Recent submissions

Comment · 10 years ago
Peter Thiel wrote an article along these lines..

http://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-l...

"A monopoly like Google is different. Since it doesn't have to worry about competing with anyone, it has wider latitude to care about its workers, its products and its impact on the wider world. Google's motto—"Don't be evil"—is in part a branding ploy, but it is also characteristic of a kind of business that is successful enough to take ethics seriously without jeopardizing its own existence. In business, money is either an important thing or it is everything. Monopolists can afford to think about things other than making money; non-monopolists can't"

Comment · 10 years ago
I understand the sentiment, and promoting civil discourse is a wonderful goal. But the way forward is figuring out how to promote the good, and discourage the bad, not disengagement.

I don't think I can say why it is important to engage better than Charles Krauthammer, so I'll just put his words here.

"While science, medicine, art, poetry, architecture, chess, space, sports, number theory and all things hard and beautiful promise purity, elegance and sometimes even transcendence, they are fundamentally subordinate. In the end, they must bow to the sovereignty of politics.

Politics, the crooked timber of our communal lives, dominates everything because, in the end, everything – high and low and, most especially, high – lives or dies by politics. You can have the most advanced and efflorescent of cultures. Get your politics wrong, however, and everything stands to be swept away. This is not ancient history. This is Germany 1933… Politics is the moat, the walls, beyond which lie the barbarians. Fail to keep them at bay, and everything burns."

Comment · 10 years ago
What's the tl;dr; ?? :)
Comment · 10 years ago
Sounds great, I'd like to see the assumptions in the financial model that show how it is cheaper than conventional roofing material.
Comment · 10 years ago
Comment · 10 years ago
What's Ben doing next?
Comment · 10 years ago
East vs West Germany, and North vs South Korea are good examples of how different governments result in different standards of living.

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