
America's Startup Scene Is Looking Anemic - petethomas
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-07/america-s-startup-scene-is-looking-anemic
======
sonnyblarney
This is misleading.

A 'startup' is a high growth type business, typically funded by VC (or
something like that) and has nothing to do with the regular kinds of 'small
companies' which are things like restaurants, cafes, contractors, small
businesses etc..

The vast majority of new, small businesses in America are not very closely
related to our modern view of 'startups'.

It's not healthy to equate the two - as the 'startup' scene in America is
actually _very_ vibrant, while there _may_ be an issue with small business
formation.

As for the later - it's not necessarily bad.

While I was at an F50 handset maker - we noticed that Spain and S. Europe
countries opted for 'individual' service package, while UK, France, Germany
opted for 'business' packages.

Our research revealed something interesting: Spain and S. European countries
just had large numbers of people 'self employed' or employed in small
businesses, while W. Europe had many more people employed in large businesses.

There are substantial advantages in having many large businesses as there
things that one cannot do unless one is at a certain scale. Think: airplanes,
automobiles etc. etc..

The S. European economies suffer from a lack of ability to compete on this
basis: the ability for people to work together in large teams to develop
sophisticated products at scale. Vast numbers of people don't even recognize
the kind of professionalism and specialization required to work in these
organizations - and I means even simple things like product management,
product marketing, a bunch of basic financial ops roles etc...

Of course there are concerns about big corps with all the market power
snuffing out smaller competition, and the lack of real innovation in bigger
firms ... there's a host of issues there ...

But to compare 'small business' with 'startup' is not very useful, and to
assume that 'small business' = 'good' across the board is not necessarily
helpful either.

The subject requires a little bit of nuance.

ie from the article: "Tech businesses, unlike corner stores, tend to be high-
growth businesses that employ lots of people."

Uhh, no. Car manufacturers (and other manufacturers) 'employ a lot of people'.
Tech employs very few in relative terms, for example.

~~~
nabla9
You made a correct observation.

Small business generally has lower productivity than medium and large
business. When politicians put their hope in small business as job creator,
those jobs have lover productivity.

It's good to have vibrant small business sector, but you can't expect it to
bring exceptional growth.

~~~
optimuspaul
You have data to back that up? I don't know that to be true. I've seen many
small businesses that have much higher productivity per employee than that of
larger businesses.

~~~
sonnyblarney
Productivity is not a function of 'how much stuff employees accomplish' \-
it's more like a measure of profits or economic value creation per employee.

So yes, small company employees are 'really productive' in the 'working'
sense, but economically, not so much.

Other than at hedge funds and maybe some other very niche businesses (law
firms?) ... the megabucks comes at a certain scale.

------
TimJYoung
Having been a software developer since the 80s, and an ISV in developer tools
for a large portion of that, here's what I'm seeing:

\- Very few companies want to take a chance on software products coming from
smaller ISVs. There's been a great deal of consolidation, and companies are
scared to use anything that doesn't already have serious backing and market
penetration. Reasons cited often include not being able to hire developers or
other IT people to manage the software, or concerns about the longevity of the
ISV. In contrast, back in the 80s you had products like FoxPro being created
by tiny Fox Software in Perrysburg, Ohio that went on to become some of the
biggest developer tools for PCs. This attitude of not wanting to use something
because of some other tangential factor was simply not in play. If you could
solve someone's problem well, you had a customer.

\- Somebody touched on advertising in one of the comments, and this cannot be
understated. There is simply no reliable way to find your audience today that
doesn't involve "spray and pray" with one's (already-limited) advertising
budget. Advertising used to be a great way for smaller ISVs to become known
and announce to the world that they were the "real deal". You would start out
in the back of a popular magazine that targeted your potential customers with
a B&W 1/4 page ad, and then move up as sales increased. It's just very, very
hard to get your product in front of the right people that are making the
purchasing decisions, and even when you do, the first issue above still comes
into play.

\- There were options like shareware for ISVs that were just getting started
and didn't have any money at all for advertising or promotion. Many great
applications started out as shareware and went on to become commercial
successes. The key difference with open source here is the expectation that
you were supposed to pay for the product if you used it, as well as,
obviously, a lack of source code.

Of course, all of this is a giant feedback loop that accelerates over time,
and here we are with a few software companies completely dominating various
spaces. It could be that this is where all industries eventually end up, but
it certainly is not ideal for small business creation. The part I find the
most disheartening is that I'm not even sure if this is something that is
specific to the software industry, in which case we're dealing with macro
issues and software developers are really lacking any tools to buck the trends
or change course.

~~~
paulsutter
> There is simply no reliable way to find your audience today that doesn't
> involve "spray and pray"

The strategy to get customers IS the startup idea.

This one subject is the place to focus 90% of your creative energy, it never
came for free. And it won’t involve “spray and pray”

~~~
TimJYoung
I think you misunderstood my second point. When advertising in magazines, you
already _knew_ who your customers were - they were those that were reading the
magazine (the publishers all gave out circulation numbers, of which I'm sure
many were fudged a bit). Combined with my first point in my original post, you
pretty much had an "in" at that point if you at least had a demo/trial version
of your software that someone could get. For example, one of the first things
I would do when getting a new copy of DBMS or Data Based Advisor magazine
would be to head to the back of the magazine to see what kind of new software
was being advertised. Yeah, it was the section that looked like the "see if
you can draw Tippy the Turtle" ads in other magazines, but people looked at
them and they worked.

So, perhaps, what we're seeing in the software industry is a result of the
collapse of the media industry and targeted magazines...

~~~
paulsutter
In the early days of computing there were a small number of highly technical
early adopters who were easily reached. Now, there’s a vast market of almost
the entire population, supporting technology companies worth hundreds of
billions.

Product categories that worked [for tiny startups] in the early days don’t
work now, but there are vastly more opportunities (especially in vertical
markets) then ever before

By the way - cryptocurrency is one area with primitive tools and a similar
user base to the early days of computing.

~~~
TimJYoung
The same product categories definitely do exist (I know I changed your wording
there a bit). In fact, many of the software companies that advertised back
then still exist today in those same categories. The main difference is that
today they advertise in ways that are out of reach for most ad budgets.

It's the "reachability" that is so difficult, not deciding which category one
wants to target.

------
whistlerbrk
> The source of the decline in startup dynamism isn’t yet known

Please... massive redistribution of wealth to the already wealthy strangles
both potential entrepreneurship and the customer base it would have attracted
since they don't have disposable income. Let's not play stupid here.

~~~
snikeris
I'm an average software developer in the USA. Would you please provide some
examples of how my wealth is being redistributed to the already wealthy?

~~~
conanbatt
If you are a software engineer in the US, you are the wealthy.

~~~
hellofunk
What's your definition of wealthy?

Because many software developers in SV might make over 100K (most do) but have
vastly less money left over to actually save compared to someone earning less
than half that in other places.

I recently considered an opportunity in SV and after getting over the initial
shock of how much they thought I was worth, I realized I as in better economic
shape staying where I am and earning what appears to be a lot less. And I'm
not what I'd consider wealthy at all.

I recently saw an article here on HN about a guy who worked for Google for 10
years then quit and started his own company. He says in that decade he saved
100K, and my thought was, that's all, for 10 years at Google? I earn a lot
less than he did, but I'm saving at nearly triple that rate.

~~~
maccard
> Because many software developers in SV might make over 100K (most do) but
> have vastly less money left over to actually save compared to someone
> earning less than half that in other places.

That's just not true.

If you're working in SF on 100k/year, your pay after tax is 5750. Spending
2k/month on rent leaves you with 3750/month, which is almost the pay before
tax of someone on half that.

~~~
jimbofisher1
What adult is paying 2k in rent in SV, with 4 roommates that may be
possible... If you want to live like that fine but most of America can afford
to buy a substantial house for 2k a month.

~~~
maccard
I don't live in SF, I had a cursory google and came up with [0] for
2100/month. My point was that even spending that amount on rent, and paying
tax on a 100k salary, that you still have more left over at that point than
someone on 50k a year will _gross_ and have to pay rent and taxes out of. The
commenter I replied to said:

> many software developers in SV might make over 100K (most do) but have
> vastly less money left over to actually save compared to someone earning
> less than half that in other places.

Not that he couldn't afford to buy a substantial house in SF.

[0] [https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/411A-Lincoln-Way-San-
Fran...](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/411A-Lincoln-Way-San-Francisco-
CA-94122/2092823444_zpid/)

~~~
jimbofisher1
Sure and I bet you could find a $500/mo room in a crack house. Doesn't mean a
working professional would be willing to live there.

Frankly a realistic number is $3000/mo for a 1BR and my point is that you
could own an incredible home in most of the country for that price. People in
SV have Stockholm Syndrome and justify the horrendous cost of living, rampant
homelessness, insane working hours etc. with their cries of "but look at all
my stock options!"

Meanwhile their counterparts in places like Austin make over $100k, can easily
own a substantial home, have excellent life-work balance and shocker... have
SUBSTANTIAL SAVINGS as well.

------
0xB31B1B
The data stops in 2013,

There was huge growth in tech startups in 2013 - 2015

I agree we have an issue with anticompetitive behaviors and monopolistic
practices though.

~~~
daok
Even if the data does not stretch to 2015, the data start way back in the 70'
which is enough to see a trend.

------
criddell
> Tech businesses, unlike corner stores, tend to be high-growth businesses
> that employ lots of people.

I always thought the key characteristic of a startup is of scale. For example,
Instagram had less than 20 employees when Facebook bought them. Those 20
people played a role in the (inevitable) destruction of Kodak and the loss of
20,000 jobs.

An angle this article didn't cover is the change in how the rest of America
sees Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. It's usually not positive anymore and that
affects how high school aged kids think about their future..

~~~
lr4444lr
Perhaps what they meant is on a per company, not per revenue basis. But I
agree - a significant portion of the productivity value of a startup is job
destruction of in traditional industries. Small companies have higher marginal
utility from each employee. It's an uncomfortable truth that the article seems
to ignore.

------
WhompingWindows
Coming at this from the data science/healthcare research field, I see a number
of factors reducing the number of startups. First, healthcare has a number of
barriers to entry for technological innovation, including very large
bureaucracies in the VA, medicare, medicaid, insurance companies, and many
other large, slow-moving entities. It's possible to entrench yourself in one
of these bureaucracies and do great changes, but there is a maddeningly slow
pace of uptake of changes. Second, you have a vast amount of talent and
capability being locked up in guild-like systems, where MD students with
brilliant minds are being closeted to study the highly specific anatomical
structures they will probably never use, for a massive bill to boot. What if
we reduced all of our training programs by 50% in time (and cost to the
student), in favor of a leaner, more practical approach to clinical work?
Again, the massive bureaucracy of healthcare is slowing down innovation.

So, where DO we see innovation for healthcare? Primarily, it's coming from the
labs of academic researchers or its coming from big biotech companies like
Pharma, biomedical device firms, etc. Yet, these academics or biotech
companies are fundamentally linked with the massive bureaucracies of
healthcare, their clients and customer-base.

On top of all of that, keep in mind in healthcare, we have very tight
restrictions on use of protected healthcare information. It's hard to study
anything, you need very detailed analysis plans and IRB approval before you
can even begin to gather/pull the data.

What's the way out for healthcare start-ups/innovators? It's a tricky
question, I think we need more open-source work, we need streamlining of
bureaucracy, and much more of the talent in this sphere needs to be put to
work on the issues that matter. If universal healthcare is ever passed, we
will need massive levels of talent reallocation to innovate and drive costs
down.

What a time to be in healthcare. We have the best science we've ever had, we
have the best diagnostics and treatments and tests we've ever had, and yet we
also have arguably the greatest challenges and the most potential for
improvement we've ever seen in healthcare. Anyone reading this who is
interested in tech, I'd encourage you to join this 1/6th of the economy which
is ever-present and only set to increase in prominence with the aging of our
western societies.

~~~
beauzero
Publishing prices would be nice too. If I could shop minor medical procedures
it would free me up significantly.

~~~
timtaco
I did a small iphone app just for that - [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/u-s-
medical-prices/id1376580...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/u-s-medical-
prices/id1376580121)

------
ddtaylor
One problem we are facing is that it's very hard to compete in online
advertising with a small budget. I feel we did a really good job at building
the software with a small team that would cost a large established company at
least $600,000 to develop but I don't know a good way to do a similar thing
with advertising and growing yo 10k users.

~~~
chatmasta
Why can’t you raise funding? If you truly have a great product with
product/market fit, and established LTV greater than CAC, then you are a
perfect investment for a VC who just needs to pour some gas on the fire.

This is exactly the kind of problem a Series A is meant to solve.

On the other hand, if the problem is your competitors are VC funded and are
spending more than LTV on CAC, then (1) that sucks, but eventually they will
burn out, and (2) you need to find ways to compete with more finely targeted
ads that result in higher CTR to outweigh the bid differentials. Or, you need
to raise the price of your product to increase LTV in line with the inflated
CAC.

~~~
ddtaylor
Our attempts to raise funding essentially investors want us to grow to 10k
users.

With our limited budget we have seen pretty good customer acquisition cost. I
can't share exact numbers but lower than $10 for targeted ads.

We spent our money already on development and it looks like it could be
$80,000 or more to reach the goals to get investors interested.

We are trying WeFunfer currently as well.

We have no competitors right now. Everyone else is doing screen time
management with rigid controls etc. Our innovation is the integration with
learning sites and rewarding the child/student with Internet access after they
meet goals.

Thanks for giving me a quick marketing 101 we are not good at this part of
things.

~~~
beauzero
Have you written documentation/POCs specifically targeting ERate funding?

More specifics... [https://www.fcc.gov/general/e-rate-schools-libraries-usf-
pro...](https://www.fcc.gov/general/e-rate-schools-libraries-usf-program)

ERate has a 5 year cycle for rural school districts. The problem you are
solving is a very real one. Also I would look to people like LightSpeed
(produce Rocket appliances) for bundling. Possibly see if you can provide a
"service" on Clover as well. Good luck.

I took a look at your site. I would also recommend a chrome extension with
easy management in G Suite. 10k customers is one rural school district for
you. Many, many of them don't do Apple but use G Suite, since it's free, along
with Chromebooks.

~~~
ddtaylor
We have not looked at E Rate yet but we have been at a few conferences and
related to K12 space with Clever - they are really good people. We originally
were targeted to parents and only recently have tried tapping into the school
space. It's not easy to get the word out to the right people, for example we
get rejected by Peach Jar for many districts and have $1500 of funds sitting
there until we can find a strategy.

~~~
beauzero
I will grant you K-12 is difficult to break into. This is advice for
specifically Georgia. I am not familiar with other states. Clever is a path
through teachers. Teachers generally push joining Clever not Ed Boards or
parents. ERate is a path through district boards. Parents don't care or
understand what/how technology is being used in the classroom. They see iPad,
Surface, Chromebook and generally think that most kids can access the same
stuff they can on the internet. It is really locked down and usually through
Lightspeed Rocket, Palo Alto, Cisco Umbrella/OpenDNS. Many push DNS through
Umbrella or forcesafesearch.google.com. Make sure you accessible. Accessible
also means you are categorized as "safe". "unknown" or "unsafe" will keep you
out of schools.

Chrome extensions, chrome extensions, chrome extensions. I cannot stress this
enough. This is the "hidden application pool" that students, teachers, and
principals pull from. There is a cottage industry that does nothing but figure
out extensions to create, disguise them as "informational sites/extensions" in
order to give kids access to games so that they can show ads. It is a constant
thorn in the side of IT.

If you have a chrome extension ...teachers will find you.

Most ERate customers make purchases on 5 year contracts or a "buy once keep
forever" model...month to month is a pariah. This is due to the fact that with
ERate government funds projects, software, and infrastructure can be
purchased. ERate funding is viewed like the lottery.

In Georgia at least there is a state run "Tech" board (email list) where
different techs exchange ideas. They make recommendations to the individual
school boards. You get someone to champion you there and you will pick up
several districts.

...again good luck.

------
pyb
Relatedly : a rarefaction of unicorns ? [https://avc.com/2018/05/a-changing-
of-the-guard/](https://avc.com/2018/05/a-changing-of-the-guard/)

~~~
atomical
Most of them will be deemed securities and the SEC will take action.

------
rm_-rf_slash
My two cents:

The 90s and 00s were a very unique time in business and tech history. With
just a computer, internet connection, and knowledge of a few programming
languages, anybody could start a site or an app. Because they were among the
first to do it, they got rich.

Nowadays, although the cost of computing is way down (more people have
computers/mobiles and cloud computing is dirt cheap compared to the on-site
hosting a decade or two ago), the necessary complexity for a novel IT product
is way, way up.

For example, social networks are pretty much complete. You have the big one
(FB), the lightweight (TW), the pictures (IG), the secret (SNAP), and so on.
Go ahead and try to make your own social network. Your costs are next to
nothing but you will probably not become the next Facebook Snapchat.

However, there is a lot of opportunity in the ML/AI spaces as well as with
electronics and IoT. That requires a further investment in education/training
as well as capital expenses (GPU/TPU/cloud for ML, hardware costs for
electronics). So the barriers to the weekend coder are much higher, even
though the opportunity exists.

Likewise, working in higher education with a close relationship to the state
has revealed enormous opportunities, but they require extensive knowledge of
grant writing, local codes, etc. More barriers to entry, but nothing
insurmountable.

In short, there’s still gold in them hills. But mining ain’t what it used to
be.

~~~
TimJYoung
I would say you're pretty close to the truth here, but the issue I have with
this picture is that there are still tons of issues with the existing software
that dominates various industries. So, why can't an upstart software company
cause issues for the existing players ? To me, that's the real issue here: we
have dominant players, but they aren't necessarily producing the best
solutions. This indicates that the dominant players are building walls that
are preventing competition.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
I think that ties into the example from the article where the writer
hypothesizes a software service that could be replicated by a FAANG, and the
resulting discouragement prevents the service from being either created or
replicated.

Just out of curiosity, what services would you consider insufficiently
provided by the big tech companies?

~~~
TimJYoung
I think you're right.

On your second point, "insufficiently" is not the word I would use because
most software titles from major publishers are feature-rich, but have some
pretty glaring quality issues.

iTunes and MS Outlook are specific examples that come to mind, although I'm
sure the list is much longer than that.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Good examples. As per iTunes, I used to use it extensively. Probably spent
hundreds of dollars over time. And yet I almost exclusively use Spotify now.
Although the issue with both is that those businesses exist at the mercy of a
few very large labels, so even though somebody _could_ come up with an
iTunes/Spotify clone - even in a weekend hack - they would have a near zero
chance of getting a label to sign with it, much less enough to reasonably
compete with Apple or Spotify. So while they get to enjoy their oligopoly, the
reality of the situation isn’t entirely their fault, either.

As per outlook, I use it for work. I work at a big university and higher
education moves VERY SLOWLY, so in my case even if a fantastic competitor to
Outlook existed, we probably wouldn’t adopt it because we’re comfortable with
our Microsoft contract, and even if the prospect was raised of changing email
clients, it would probably take a decade to even happen.

I don’t see too much danger with either example. My parents had far less
choice when it came to, say, televisions and cars. But things turned out all
right.

~~~
TimJYoung
I get what you're saying, but I'm not sure if televisions and cars are the
right comparison since both tend to be capital-intensive endeavors, which has,
traditionally, not been the case with software and why it has been sort of
this "gateway to wealth creation" that was more similar to pursuits like music
or literature.

In the past few years, I've seen a lot of stories about developers leaving
software to do other more traditional startups. When one sees a story about
someone leaving software to start a bakery or restaurant , we should all be
very, very worried. ;-)

------
Alex3917
The current low cost of capital favors legacy companies and fewer, overfunded
startups. Once the next recession hits there will be a premium on efficiency
again.

------
exelius
Maybe because it doesn’t take a company to test product/market fit anymore? A
single developer can build an entire app on something like Heroku or AWS
Serverless and use that to test the market, rather than needing to build a
whole company to get to MVP.

That said, the fact we need far fewer people to build tech products means that
most of the economic gains those companies would have distributed to workers
just go to the platforms...

------
matte_black
Can’t say I’m surprised.

When the mobile app market began and cloud computing was becoming a thing and
social media was connecting more people than ever, it seemed like everyone
suddenly had an idea for a hot new app.

I remember fielding calls from people who wanted mobile apps developed when
they had no business being in this industry. Many of them seemed like the
types who would be easily swayed by stories of people becoming overnight
millionaires off of one simple app.

I remember Startup Weekend events were blowing up all across the country and
people would go to these events and take them very seriously, no matter how
ridiculous or derivative the ideas pitched were.

I remember reading articles hypothesizing about where “The Next Silicon
Valley” would be, and people trying very hard to host “events” to make their
hometowns into that. Of course, Silicon Valley itself had become nothing more
than a cesspool of startups with ideas built on short term thinking and
fastest possible growth.

A startup scene built on hype like this is not sustainable, at least not
without a major pullback at some point.

------
frgtpsswrdlame
I don't think their chart is very convincing. So there's less high-tech
startups than in the 1999-2001 era, why is that a problem? I'd be a bit
worried if we _did_ have that same spike. And it seems to me that tech giants
are bad for a lot of reasons but I'm not sure how they disincentivize startup
formation. They do lots of competitor buyouts so they probably do reduce the
average lifespan of startups but I would think that just slightly moves the
risk/reward of creating a startup down.

To me the chart reads that the problem with startups is in every sector except
for tech. In that case perhaps we should look at economy-wide reasons for a
slowdown in entrepreneurship. Considering the number one predictive factor for
entrepreneurship is receiving an inheritance or gift maybe we should look at
whether we're placing people in too precarious of a position to take on the
risk required in starting out on your own.

------
s2g
> That’s worrisome, because small business was traditionally one of the main
> gateways to the middle class. Without the option of starting a corner store,
> Americans without high skills or advanced degrees will find it that much
> harder to maintain comfortable lifestyles. Instead, many will have to seek
> jobs from large corporations, depriving them of personal autonomy and
> possibly driving down wages due to the increased competition for jobs.

oh please.

> But it’s also possible that the high-tech sector is becoming dominated by a
> few big players, leaving less room for innovators to break in. Tech titans
> like Amazon, Facebook Inc., Apple Inc., Alphabet (Google) and Microsoft have
> grown to staggering size

Bingo.

Conglomeration is just awful.

> regulators might take a second look at options to reduce the dominance of
> the big players.

Nope. After Microsoft the big tech companies learned to pay their bribes like
everyone else. Too much lobbying now.

------
jdavis703
If you view the graph for number of "high tech" startups the performance has
been relatively flat for decades, save for the dot-com bubble. It is
concerning that one of the principal drivers of wealth is floundering, but in
terms of the impact on the tech scene, this article is more sensational than
scary.

------
aluminussoma
The most recent assortment of high-flying tech unicorns were mostly started
during the 2008-2011 period. Great startups tend to get their start in the
depths of a recession, where perhaps economic conditions force founders to
take risks and practice uncommon business creativity. We haven't had a
recession in a while; I wonder if the talent that would oridinarily start a
startup has chosen the relative comforts of existing large businesses.

------
nimish
Of course it is. More and more markets are becoming oligopolies with high
barriers to entry and high costs to consumers.

We need a new trustbusting government to clear out the cruft.

------
nautilus12
Ive wanted to start a company for years on various projects but have failed to
find the sales network to help me put any of them forth into motion. That in
combination with the fact that bigger players are more well funded and I dont
have the realistic means or support to bootstrap my idea. Maybe everyone else
feels the same way.

------
strongmoneypac
Poorly designed securities regulation prevents private capital formation
except by giving up your ideas or company to accredited investors or getting
funded through a bank which is impossible unless you are already wealthy.
Accredited investor laws need to be abolished and the funding portals need to
go up to 10 million and need to be exempted from state regulation.

------
arzt
There is no reason to stab in the dark re: a cause. Wealth concentration is
the cause. Break up the big 4 and you will cause a massive wealth
redistribution by the unleashing competition that has been stifled in tech.

~~~
briandear
Any actual data to support this?

------
DGCA
Non-AMP Link:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-07/america-s...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-07/america-
s-startup-scene-is-looking-anemic)

~~~
throwawayqdhd
I'm yet to find a single AMP page that I didn't hate. Don't know why Google
keeps pushing it on me. At least in my country, data is ridiculously cheap - I
can't spend a few MBs on a page if I want to read it

~~~
hamandcheese
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

------
DrNuke
If mighty Apple centres its main event on emoticons and ways to take better
selfies, there is a big big big problem with the direction of capitalism (and
mankind) for sure.

~~~
Clubber
There is so much wrong with that statement, I don't even know where to begin.

