Gongol.com Archives: May 2014
Hipsters on food stamps
Everyone gets to where they are in life through a blend of luck (good and bad) and choices (good and bad). Nobody should want to take good luck away from others, and we're not civilized if we don't recognize that bad luck just happens to some people (who may consequently need a helping hand to recover). But to the extent that we fail to build systems that reward and encourage good decisions (and discourage the bad ones), we're just knocking down the kind of standards that have taken centuries of human progress to achieve. We have romanticized certain notions -- like the value of doing only what you love and the myth built up around "creative" workers -- to the point of fetishization, when what we really need are smart people who are willing to do hard work because that's what's really rewarding in the long run. Hipsters using food stamps because they can't find full-time work as bloggers are making bad choices, not falling victim to bad luck.
"Like so many tech startups, Silvercar seems desperate to claim that it is 'disrupting' an incumbent industry"
Would someone please take the word "disruption" and hit it on the back of the head with a shovel? Most progress is from evolution, not revolution -- and when revolutions do happen, they rarely need to self-promote quite as much as "disrupters" like to announce themselves. Better goods and services? Yes, please...but stop trying to make them out to be bigger leaps than they are.
Show notes: WHO Radio Wise Guys - May 10, 2014
Official show page for the tech-news show and an on-demand podcast
How to set fees as a public speaker
Little-known facts about "The Cosby Show"
