>the solution may be more Solyndras. Maybe we need some public institution - government or philanthropic - to grant loans at a 2 to 1 match for equity investment in companies that are tackling socially useful problems.
This is just torching money. It's all very well to say you're trying to destroy value to reach a social goal, but if you throw good money after bad on failed business ideas - no matter how noble the quest - you're still making life worse off for everybody.
Any good business that provides social benefit and has revenues higher than it's costs will go on to provide the benefits for many people.
You can't just throw money at a problem and hope to make it go away. It's especially worse if you throw public money at a problem.
Creating the next round of profitable companies hinge on the people involved understanding what goes into making a company profitable. If you hire a bunch of people and get them to tip public money into dead-end projects, all you've done is trained people to waste money.
The problem in the argument you have made is that you're insisting that something like facebook doesn't improve peoples quality of life, when it's patently obvious that it does, or people wouldn't use it.
I'm going to paraphrase-quote a pg essay here, but the point stays : 'it might be lamentable that people prefer beer and football to fine wine and opera, but you can't call it wrong when they have made that choice of their own free will'.
This is just torching money. It's all very well to say you're trying to destroy value to reach a social goal, but if you throw good money after bad on failed business ideas - no matter how noble the quest - you're still making life worse off for everybody.
Any good business that provides social benefit and has revenues higher than it's costs will go on to provide the benefits for many people.
You can't just throw money at a problem and hope to make it go away. It's especially worse if you throw public money at a problem.
Creating the next round of profitable companies hinge on the people involved understanding what goes into making a company profitable. If you hire a bunch of people and get them to tip public money into dead-end projects, all you've done is trained people to waste money.
The problem in the argument you have made is that you're insisting that something like facebook doesn't improve peoples quality of life, when it's patently obvious that it does, or people wouldn't use it.
I'm going to paraphrase-quote a pg essay here, but the point stays : 'it might be lamentable that people prefer beer and football to fine wine and opera, but you can't call it wrong when they have made that choice of their own free will'.