251–260 of 310 posts
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I think we are violently agreeing? Profit sharing with your citizens is basically government. I think ...
Taxes and government are mandatory profit sharing, these agreements are voluntary. Whether that is good or bad is up for debate.
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…
I'm not trying to be rude and I enjoyed your comment, but you say you don't have the skills to humblebrag or sell yourself but you're doing it pretty well here
Also, even that writing skill has been greatly refined and improved over the last three years; since I left my last job.
Funny. Deciding not to pursue employment seems to have helped me to improve some of the skills employers might actually notice (I consider them fairly “superficial,” but they are what tend to attract attention). I feel that the really valuable stuff, like an expert grasp of Apple development, running a geographically-distributed team for decades, and a long history of releasing high-quality, finished product, is not so obvious (or valued).
I was talking, recently, with a former employee, who had gone through the interview process for a FAANG. He made it through the whole thing, and may get an offer, which he’ll likely decline (he took a job at a corporation that will probably treat him well, but won’t pay as much). What he described, sounded a lot more like a hazing, than a serious evaluation. I’m not about to put myself through that kind of crap for any amount of money. I have too much self-respect. I feel he made the right choice. He had basically made up his mind, fairly early in the process, and really went through the motions to learn and practice (he presents quite well). I feel that they missed out on a pretty damn good engineer, but maybe they weren’t really looking for what he offered.
Being treated with respect by our employer is important. I always treated my employees with respect, and was able to keep the team together, under rather stressful conditions, for decades. Most of my team consisted of highly experienced and skilled engineers, with families and extracurricular lives. In the last couple of years there, we worked with an SV startup, and I got to see, up close and personal, what working in SV is like. I had been in a “silo” for a quarter-century.
It was quite sobering.
I feel that the industry has become incredibly vicious and downright mercenary, over the years. It’s always been a business, and competitive, but the zeitgeist is much nastier, these days, than it was, when I was younger.
It’s kind of disappointing. Money has leached the fun from tech. I’m really sorry for the younger folks coming into the field. They won’t ever have that sense of wonder, adventure, and community that I enjoyed.
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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.
I can't believe that not even HN can get tax brackets into their head. It is not a hard concept!
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Thank you. The indentured servitude character of this stuff is most clear when we look at the $ALEX example. Selling off a chunk of future autonomy and income in order to finance migration to a place with more economic opportunity is exactly what poor folks did circa the 17th and 18th centuries. Perhaps we should look at the history of how that went before replicating it.
My understanding is that economically it was usually a mutually beneficial arrangement, and servants often ended up better off than a normal immigrant. The second-class status of servants is somewhat hard to stomach by modern standards, but honestly it is not much different than the way members of the military are treated (source: I served five years enlisted in the US Navy).
I am not sure why that needs spelling out, but social issues are actually not resolved by making them a suffering contest.
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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.
Did it come from propaganda talking points that outline the dangers of “socialism”? I hear similar statements from my relatives in the US.
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 ~…
This only works if you have a reasonable population growth rate. And this isn't happening anymore. So we are boosting population numbers through immigrants that will never afford the kind of housing and retirement the previous generation had. And we are boosting the stocks through printing more money, that also drives real estate prices insane. That's a recipe for a social conflict. Once the majority can't afford a h…
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'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…
You know who else talked about the commodification of labour? M- is dragged off stage by angry HN audience
(Seriously, this is an interesting and important discussion to have - the dignity of labour and non-financial values - and it's interesting to watch a number of conflicting arguments made here which have been made loudly and vehemently by various historical figures)
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.
I’m usually in total agreement about blockchain just being stuffed anywhere, but observationally, there must be a good reason why blockchain shows up in these situations so often. There’s definitely the hype factor, but blockchain does have value in that it’s reasonably trusted by average people (perhaps unlike signing a contract everytime you wanted to purchase a piece of a creator - coins gamify it), and it’s easy…
This is absolutely backwards though; the contract is enforcible, whereas the coin isn't. If Alex simply chooses not to pay back his investors, nothing happens other than a loss of face.
> it’s lightly regulated and has hype
Exactly.
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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.
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My understanding is that economically it was usually a mutually beneficial arrangement, and servants often ended up better off than a normal immigrant. The second-class status of servants is somewhat hard to stomach by modern standards, but honestly it is not much different than the way members of the military are treated (source: I served five years enlisted in the US Navy).
Yes, but then you should apply political pressure to better the US army, not go "welp, let's give everybody that experience". I am not sure why that needs spelling out, but social issues are actually not resolved by making them a suffering contest.