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Comment by pg | Hacker News Reader

Food prices are skyrocketing. The financial system is melting down. Energy, of course, is more and more toxic, and costly.

These are the problems we're being challenged to solve? The first two appear to be random fluctuations-- possibly very bad ones, but due largely to speculation and chance. The third is something investors and founders are working on energetically right now.

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They are not random fluctuations. Federal Reserve policy had a lot to do with both food prices & the financial system.

Read libertarian economic literature to understand how the US and world economy have been fundamentally warped by the credit bubble unleashed by the Fed - LTCM debacle led to Nasdaq bubble, fighting the Nasdaq bust led to the housing bubble and so on.

Even the start-up flip-it mindset in the valley has roots similar to the housing flip-it mindset everywhere.

"So here's my challenge. If you're a revolutionary, then be one: put your money where your mouth is, and fix a big problem that changes the world for the better - if you really have the courage, the purpose, and the vision, that is."

isn't that essentially saying: "be good"?

He was the original "be good" writer, 2004-2008 B.P (Before Paul)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=site+b...

http://www.bubblegeneration.com/2008/03/edge-principles-frie...

Or, "make something people need."

The problems are clear though: create something that will make the variations you speak of (whatever their causes) rarer, slower and of lower magnitude. We have done it before (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution) and we will do it time and time again, hopefully. The solutions, as usual, are hard to see. But if we do not work on the big problems, the hard problems, do we do valuable work?

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