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Comment by chailatte | Hacker News Reader

All the innovation and multitude of startups can't plug the sinking ship that is the US economy. For example, how will these problems be fixed:

- US national debt at 13 Trillion.

- US debt held by foreigners at 4 Trillion.

- US total debt at 54 Trillion. Unfunded social security and medicare liabilities.

- a costly army stationed at 150 countries around the world

- an aging baby boomer generation, which will reduce their consumer spending (70% of the US economy is consumer spend)

- U6 unemployment rate at 17%

Not to mention in this economy, the web startups face

- closed platform dominance from facebook/google/zynga/apple. if you build something they want, they will duplicate the functionality quickly

- too many other 'me-too' startups. all the seed camp startups are starting to look alike.

- lack of monetizing opportunities, as most people still don't like to pay for things online.

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a costly army stationed at 150 countries around the world

I keep seeing this number, always without any kind of citation. What's really interesting is that there are only between 150 and 200 countries in the world. But wait--the US has an embassy in every country it has diplomatic relations with, and each embassy has a detachment of Marines. There are 125 of these detachments (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Security_Guard). 125 and 150 are within the standard rounding error of urban legends, but there's probably another 25 countries you could add to the list if you count military advisors, peacekeeping/humanitarian missions, and even a handful of actual foreign deployments.

It's pretty disingenuous to count 1,000 Marines distributed over 125 embassies as stationing the US military around the world, if that's indeed what the people who came up with this number are doing. I'd really like to see a breakdown of this "150 countries" business.

Especially if you count that way, what first world country doesn't have troops stationed in 150 countries?

We obviously have major detachments in Germany, Japan, and Korea. Plus the countries supporting the war in Iraq and Afghanistan (I'm sure those two will join my first list in 20 years). Then there are a lot of logistics bases around the world. Does that really count? If we want to be able to project our navy to the other side of the world, you need a refueling stop in Guam. So unless we are talking about cutting the military down to a tenth of what it is now, the # of bases is not what is driving US costs.

# of and cost of weapon systems drives it all.

> what first world country doesn't have troops stationed in 150 countries?

Switzerland, maybe?

On the other hand, the Swiss Guard show up wherever the Pope goes.

That's like counting all the people in the French Foreign Legion as soldiers of their home country.

How do you mean?

The Swiss guard is a military unit of the Vatican, not of Switzerland. Or is it?

Both. The Pontifical Swiss Guard, which is the remaining active branch of the Swiss Guard, is a Swiss military unit (consisting of strictly Swiss citizens) that serves in a guard role for the Vatican.

They still have embassies. Being neutral doesn't necessarily imply being isolationist.

Do they have troops at their embassies?

Wikipedia is your best friend. They need donation, so go now!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_deployme...

Perhaps we should focus on military bases. Analyzing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military_..., there seem to be US military bases in 29 countries/territories: Afghanistan, Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cuba, Diego Garcia, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Guam, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kosovo/Serbia, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Phillipines, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, The Netherlands, Turkey, United Kingdom

Air force: Afghanistan, Australia, Bulgaria, Germany, Greenland, Guam, Italy, Japan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Taiwan, The Netherlands, Philippines, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom,

Army: Bulgaria, Germany, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Kosovo/Serbia, South Korea, Israel

Marines: Afghanistan, Germany, Japan, Kuwait

Navy: Diego Garcia, Brazil, Cuba, Spain, Japan, Guam, Bahrain, Italy, Greece, South Korea

Or just the number of countries that have more than 100 or 1000 personnel, which the prior Wikipedia article had a map of.

I considered that, but that map is from 2007 and doesn't have a source, so that distinction risks sounding more certain than it is. Troop movements are more fluid once a base is in place.

20 or 30, the number of countries isn't 150. Which was the main point.

Please keep in mind that I'm not disagreeing with you, just noting that alternate information comes to a similar answer ("far fewer than 150").

Devalue our currency by some amount by printing money over time? I'm not being glib. The effects:

Makes debt and social security obligations smaller by paying the dollar amounts, but with less expensive dollars.

Force boomers to work well into retirement which is set based on a shorter life expectancy anyway.

Reduce our debt to china.

There are plenty of bad effects, but it seems the easiest thing to put over on the people, because all the other hard decisions would be politically unpalatable. Aside from this, the current course seems to make it inevitable.

Whoa, full global thermo-nuclear economic warfare? That would be a sight to see.

It's already started :) Ben Bernanke's second round of dollar printing has already introduced massive inflation in food prices in China, causing them to institute price control this month. Just wait until Asia abandons dollar altogether and all those dollar flows back to US.....

Nah, I doubt it. Inflation in China's been a longer term trend.

http://www.businessinsider.com/qe2-and-chinese-food-prices-2...

Devaluing the US dollar wouldn't actually fix the Social Security problem by itself due to COLA.

http://www.ssa.gov/cola/2011/factsheet.htm

I think some form of limited default on our sovereign debt (restructuring) is more likely in the long run, combined with a further increase in the Social Security retirement age and a cut in benefits.

Why is the projected deficit so high?

Because of the cost of medicare. Which is basically a combination of demographics and the cost of medical care, with the cost of medical care being the driving factor. Doesn't that sound like an arena ripe for disruption by startups?

The energy crisis that will inevitably come, doesn't that sound like an arena well suited for startups?

There seems to be a tetonic shift right now that a lot of people have a big stake in ignoring.

VCs are meant to provide capital to entrepreneurs who need capital. Web apps don't really need capital in the initial stage, everyone knows how easy it is to boostrap your web app these days. That's why angels are growing in prominence - becuase they fit the funding level a lot better.

The VC's should be giving their attention to companies that require greater investment - my two examples are healthcare and energy but they are just 2. Solutions to billion and trillion dollar problems yield large returns on a few hundred million dollars. Can you see that coming out of the web sphere?

But your average software VC can't really pivot over to those fields, they have expertise in this area, and don't have the skills to evaluate bio-medical and energy startups. So instead of realizing this and packing it up and going home (or at least hiring some new people to evaluate deals) they are just strip mining the web app space until there is nothing left.

The guys in those fields don't necessarily have the entrepreneur mentality of a lot of software guys, so they aren't seeking the VCs the same way hackers are.

> the cost of medicare.. is basically a combination of demographics and the cost of medical care, with the cost of medical care being the driving factor. Doesn't that sound like an arena ripe for disruption by startups?

Honestly, not particularly to me. As far as I can tell, this is a largely social issue. The idea that we might not give the best care possible to someone, that we might let someone die when we could keep them alive, that we might put a dollar figure on a person's life is an anathema to many people. I'm not really sure how a startup is going to disrupt that.

I'm not really sure how a startup is going to disrupt that.

Well one way would be to convert the dollar amount to something else: show how many lives could be saved if the money were spent differently.

I think the way to disrupt that is to come up with cheaper treatments and cures that are equally effective. Come up with a way to replace dialysis, or just make it a lot cheaper and you'll save a bunch of money. Obviously prevention is by far the cheapest solution, but some financial incentives to come up with cheaper treatments might be helpful.

Except that we already spend considerably more than other developed nations for no better care or outcomes.

> The energy crisis that will inevitably come, doesn't that sound like an arena well suited for startups?

No.

Energy is an area where the "unit" is measured in billions of dollars, and it doesn't make much sense to play with fractional units.

Startups and VC funding haven't worked at that scale. Maybe Kleiner can pull it off, but they haven't yet.

closed platform dominance from facebook/google/zynga/apple. if you build something they want, they will duplicate the functionality quickly

Facebook: founded 2004 Google: founded 1998 Zynga (!): founded 2007 Apple: founded 1976, but current resurgence began perhaps with the introduction of the iPhone in 2007.

I think it's pretty difficult to argue that it's a problem if a company formed in 2007 is now dominant enough that you list it instead of traditional heavyweights like Microsoft or IBM.

lack of monetizing opportunities, as most people still don't like to pay for things online.

Facebook, Google and Zynga all seem to have made it work...

To be painfully blunt, most of those problems are the direct result of having a bunch of old people who can't be economically productive and who are extremely expensive to keep alive. The best solution to that is to cure aging.

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