“I think humane and rational conversation is important… But there are also a lot of liars and idiots in the world and subjecting them to scorn and mockery is part of what you’ve got to do in life.”— Matthew Yglesias » What Price Snark?
“There are ideas that [are] obvious lying around now. The reason you’re overlooking them is the same reason you’d have overlooked the idea of building Facebook in 2004: organic startup ideas usually don’t seem like startup ideas at first. We know now that Facebook was very successful, but put yourself back in 2004. Putting undergraduates’ profiles online wouldn’t have seemed like much of a startup idea. And in fact, it wasn’t initially a startup idea. When Mark spoke at a YC dinner this winter he said he wasn’t trying to start a company when he wrote the first version of Facebook. It was just a project. So was the Apple I when Woz first started working on it. He didn’t think he was starting a company. If these guys had thought they were starting companies, they might have been tempted to do something more “serious,” and that would have been a mistake.”—Organic Startup Ideas - Paul Graham
“As long as it remains possible to get rich via less-than-upstanding behavior, and enjoy those riches, a lot of people in business will choose that path. That’s an argument for laws, and regulation. Of course, lawmakers and regulators have their own perverse incentives, which is why so many of us are dubious of more laws or regulation. Plus, having too many rules to follow can make us focus more on the rules than right vs. wrong. Clearly, I’m stuck here. Can somebody help me out?”—Improving the Let’s-Persuade-Business-to-Improve Movement - Justin Fox
