All right on the mark and thanks to the author for saying this! I think a big part of this issue is that there are way more great teams/ideas/new businesses than there are investors in PDX with money... so it's an investors market. They have all the power here and they know it and act on that. Companies seeking funding outside Portland upset this balance and that's good for other founders/companies. Bravo!
A version of this problem I've seen is that often customers (particularly enterprise customers) want you to make solutions specific to their exact needs rather than the broad needs of their whole category. Even if they want the same problem addressed that you do they will want you to make the product suit their needs EXACTLY. That won't scale and backs you into being a services company instead of a product company. Strategies we've used to fight this are to listen to feedback from all users and only build what everyone agrees is needed, and also offer an API so we don't have to flat out say no. Instead with an API we can say, you're welcome to do whatever you'd like... Finally, when we do have to say something like "no" instead we just put a astronomical price tag on it and let the customer decide no for themselves. ...or maybe they'll say ok and then we'll know our thinking might be flawed if some feature is worth a hefty premium. Hope that's helpful to others!
The book "Black Box Thinking" by Matthew Syed has good insight on this issue, especially the differences between how the airline and medical industries handle errors.
I'd say this issue gets more severe as the complexity of care delivered increases. The more providers, docs, meds are thrown in the mix the more likely it is that there will be an error. If each of us had realtime records when the doc ordered a medicine we are allergic to their computer system could have a fun little pop up like the Microsoft paperclip guy that said "Hey, looks like you're trying to kill this patient by administering a drug they are allergic to press ok to proceed or X to cancel.
This is a problem technology could dramatically reduce if each of us had a complete medical/medication history that was immediately accessible to the physicians/institutions treating us. That doesn't exist now unless you're getting all your treatment/meds from one company/hospital system (Ex: Kaiser). Right now if you (or your spouse/kid) are brought to the ER unresponsive the doc isn't going to know shit about what meds you are on, what you're allergic to or perhaps even why you're unresponsive in the first place... in the case that they do have information it is likely incomplete. It's not the slightest bit surprising this routinely leads to bad outcomes because doctors are guessing. Dr. William Yasnoff (MD & PhD Computer Science) has suggested the concept of "Health Record Banking." Similar to financial banking institutions would compete for the right to host your health data and providers could "withdraw" records and "deposit" records. Your smartphone would be a key portal to access this information securely. I'm not sure what the perfect solution is here but the Hacker News crowd is going to have to be the folks to fix this because government, doctors and insurance companies are not.
The Fed economic policies of strict inflation control have had a big part in holding down wages for working people. We all know when there is very strong job growth the Fed increases interest rates to slow the economy. This is done to limit inflation but it's executed at the very point when the "working person" would otherwise have the chance to get ahead. If interest rates were held lower longer strong job growth would elevate competition for labor... thereby increasing wages. This strategy caries with it a more pronounced risk of a spike in inflation but I would suggest that risk is worth it. If you look at the stagnation in real wages it starts around 1980, not coincidentally 1 year into Paul Volcker's term as fed chairman (whose clear mandate and legacy was controlling inflation at any cost).
"Facebook.... <story is yet to be written> but the same thing will happen to them." -amen! Their big screw up is not supporting a vibrant market for apps. Zuck says he wants "to be electricty" but it seems he also wants to tightly control what is plugged in and how it's used. How come I can't access messenger with a 3rd party app? Why can't all kinds of cool startups build their business on the FB "platform"? Why not be more open, when Apple allowed Google Voice in the App Store all the carriers had to hasten their move to data based pricing... it was a revolution but Apple allowed it. Facebook will not ever let their power, position or business model be challenged by apps in any serious way.
Agree that all the analogies are flawed, although funny. Just as the market made this I'm sure the market will find a solution if it really is a problem.
Much more often than you might think. Every time we make a deposit (likely monthly/bi/weekly) that money needs to be deployed (aka stock purchased). If we are part of a big fund that fund may need to buy stocks in huge chunks and when the HFT sniffs out what they are buying they will raise the price.
Haha! :) Clever point but grocery stores provide utility. HFT is more like if you set out to go buy a whole lot of peppers (because you have a pepper index fund :) and some guy saw you doing this at the first store... knew that was your plan, called all around town placing orders to buy all the other peppers in town and offered to sell them to you for a premium, but cancelled those orders if you declined.
I was surprised the author didn't highlight the pressure that the stock market exerts on companies to produce short term gains. Isn't that what's discouraging long term focused R&D? Seems there has been a shift from in house R&D to acquiring companies.
Edward Snowden is not a hero IMO, anyone who cared to look knew for years the government had vast surveillance powers. Is anyone else tired of seeing his headlines? The guy seems to really want to be a celebrity? Does he deserve that? I'm not trying to be rude, only suggesting we rethink our attention to him.
"but it's a mistake to drop out of one of the most effective social networks ever devised by humankind." Listen to this guy, he is giving you great advice!