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

The Ponzi Career

drorpoleg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 310 posts

Re: The Ponzi Career

#271

Post by jfengel »

blaser-waffle wrote: post #265
pjc50 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are not a commodity, you are a human being 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 figure…

> You know who else talked about the commodification of labour? M- is dragged off stage by angry HN audience I mean HN is the news aggregator for ycombinator, an entrepreneurial startup incubator. Doesn't mean there aren't good points there, but this is a tech news site for technology capitalists. This is the culture that gave us hackathons and death marches and veneration of guys like Steve Jobs.

It also gave us Free Software and Open Source. Not quite the same people as Y Combinator, but there's definitely an overlap. Certainly you also see an awful lot of calls for the elimination of walled gardens and for sharing important pieces of corporate-owned infrastructure (such as the dominant social media sites).

Cynically, it does look a bit as if people are M---ist when it comes to other people's stuff and capitalist when it comes to their own. But of course, often these are different individuals, who only seem to act as if there's a collective opinion.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#272

Post by etripe »

freeone3000 wrote: post #175
LB232323 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Can you eat honor? Can you sell it? What is the worth of a man besides his ability to profit? Seeing endless people of honor scrape out meagre existences while those who exploit others endlessly become billionaires is more enlightening to the worth of honor than our useless platitudes.

Can you eat or sell happiness? What about contentment, satisfaction, meaning or purpose?

I mean, no skin off my back if you want to frame yourself as a cog in the economic machine, but surely there's more to life than materialism?

Am I perhaps misunderstanding your post and are you instead making a point about the disposable nature of men as a gender group?

Re: The Ponzi Career

#273

Post by oblio »

john_moscow wrote: post #261
oblio wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you need population growth rate? You can just have each individual self fund their retirement, no Ponzi shenanigans.

Because otherwise if you graduate at 25, work until 65, and expect to die at 85, your retirement contribution during work years needs to be half of your retirement check. If you are aiming for the same income level, 1/3 of your income needs to go towards retirement. In reality, people cannot put aside that much, so the % is much lower, relying on higher returns (private) and population growth (public).

Returns on investment? Even public pension plans can have them.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#274

Post by hnxs »

Oof, I can’t take anything this author says seriously after his mention of Quibi in one of these articles. It didn’t lose to TikTok due to algorithms and luck, it lost because no one was interested in the content. The founders will blame that on covid, but I think they’re wrong. No one would have wanted it pre-pandemic either.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#275

Post by RhodoGSA »

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.

I always see this sentiment here on HN. Everyone says "Why use blockchain, when you could just do X". Alot of the time when people say this, i don't think they actually understand blockchain. There's a million here but i'll only ask one...How could you actively trade a 'contract' if it's not on the blockchain?

Re: The Ponzi Career

#276

Post by mtnygard »

gibybo wrote: post #12

If you're interested in this concept, you may enjoy the novel "The Unincorporated Man" which is set in a future where everyone (except the protagonist) has personal shares traded on an open market. It's a bit thick on ideological propaganda of the extreme capitalist/libertarian type, but I found the exploration of the concept fascinating enough to get through most of it.

Thank you! I knew I'd read a novel with this premise but could not recall the name.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#277

Post by RhodoGSA »

pjc50 wrote: post #258
tjs8rj wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 to setup trust systems 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 E…

The incentive here is economic, not some governmental force. If some company stopped paying dividends, the stock price would crash. Some governmental entity coming in after the fact and forcing the company to pay dividends would be null at this point as the company would most likely be bankrupt. The same thing would happen here, the price of alex would crash to nothing making the other 90% that he owns worthless.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#278

Post by RhodoGSA »

SergeAx wrote: post #154
xur17 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that there's a ton of money floating around / frothiness, but what's inherently wrong or ill-advised about investing in future cashflows of a person. Assuming you diversify across a bunch of people in a bunch of fields, this actually sounds better than some of the stuff people are investing in in the stock market.

Because having a share in an individual sounds very much like slavery?

but it's not like slavery because you can quit at any time. Outside of blockchain contracts should be considered 'Slavery' because an 18 year old can take out a loan that ruins his whole life because he is forced to pay back the loans by some outside entity. Investing in an individual via the blockchain makes it so you are investing because you believe in the individual, but at any time the individual can simply stop working, stop earning and enjoy a simple life without any repercussions. This makes the investment more risky for sure, but stops it from being slavery because a.) the individuals don't have to be worried about some gun forcing them to do something b.) i can sell my tokens at any time.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#279

Post by bitsoda »

volta83 wrote: post #249
andxor wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Which country is this? 30% seems reasonable for all that.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#280

Post by RhodoGSA »

bko wrote: post #9

> As I mentioned in an earlier piece, these tokens are not simply "certificates of ownership"; they can be pre-programmed to behave in a certain way (for example, pay a dividend each time a predefined event happens). I don't get how you can pre-program a contact to pay a percentage of your earnings. Ethereum is very restricted as to what you can program. I don't think you can just write "check stock price of X on CNB…

theoretically, you could do away with the whole 'i'll pay you a percentage of my earnings' and just trade the tokens. The tokens would appreciate in value as your social standing did. It's a ponzi scheme like all coins are (i have alot of money in crypto) in that you are just looking for price appreciation on the coins before you sell them.
Post reply on HN