"I do care about would-be founders' opinions, but surely I don't have to use every essay I write to convince people to apply to YC."
The essay reminds me a bit of the argument that the Native Americans actually got a great deal when they sold Manhattan for $24, because that money would be worth about $30 trillion today if it had been invested at a return of just 7.5% for the past 385 years. I think it's interesting and worthwhile to explore these sorts of mathematical ideas, but at the same time it's impossible to make good business decisions without fundamentally basing them on human needs, human scales, and human timeframes.
The essay reminds me a bit of the argument that the Native Americans actually got a great deal when they sold Manhattan for $24, because that money would be worth about $30 trillion today if it had been invested at a return of just 7.5% for the past 385 years. I think it's interesting and worthwhile to explore these sorts of mathematical ideas, but at the same time it's impossible to make good business decisions without fundamentally basing them on human needs, human scales, and human timeframes.