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How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

callmenish.com

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Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#241

Post by dvt »

shard wrote: post #229
dvt wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you're just woefully disconnected from real estate markets in big cities. The cheapest , crappiest, smallest house in a neighborhood like Santa Monica (which is nice, but not Bel Air or Malibu nice) is $1 million dollars. Maybe I shouldn't complain, because I have friends in San Francisco that have it even worse. The "making six figures and living with 4 roommates" is basically a meme at this point if you live a…

Santa Monica is not a good choice for affordable living in a good neighborhood with a good school district in Los Angeles. Look a bit further afield in cities like Torrance, or even North OC cities like Fullerton or Garden Grove. If you insist on living in an expensive coastal city like Santa Monica, expect to pay for that privilege.

You missed the point. Of course Santa Monica is expensive, but the point is that it shouldn't be. In fact, until a few decades ago, it wasn't -- it's not like people just recently started liking the beach. Your argument also doesn't work because most LA tech jobs are in Santa Monica. The idea that it should be status quo to commute to your job because you can't afford to live around where you work is nonsensical. Not to mention that Santa Monica real estate (like a lot of CA real estate, including OC) is propped up by foreign investment and screws the actual locals that live in those communities -- unless, like my parents, you just happened to get lucky and get a house at the bottom of the bubble (a house which now almost doubled in price).

Professional, educated, well-off young people can't afford to buy houses in California (I've had this conversation with dozens of friends). Market forces or not, even as a part-time libertarian, it's clear to me that this isn't tenable and people are frustrated.

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#242

Post by peteretep »

seppin wrote: post #240
peteretep wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can you choose to be without a real home that long? Depends what you mean by "real home" I guess. I have a tiny apartment in Bangkok, where we would normally spend ~ 8 weeks a year in total a year, and then we rent ad-hoc or stay with family the rest

Ah ok you are married. Do you have long term friends locally ? Is your wife your anchor to a local community ?

> Do you have long term friends locally?

Not really sure what that means, but most places we go we have friends we’ve known for many years, and those are often other nomadish types.

> Is your wife your anchor to a local community?

No, she’s from even further away than me

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#243

Post by smabie »

saiya-jin wrote: post #219
yakireev wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I live in place swarming with rich folks, both old rich and new rich, while being neither. Most of them live such boring lives it would be sad if I cared for them. I was half-expecting the next sentence to be "Sign up for my webinar and I'll teach you how to make your life as fun as mine!" Seriously though, what do you mean by "adventurous life"?

Low-cost backpacking in 3rd world (obviously not during covid), hiking, alpinism, climbing, via ferratas, ski touring/alipinism, skiing, paragliding, diving... plus some more usual sports/activities like biking, running, swimming. It doesn't have to be that many (which is hard to manage with 100% employment), even 1 would suffice if done properly. I have a kid now, second possibly on the way, so even without covid so…

Why can't you be rich and be exciting things? I know many definitely rich, and definitely exciting (maybe too exciting) people.

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#244

Post by seppin »

peteretep wrote: post #242
seppin wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah ok you are married. Do you have long term friends locally ? Is your wife your anchor to a local community ?

> Do you have long term friends locally? Not really sure what that means, but most places we go we have friends we’ve known for many years, and those are often other nomadish types. > Is your wife your anchor to a local community? No, she’s from even further away than me

Right but actual roots / connection to a local community, besides fellow travelers / tourists?

I personally never felt more than a temporary resident in most places i've been.

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#245

Post by arthur-st »

mssundaram wrote: post #111
marcus_holmes wrote: post #5

Seen so much of this bullshit while travelling around SE Asia. I swear 90% of nomads are dropshipping/life coaches running ponzi schemes, and the other 10% are geeks like me who lucked into remote-friendly coding gigs. Sprinkled with some truly fascinating folks who genuinely discovered some new and interesting way of making this work for them.

Dropshipping someone a life coach, now there's an idea

Really postmodernist take on mail-order brides.

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#246

Post by bsanr2 »

refurb wrote: post #173
bsanr2 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I mean so does heavy taxation of capital ~hoarders~ holders, to be redistributed among the country's labor base, who will then tend to spend it immediately on goods or personal investment, but we don't talk about that. OR The point of liquidity is to get people doing things, but the status quo today seems more like giant firms trading above our heads to manage the risk of rent-seeking on an increasingly precariously…

Neither of your points seem based on an accurate understanding of the financial markets.

I don't know why another user's comment,

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

was flagged, as it was neither inflammatory nor uncouth, but I agree with it. You seem to have an entirely elementary conception of the market and an inability to understand the ways those assumptions have fallen apart in the face of market and regulatory conditions.

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#247

Post by justnotworthit »

solresol wrote: post #134

Isn't there a bigger Ponzi scheme in tech? The one where you sell a product at a screaming loss, double your revenue each year (without ever showing a profit), and then each year raise capital at double the previous year's valuation to fund the ever-growing loss-making sales. It's just the suckers in that scheme are the investors...

This is what I thought the article would be about: You get to be startup-rich not by convincing people to buy your product, but by convincing investors that people will buy your product. That's a much different sell, and you can ride it multiple times for a long time, getting rich without ever making a sustainable product. Your product, essentially, was selling hope (later turned to regret) to investors.

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#248

Post by rootshelled »

friedman23 wrote: post #29
nish1500 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trading on the stock market (by and large) doesn't create value. If someone makes a killing, it's because someone lost it. You hear about those who make money - because it's the story you 'want' to hear. People don't understand how money comes from value created, in the long run. People think they can game the system. Everyone feels they are not a part of the average.

>If someone makes a killing, it's because someone lost it Not true, companies can create value, that value is reflected in the stock price. The economy is not zero sum. Did all the people that got rich off of apple, google, microsoft, nvidia, etc get rich because someone else lost money?

Those companies got value via selling products with a margin to their customers. So, technically their customers lost money for those companies to gain money.

Not that there is anything wrong with that. Just pointing out how I think your logic is flawed.

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#249

Post by thinkingemote »

justnotworthit wrote: post #247
solresol wrote: post #134

Isn't there a bigger Ponzi scheme in tech? The one where you sell a product at a screaming loss, double your revenue each year (without ever showing a profit), and then each year raise capital at double the previous year's valuation to fund the ever-growing loss-making sales. It's just the suckers in that scheme are the investors...

This is what I thought the article would be about: You get to be startup-rich not by convincing people to buy your product, but by convincing investors that people will buy your product. That's a much different sell, and you can ride it multiple times for a long time, getting rich without ever making a sustainable product. Your product, essentially, was selling hope (later turned to regret) to investors.

Investors don't have regret when that happens, they count on it. They spread their bets across many small startups. It only needs one investment to succeed and the other dozen or so can fail. Most startups will and are expected to fail.

It's part of the game that you need to convince investors that you still have a chance in being the unicorn.

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#250

Post by shard »

dvt wrote: post #241
shard wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Santa Monica is not a good choice for affordable living in a good neighborhood with a good school district in Los Angeles. Look a bit further afield in cities like Torrance, or even North OC cities like Fullerton or Garden Grove. If you insist on living in an expensive coastal city like Santa Monica, expect to pay for that privilege.

You missed the point. Of course Santa Monica is expensive, but the point is that it shouldn't be. In fact, until a few decades ago, it wasn't -- it's not like people just recently started liking the beach. Your argument also doesn't work because most LA tech jobs are in Santa Monica. The idea that it should be status quo to commute to your job because you can't afford to live around where you work is nonsensical. Not…

> Of course Santa Monica is expensive, but the point is that it shouldn't be

Not sure if your "should" is in the sense that logically it doesn't make sense to be, or that morally or ethically it had no right to be. For the first meaning, neighborhoods rise and fall in popularity based on trends, often driven by the tastes of young people, and is a natural cycle just like clothing fashion. Thus logically it should not be surprising that certain locations rise in housing costs as it increases in popularity. If you intend the second meaning, I'd be interested in your reasons.

> Your argument also doesn't work because most LA tech jobs are in Santa Monica.

I'd be interested in seeing the numbers, but there are a large amount of tech jobs in the South Bay area as well, along the 405 going south around Gardena and such.

> The idea that it should be status quo to commute to your job because you can't afford to live around where you work is nonsensical.

The problem is that traffic around Santa Monica is horrendous, making the housing more expensive. My previous commute from Torrance to Culver City was 40 min in the morning and 20 at night, but going from Culver City to Santa Monica was an extra half an hour. If you pick some of the worst traffic areas in LA, I don't think you should be surprised or incensed that people will pay to cut that traffic time down. It's an infrastructure problem, really.

> Professional, educated, well-off young people can't afford to buy houses in California

There are still lots of cities with affordable house prices, unless they insist on competing to live in the worst traffic areas of California.

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