Comment by taeric

5 days ago

I have grown to not agree with this idea. Sorta, at least.

It isn't so much that I think the criticism is wrong. Many people do think they could more effectively do something in a different area. But this isn't a stack thing. People are largely ignorant of a ton of work happening everywhere.

You see that ignorance quite commonly in stuff like climate activism. Young activists are convinced that nobody is working on the problem. And to be clear, it would be nice if maybe more people were working on some problems. But please don't ignore the progress made by a lot of hard work, in the meantime.

But back to "why companies keep failing." I could as easily assert that big companies fail when they stop pouring money into growing. Wouldn't be hard to build an argument that the more "funny money" is at play in a large company, the more they are stifling innovative ideas in their walls. Of course, if you pour money through leveraged debt, some day that comes due, as well.

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taeric

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r14c  5 days ago

> You see that ignorance quite commonly in stuff like climate activism. Young activists are convinced that nobody is working on the problem.

IMO the complaints here are well-founded, but maybe some wires have gotten crossed in communication. There are many climate related companies out there (with varying levels of actual utility). People are obviously working on the problem, but the policy side is largely captured by big oil and other monied interests who would lose a lot of money if any meaningful shift away from fossil fuels were to happen.

Addressing the climate crisis using minimally subsidized market forces is way too slow to be effective at reaching even the bare minimum Paris Accords numbers. Even those policies at this point are being dismantled and called a "climate hoax". The market side work is laudable, but the climate crisis cannot be averted without a supportive policy framework.

I do a lot of activism work and the critique is typically centered on "nobody in the government is making progress on climate policy", not "nobody is doing anything at all". Though maybe we're talking to different groups of people lol

  • taeric  4 days ago

    I'm talking about people that literally think absolutely nobody is working on things. There was a viral video not too long ago of a young activist saying she got into this because she realized that "literally nobody was working to make things better." I could chalk that up to online viral nonsense, but I've talked to people fresh out of college that legit think this sort of stuff.

    This sort of thing is usually made worse by people that are not willing to acknowledge that not all progress is definitionally good. (As an easy example, the report a few years ago that raised the idea that measurable increases in ocean temperature were from cleaner shipping got annoyingly ignored.)

    Again, though, in my theme of "this isn't really stack related." This is also not activist related. People have a tendency to think the problem they are working on is more important than every other problem. Dentists tend to think oral health is the key to understanding all health. Nutritionists, the same. Managers tend to think things just need good management. It is a very common pattern.

    And it is enticing because it speaks to kernels of truth. It just doesn't survive the "no panacea" test.