Comment by ekianjo

Comment by ekianjo 3 days ago

2 replies

> This is why having a safety net and resources to try again is so powerful.

The idea of a safety net is a silly idea. The whole world had very little safety net just 100 years ago, and we still managed fine to make progress and to get out of poverty (on average).

On the contrary, when you know you have very little safety net, you tend to try harder and to persevere a lot more.

blharr 3 days ago

> The idea of electricity is a silly idea. The whole world had very little electricity just 100 years ago. and we still managed fine to make progress

This is just an argument from tradition and not even a good one. It's debatable (and maybe impossible to prove) if it's even true. 100 years ago, the global economy fell into a huge decline that led to more global safety nets. Then, were there even less safety nets 50 years ago? And did that lack of existence not hinder progress?

> you tend to try harder

Is there any actual evidence for this? If I don't have a social net, I can't do anything about it. I'm not going to try harder at my risky, innovative product. I'm going to give up and do something 'safe' that only marginally increases economic output.