Eat People

aka Free Radical-s by Andy Kessler ISBN:1591843774

Lots of anti-BigGov stuff.

But his real point is that it's best for you and society if you Change The World (create Progress) through a Huge Invention. He emphasizes that it has to Scale (e.g. eventually get used by millions if not billions - Critical Mass). End up as a BigCo.

• see also Software Is Eating The World

Rules

• Has to Scale (keep getting cheaper, get more widespread)
• Waste abundant things to compensate for what's scarce - e.g. find the new Abundance and use lots of it.
• Go Horizontal (breadth for wide usage, part of everyone's stack, vs vertical integration for narrow market)
• Intelligence at the Edge - use lots of devices and humans (Crowd Sourcing).
• Wealth comes from Productivity. (Even if it's more-efficient ''delivery'' of ''fun''.
• Make technology adapt to humans - Personalization.
• Eat People - eliminate their BullShit jobs (UnEmployment). Esp non-Creators - he has a ladder
  • Creators
  • Servers
  • Sloppers: Middle Man, broker, goods-mover
  • SuperSloppers - marketers esp of Luxury goods
  • Sponges - sloppers/servers who make lots of money through Artificial Scarcity - lawyers, doctors, other licensed Trade Guild-s
  • Slackers (just Servers that Andy thinks are liberal doofuses) (Hipster?)
  • Thieves - "political entrepreneurs" (business seeking Subsidy and Monopoly - Government Failure)
  • Slimers - Wall St - reduce friction
• Markets Make Better Decisions Than Managers (sounds like the Edge again)
• Embrace Exceptionalism - be smart, work with super-smart people
• Be a Market Entrepreneur and attack Political Entrepreneurs - Route Around the rules. Take advantage of them as sources of inefficiency and Route Around the attempts to protect them.
• Use Zero Marginal Cost to create a Flood - scale again. Find goods where you have zero marginal cost but can price at value.
• Create your own Scarcity with a Virtual Pipe. "Media is about control of a pipe." Create Lock-In (but don't over-exploit) ITunes, WoW. Create a closed system (Walled Garden Platform) that leverage the stack of open layers (Twitter). Personalization again.