[moocow01]

Probably not a popular opinion around here but Id say we are well on our way to the precipice.

I hear the line about how the companies are better this time around but I'm really not so sure about that on a macro scale. I'd be much more encouraged if more (funded) startups were seriously aligned to try to combat the country's obvious problem areas - health, education, finance, etc. There are some good ones out there but the majority of funding is getting piled into a lot of stuff that is dead on arrival due to a lack of need and this problem just seems to be getting worse.

On top of it the money and hoopla is exponentially drawing in a lot more folks naively looking to make a quick buck and when they show up in force it usually means the game is largely up.

[PaulHoule]

well, the trouble with the real problems is the barrier to entry.

liberals like to blame the health insurance companies for the problems with health care, and yes theu get some blame, but really it's the doctors and the pharmaceutical companies and all the other service providers. One day I was talking to my doc about a prescription and what it would cost and she estimated it would be $80 a month, but then I showed up at the pharmacy and it was $4.86 and I know that's close to a real price because I'm on a high deductable plan. Now this is a happy ending, but it shows the doc is in la-la land when it comes to knowing what whatever she prescribes costs.

education? well at the K-12 level you go head to head with the teacher's unions and i'll just say if you get in their way they draw blood. now the tenured profs at the college level have "aprois moi le deluge" as their slogan and they've got no reason not to live by that.

finance? who knows? i'm starting to think that those guys from Lagos who say they want to deposit $35 million in your bank account really find completely wack people who expect to get $35 million in their bank account. if some guy who made $20 billion thinks the country needs Newt Gingrich there have to be a lot of rich people who've got no sense at all.

so you go in the problem areas and you know you'll be eaten alive by the incumbents and the unions and the government and god knows who else so you might as well focus on something safe like pictures of cats.

[dkrich]

> well, the trouble with the real problems is the barrier to entry.

This has always been the case, and always will be, for every industry. If the market is easy to enter, you aren't going to make much money for very long. It is precisely because of this that companies that are attacking the easy problems or non-problems and are getting multimillion dollar valuations are making people nervous.

[einhverfr]

I don't think solving the obvious national problems are the key issues. I think the larger question is simply "is the hype greater than the value?"

That's an important question. And I think we are in some stage where the hype is greater than the value. Sure there may be value in solving hte big problems, but there is also a lot of value in solving little problems that nobody else sees at the moment.

I am just not sure that Zynga actually solves any problems.