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The Ponzi Career

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Re: The Ponzi Career

#241

Post by piva00 »

freeone3000 wrote: post #180
saagarjha wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue here is that you’ve tied a monetary value to honor, when honor is often tied to other things and occasionally explicitly the lack of a desire to maximize profit.

It's not monetarily valued. It's not societally valued, in any tangible sense. Power is not allocated to whomever has the most honor. So what good is it?

Do you only care about things that bring power to you personally? Or do you care about intangible values that are important to you as a human? One defines character and personality, the other is just a way to achieve personal gains.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#242

Post by Broken_Hippo »

andxor wrote: post #209
jopsen wrote: post #173

Have people forgotten the classic way of investing in humans? Social programs. In Denmark part of my taxes goes to pay public pensions, and when I get old taxes will fund some pension for me. The public pension isn't huge, so yes, almost everybody has a private pension scheme too. My private pension is exposed to global stock performance over ~30 years. My public pensions is exposed to value of humans in Denmark in ~…

So Denmark would forcibly take more than half of my income to invest in stuff I don't have a say on, while no one is held accountable by competition and economic incentives. I'll pass.

Most folks don't pay that much in tax, and I'm guessing that your state taxes, federal taxes, insurance premiums, and deductible is more than whatever tax rate you'd be paying in most countries that charge similarly.

It isn't like you get a real say in where your taxes are spent in any country, honestly, and part of paying taxes is that they get spent on some thing you don't like. Not only that, but no one is really held accountable by competition in most things that taxes pay for (health care and infrastructure and a safety net aren't held accountable because of economics since someone always has leverage and they are easily monopolies as the choice isn't real).

Re: The Ponzi Career

#243

Post by zshrdlu »

ganafagol wrote: post #235
alexmasmej wrote: post #169

Hey, Alex Masmej here. Just wanted to say that I had no choice because I had no money in the bank. During the start of COVID, I lost my only (and very first) source income at the time, and I lost all my savings in crypto (DeFi is dangerous even to crypto people like me). Financially, this ISA freed me instantly, and gave me a newfound legitimacy as a crypto innovator. This was by far the best way I could find to brea…

Does nobody in here realize that this is just the first step towards the well-known as well as rightfully-abolished concept of slavery? Fraction of future income and participation in "certain life decisions" is just the beginning. In principle this can ramp up to all future income and all life decisions. And don't tell me this is voluntary, which makes it all different from slavery. Alex himself writes "I had no choi…

I've encountered something like this in a work of fiction, Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow. In the book, investors find young, brilliant but impoverished children, usually in crisis-struck places (war, civil strife, etc). They sponsor the young people's top-tier education and earn their salary when they become professionals, the sponsored only receiving a stipend necessary for living until their debt is paid off.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#244

Post by Kbelicius »

VRay wrote: post #93
prox wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author mentions the ponzi scheme, and quite right. As long as the general trust is there and the investments are on the up and up you’re fine. But the insidiousness is once you’re in, you’re in. Once you bought 4000 Tupperware to resell (insert any pyramid scheme here) , you can’t find fault in it, and when it crashes you’re burned. I don’t want to bash blockchain, there might be interesting use cases, but I haven’t…

It's sort of useful for sending money to Asia without losing 1.5 to 5% on transaction fees, but that doesn't involve actually investing in it

Meh, one probably loses more by converting from fiat to crypto and back then on transaction fees for sending fiat directly.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#245

Post by zshrdlu »

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.

It sells itself better to a target audience that is bamboozled/enthusiastic/optimistic about the technology. Think of it as you would SEO - it's merely a feature/optimization that gets you an audience.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#246

Post by Vinnl »

Kosirich wrote: post #237
andxor wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, of course, but not > 50%.

I'm not refuting your point but where did you get >50% from? You absolutely can get taxed up to 54% but for that you would need +200k (krona) per month.

And also only applies to the amount above the threshold.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#247

Post by Kbelicius »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #217
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.

Maybe ask Masmej why he chose to use an ethereum token instead of a traditional contract. I think it probably made things much easier for him.

Or maybe he knows that traditional contracts are enforceable while ethereum tokens are not.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#248

Post by insert_coin »

ganafagol wrote: post #235
alexmasmej wrote: post #169

Hey, Alex Masmej here. Just wanted to say that I had no choice because I had no money in the bank. During the start of COVID, I lost my only (and very first) source income at the time, and I lost all my savings in crypto (DeFi is dangerous even to crypto people like me). Financially, this ISA freed me instantly, and gave me a newfound legitimacy as a crypto innovator. This was by far the best way I could find to brea…

Does nobody in here realize that this is just the first step towards the well-known as well as rightfully-abolished concept of slavery? Fraction of future income and participation in "certain life decisions" is just the beginning. In principle this can ramp up to all future income and all life decisions. And don't tell me this is voluntary, which makes it all different from slavery. Alex himself writes "I had no choi…

There is a lot of room between drone worker, saying you "had no choice" and actually having no choice, to both sides, but people that begin with the picture of a top down unmovable hierarchical structure of employment, and life in general, will never see that. Employment is no slavery. It is not easy, but it is not slavery.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#249

Post by volta83 »

andxor wrote: post #209
jopsen wrote: post #173

Have people forgotten the classic way of investing in humans? Social programs. In Denmark part of my taxes goes to pay public pensions, and when I get old taxes will fund some pension for me. The public pension isn't huge, so yes, almost everybody has a private pension scheme too. My private pension is exposed to global stock performance over ~30 years. My public pensions is exposed to value of humans in Denmark in ~…

So Denmark would forcibly take more than half of my income to invest in stuff I don't have a say on, while no one is held accountable by competition and economic incentives. I'll pass.

I pay 30% of my income in taxes.

I get, in no order:

- free transportation (free high quality high-ways, train network, subway, tram, bus, rent-a-bike...),

- free education for myself and my children, from pre-kinder garten up to university.

- paid very high-level education (PhD, postdoc) for myself and my children,

- free health-care for everyone,

- universal salary for everyone (no homeless people around, extremely low crime rates)

- free sport offerings, open-air health activities, safety sport training (climbing, skiing, ...)

- free internet,

- free cable TV,

- all the usual stuff (garbage collection, street cleaning, access to water and power networks, etc.)

Of course, "free" does not mean "free", since I'm paying all of this with my taxes.

But how many taxes do you pay, and what do you get from them?

Because what I get is that my biggest worry in life is "How will the weather look like at the weekend?" and "Depending on that I might go hiking, or cycling, or surfing, or skiing...".

I don't worry about my children, or school, or being able to pay for anything, or crime, or security, I don't worry about my 6 year old son taking the subway and a bus alone to go to primary school, or them making it back home safely, or my 16 year old daughter going partying till 5am and then walking home alone at night, or what happens if they break an arm and need to go to the hospital, or whether I can afford the university they want to go to, etc.

Like, really, my only worry in life is "What's the weather like and what am I going to be able to do in the weekend depending on the weather".

Re: The Ponzi Career

#250

Post by hycaria »

alexmasmej wrote: post #169

Hey, Alex Masmej here. Just wanted to say that I had no choice because I had no money in the bank. During the start of COVID, I lost my only (and very first) source income at the time, and I lost all my savings in crypto (DeFi is dangerous even to crypto people like me). Financially, this ISA freed me instantly, and gave me a newfound legitimacy as a crypto innovator. This was by far the best way I could find to brea…

You had no choice but go to the most expensive place in the world ?
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