Gerrymandering backfires when voters change parties easily and frequently. Loosely held party loyalties keep politicians on their feet and forces them to focus on actual voter's issues.
When voters dogmatically lock-in to a party affiliation for decades/generations it leaves politicians with zero incentive to listen to them and shifts their focus to drawing safe-districts.
The best way for voters to be heard is to radically reject all party-lock-in-narratives and fire anyone who is in a safe seat - irrespective of everything else.
I have tried recruiting many of my close friends from FAANG companies to my well funded startup.
It starts with them talking about feeling miserable in their jobs and that they badly want to quit.
I then ask them to try something new, join my (or another) startup (or another company). Then they get paralyzed by the pros/cons of various options, (salary, stock, commute, role, title etc. etc.) they end up not making any changes at all and continue feeling dissatisfied.
I have come to believe that dwelling on these pros/cons doesn’t help anyone and just causes analysis/paralysis related misery that is completely unnecessary.
It is better to pick one thing and then focus 100% on making the most of it. After a while, if you notice it has stopped giving you joy/learning/growth, make a switch, try something different and again focus on making the most of that.
Being clear in your head about what you want to do, why you want to do it and aligning your actions/efforts 100% with that clarity is the most valuable thing there is to have in life. The rest is noise.
This is not unique to the US and not even unique to the modern era. The "common enemy" is the glue of every civilization. Build a case against a scapegoat and rally public opinion to wage a war - this is essentially the job of every form of government. Let's wage war on poverty, corporations, the 1%, unions, drugs, immigrants, corruption, terrorism... the list goes on and on. You can go back to the Bhagwad Gita, the Bible, the ancient myths... and the story doesn't change very much.
An experience feels meaningful only with respect to others that don't. If it wasn't for bullshit we would never know what to cherish.
The bullshit and cherishable also seem to frequently reverse roles. Many things that seem like noise today, may return to foreground with profound meaning later.
I wonder if perhaps nothing is bullshit or meaningful after all. Experience simply plays this game of light and shadow to keep us entertained.
I asked my neighbor about cleaners, they use X and gave me her phone number. I called X and she did an amazing job. Turns out, X has a higher incentive to clean my house because she can synchronize timing with my neighbor and reduce her overhead cost. The arrangement has worked great for everyone, running 9 years in a row and more neighbors have joined.
I see this as an ideal win-win experience for all parties involved. It would be really nice to have a service that can create this type of experience at scale.
Writing something (that is worth reading) in simple words is very hard. I believe that clear thinking plays a bigger role than semantics. When I am confused about a topic, I tend to write about it using complex arguments with long sentences and long words.
PG speaks and writes about startups with more clarity than most people. It is because his thinking on startups has greater clarity/conviction than most people. From my perspective, there seems to be no shortcut or semantic trick to clear writing.
At a large company it is very difficult to try new things quickly. Flat hierarchy, smart people and great culture help but not enough to make a drastic difference.
I have found it helpful to understand this from experience - as opposed to theory.
Trying new things quickly is the biggest competitive advantage of an entrepreneur. A sharp focus on maximizing this advantage does make a better entrepreneur.
Thanks for the query Niran. I am the co-founder of Vernox Labs.
1) The data is being provided to us by our customers.
2) Data is very rich. However, it is unstructured and that is a problem we directly address using our technology.
3) Even disparate projects have identical sub-systems. We actively create models for relevance between specific pieces of information across projects.
When voters dogmatically lock-in to a party affiliation for decades/generations it leaves politicians with zero incentive to listen to them and shifts their focus to drawing safe-districts.
The best way for voters to be heard is to radically reject all party-lock-in-narratives and fire anyone who is in a safe seat - irrespective of everything else.