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

The Ponzi Career

drorpoleg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 310 posts

Re: The Ponzi Career

#111

Post by dharma1 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #41
bko wrote: post #9

> As I mentioned in an earlier piece, these tokens are not simply "certificates of ownership"; they can be pre-programmed to behave in a certain way (for example, pay a dividend each time a predefined event happens). I don't get how you can pre-program a contact to pay a percentage of your earnings. Ethereum is very restricted as to what you can program. I don't think you can just write "check stock price of X on CNB…

> I don't get how you can pre-program a contact to pay a percentage of your earnings. You can't. Any agreement like this would still require a traditional, real-world contract to carry any weight. The contract would specify that the holder of the NFT is entitled to the benefits of the contract. Even in a hypothetical world where everyone gets paid on the Ethereum blockchain, the person could simply open up a second E…

You’re right, the personal tokens like one the from Alex are simply an IOU based on trust and reputation. Reputation systems are really interesting and can work for some things, but I’m not sure you could sell the equivalents of Bowie bonds on trust alone - and the whole point of smart contracts is that they’re supposed to be trustless.

So I think investing in future gains of a real world entity who can simply start over under a new guise or decide not to pay, without being able to enforce the contract isn’t going to work. But I’m not sure connecting current legal entities/contracts to onchain versions will be the answer either in many cases.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#112

Post by 0x4d464d48 »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #99
0x4d464d48 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Is it just me, but isn't an Income Share Agreement ... taxes?" No. Its profit sharing akin to how companies do so by issuing dividend paying shares. So far as the government is concerned theyre just looking out for their most important stake holders, wealthy individuals and monied interests, by keeping taxes extremelly low. Universities being underfunded to the point they need to raise tuition to the point where stu…

I think we are violently agreeing? Profit sharing with your citizens is basically government. I think ...

We agree that its wealth redistribution by anyother name. Certainly.

The difference is that taxing is done in the name of public/government interest whereas profit sharing is done in the name of private/individual interest.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#113

Post by darkerside »

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 seems like you may be indexing on a reaction that either doesn't exist, or attributing a response from individuals as if it were coming from "everybody". In the latter case, it sounds like you've adopted the right mentality, which is to let the ball be on their court if they don't want to believe in you. Unless it's actually doing you from doing something you want to do, it doesn't really matter.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#114

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

cassepipe wrote: post #110
LB232323 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not sure if you are talking to me, or the parent.

I used the word "Honorable," as it seemed more effective than "Integral" (as in "having Integrity).

As far as I know, that word isn't on any blacklist. If it ends up there, I'll find an alternative.

In the meantime, I'd gently suggest that accusing decent folks of supporting the murder of female children might not be the most effective way to start good relationships.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#115

Post by darkerside »

robocat wrote: post #104
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...

And with the amount of federal and state dollars going into scholarships and loans, it's hard to say with a straight face that society isn't directly funding its most promising youth.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#116

Post by pavlov »

> "By letting other people invest in you, you are incentivizing them to promote your own story and do their best to increase your tokens' value."

In 1946, the US Supreme Court established the so-called Howey Test to determine if an investment opportunity is a security offering. These are the Howey criteria:

"Under the Howey Test, a transaction is an investment contract if:

"It is an investment of money;

"There is an expectation of profits from the investment;

"The investment of money is in a common enterprise;

"Any profit comes from the efforts of a promoter or third party."

IANAL, but these personal tokens seem to match every condition of the Howey test. I'd be extremely careful about conducting your own little security offering if you're resident in the US, or allow US residents to participate.

It's worth noting that Alex Masmej, the person mentioned in the article, conducted his token offering while in France.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#117

Post by ghufran_syed »

cassepipe wrote: post #110
LB232323 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I personally like this definition, from one of Lois Mcmaster Bujold’s books: “ Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.... The friction tends to arise when the two are not the same....There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. That's soul destroying. The other way around is merely very, very irritating.”

Re: The Ponzi Career

#118

Post by cassepipe »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #114
cassepipe wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not sure if you are talking to me, or the parent. I used the word "Honorable," as it seemed more effective than "Integral" (as in "having Integrity). As far as I know, that word isn't on any blacklist. If it ends up there, I'll find an alternative. In the meantime, I'd gently suggest that accusing decent folks of supporting the murder of female children might not be the most effective way to start good relationships.

Look at the indentation, I am clearly responding to the parent. Especially to : "Honesty and honor are worth more than money."

I don't think "honorable" has the same meaning and I did not even see it when I read you post.

I specifically edited my post to explain I was not accusing parent of supporting murder but maybe you were already writing yours and did not see that part.

No it is just on my blacklist and the only way I can enforce that blacklist is by trying remind anybody who uses it whence it came. Not trying to launch a censorship campaign by any means.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#119

Post by ghufran_syed »

musingsole wrote: post #59
lisper wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't have the personal skills to "sell" myself Actually you do. You've demonstrated them in this very comment. Maybe you don't realize this, or maybe your self-deprecation is a deliberate part of your strategy. Either way, it worked on me. This comment led me to your profile, which led me to your company web sites, which impressed me. I don't need an iOS app developer at the moment, but if I did you'd be at the…

To reiterate, it is very likely that those people who passed on you or didn't become interested due to the lack of self-marketing are not the people you would want to work with and doubly are not actually offering the job you thought you were applying for. Grifters interview and hire grifters because their org/team/company relies on the grift more than the truth to make ends meet. If you can't grift, you frankly don'…

I ended up working in sales for an investment bank and found out exactly how true this is...

Re: The Ponzi Career

#120

Post by tdeck »

ausbah wrote: post #34

is this suppose to be good? this sounds awful. it just reads like finance and tech have eaten literally everything, down to a person's life I guess there is more "freedom"? but that seems to come at the cost of stability and more winner take all scenarios like a lot of this stuff isn't new, but the degree to which is seems prevalent reads dystopic

This is simply an example of an ecomonic/political system creating problems (in this case lack of capital needed to start a career), then creating "solutions" to those problems (debt, commodification of people as investments) that reinforce the system and enrich its key stakeholders.
Post reply on HN