His point is that we talk of existing, as existing in this universe. But God is outside of it.
An analogy is: it would be wrong to say Tolkien exists in the Lord of the Rings universe, even though he made it, and so in a sense is a precondition for any of the characters in the lore existing.
This is actually not unusual but is the standard theological view
I think you're making a category error by thinking of companies and countries as completely different.
In the global world countries can be seen as sort of quasi-companies that happen to have monopoly control on a particular area (a monopoly that is slowly dissolving with the internet) + force.
There are many ways a company can help solve problems that we tend to think of as government problems.
1. Government also buys services.
2. Startups can fix the services government does badly as an additive product, e.g. Gusto or TurboTax.
3. Startups can solve government problems directly, e.g. Fedex vs USPS.
The only real difference between the two entities is the power of force that government can apply to make you people their services. Which is sometimes useful, but doesn't make voluntary efforts at solving the same problems a bad thing. It is also not in competition. Whenever I see these arguments being made I see people who would rather limit their work on these problems to voting once a year, instead of actually trying to solve the problems themselves.
You were said to be a skeptic of quantum computing company d wave. Then you started believing and then went back to skepticism. What is your current status, do you think it works? What would you like to see from them?
Also, what is your take on Max Tegmark's quantum suicide experiment. Would it work? If yes would that imply that each of us should expect to live a really long time subjectively?
I understand where you're coming from, but consider this: for things you know you are going to do, a subscription is the right product - not an insurance. Insurance is better for unforseen large costs, instead of predictable small costs. And we are in fact planning to add a global primary care subscription to address that. In the Nordic countries where we're from, most of healthcare is delivered (by the government) in something closer to a subscription than insurance.
> random bold words
I agree with this being unnecessary formatting, we will look into and fix this.
> lost checked luggage coverage excludes literally everything of value
It is true that our lost checked luggage coverage has too many exclusions and is not good enough. This is something we are working on improving, and will release and add-on that fixes it, and give people the option of a genuine stuff-insurance.
We'll work on getting this better, would appreciate if you have time for a call with us at one point. Would really appreciate getting feedback on how we can not just remove the bad, but also maybe add some good.
(If you want to, in addition to helping us build something useful, we can like throw in a $25 airbnb gift card, my email is [email protected])
This is I suppose a quite wise choice given the preferences you have. Our insurance has lower deductible than yours ($250 for coverage period (not per instance), and lower max limit ($250k). We went with this after asking digital nomads what they would choose among a series of options. We have priced and might need to consider adding a higher max limit option though, thanks for letting us know.
Sorry my mistake, I actually just didn't catch that you wanted the rates. All the age-brackets rates are: 18-39, $37. 40-49, $60. 50-59, $94. 60-69, $128.
One big difference is time-limit. If you go with their single voyage option, it's max 6 months, and 12 months for the other one. While we offer an ongoing monthly subscription-like service. Another big difference is that Geo-Blue requires I believe that you have a primary health plan.
I very much agree with your sentiment. We have made efforts to put the price for most users straight on the home page, for example. We also try to say all that's included, and give a specimen of the actual policy document. But we can improve this a lot in terms of figuring out what is the most relevant information.
In order to get to the stage one can do an actual purchase, we do need a few pieces of information though. We have tried minimising this, but we'll take a look at how we can reduce it further. Any specific suggestions you would have for what we should put before registration and after?
Yes there are country-specific ones that do at least, for expats, like Cigna global.
Yes the second biggest problems nomads cited in our surveys was loneliness / being disconnected from relationships when moving often. One thing we are doing to address this now is to build a community, with social events for our users. I think it sounds like an interesting idea to consider adding counseling services though. We haven't considered it before, but we will take a look at it. Thanks.
Targeting digital nomads because we are that ourselves, so we know what isn't working, and so can make a better product. We aren't innovating on the financing though. We have a Japanese giant as insurance partner, and it's underwritten at Lloyd's.
We are planning to target freelancers and entrepreneurs more generally, with our coming series of products. They will all be global though. This is just the first step.
The illustrations is made by Sean MacIsaac, our genius designer/frontend/illustrator who is on the founding team.
Thanks! For digital nomads the biggest option today is Worldnomads. Coverage is comparable. Main differences is that they are 2-3x more expensive, don't have subscription-option and don't offer home-country coverage (the one we have is 30 days for every 3 months).
Yes we do intend to add more products, next one is to complete a global health insurance that includes primary care. We currentl offer 40-49, 50-59 and 60-69 as well, but at higher price points. Most of our users are in the 18-39 age-range, so this was the segment we tailored it to.
I think overall housing supply is the primary driver.
This regulation is just the sort of red tape that incompetent governments impose, fooled by rent seeking interests to implement a barrier to entry to reduce competition.
I relate to your sentiment, but it seems to me that promoting healthy lifestyles and inventing new cures doesn't have to be in opposition.
Like you, I spend a lot of time figuring out how to live better. But also grateful for the medicine I got for illnesses when they do arise.
I use and apply free health advice. Then again, I also use gym and supplements, which may have made VCs rich. Likewise, in cures, I appreciate that they are available in the low probability I get seriously ill. I am sure many suffering from alzheimer, cancer or other age-related diseases, would want there to be cures.
In the goal increasing healthspan, can't one favour the all-of-the-above approach? Primarily rely on healthy living like you suggest, yet support people developing cures for diseases.
PS. Almost all cures come from the US, 57 % of them, and 13 % from Switzerland. While this health care system is dysfunctional in many ways, it also is the market new cures are being developed for. In Europe, where I am from, most drugs are purchased by a single large purchaser, which has negotiation power to buy a drug at close to marginal cost. This makes drugs cheaper, but also makes less people try to invent new cures. So, it's a bit of a trade-off between the present and the future.
I am surprised that you honestly can't tell. I find this sincere. There are a few such things on the list, like modern firefighting and renewable energy from engineering microbes. So if we aren't cherry-picking, it's a varied list.
Moreover, it isn't always as easy to say what is the biggest idea. If we truly learned to communicate with animals, I can see that having the potential to radically decrease suffering in the world for example.
Instead of complaining some people's ideas aren't good enough enough, see it as a challenge to publish some of your own, you got some good problems there.
I actually loved this list and article, and what I like the most about it was the unpretentiousness of actually proposing real ideas, versus saying something that would sound admirable, but actually not really be an idea.
I think the reason is that it's a local arbitrage, and it's limited in sypply. He is buying from his local stores, who probably have limited amount of such products on sale. So there's probably room for more doing the same strategy.
Would you say 3,6 % is that stringent though? I remember GE under Welch fired 10 % of the lowest performers every year, that seemed kind of stringent. But Tesla is fast-hiring and acquiring, so seem to have a larger need to fix hiring-errors than GE. At the end of 2015 they had only 14,000 employees! In light of that, 3,6 % seems completely reasonable to me. Low, even.
Concerning the performance review: would expect that after acquisition, SolarCity would adjust to Tesla's performance standards. So even if they were based on prior performance reviews, still seems like a reasonable action and level to me.
As much as I try to squint, I'm having troubles seeing the smoking gun here.
We provide on-demand freelance services, customers are b2b
Got first 100 by
1) Friends: first asking a few to try; then telling about the idea at parties (also hosted a "launch party" at home, etc. Then at last emailing whole LinkedIn-contactlist. First couple were free, rest more or less discounted but paid.
2) PR. Had a few early newspaper articles when we had initial traction which gave us perhaps 20 customers each.
Also posted the article to our facebook, which I think perhaps got us half of those.
(We also tried a lot of other stuff that didnt work, including a big cold call campaign and paying for leads via ads, but it didnt yield much results as it is very hard to do well)
An analogy is: it would be wrong to say Tolkien exists in the Lord of the Rings universe, even though he made it, and so in a sense is a precondition for any of the characters in the lore existing.
This is actually not unusual but is the standard theological view