Grift: the project of gaining power/wealth from the existence of a problem without any interest in even remotely attempting to solve the problem.<p>If saying “the government is the problem” is an effective strategy for a person to gain political power, then that person is heavily incentivized to do everything in their power to make government ineffective.<p>See:<p>Complaining extensively about both high taxes and high gas prices yet uniformly voting against removing the gasoline tax.<p>Supporting the troops, yet voting against medical care for veterans.
Scanned it. Absolutely excruciating reading but seems like there’s something meaningful in there. Will go look for a readable synopsis of his thesis…<p>This is way better; “editing” FTW:<p><a href="https://fst.net.au/industry-insights/whos-who/mitch_weiss_harvard_business_school_2021/" rel="nofollow">https://fst.net.au/industry-insights/whos-who/mitch_weiss_ha...</a>
He talks about "new ideas" and "entrepreneurship" being the solution to societal problems. To me that shows such a lack of understanding of why we can't solve the problems we have.<p>The reason the problems don't get solved is not a lack of ideas. We know how to solve homelessness, global warming, and traffic deaths.<p>We know exactly what to do. Stop emitting CO2. Build houses, give people jobs, make sure wages keep up with housing. Slow down cars in city centers, build separate pedestrian infrastructure, encourage public transport.<p>The reason we don't do these things is political. More ideas won't solve anything.
If you can get people to agree on a what is a problem, it can get solved quite simply in many cases. For instance, illegal immigration could be solved trivially, but the bulk of the ruling class is in favor of it for various reasons, so it stays.<p>This boring person is so short on details that I suspect he is pretty comfortable with the way things are. He mentions Covid. Okay--the solution to Covid was to wait until it evolved into a cold-like disease as Coronaviruses seem to do. The short term solution was to isolate at-risk populations. Instead, we be-masked five year olds. We're still be-masking five year olds. I would consider <i>that</i> a public problem, and I suspect professor Weiss would disagree.<p>The CDC is right on top of a new public problem, however, and advises people to have clothes cover any rashes during sex and to clean their latex gear in between partners.<p><a href="https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/sexualhealth/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/sexualhealth/index.ht...</a>
I think they need to define what they mean by a 'public entrepreneur'.<p>A private entrepreneur in a capitalist system is a fairly clear concept: someone who starts a business using funds that they are responsible for in some way, i.e. they bear the risk of failure. A successful entrepreneur is one whose business generates some degree of profit, i.e. it has a positive balance sheet. Note that a manager of someone else's money is not, by this definition, an entrepreneur, as they are not really bearing most of the risk of failure. In addition, most entrepreneurs turn to external sources of capital (VC funds, banks, etc.) to grow their businesses once they've demonstrated some degree of independent success.<p>So, what's a public entrepreneur? Someone who starts a program / business using public funds, but then puts the profits in their own pocket? Are we talking about private contractors who seek government contracts (I assume not)? Is a Congressperson who uses insider information about pending bills to make lucrative investments a 'public entrepreneur'? How about a government-funded academic trying to lever their state-financed IP into a lucrative side business?<p>Rather than public entrepreneurs, we'd be better off with reliable civil servants who are not corrupt, i.e. not taking kickbacks from private contractors, not altering regulations solely for the benefit of private parties who will later give them 'jobs', not using their academic positions as launching pads for government-funded 'public-private startups', etc.
In the last 10 years I’ve seen massive buildings constructed in the town I went to school in (Champaign). Literally sky scrapers all over.<p>So yes, we can solve a public problem (housing).<p>The question is whether we can recognize and want to solve the problems imo. Today our media seems incapable of highlighting issues. The media pushes a narrative to effect social change (ie political); rather than presents the issues. On the ground most people agree on the issues, but half the population take the narrative at face value and push the same political ideology (which often doesn’t address the root issues).<p>To be frank, we have a cultural issue. Most of our institutions rely on a solid cultural basis. With the degrading of our culture (classically liberal, ie conservative values, but libertarian in policy) we no longer have a conservative value system being presented. So we have the libertarian “you do you” mentality, without the public shame that comes with certain actions (such as public displays of nudity, open drug use, etc).<p>To me, this comes across as many places in the United States have become unsafe for children - SF being one. I can’t let me kids walk down the street with needles, human waste and screaming homeless.<p>We don’t help those people because we don’t have the cultural foundation to.<p>In short, we can solve more problems than before, but the culture itself has the problem.