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The Ponzi Career

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Re: The Ponzi Career

#101

Post by pavel_lishin »

tjs8rj wrote: post #66
mattzito wrote: post #14

There’s literally nothing in this article that you couldn’t replace “token” or “coin” with “contract” or “membership” and have it work exactly the same. The idea of selling contracts against future income is interesting but putting the blockchain here is yet another solution in search of a problem.

I’m usually in total agreement about blockchain just being stuffed anywhere, but observationally, there must be a good reason why blockchain shows up in these situations so often. There’s definitely the hype factor, but blockchain does have value in that it’s reasonably trusted by average people (perhaps unlike signing a contract everytime you wanted to purchase a piece of a creator - coins gamify it), and it’s easy…

> blockchain does have value in that it’s reasonably trusted by average people

I don't think you and I would agree on what constitutes "average people".

> it’s easy to setup trust systems - Alex setup his own token in a weekend for a “human IPO”, rather than running through the cost and time of properly setting it up with a lawyer and contracts.

Easy to set up, but how easy it is it to enforce?

Re: The Ponzi Career

#102

Post by kristianc »

Each of these articles need to be treated with a degree of scepticism: in order to have a functioning market for any of these things - whether an NFT, a share of future earnings, or ‘BitClout’ - you need people who are willing to buy into the ecosystem.

If there are not a steady stream of new entrants with new money coming to the market, the whole thing collapses like a house of cards. And you will eventually run out of people. Anyone seriously looking into BitClout should look into the recent story of FootballIndex in the UK.

The Ponzi analogy is quite apt, and buyers into Ponzi schemes typically do not do well out of it.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#103

Post by pavel_lishin »

kingsuper20 wrote: post #21

I've run into that with doctors now and again. You'll meet a younger doctor who complains heavily about student debt and how impossible life in the US is. I'll offer to write a check for the debt in return for a negotiated percentage of their income from now on. Silence ensues.

That's probably because the deal you're offering them is objectively worse than their current deal.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#104

Post by robocat »

caseyross wrote: post #18

Interestingly, there's nothing particularly novel about investing in a person's early career to reap late-career rewards. In America, it used to be that parents and employers would invest a lot of money in raising and training young adults, respectively. But more and more, there's less money available to support these programs. Given this situation, it makes sense that early-career people would have to look elsewhere…

> there's less money available to support these programs

Incorrect. “Since 1980, college tuition and fees are up 1,200%, while the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for all items has risen by only 236%.” https://www.visualcapitalist.com/rising-cost-of-college-in-u...

Re: The Ponzi Career

#105

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #13

I enjoyed the piece. Personally, I want no part of it, but I think it might work well for people who are not me. I've always been "on my own." My life really is a series of watersheds, where I've been the only person to believe in me, before the event, and a whole bunch of folks seemed to believe in me, after the fact. Not a particularly good setup for selling "Chris-Tokens™." Not a bad thing, in the long run. It hur…

I agree probably since my experiences were similar. Things are much better now, but I don't remember people telling me 'here is some money; remember me when you make it big'.

There are definitely people who would benefit from this. Some of my friends would have said 'some people just put everything in their char stat'. In fact, I have this HS friend. When we were growing up, he could barely turn his PC on. Now he is an IT manager for a major US brand. He either has gotten better or he was able to BS everyone with his cool guy persona ( and he is cool ). In short, I would buy his personal IPO.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#106

Post by musingsole »

adkadskhj wrote: post #89
yarcob wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a few months to a year of expenses on the side fixes this. When you know that no matter what happens, you have enough savings to pay your recurring costs, you just aren't as vulnerable. You are going to find a job in a year, or you could find a cheaper place to live in a year... Things just aren't as scary anymore once you have enough saved up. If you live paycheck to paycheck it's going to be stressful no mat…

> Having a few months to a year of expenses on the side fixes this. It doesn't, for me. I'm sitting at ~12mo with full expenses. I budget everything, so i do me full expenses, all the niceties, enterainment, etc. If i lost my job i could probably stretch it to ~24mo with the fat cut away. Still, i worry. Keep in mind i do partially agree with you, paycheck to paycheck is a massive concern for people. It's why i obses…

Yeah, building a bit of a nestegg helps, but I think I share your concerns on work security. And I think you're right to worry. If you walk out of every failed interview assuming they just weren't a fit for you, you run the risk of arrogance and never properly tuning yourself to the industry and its opportunities. 100%

BUT All of an individual's interviews are a terrible sample from which to draw any inferences about the industry and your place in it. Successful interviews give a signal. Failed/Not-followed-up-on interviews give none at all. My point being, tuning and training yourself must be a separate endeavor from interviewing or you will always be in for a bad time.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#107

Post by martindbp »

The nicest thing I've ever been told came from my best friend, telling me he'd buy stocks in "me" if it were possible. It wouldn't have been a particularly good investment, but I guess he was on to something with that concept!

Re: The Ponzi Career

#108

Post by bidirectional »

llaolleh wrote: post #38
kingsuper20 wrote: post #21

I've run into that with doctors now and again. You'll meet a younger doctor who complains heavily about student debt and how impossible life in the US is. I'll offer to write a check for the debt in return for a negotiated percentage of their income from now on. Silence ensues.

Haha I love this. If we think about it in terms of pure game play, medicine is a part of the game where the strategy is to take on a massive amount of debt, high risk and uncertainty for incredible returns.

I heard a (probably invented) story that one year the Harvard Business School commencement speech basically boiled down to "you can earn an upper-middle class income for the rest of your life without ever working as hard as you did to get in to this programme".

Re: The Ponzi Career

#109

Post by dharma1 »

It’s hard to say if personal tokens will take off or not, but I’m almost certain many more things will be turned into financial instruments in the future. Almost anything that can have provable (current term is “on-chain”) revenue (future or current) can be “tokenised” and sold, bought and speculated on. Our definitions of employee, employer, nature of work and contracts, our definitions of companies, shares and financial instruments are arbitrary - we are just used to them. They will change.

I can absolutely see a future where people work on (and own pieces) of many projects, revenue share is tied much closer to measurable value creation, and “tokenised” future cash flows in almost anything measurable and enforceable (ie. on-chain activity) have liquid markets from very early on.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#110

Post by cassepipe »

LB232323 wrote: post #35
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #13

I enjoyed the piece. Personally, I want no part of it, but I think it might work well for people who are not me. I've always been "on my own." My life really is a series of watersheds, where I've been the only person to believe in me, before the event, and a whole bunch of folks seemed to believe in me, after the fact. Not a particularly good setup for selling "Chris-Tokens™." Not a bad thing, in the long run. It hur…

It's not a character flaw or lack of skills in not being able to "sell yourself". It's a sense of dignity and pride as a working person. You are not a commodity, you are a human being. You may look like a commodity to a business owner, but you refuse to allow yourself to become one. Honesty and honor are worth more than money. There is money to be made in making yourself into a sort of corporate dog, but it will leav…

I am not really sure of what it is you call honor though. To me it is a word whose meaning I don't really understand whose main purpose seems to justify leaders in sending people to their death at war and by men to justify murdering women/other men. It is at best anachronic, at worst dangerous. (Of course I am not accusing you of promoting murder but that's a word that has a sad history and I hope we get rid of it in the context of our daily lives )

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing

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