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How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

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Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#201

Post by MeinBlutIstBlau »

cranium wrote: post #166

If you want to eyewitness an even tighter Ponzi scheme loop, look at YouTubers in the trading industry. Boats of them sell a course/book and use YouTube for marketing & ad money. Bonus points if they advertise beating the market.

My college roommate followed this one guy and even bought his courses. He claimed he's made double his money since paying for his "insider trading tips" or whatever. My roommate claimed he was a self made millionaire.

I looked the guy up, he's just a college dropout whose parents owned a very successful real estate agency to which he was placed in. He then got absurd amounts of capital from the commissions only people like his parents could get.

My roommate believed this guy knew the ticket to wealth but all I saw was basically the xkcd comic of "but lottery tickets! It works!"

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#203

Post by mguerville »

closeparen wrote: post #87
andrepd wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot two factors: capital (which excludes the vast majority of people om earth), and an enormous amount of luck.

It's pretty easy for a technology business to get capital these days.

It’s not that easy, even in SV and within my batch at 500 startups (arguably one of the better credentials a startup can have at an early stage) the struggle to raise was real. And then back in the Midwest a lot of startups I’ve advised have had a hell of a time raising.

If you aren’t well connected or hyper credentialed (or if you’re a minority founder), raising capital is very hard. It’s easier than it’s ever been, but it’s not « easy »

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#204

Post by slow_donkey »

dx87 wrote: post #20

The "nomad" posts always bugged me, especially when it's someone traveling around the world by working odd jobs and relying on the kindness of strangers. They're always presented in a way to make you feel bad about having a steady 9-5 working for "the man" when you could be seeing the world and being free. They conveniently leave out the fact that their lifestyle is completely dependent on the majority of people work…

Isn't this true of any job - If the world was all software engineers it'd be missing lots of stuff too. I get the point you're making about nomads being (more) dependent on others, but I honestly think that's true for everyone now.

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#205

Post by bsanr2 »

refurb wrote: post #193
ajmadesc wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of his points seem based on Economic dogma shoved down your throat during undergrad.

No it doesn't. It seems based on populist memes and from watching popular movies. People with invested capital aren't "hoarding" it. It actively invested. No, the point of liquidity is to encourage an active market, which is exactly what it's doing. Not sure what "trading over our heads" even means.

Maybe you should try to understand the things you respond to, rather than posting a kneejerk response, then?

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#206

Post by blaser-waffle »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #195
coldtea wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be the "slightly improved" part, "50 years later". And NASA hasn't used "5% GDP" for 40 years. It has been less than 1% since 1973. Actually scratch that, it has been less than 1% the federal budget, which is much much less than the GDP. Of course all that 50-years of IP got handed to the "private visionaries" of SpaceX for free, or rather, along with money paid to them...

If it was that low risk and easy for Musk, why didn't NASA just do it themselves? Or why not some other person? There seems to be quite a lot of space x competitors not doing as well as space x.

Where is the will in the federal government? If we handed 20% of the War On Terror budget to NASA would it make Americans more safe? Or feel more safe? (an important distinction since the TSA is mostly dog and pony shows).

Standard Fed'Gov contract hustle -- provide a service for less than what they're currently playing and leach off that gob'mnt teat.

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#207

Post by bsanr2 »

paul_f wrote: post #192
dvt wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the stability is still there for the people who's skills are in demand Saying this after 2008 is just empirically false. You do realize that people lost their entire 401(k)s, right? My dad worked at IBM for over a decade and was laid off. More recently, my buddy (late 20s) was laid off by IBM after working there for the past 7 years; I know people in their 40s and 50s (at big companies and startups alike) that were…

Unless it was 100% invested in Enron or Lehman Brothers, nobody using a competent financial firm "lost their entire 401K". The markets only took 4 years to completely recover to the 2008 top levels.

How do you measure competency? Does not the speed of that recovery, in the face of ongoing and growing pressures on the consumer class that floats the economy-at-large, leave you wary of its fundamental foundation and stability?

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#208

Post by blaser-waffle »

netsharc wrote: post #28
fxtentacle wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say 95% of digital nomads are just online marketers who market their own lifestyle so that they can sell a course on how to imitate them. And obviously, their customers will imitate them and sell a course on how to imitate them. And so the cycle continues.

I've fantasised about the vanlife, living the nomad lifestyle out of a van. When looking for build inspiration videos on YouTube, I ended up seeing a lot of vanlife "influencers", but what I notice is many videos just have a few thousand views, which is surely not enough to make a living..

It's a meme, man. I did the van thing for a year while working in Australia on the NBN (big fibre optic project). Drove around and spliced and oversaw fibre projects.

It gets old pretty fast, has tons of hidden costs, and looks quaint and romantic to people who've never had to do it. Fun for a year, but I probably would have paid almost as much just booking into hostels or AirBnB's and renting a car on occasion.

I was able to go and see some cool places -- but breaking down in remote South Australia was scary and frustrating. And you get really, really tired of the lack of space.

What made it tolerable was being able to get out of the van and chill in places like the library or a coffee shop-- likely all no-gos in the COVID era

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#209

Post by louwrentius »

conductr wrote: post #135
louwrentius wrote: post #72

I expected an article about Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency but I was disappointed in that regard. Cool article though.

TBH I knew when I bought BTC at ~$10 that tech people were the first adopters and if it broke out from the tech crowd it would be like being near the top of the pyramid. It's precisely why I bought.

Good for you.

But Bitcoin is nothing.

It now has value because a lot of people - having a stake in it - artificially created demand with bullshit stories.

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#210

Post by ek750 »

gruez wrote: post #119
an_opabinia wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For a classic example, just look at /r/wallstreetbets -- young people are frustrated because there's no end to this tunnel That's a bad example. By many measures retail investors have outperformed institutional investors since March. The simple reason is that options have a built in exit strategy, the thing that's missing when most people lose in scams - including Ponzi schemes! On the flip side, why then do they o…

>That's a bad example. By many measures retail investors have outperformed institutional investors since March. The average retail investor might have outperformed institutional investors, but it's a leap to suggest that wsb outperformed institutional investors. Foe one, the average retail investor isn't buying otm options like wsb users are. > The simple reason is that options have a built in exit strategy, the thin…

>Not really? Options can have their value go to zero if they remain unexercised

true. but as a person who plays with options, I should point out that when you buy an option contract, you don't want it to expire worthless.

However if you are an options seller, that is the best possible outcome.

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