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derfclausen

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No, I didn't say I thought that. I was just spouting off a few random questions that come into play when you let the concept of a child's random lemonade stand scale up to something you'd consider a "real business".

In that other story, a kid's dad rented a soda machine and let the kid manage it. Presumably it complied with any applicable local laws regarding vending machine ownership, permits, taxes, safety, etc.

I'm all for kids learning entrepreneurship. I think the term 'Lemonade Stand' is loaded, at least for me, as it implies some innocent kind of hardly-profitable but fun thing for some kids to do once in a while. I think it would be great for some kids to see it grow and become mindful of business finances... but at that point, the line gets blurry for me.

When I think of a good ol' fashioned lemonade stand, I think of kids picking lemons and mixing up a big pitcher of homemade lemonade. In this article, the main photo shows kids selling bottled drinks and putting cash in a strongbox.

Would it change your opinion if you found out these kids were making $1000 a day? What if their parents were food vendors and didn't want to deal with permits, so they had their kids operate a stand? What if someone got salmonella from their lemonade?

I'm all for the cutesy kids killing a summer afternoon by selling homemade lemonade at the end of their driveway. The parents buying flats of drinks from Costco, a steel cashbox, and taking them to a street fair? Not so much.

I think the audience here tends to be capitalist/libertarian/objectivist. This means that for many, your assumptions about what is moral/"on shaky ground"/etc. are seen as somewhat baseless and irrelevant.

Maybe a better topic to discuss would be the ongoing debate over the proposed Harvard MBA 'oath' (http://www.alumni.hbs.edu/bulletin/blog/2010-02-19.html). Actually, I think a quote in that article answers your question quite succinctly:

  He concludes: “Rather than focusing on pledges, businesses should make sure that managers comply with their fiduciary and ethical responsibility to maximize the wealth of the people who pay their salaries, i.e., the shareholders.”
Lastly, it's not common to have these kind of open-ended discussion topics.

Good luck.

This is as "anonymous" as a public mailbox. This is trivial to monitor, and said monitor could easily perform a diff of the drive after each contact.

Real dead drop locations are typically only known by the involved parties, are ad hoc, and move frequently.

Don't get me wrong -- it's an interesting and sort of amusing project. I don't mind most of the terminology they're using, but I think it's dangerous to call something "anonymous" when it is so far from being so.

Your question is a little bit weird -- you're asking how horrible your own commute is? Or are you asking why more companies don't have SF offices?

For the latter, it seems obvious that real estate and infrastructure are cheaper in the Valley.

For the former, it really depends on where you live in SF.

If you are driving a car to the Valley, how far are you from the 280 or 101? Does your employer allow you to work your schedule around the rush hours? Are you working for a startup where you are expected to put in long hours and possibly even spend a lot of time with coworkers outside of the office?

If you are taking CalTrain, how far are you from the nearest station? I lived in the Sunset for several years and commuted to Palo Alto; it was a bit maddening, mostly due to the long time it took to ride MUNI to CalTrain. Door-to-door was around 100 minutes, but it was 100x less stressful than driving. Plus, I could catch up on news/email on the train. On the rare days that I'd drive in, I'd arrive at work already feeling beaten down.

While it's true that there's plenty of cool stuff going on in the Redwood City-Sunnyvale corridor, I still prefer life in SF. I'll speculate that you'll hear a lot of startup-centric people here bagging on it, but to each his own.