[dcurtis]

As the author of The Best, I am quite surprised and confused by Rhinehart's suggestion that the piece marks the "death" of Silicon Valley. He does not seem to understand me or what I was saying at all.

Also, "my ilk" are the very people he praises, including Paul Graham and YC founders pre-2012. I'm tempted to write a rebuttal, because while I agree that there was a marked change in the startup community around that time, I think it happened for reasons very different from the ones Rhinehart outlines in his piece.

(For reference: https://dcurt.is/the-best )

[drenvuk]

Your blog post sounds like your philosophy was to search for and find goods that you would enjoy using and give you peace of mind. His philosophy sounds more like "get what works, if it breaks replace it and try again." The longevity and quality of his items don't seem to matter so much as their ability to fulfill each stated purpose adequately. Your philosophy sounds consumeristic in the face of his more utilitarian sounding examples.

Taking the example of your flatware - why not just get some cheap stuff from Walmart? It will work well enough. The mouth sensation and feel in hand is secondary to the purpose of feeding yourself. I'd buy it because it looks nice but the cost of that vs a 20 piece set from Walmart? You can donate the excess to a soup kitchen.

My unasked for $0.02. I'd read your rebuttal. Please write it.

[calbear81]

I think Rhinehart’s perspective may be that a generation of people are focused on solving the wrong problems (ones that don’t have real impact on human lives) and we (collective) are fetishsizing that singular focus on making the best of something that is largely inconsequential in the real of real problems. For example, should anyone be making the best flatware and why do we care about buying the best flatware when there’s plenty of good enough.

There’s so many points in his article that it’s hard to start in one place but I got the sense that his overarching thesis is this:

There’s a bunch of real human problems today (hunger, climate change, disease etc) and people can either be working on 1) solving these problems or 2) distracting people from thinking about their own mortality and these crises. In the bucket of the distraction-economy is probably anything entertainment related, social networking, consumerism, etc which is not innovative. There are people who are trying to change the system because it’s broken not just simply extract more value from it.

At least that was my takeaway.

[parsley27]

I missed your post when it came out the first time, but I don't think you need to add a rebuttal about "The Best"; I think the message is clear and hasn't changed. Now your view on if Silicon Valley has fallen would be something I'd like to read.

But as far as your original post, I couldn't find anything polarizing and controversial about why seeking and trusting the best would bring peace of mind, or how that is somehow a call for overconsumption.

It's strange how differently the same words can be understood by different people.

[floatingatoll]

I’d be interested in reading that post. I hope you do end up writing it.