- demand side of the macroeconomy.

Thanks for your appreciations. It is hard for me to explain those ideas as other do. But yes, I feel the current problems is we forget the demand side of economy.

>The company would still create the same value to society

Ok, I'll bite.

It would still create the same value to its investors.

No for-profit company ever creates value to society except by employing people or by having secondary effects that result in more/higher-quality employment.

Nope. See "consumer surplus".

... And why is that valuable to society? Because then consumers have money to left over to spend on other things.

See "secondary effects that result in more/higher-quality employment."

> Creating jobs is a strange goal.

Why? Who says efficiency should be humanity's goal? Is humanity a machine to be optimized? Are we just evolved cogs, one of nature's crueler jokes, or are we (also) agents that can put up a fight? You know, Dostoyevsky extolled the virtues of intentional self harm -- or spite -- as a person's noblest goal, asserting freedom from "laws of nature". I'm not saying spite should be a matter of public policy, but it's very important to avoid seeing some mechanistic, or even natural, process as a desirable outcome just because that's how things work (this is the naturalistic fallacy[1]). Public policy should be crafted subject to consideration and political debate.

> People miss the whole point of companies. The goal should never be providing jobs but creating value.

Says who? That's a peculiarly American view of the role of corporations. Another valid goal for companies is providing sustenance to their employees first, and "value" later. I.e. generating value is just a means to an end.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy

It also depends on the meaning of "value." In the US it looks like "value" is interchangeable with "cash-able goods," which as you point out is quite restrictive. And, on the other hand, it goes straight against most of companies' "visions" (which are usually non-monetizable).

>> Creating jobs is a strange goal. > Why? Who says efficiency should be humanity's goal? Is humanity a machine to be optimized?

I think saying that creating jobs is a goal is more accurately the viewpoint that humans are cogs.

Say there's an efficient way to do something, for example: a machine that weaves fabric.

If the goal is to create jobs, we could stop the machine and hire people to do the job. In fact, I bet we could force people to do it in a really inefficient and tedious manner that would require lots of people to replace a single machine.

The disadvantages: slower. more expensive. more error-prone. people's time-wasting.

The advantages: these people have a job so now you have a 'valid' excuse to give people an income.

I'm not arguing that one goal is better than another, just saying that goals cannot be (solely) derived from logic, because nature or logic cannot dictate what is good for humans. Deciding on common goals is exactly what politics is for.

That's a peculiarly American view of the role of corporations. Another valid goal for companies is providing sustenance to their employees first, and "value" later.

Indeed. Even stakeholder-driven commercial institutions like co-ops or credit unions are somehow culturally not-quite-corporations in the (American) usual sense.

>People miss the whole point of companies. The goal should never be providing jobs but creating value.

"creating shareholder value"

Even if we're ignoring "social good" (which is a perfectly valid "shareholder value") one way to chase profit is to look for inputs that are cheap, and figure out how to turn those inexpensive inputs into expensive finished goods.

Right now, low-end labor is quite inexpensive. If you can figure out how to produce something useful using that inexpensive labor, there is profit to be had.

I would not like to use Uber as an example of creating jobs.

I see them as KFC in the egg farming world - pushing all the capital expenditure and risk onto smallest individuals whilst then aggregating what should be a distributed market.

I think any company capable of directly claiming to create one million jobs will be this abusive on a massive global scale - not something I would want to invest in personally.

I can imagine plenty of ways to create a million jobs - invent fusion power, invent a foldaway surgery theatre, but they are not things that capture the value back to the originator (that is the genuine use for patents).

So this seems like "build a market platform, make sure it is not interoperable, find a business model that makes individuals dependant on you, while pretending they are businesses". I think I understand what YC is reaching for here - there is a coming hollowing out of jobs, somehow we need to create new jobs. I agree - but a business model that creates new jobs and captures that surplus seems to me abusive - or it is a marketplace open to competition from other marketplaces and that's rarely a way to make money. So far.

Edit: clarify as much as I can this early before coffee

Uber is actually a good example of how existing regulations can be a formidable barrier to startups; or even any kind of innovation. You are not just free to offer a new product or service that competes with existing ones. The incumbents will have the existing regulations on their side and use them to shut you down.

> The incumbents will have the existing regulations on their side and use them to shut you down.

Absolutely, but you must consider the possibility that in addition to turf protection, those regulations actually serve a social purpose. Not every innovation is good and every regulation is bad. Sometimes regulation is formalized valuable lessons learned over many years. As someone who sees Uber as an exploitative venture (I may be wrong), I actually find those regulations the last wall slowing down the huns.

I absolutely agree. The analogies I use when describing this are with the food (and medical/drug industry). Unless you grow/rear your own food, you really have no idea what's on your plate and your ability to comprehend the totality of the system that got the food there is quite limited (unless you work in that industry or devote significant time to it). Therefore, there is regulation intended to protect consumers from harm and from making poor choices.

It's true that regulations can be perverted and manipulated by incumbents but in my mind that's a separate issue (related to lobbying and politics). It doesn't mean we should throw out the laws all-together.

How many Uber drivers have you talked to? Every driver I've asked has been quite happy with the job. While they might avoid open criticism, often they've provided sufficient details about their other or previous job that it's clear that this is an improvement.

As many as I have chicken farmers, long haulage truckers and other "capital at the lowest rung" industries. Which is one.

But that's not the point - Uber has no obligation to their drivers to provide work, or a fixed amount of pay not does it want to operate in an environment where it Ilis forced to do that. And history shows that if you have all the capital requirements at the bottom of the ladder (you own the car / the chicken shed / the 17wheeler) then the bottom of the ladder will keep cutting its own throat.

Uber would not be in business if it owned the capital.

What surprises me is the taxi firms do not seem to be fighting back with a (open) app of their own

I wanted to revisit this quickly - I think what struck me was the difference between entrepreneurship and invention. I genuinely struggle to see how to create a million new jobs. Jobs are either shifted (demand for product A drops so Factory A shuts and everyone then goes to work at factory B)

This seems to be something where the total jobs globally is static (perhaps total demand is) except for natural growth probably population related

And is distinct from an invention - say fusion power - that actually increases the value available to humans

Just realised quite horribly that I wrote that on the coach in to work 20 hours ago - and have just got into bed. It's gonna be a rough day tomorrow.

most people seemed to have picked up on this, but we aren't looking for a company that wants to have one million _employees_.

i can envision a future where a million people drive for uber, or where someone creates a healthcare platform that lets individuals find people who need care, or an education platform that matches up people who want to learn with people who want to each, or...

So it's "a million jobs with no healthcare or retirement benefits," then.

Even with a cynical reading, that would seem to be permitted but not required.

You just described Fiverr

How about a company that figures out how to provide _very_ affordable high-quality health care to large numbers of people, so they aren't dependent on an employer for their healthcare? That would allow many more people to become free-lancers, or to work for companies too small to get good health insurance prices. Such affordable healthcare might make it possible for a million more people to work for startups.

Such a company might not be feasible in the current regulatory climate, but some people say the same about Uber.

You mean like the NHS?

You are describing universal health care.

I read it more like a machine in everyone's basement, next to the water heater. It would diagnose illnesses, set broken bones, stitch up wounds, and inject you with all the drugs you need.

Or "a million entrepreneurs who are responsible and fully in control of their own healthcare and retirement benefits". If you're self-employed, you can choose the precise healthcare and retirement package that makes sense for you.

Or "50k new firms each with 20 employees". When I first read the OP I thought about some new "Green Power" innovation where you need installers, servicers, etc. Possibly-crazy example would be PV that's 100x cheaper / more efficient than today, leading to an explosion in the demand for rooftop installations -- to the level of nearly every household, strip mall, big box, etc in the developed world. Prior example might be the auto industry 100 years ago, which created a need for parts mfg firms, dealers, mechanics, etc.

Or an entirely new and previously unheard of industry. Definitely-crazy example would be making Mars colonization possible, where you'd need thousands of employees for production, thousands more colonists, specialists like pilots, entire sub-industries, etc. The canonical prior example would be the explosive growth of the internet over the past 30 years; SEO as a job title (to pick one) didn't exist in 1990.

Prior example might be the auto industry 100 years ago, which created a need for parts mfg firms, dealers, mechanics, etc. (...) Or an entirely new and previously unheard of industry.

Pneumatic transit comes to mind. Demonstrating the viability of Hyperloop as the first new mode of transportation since the jet would spurn a whole new global industry practically overnight!

You must live in a country that ties healthcare and retirement benefits to an employer. Sounds barbaric, like some sort of indenture.

Ohwait.

That doesn't sound like indenture. If you aren't contributing to society, you do not deserve anything. This is precisely what corporations do today and it works.

OK, I'll bite.

No, it actually doesn't work. While it does sound like a good idea in theory (tit-for-tat), in practice greedy corporations (I mean that neutrally, in the capitalist sense where corporations have a duty to extract maximum profits) have powerful incentives to shaft employees over these benefits in order to maximise shareholder value.

In an ideal scenario, companies would compete for employees, and would provide good benefits to out-offer other companies. In practice, a large part of the workforce is groveling for jobs and will accept any raw deal for some kind of income.

Oh hey, egregious example: Walmart http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Walmart#Health_ins...

Or that thing that's been in the news lately: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/6/30/hobby-lobby-...

Or some random link from "company denies healthcare news" search: http://www.news-leader.com/story/money/2014/03/18/washington...

Would it be fair to say a marketplace for services which software is poor (relative to humans) at providing? I can't see how else to create 1M jobs while still having the jobs, individually, produce value.

Temp agencies employ 2.6 million people a year in the US. It's fragmented and inefficient in a way that is mildly predatory to workers. My guess is that software could replace the temp agency middleman and help "employ" 1 million+ folks.

A website for US-based temps, "physical delivery" of employees, is interesting. I'm not aware of any service that does this. Like Uber for people!

If physical presence isn't required, Elance, Odesk and even Amazon Mechanical Turk exist. Drives cost of labor down to the $1/hour range (globally competitive) - probably not what Sam is getting at here.

It's also really interesting to see this idea. My initial read is that this sounds like a response to the common criticism that Silicon Valley destroys jobs in aggregate ("software eats the world.") Will be fascinating to see if something emerges here.

this would be for physical work and less for odesk/elance type of jobs that can be virtual. think accountants, on site employees in retail, etc.

You are definitely onto something huge here [1]: you could be improving the livelihood of millions with an app to allow people to fill in on temp jobs at competitive wages with the click of a button. Talk of a massive impact...

The road ahead is steep, though. At first I thought Leah's TaskRabbit would eventually head that way, but to me it strikes me as if she's still massively underestimating the potential of her platform. Justin Kan's Exec and its postmortem doesn't bode too well, either (but it's still an insightful read) [2]. I'm pretty sure though you and AB have what it takes to figure it all out.

[1] http://www.propublica.org/article/the-expendables-how-the-te...

[2] http://justinkan.com/exec-errands-post-mortem

The propublica article opened my eyes to many things. It's a 134 billion dollar a year market that's highly fragmented - top 4 largest only account for 11% of the market. Sounds like a problem for software.

Taskrabbit is for tasks, which are great, but not in as much demand as weekly, monthly, or even daily stints. Think the local starbucks, a small business around the holiday hours, or even accounting (Robert Half is big on this).

Overall, it has the potential for a very large impact and massive business. Look at the jobs report today. If you could more efficiently help employ 1 million people the economy is improved. You're also looking at one of the largest workforces and businesses in the country.

btw, sounds like you know Andres and I. Can't tell who this is by your username. Feel free to drop me a line - j@jasonlbaptiste.com

I can also envision a future where no one drives because all cars are driverless. I'm not sure why you'd want the future where we still have humans doing the driving or the cooking or the teaching or anything else for that matter when we can just let the people lounge around or create art and poetry.

There's no empirical data, at least not in the fortune 500, that show a company with more than maybe ~500K employees. So the headline point is easily rejected at that level.

If the concept is to "create an ecosystem" that has 1x10^6 employees, than this seems almost trivial. In that case its just a series of logical optics on starting new industries. But again, what is the empirical data show?

Would facebook meet this test? Did they invent social media? Probably not, so they are a "failure". Are there any companies in the fortune 500 that would? Maybe RCA and the TV industry? or the early Hollywood Studios? Silicon Valley itself seems have created more than "a million jobs" if you abstract it out to "the computer" industry, or "the software" industry but its largest companies don't get that big and its ecosystems are simply abstractions both in their point of origin and their ultimate threshold/boundary definitions.

Having a company that employes people for "freelance work" is simply just an outsourcing shell company and nothing to be proud of. It also doesn't seem overly original, in the more dramatic way the the headline would suggest.

I too want to have a million people doing my bidding for me, cheaply. (BTW, The fastest way to get this dynamic is probably to make the poor poorer, and the rich richer).

suggested edit:

New RFS: One Million Careers

(McJob creators need not apply).

This is one of the most cynical threads I've seen on HN. I hope you're undeterred by the reactions here. If HN starts funding hardware startups - especially ones that that manufacture locally - the multiplier effect [1] can be significant.

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerry-jasinowski/jobs-multipli...

Shameless plugin > "education platform that matches up people who want to learn with people who want to teach" - kind of what we are trying to do at FillSkills

"I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work." Bertrand Russell http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html

Great quote! Job creation is such a short-sighted goal, when we should really be looking at an organised transition to less and less work. Things are going that way anyway, but in an entirely uncontrolled fashion which will lead (perhaps is leading already?) to a lot of social problems. Instead of attempting to go down that path, Y Combinator just wants to prop up the existing system it seems?

A lot of posts being downvoted in this thread. This one clearly contributes whether you agree or not. What is going on?

The RFS talks about sparking a million jobs, not necessarily a million full-time, long-commute, high-stress jobs. They could be the sorts of opportunities where the takers can get a fairly painless way to cover some bills for 15-20 hours a week from home.

Or a way of handling job sharing so that a million full-time jobs are just as easily managed by two million people who'd prefer to reduce their hours. (People going on maternity/paternity leave would love an opportunity like this.)

I know "jobs" are a goal with good intentions, but I have to disagree. While it's political suicide to claim otherwise, aiming for job creation simply plays into the idea that more jobs are the things we desire, when what we really want is a comfortable existence and a sense of fulfilment.

What new consensus might we converge on if we continue to automate away jobs quicker than retraining can reasonably be expected?

Personally, I'm excited when technology can expose the lie that 40-hour-per-week paying jobs are required to be a contributing member of society. Unfortunately, exposing that lie likely involves some period of high unemployment before a critical mass of people start to reject the premise that holding a job equates to worthiness in society.

I've recently come across the term "accelerationism" on HN, and it seems to at least partially describe the above position:

> Accelerationism is the name of a contemporary political heresy: the insistence that the only radical political response to capitalism is not to protest, disrupt, critique, or détourne it, but to accelerate and exacerbate its uprooting, alienating, decoding, abstractive tendencies.

edit: To answer my own question, I guess it has to be a "job platform" like EBay or Uber, and not a company (as sama is saying). Otherwise the economics are quite challenging.

There is the distinction that EBay sellers get most of the revenue; EBay just takes a cut and thus doesn't have to have a huge amount of revenue itself.

-----

Doesn't this mean the company has to make more than $50 billion in revenue? Assuming a $50K wages a year, 1M jobs takes $50B to pay for.

Do the jobs have to be in the US?

Seems like an interesting idea, but my first thought is that you would want to find some way NOT to pay $50B a year... that would be a lot of profits. More profits than the vast majority of companies make.

It seems risky because it's hard to imagine getting to 1M jobs in less than 10 or 20 years. But in 10 or 20 years, computers will have gotten a lot better at the things that they are currently poor at. It's very hard to predict, but it will change rapidly.

Did EBay create 1M jobs? i.e. a significant number of people have made their entire living on Ebay. I think it might have been on the order of 1M, but not sure.

edit: http://investor.ebay.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=170073

Ebay in 2005 claims 724K as primary or secondary source of income. If I had to guess it would be more like 72K "jobs", as 1/10th of those people might have Ebay as their primary source. That was 2005, but I don't think the order of magnitude has changed in the last 9 years.

I live in Europe, baltic country. you can get a lot of workers to work for 10k/year. for 20 it can be almost top level workers.

Did EBay create 1M jobs?

This is pretty difficult to determine, if you want net jobs created, not merely people who currently make a living selling via eBay. For example, when a consignment store closes and that business moves to eBay, those are jobs shifting from one location to another, not really net-created jobs. Figuring out how to net that out is pretty complex, and I'm not sure solid enough data is available to determine to what portion of eBay's business are new transactions, versus existing merchants shifting sales channels.

This is perhaps even more clear with Amazon Marketplace, which has a number of booksellers making a living selling used books full-time there, but probably a number actually amounting to fewer employees than have been displaced by the same Amazon's impact on brick-and-mortar used book stores. Many of the full-time sellers are even direct continuations of such used-book stores, which have laid off most of their staff and "gone virtual", transitioning from meatspace to online storefronts. (This isn't to say that Amazon Marketplace doesn't produce other advantages, but creating net new jobs in the used-book sector is probably not one of them.)

To further complicate things, you also have to count the _customers_ of the firm in question. Amazon made certain things cheaper, and there are probably at least a few marginal businesses out there that can exist because of it.

A similar argument goes for eBay -- there are probably entrepreneurs out there who make a living in part because they can use eBay to buy things. This includes obvious stuff like resellers, but also less obvious stuff like a business that just uses eBay products as one of many inputs.

Perhaps it can be done with leverage? Finding a way to empower others to create those jobs. Perhaps this is via capital, advice, networking, or some combination.

Unfortunately, the historical way to create 1M jobs is with bullshit jobs[1] which by themselves produce no value.

[1]http://www.salon.com/2014/06/01/help_us_thomas_piketty_the_1...

A lot of people are treating this like a genie wish, or an unreflective prize awarded to the first team to accomplish this by any means, or something...

This is a request for startups with a particular feature. Funding them still needs to seem like a sufficiently good idea. Somehow, I don't imagine Sam leaping to fund slave labor(!), or even less-obviously-absurd things that only technically meet the requirement while not actually doing so in a meaningful way or having any chance at a profit.

This is moving the wrong direction. We want to use automation to reduce the number of jobs, not to create makework for it's own sake. This is the key statement:

There are a lot of areas where it makes sense to divide labor between humans and computers—we are very good at some things computers are terrible at and vice versa—and some of these require huge amounts of human resources.

As entrepreneurs it's our task to make computers better at the things that they aren't good at. It will require groundbreaking technology, a lot of work and incredible amounts of risk...but if not us, then who? We're blessed with the ability to make tools that make lives easier, we should be doing everything we can do make machines do more work so that humans can do less.

If Adam Smith was right and land, labor, capital is the relevant equation, then automation is a way to create nearly unlimited amounts of labor. Human brains are probably the most powerful computers to ever exist, it's unlikely that busy work is the best way to utilize them. A focus on creating jobs just exacerbates the social problems of capitalism. When people mention basic income, they usually also mention automation as a way to mitigate the loss in the labor force. If we push for more jobs instead of automating away jobs, we're just delaying the best outcome.

The most important question of the 21st century is "What can be automated?". Reducing the number of jobs is our great calling. Paradoxically, we'll have to employ at lot of smart people to make progress toward that goal. I think that's the real challenge, and it's one that we can rise to.

List of companies/organisations on that scale: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers

Looks like the RFS is looking to build an army.

Dreaming big is good, but may be that goal is off by an order of magnitude or two? For comparison, just look at [1].

I'm not discouraging, but what startup even has the potential to hope to employ even 100000 individuals within the next 10 years?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers_in_th...

Commenters aren't realizing you can create jobs without hiring people.

Uber has created many jobs. Airbnb too.

Created or moved? I would argue that the Uber/AirBnB jobs have just taken market share from existing jobs. That's not to criticize or make it less worthwhile, I just don't think that is the intention of the RFS - though its brevity leaves it quite open.

Uber has definitely created. Typically speaking there's a hard cap on the number of taxi drivers. For example Seattle hasn't issued a new taxi license since 1990 [1]. That's insane! The area has grown dramatically in that time. That said there is some amount that are moved rather than created. It's definitely something that should be considered.

[1] http://www.change.org/petitions/seattle-city-council-break-t...

Great "Jobs can be created without hiring people"

so no limits of quality of the job, number of hours per week to qualify, or such? Such requirements are service oriented at best, if not then off shore for others.

to give a sense of scale, Wal Mart has 1.4 million or so workers in the US.

You cited taxi type services, but would not work at home call center work be similar? The in home medical care many receive qualifies, are there are other in home opportunities out there? Education perhaps, remote teaching and the like?

Honestly this "one million" number just comes off as a feel good statement, it reminds me of politician speak way way too much

But how many of those jobs are job transfers, someone moving from a normal taxi firm to uber doesn't create a job in that sense.

The two ways to solve this problem would be to find a fundamentally new task that humans have never done before or to find a task that only some humans can currently do and make it do-able by many more people.

So job creation by cleverly bypassing regulations and agreements is considered desirable?

Perhaps so.

In the case where taxi medallions are in far shorter supply than what is actually required, but there is a negative externality - increased congestion and pollution, which is essentially what the medallions were created to control.

Likewise with AirBnB - while it would allow me to rent out a room or my house, those who own a condo or rent an apartment are likely breaching an agreement they never really read. Assuming the guests are polite (i.e. not noisy and not arriving at odd hours) the externalities are controllable, but the backlash against your neighbors running a hoteling service is quite understandable.

Rather than controlling medallions would it not make more sense to charge a per-mile tax on anyone carrying passengers for a fee (including uber)? Make that tax roughly equal to the bus fare for the same trip and then use that money to subsidise bus fares.

I'm reading this as "one million indirect jobs" as opposed to "one million directly employed jobs". I'm not sure that a corporation with one million direct employees is currently a desirable end goal due to large organizational overhead, political infighting and large inertia. Of course redefining what "jobs" are, would help.

I am reading it as several companies that create an aggregate of 1 million jobs rather than one absurdly large corporation.

I am reading it as the creation of an entirely new industry which will spawn sub-industries, hundreds or thousands of firms, and a million jobs over the course of the next 20 years.

The way I read it, they don't care how many companies would employ the workers. It's about discovering new demand and a way to fill it that involves people. This is interesting precisely because most start-ups are trying to displace people with technology. Note that this isn't a negative judgement on either side: having people work on things they don't need to be working on can be bad at the same time that finding new things to work on can be good.

What about YouTubers? Or people with Etsy stores. These businesses focus on letting people be able to make a living off their service.

Yeah, I came here to ask this as well. I get really excited about shops that work hard to facilitate and lower the barrier of entry for people to make a living doing what they love (Etsy is a specific career-crush for me). Curious whether this is included in the sort of thing the RFS is talking about.

Agreed, but how many people make enough for it to be their full-time jobs?

65% of Etsy sellers make less than $100/yr: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/11/08/etsy_economi...

There are only two types of things which can be produced: information and material.

Most people aren't very good at working with information beyond basic pattern recognition/recall and to some extent, human interaction. Most of the people who are good at either or both of these things are already gainfully employed.

In the material realm, we already produce enough food, clothing, housing, and computers to suit the needs of the public. We have more empty residences than homeless people. As technology advances in the imminent years we will become less reliant on people for producing these things--not more. Most significant material advances will come from knowledge work discoveries (e.g. larger capacity batteries), not from material work (assembling batteries by hand more quickly or using more people).

Dolphins do not derive their self-worth, happiness, or other aspects of their life from a "job." Perhaps humans are poised to become as advanced as they are?

Imagine if a million people had the freedom to experiment in whatever way they chose: to make music and art, to enjoy their lives without the approval of others as expressed by dollars of consumption. How much would the culture they create be worth?

Curious if there are any companies which currently create millions of jobs?

I suppose one could create a new market which could have capacity for such jobs. That might still be in the best interest of a startup.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers

Seems like walmart and the Chinese energy companies are the only private employers of >1m humans.

Walmart employs 2 million people, but it's hard to imagine a venture-backed technology startup with plans for mass employment.

Be careful what you wish for. Microsoft have created many jobs in the industries that fix / work around / benefit from bugs in their software.

Oh true... So we should create a company that destroys things and creates jobs to rebuild them... :-O

Edit: Looks like the "List of largest employers" in the other comments confirms this with the military companies as the top employers. :-(

> I suppose one could create a new market which could have capacity for such jobs. That might still be in the best interest of a startup.

Not that it precisely fills this need, but look at things like Mechanical Turk. That's one way to think about this problem: rather than being a direct employer of millions, find ways to connect millions with useful employment doing jobs that we can't easily automate.

Curious if there are any companies which currently create millions of jobs?

I'd be really surprised if Microsoft or Google didn't have this impact worldwide, though in Microsoft's case it might be tough to distinguish whether those are net jobs. (Though in fairness, in a very real sense, everyone at Google and Google's ecosystem owes their jobs to Bill Gates putting a computer on every desk and many homes.)

As has been mentioned a few places here (and as the RFS now states), the goal is not "have a million employees", but "create a million jobs".

As the people employed may or may not work for you, and as a lot of companies displace other companies, having a million employees is neither necessary nor sufficient.

230,000 active application publishers creating apps for the Apple US AppStore [1]. Not sure how that maps to global appstores. Global app revenues are measured in the tens of billions. Could plausibly believe that the iOS app ecosystem globally employs of the order of a million people - effectively making Apple the creator of a million non-employee jobs.

[1] http://www.pocketgamer.biz/metrics/app-store/

The toughest part of this is the idea needs to help expand the economy that is how real jobs are created. There are many ways folks! From the absurd, such as moving money from inefficient areas of the economy (i.e. taxation to efficient areas of the economy, private individuals, or from banks to small businesses.)

If there is a legal way for example for an employee that pays $10,000 in tax to employ someone at $10,000 and save that money then for each tax-payer a new job is being created. This can be for example be channeled via a non-profit (which scales via software) which would legally employ the individuals assign tasks to the individuals, provide training (which can employ trainers) help in seed money etc., basic health care and other similar services.

Another counter-intuitive idea, is to target high worth individuals, rather than low end individuals. Thousands of people are in jobs and interested in getting out of them to start a business. A Job + investment scheme in businesses that need financing might or might not work, but worth thinking. This keeps the individual employed and if the business expands would probably create another 2-5 jobs easily.

Franchising as a co-op rather than sending money to the mother ship, can easily scale in many sectors.

I think this is the greatest RFS ever and wish it success from the bottom of my heart. If no single scheme can achieve it, maybe 100 schemes can. It is not impossible.

Can we use Tim Hudak math?[1]

context: in the recent election for the province of Ontario in Canada, Tim Hudak promised 1 million new jobs if he got elected. There were several questionable ways he arrived at that number, one of which was counting 8 years of a single new job as a new job.

1: https://www.google.ca/search?q=tim+hudak+math

This demonstrates a severe lack of understanding about basic economics. Jobs are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. Paying someone $1 to dig a ditch and refill it is a job.

What we need is not jobs. What we need is the ability for everyone to make a living they deem acceptable (TV, heat/AC, car, electricity, plumbing, internet). That's the real issue here...

I dislike the new, hyper-ambitious side of YC (also in the other new RFSs: AI, HealthCare...). Have any of the truly revolutionary inventions (like steam engine, automobile, microcomputer, internet) started out as something developed to have such an incredibly big scale, or did they merely turn out to have big implications? It's the latter, and I think it's not just a correlation, but a causation: To make something truly disruptive, it needs to be new, and it is very unlikely to come up with something that is new while at the same time aiming to solve a problem that everybody can agree on (like let's build one million jobs, let's build AI, let's fix healthcare etc). That's usually the reason government projects fail, and the reason startups succeed, and having YC now focusing on stuff with the "could-this-be-a-big-company"-shaded glasses is a 180° turn from their original heritage.

you will be happy to hear that 90% of the companies we fund still get mocked on HN and elsewhere for "being small".

certainly agree that's usually the way to get huge. and even the "hyper-ambitious" companies we fund have to start with going after a very small market--in fact, their first products mostly sound like toys, and that's a feature not a bug.

it's a mistake to build a startup that looks like a huge government project. it's also a mistake to not think about how to be a huge company one day. in fact, i remember one of the first meetings i ever had with airbnb. i told them how i thought that this silly-seeming thing they were doing could one day change the way most people travel. i think it seemed crazy even to them at the time.

Indeed, most of the yc-funded startups still focus on building practical stuff. But isn't the airbnb example showing that it works to "not think about how to be a huge company one day"? I mean, if the size of their idea (changing the way most people travel) was not clear to them at the time, and yet they've succeeded (or are on their way to do so), it obviously worked out.

Have any of the truly revolutionary inventions (like steam engine, automobile, microcomputer, internet) started out as something developed to have such an incredibly big scale, or did they merely turn out to have big implications?

Apparently, yes. Economic historians today argue that, throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century, Enlightment-era notions such as "useful knowledge" and the Baconian concern with the "big scale" societal impact of scientific and technological work played a crucial role in "re-focusing" Europe's intellectual capital, as Joel Mokyr puts it [1]. In the twentieth century, seminal institutions like the OSRD, Bell Labs or (the old) DARPA --which as you know were behind most of the "truly revolutionary" inventions of the century-- had quite explicit utilitarian, "hyper-ambitious" mandates in their charters as directives --see for instance the writings of Vannevar Bush [2]. The development of modern organic chemistry and pharmacology was also quite explicitly motivated by tackling big societal problems, with many X-prize style prestigious awards for novel syntheses of crucial interest. And even the development of the internal combustion engine automobile by Benz [3] was quite explicitly motivated by his obsession to make it reliable and practical enough to fully supersede horse carriages and liberate cities from the iniquities of manure, which at the time was as "big scale thinking" as it gets.

Once you expand your perspective beyond the common troupes and political biases of the past 20-30 years, things start looking a bit different.

[1] http://www.crei.cat/conferences/RandD_and_Innovation_in_the_...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Benz

I really like this perspective. Computers are tools that can enormously increase the power of a single individual. There are huge opportunities to increase both human productivity and computing productivity if we can figure out how to create tools that foster more symbiotic interactions between humans and computers.

I would also be looking for the opposite. Software that eliminates the need for people, especially consultants, can be huge opportunities too.

That's what we're doing with MindOps–an easy-to-use OCR API. Currently humans transcribe receipts, we automate it.

I know it's not what sama meant, but these are the only employers that have 1MM+ employees (excluding the DOD, the PLA, the NHS, and the Indian armed forces):

Walmart 2.1 million (United States)

McDonald's 1.9 million (including franchises) (United States)

China National Petroleum Corporation 1.6 million (People's Republic of China)

State Grid Corporation of China 1.5 million (People's Republic of China)

Indian Railways 1.4 million (India)

Hon Hai Precision Industry (Foxconn) 1.2 million (Taiwan)

Note that Indian Railways, the State Grid Corporation of China and the China National Petroleum Corporation are state-owned.

Finally some data. Most of the big companies with "real jobs" top out around 300K. Of course its easy to create "mc-jobs" or the equivalent.

Its not a million, but the Pathak's[1] created around 100,000 jobs by effectively creating the British curry house, supplying ingredients and recipes to largely Indian-Ugandan refugees after they were forced out by Idi Amin. Thats why most have the same menus.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/finance-obituarie...

Interesting. Thinking about what computers can't do now or in any foreseeable future, I wouldn't be surprised if spending time with people in need of human interaction becomes a huge industry in coming years. I first laughed at ideas like Awesomeness Reminders etc, but I can see there's a future in that direction!

Just for some context Google have ~50,000 employees according to this https://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html

And has created/expanded jobs in SEO, SEM, android development, etc. How many, do you think?

Seems like Uber is such a company - I can see how "this could potentially create 1 million jobs" would be a conduit for "this could potentially be a win on a scale yet unknown"

Does "job" refer to the traditional sense of a primary source of income? I guess what I'm asking is, do services like TaskRabbit and Airbnb also fall in this category?

How the RFS works? i see that there are different "calls", but if i click to "apply" the deadline was in march. so, what should one do to apply?

An interesting request -- it's asking the question "what can people do that computers and mechanization absolutely cannot?"

Care for one another?

I'd venture to say, anything creative. That is, until we get strong AI.

We have managed to create around 4000 jobs for audio transcribers. Around 10% are regulars on our platform. Long way to go for a million.

Perhaps a better phrase than "jobs" is "earn income". The former comes with a lot of assumptions.

MobileWorks is an example of an existing YC (S11) company that has the potential to do this.

That's just under the size of the Active duty US military or major industries!

Quite a task.

Find another planet, or the moon.

Populate it.

There are jobs here, there will be jobs there.

A million will not be sufficient.

RFS?

Request For Startups:

http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/

What does RFS stand for?

Request For Startups. Was first posted by PG some years ago:

http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/

Might have been a play on the acronym RFC (Request For Comments).

Sooo...marketplaces?

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