Lawrence Wang

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  Lawrence commented on the article | almost 3 years ago

  Overclass: The Problem With the Bootstrap Era

  > Nathaniel Whittemore:> all sorts of things that could very quickly "price out" whole swaths of people with great ideas>
  
  I don't know if this "overclass" idea is likely to happen... Great ideas, and more critically, great people who can push those ideas to their full potential, are always worth a lot. 
  That's why the venture capital market exists, come to think of it. VC's are people who pay to help grow other people's ideas. It's really been interesting to observe companies like Y-Combinator experiment with investing sums that are traditionally "very small", but still a healthy stipend for a young adult. I think we're going to see an explosion of new ways to "equitably distribute capital" coming out of the "web tech world". (One example that comes to mind: http://www.businessinsider.com/startup2009)
  Certainly the drying-up of capital that characterizes a bootstrap era can be a difficult obstacle to new entrepreneurs. But it's also an opportunity to prove the strength of one's idea, at least by surviving when others do not, and at best by earning press coverage and profit.
  
  Class is malleable. You're right that the dream of "good old-fashioned hard work" is obsolete. What replaces it, I wonder... 
  > Charles Harding:> However, there is an apparent tension between American individualism and reliance on kinship and social networks.>
  
  Absolutely! My personal opinion is that it went too far in the 80's. Now we're picking up the pieces by inventing things like Twitter. (Half-joking...)