If you have strong opinions, you're dividing people. If you're Bezos, you've got a lot of influence. If you then dump them out of opportunism, you're ignoring any morality.
I agree, there are hundreds of comments in this post, which is not at all unusual for these kinds of societal topics, yet very few actually clarified the basics.
The goals, desires, motivations, assumptions, etc., of the various parties and groups involved.
Without this, the vast majority of effort seems to be spent going in circles. Some might be convinced from position A to B, some might be convinced from position B to C, and some might be convinced from position C to A.
i'm reminded of the short story "unwirer" by charlie stross and cory doctorow, which imagines a counter factual universe in which the internet was captured by corporate intentions much earlier
> but this would require people to be able to manage their own private keys
a few generations ago social networking would have seemed infeasible because it would require wide spread literacy (along with many other reasons of course). widespread private key management doesn't seem that infeasible to me.
> I'd argue that if you're smart enough to be reading this website, you're smart enough to create and sell a piece of software to 10 businesses.
it's both fascinating and horrifying to think through reasons this doesn't happen, the many complications that get between raw ability/acumen/interest and such straightforward outcomes!
I'm curious thinking about this. I'm a very strong researcher, mild-moderate software developer, and absolutely gridlock terrified of contracts, formalities, getting locked into commitments, etc.
Like, I think I could do it, but I'm on the autism spectrum so my budget for variance is _so_ much lower. I highly downbudget things in my life that are higher variance so I look more neurotypical a lot of the time but sometimes with unavoidable stuff I get very much the more classical autism negative stuff (meltdowns, subtle meltdowns, shutdowns (!!!), a host of destimming and de-stressing mechanisms, etc).
I guess that's the thing I'm concerned about. Any field I can eventually become comfortable in once I know the different situations and how to leave the bad ones/find the good ones/have healthy strategies that personally work for me for my worst case scenarios/etc. The main problem is that I don't have the 5-10 years to really sink into that comfortably to get there from raw experience, or the stamina to go through what would seem to be my own personal hell in the meantime.
I could be totally wrong so I'm up for learning (especially if there are resources that are specifically adaptive to autism &etc -- it helps a lot!). I could see how this all could be a good thing in a different light with a different set of strategies.
> The main problem is that I don't have the 5-10 years to really sink into that comfortably to get there from raw experience, or the stamina to go through what would seem to be my own personal hell in the meantime.
you've described a very difficult situation. i wish i had concrete advice for progressing with it.
you do seem to have a strong sense of your weaknesses and strengths though.
off the top of my head, perhaps developing some kind of SaaS such that you can deal with clients in a very algorithmic way / purely by API, would suit you best? as opposed to dealing with per client contracts/formalities...
sorry, i wish i had better advice and/or perspective for your situation.
i appreciate that "I cannot stress enough" is somewhat idiomatic, however it strikes me as odd to announce this but then not offer least some of the specific reasons you believe this.
(i think it was Bezos who first expressed this ideal?)