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

The least impactful way to spend $300M?

passingtime.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 291 posts

Re: The least impactful way to spend $300M?

#211

Post by eru »

thejman5200 wrote: post #174
eru wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, education is mostly bad for society. In the sense, that most of education is about signalling, and funneling more money into education just fuels the arms race. See Bryan Caplan's Case against Education for more details. (The part of education that's actually about learning has mostly become cheaper than ever, thanks to the power of the Internet. But unless you got a piece of paper from a university, hiring manag…

I have a theory that every internet comment that starts with Eh is always wrong. So far I haven't been let down. I don't understand how you could possibly say education has negative impact on society. Top universities can and do hire faculty for the purpose of research alongside teaching. Top minds performing research obviously benefits everyone as they can make new discoveries and innovations. That has the side effe…

Education has a negative impact on society, because we are forcing young people to waste years of their lives that they often neither enjoy nor do those years make them more productive. They don't get those years back, and even pay dearly for that privilege.

Individuals benefit from getting more education, but only in the sense of getting ahead in a signalling.

Perhaps an analogy helps: an individual tree benefits from growing taller than its neighbours, but the 'society' of trees scarcely gains any net benefit from that arms race.

Research is an entirely different topic that I didn't want to broach here.

For the sake of argument, let's accept that research is good for society. But we could get plenty of research without having to cross-subsidize it via education spending.

Re: The least impactful way to spend $300M?

#212

Post by eru »

never_inline wrote: post #199
jliptzin wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he’s talking about the institutional capture and monopolization of higher education…essentially coming away with the same skills for free from YouTube but they’re worth nothing in the market because you didn’t pay $50k/year to the higher ed cartel.

> coming away with the same skills for free from YouTube How can I become high energy physicist on YouTube ?

Think more along the lines of the degrees that companies like McKinsey require. They usually just say 'any degree is fine'.

Re: The least impactful way to spend $300M?

#213

Post by bheadmaster »

pembrook wrote: post #207
koromak wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God I just don't buy the "these people will go on to benefit humanity" argument anymore. We don't need more tech companies. We don't need more hedge funds. We don't need to feed our genuinely brightest minds into the wealth consolidation machine. Occasioanlly one of these people will find some one-off bit of brilliance that lifts an entire class of people out of poverty, but that ticket has an expiration date tied to…

> We don't need more tech companies. We don't need more hedge funds. What we absolutely don’t need, is autocrats dictating what society needs. Luckily we already have this cool innovation called a market economy. It’s not perfectly efficient (especially in the short term), but pretty damn efficient. By throwing off price signals, the market allows us to allocate efforts to things society wants more of. Unfortunately,…

> Luckily we already have this cool innovation called a market economy

Market economy got us into the situation where the most brilliant minds in the world are researching best ways to make internet advertisements as addictive as they can be.

Very cool innovation, indeed. Ever read The Space Merchants?

Re: The least impactful way to spend $300M?

#214

Post by onion2k »

pembrook wrote: post #207
koromak wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God I just don't buy the "these people will go on to benefit humanity" argument anymore. We don't need more tech companies. We don't need more hedge funds. We don't need to feed our genuinely brightest minds into the wealth consolidation machine. Occasioanlly one of these people will find some one-off bit of brilliance that lifts an entire class of people out of poverty, but that ticket has an expiration date tied to…

> We don't need more tech companies. We don't need more hedge funds. What we absolutely don’t need, is autocrats dictating what society needs. Luckily we already have this cool innovation called a market economy. It’s not perfectly efficient (especially in the short term), but pretty damn efficient. By throwing off price signals, the market allows us to allocate efforts to things society wants more of. Unfortunately,…

Luckily we already have this cool innovation called a market economy.

We don't really though. There are companies, and individuals, with enough wealth and influence to compete with entire markets. A well-funded startup can undermine whole industries by spending VC money to run at a loss long enough that the rest of the market fails (Uber, AirBNB) or they can become so massive that there's absolutely no possibility of competing (Amazon). People can start private companies that do things only governments have done before (SpaceX, Palantir). These businesses are not influenced by pricing, because they're either too well funded to care, or too influential for others to get a foot in the door.

Free market economics is a beautiful idea, but every big business (and some small businesses) do all they can to subvert the market and hold a monopoly on something. Heck, Peter Thiel literally wrote a book about how to do exactly that - Zero To One.

Re: The least impactful way to spend $300M?

#215

Post by eru »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #200
eru wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who says large funds don't have long-term stakes and can't help make long-term decisions? Fund managers want perhaps to see quarterly profits for their fund, but that's not the same thing as quarterly profits at the underlying companies. Your fund can also profit, if the stock prices of the underlying companies rise. To give some existence proofs, have a look at how Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Tesla etc had rising sha…

> To give some existence proofs, have a look at how Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Tesla etc had rising share prices long before they ever returned any money to shareholders. This was also true of Juicero and Pets.com. Moreover, the people investing in small startups are generally not huge funds. The funds buy in after the company is established. Tesla turned a profit before they were added to the S&P 500. > For that to…

> This was also true of Juicero and Pets.com.

Yes, it's hard to predict the future.

> Moreover, the people investing in small startups are generally not huge funds. The funds buy in after the company is established. Tesla turned a profit before they were added to the S&P 500.

One reason those small startups can attract capital in the first place, is because their early investors can reasonably expect to cash out by selling to huge funds once the company gets established.

Remove the late investors, and you dry up the payouts for early investors.

> Most of the scam comes from information asymmetries.

That's hardly news. Investors take that into account.

What keeps investing from turning into a market for lemons is that companies can communicate to prospective investors and show them transparently that they eg didn't remove the slack.

As an investor, you can go by the maxim of 'guilty, unless proven innocent'. So if a company does not have that transparency, you should value them as-if they have skeletons in the closet.

(And if companies explicitly lie, that's already a crime.)

Re: The least impactful way to spend $300M?

#216

Post by navane »

pembrook wrote: post #207
koromak wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God I just don't buy the "these people will go on to benefit humanity" argument anymore. We don't need more tech companies. We don't need more hedge funds. We don't need to feed our genuinely brightest minds into the wealth consolidation machine. Occasioanlly one of these people will find some one-off bit of brilliance that lifts an entire class of people out of poverty, but that ticket has an expiration date tied to…

> We don't need more tech companies. We don't need more hedge funds. What we absolutely don’t need, is autocrats dictating what society needs. Luckily we already have this cool innovation called a market economy. It’s not perfectly efficient (especially in the short term), but pretty damn efficient. By throwing off price signals, the market allows us to allocate efforts to things society wants more of. Unfortunately,…

The market as implemented in the past, in a world with technology form the past, worked well in the past. This doesn't mean it won't need to be changed ever. No one is saying the complete market should be removed. We always have had rules putting boundaries on free markets (child labour, slavery), and these rules should move with the times.

Re: The least impactful way to spend $300M?

#217

Post by eru »

hkt wrote: post #205
shjake wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by ‘Global Inequality’? Because income and wealth inequality has been steadily increasing in (almost)all developed countries

Global inequality has sort of fallen, insofar as China has reportedly lifted 800 or 900 million people out of extreme poverty. I suspect that's not what their were referring to though..!

Not just China. All over the world once dirt poor people have started closing the gap. Most of South East Asia, India, even Sub-Saharan Africa, etc.

Re: The least impactful way to spend $300M?

#218

Post by eru »

socialist_coder wrote: post #176
eru wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] increasing levels of income inequality. What exactly are you talking about? Global inequality has been on a downward trend in the last few decades.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-... US has the worst income inequality of all G7 nations and has been on the rise since 1980.

'Consultants, hedge fund managers, architects' etc don't just restrict themselves to the US, and neither should we.

UnAmerican people have moral value, too.

Re: The least impactful way to spend $300M?

#219

Post by eru »

shjake wrote: post #182
eru wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] increasing levels of income inequality. What exactly are you talking about? Global inequality has been on a downward trend in the last few decades.

What do you mean by ‘Global Inequality’? Because income and wealth inequality has been steadily increasing in (almost)all developed countries

Why do you worry about borders?

Just because eg inequality in the US might have increased, and inequality in China might have increased, doesn't mean that the inequality in their combined population has increased.

I'm talking about the combined population of all humanity.

See eg https://archive.is/7xWtr

Re: The least impactful way to spend $300M?

#220

Post by a4a4a4a4 »

bheadmaster wrote: post #213
pembrook wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't need more tech companies. We don't need more hedge funds. What we absolutely don’t need, is autocrats dictating what society needs. Luckily we already have this cool innovation called a market economy. It’s not perfectly efficient (especially in the short term), but pretty damn efficient. By throwing off price signals, the market allows us to allocate efforts to things society wants more of. Unfortunately,…

> Luckily we already have this cool innovation called a market economy Market economy got us into the situation where the most brilliant minds in the world are researching best ways to make internet advertisements as addictive as they can be. Very cool innovation, indeed. Ever read The Space Merchants?

> the most brilliant minds in the world are researching best ways to make internet advertisements as addictive as they can be.

They're doing a great job, ads are so addictive I've even turned off my Ad blocker so I can get more of them! Won't someone save me!

Post reply on HN