This is a simplified view but communicates the idea.
Some might say crystallized intelligence is under-valued in tech. That might be true. But then we should discuss that, not through the lens of social justice against age discrimination.
> The problem with housing is that the supply is very fixed.
This claim seems to be the root of every anti-AirBnB argument: AirBnB rentals eat into the resident housing supply.
But this is simply solved by zoning and regulation. In any given city there is some number of residents and some number of visitors, and some number of permanent and temporary beds for them to sleep in. Yes, AirBnB shifts some of the housing stock from resident to visitor - but, if that's what economic forces are commanding then the zoning & regulation should adapt, not fight it. It's not a capacity issue, just one of allocation.
Reminds me of how the Congressional Black Caucus pushes for billionaires' repeal of the estate tax under the guise of racial equity. I think they try to make it into social issues, racial justice, just to divert the conversation from the indefensible root of their positions.
> “Full repeal of the estate tax would allow African Americans to pass the full fruits of their business success to the next generation and thereby laying the foundation for a permanent minority ownership class that can contribute to the economic growth and development of the United States economy,” Robert Johnson, whose worth has been estimated at more than half a billion dollars, wrote to the House Ways and Means Committee last week.
Our mission is to help people see & understand their data. I'm not good at marketing, you can Google us & read for yourself. I've been here >3 years and love it - common feeling here, the high retention rate and happy team speaks for itself. Happy customers, too. The customer conference is a lot of fun.
We're hiring pretty much every engineering specialty, still growing fast - my team specifically is looking for web client expertise, but if that's not your thing I can connect you with someone who knows your specialty better. Web client stack is the usual SPA ecosystem: Angular, React, Node, TypeScript. Happy to go deeper if you're interested. Reach me at [email protected] or [email protected].
I moved from Seattle to San Francisco a couple years ago, asked Yelp for the best coffee and was sent to Philz.
I experienced some culture shock learning that San Francisco's top coffee shop didn't serve espresso. The idea of a coffee shop without an espresso machine had never crossed my mind. I left confused, with a scalding hot pour over, and moved back to Seattle soon afterward.
Blue Bottle and Four Barrel Coffee were both excellent.
What I find more interesting is that parking SHOULD cost more than it does, and if it did, Uber would win the cost-value comparison hands-down.
Americans subsidize parking by imposing fees on developers who don't include "enough" of it, and by reserving large portions of cities' streets for car storage. Multi-billion dollar highways enable sprawl and cheaper commercial parking lots. Driving & parking personal vehicles is incredibly wasteful from a broad economic perspective (but it was the correct path -- a necessary evil in the absence of density to enable effective mass transit).
Even with the government subsidies, Uber is an economically competitive alternative to driving & parking personal vehicles. That's the amazing part. Public policy favors the incumbent behavior, yet "ride-sharing" has still been able to expose market inefficiencies. Imagine if we killed all the parking subsidies, or better yet: used economic incentives to discourage driving & parking personal vehicles, and encourage the behavior that had a lower total cost.
I believe the future of personal transportation is computer-driven computer-dispatched vehicles, a game Uber and Google are leading. We can't get there soon enough.
> "Parking? Solved! Once we arrive at our destination, the car can self-park while we go on with our day."
Doesn't solve the worst part of parking: reserving that much space for car storage.
The author's vision seems to be one in which everyone owns a self-driving car. Why own the car? Just pay for use, Uber et al. can handle logistics. Only the reserve portion of the fleet should be parked, like buses.
If I were a Vegas bookie, I'd think Ello has perhaps as high as a one in 10 chance of becoming the next major social network, and on the low end a one in 1,000 chance. A $20M valuation would place them at one 10,000th of Facebook.
Pretty & usable are easily purchased. Throw an expensive dev team at it. Brand and reputation are more difficult.
The real estate market is huge and inefficient, a ripe opportunity for technologists to capitalize on. But I don't understand what Zillow brings to the table. Do they have any plan beyond their current business model (advertising)?
As a consumer, I think I should oppose Zillow. They seem to just take public data, present it nicely, and slather it with advertisements. Real estate agents play the same heavy-handed role they always have, except now they have to give some of their profits to Zillow else lose visibility to their competitors.
I'm more excited about Redfin. Redfin makes shopping for a home closer to the self-service experience it should be, with agents dealing in higher volume with lower margins playing a lighter role. Unlike Zillow, Redfin seems to make that market more efficient, and I think that's the bigger opportunity for capitalization.
http://examinedexistence.com//wp-content/uploads/2013/12/cry...
This is a simplified view but communicates the idea.
Some might say crystallized intelligence is under-valued in tech. That might be true. But then we should discuss that, not through the lens of social justice against age discrimination.