Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pieces of Shit

geohot.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 84 posts

Re: Pieces of Shit

#61

Post by awillen »

yarcob wrote: post #2

> A 500% tax on advertising. It’s a zero sum game with no benefit to society. I don't think a tax is going to fix the underlying problem, which is that ad publishers have no responsibility for the ads they show. The problem is that the scummiest advertisers can afford to pay the highest prices. Someone who defrauds you can always afford to pay more for advertising than someone who actually provides a service.

> Someone who defrauds you can always afford to pay more for advertising than someone who actually provides a service.

This is just demonstrably not true. Look at the biggest advertisers in the world - they're giant corporations that sell good/services.

Re: Pieces of Shit

#63

Post by imtringued »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #55
djbebs wrote: post #19

I read it. Its at best unhelpful and misguided and at worst actively harmful to the stated goals. Ultimately he is advocating for a political solution for what he believes is an economic problem. The issue here is that the cause of the problems he wants to resolve is not an economic problem at all, but a political choice. The proposal of preventing companies from purchasing property, for example is a clear cut exampl…

> Ultimately he is advocating for a political solution for what he believes is an economic problem. I think the larger point he is making is that if someone doesn't do something about unbridled "Corporate Capitalism", there will be blood in the streets. Government might be the only actor capable of going toe to toe with such a behemoth.

There are a lot of people who got screwed over by the the 80s reformation of the economy away from government intervention and the strange part is that these people believe that this move is actually a form of government intervention and it was the government that is making their lives worse. So getting to an even "free-er market" will solve the problem so they keep voting that way.

The free market is an empty ideology because there is no such thing in the real world. When the law and order of governments no longer applies, then we don't fall back to a fair and just utopian world free of governments, we fall back to the law of the jungle. [0] The law of the jungle involves a lot of pain and from the perspective of those living lives sheltered from pain through law and order of governments, the primary source of pain is the government. After all, governments have vast police and military forces.

They have the monopoly of violence. Therefore people perceive governments = violence and no governments = no violence. If the amount of violence increases by decreasing the importance of the government then people will insist that it's the government that inflicted the violence and will want to keep decreasing the importance of the government. What they don't realize is that they will experience an even harsher reality.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_jungle

Re: Pieces of Shit

#64

Post by justzisguyuknow »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #53
timdaub wrote: post #38

> Continue to let huge ad companies (stop calling them tech companies) rent seek and nickel and dime you on everything +1 for calling FAANG ad companies

Yes, that was one point of his that I recognized that individuals can act on. As an example, cancel your monthly Netflix, Spotify, etc. Wasn't a lot we could do about the others.

Isn't the whole point of paying for Netflix/Spotify that you don't get ads?

Re: Pieces of Shit

#65

Post by imtringued »

tentacleuno wrote: post #4

> Continue to let huge ad companies (stop calling them tech companies) rent seek and nickel and dime you on everything What is he referring to here, out of curiosity? Does a company like Google own an apartment complex, or is it some sort of on-site housing programme?

He's saying that the ad space is an oligopoly and Google has such a big portion of it that they might as well be a monopoly. Humans have limited attention so getting a prime spot is important for your business. This allows Google to charge above and beyond the value of the actual advertising they provide.

Re: Pieces of Shit

#66

Post by imtringued »

j7ake wrote: post #47
mmarq wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it even mean to separate capitalism from government?

For example, working in certain positions of government for a few years can often land very lucrative jobs in finance companies like Goldman Sachs. There is a corrupting influence of finance companies on government civil servants to sway legislation towards the companies by hinting they will be rewarded later for it by employing them later in senior positions. A way to limit this corruption is to ban government civil…

How about limiting private jobs during their service?

Re: Pieces of Shit

#67

Post by q1w2 »

This post is childish and has no depth or merit. It reads like a teenager's rant with blending of angst and conflating of ideas and emotions.

Re: Pieces of Shit

#68

Post by aldanor »

fuoqi wrote: post #23

>1% tax on the full amount of every trade. Fuck off worthless HFT mega brain drain. Fuck off short termism in markets. I think a much better solution would be to mandate "slower" exchanges, i.e. exchanges would accumulate orders in a hidden queue and resolve them for example every 1 second, after that it would publicly publish all orders submitted to the last tick. For most market participants this change will be vir…

That would create more opportunities for all sorts of gaming (e.g. place orders before update, remove them right after, etc). Since fast players would still exist, they would react first to each slow update, which means all other participants would always see a book that's pretty much always outdated, and very heavily so.

HFTs are not a universal evil, they increase market efficiency and they pay for it.

Re: Pieces of Shit

#69

Post by beepbooptheory »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #56
beepbooptheory wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A non political solution would be the transition away from capitalism to a different kind of relation between labor and society. It should be clear at this point that capitalism can tolerate a pretty broad spectrum of political arrangements, from 'socialist' countries to dictatorships, and especially everything in between. You can change your frontend to be all kinds of ways, and that will create vastly different use…

I'm not sure how you transition away from capitalism without government involvement? Some kind of "people's movement" to embrace, oh, I don't know, coops?

Well the actual implementation of it is totally separate from understanding the requirements.

Its not clear, at this point, it will ever actually happen, but that doesn't itself speak to the main point, that there is a fundamental separation.

and either way, you will find history is full of events where people act outside of their current political world in order to change it!

Re: Pieces of Shit

#70

Post by brigandish »

rspoerri wrote: post #41
yarcob wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume they mean to make sure the people who make the laws don't profit from them. Kinda hard to do in practice.

It would also mean that it's impossible to gain power in goverment by money or by owning "things" (factories etc.). Afaik historic greek democracy was more like that. People got into goverment by lottery. If you were chosen, you had to attend a 2 year training and then your spent 4 years in goverment.

It's called sortition[1] and I think it'd be a wonderful method of choosing the 2nd house in a bicameral legislature like the UK's. Imagine replacing all the lords and bishops who've been placed there by heredity or backscratching with people chosen by sortition. That'd really hold the elected politicians to account.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

Post reply on HN