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The Ponzi Career

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Re: The Ponzi Career

#281

Post by ahel »

CFA178B wrote: post #259
zshrdlu wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Interestingly, if I am gifted child in a neglected place selling myself would be a way to get out. Limited options make a bad looking options look good.

Which is very fun, counting that wealthy investor could potentially keep certain areas of the world in an impoverished state so to reap young gifted childs.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#282

Post by assadk »

bitsoda wrote: post #279
volta83 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most likely a Scandinavian country.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#283

Post by bitsoda »

assadk wrote: post #282
bitsoda wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Most likely a Scandinavian country.

I figured as much, but was surprised by the 30% figure. I always assumed a tax rate of > 40% to support those social programs and benefits.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#284

Post by assadk »

yarcob wrote: post #81
adkadskhj wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My fear with this mindset of "They're people i wouldn't want to work with anyway" is that it's easy to say that when i'm not hungry. If my mortgage is on the line my desire for a paycheck increases. Perhaps i don't live simply enough - but i'm always concerned about stability and until i'm retired i will always be concerned about the next paycheck. I too lack skills to feel confident about common interviews, but i lo…

Having a few months to a year of expenses on the side fixes this. When you know that no matter what happens, you have enough savings to pay your recurring costs, you just aren't as vulnerable. You are going to find a job in a year, or you could find a cheaper place to live in a year... Things just aren't as scary anymore once you have enough saved up. If you live paycheck to paycheck it's going to be stressful no mat…

This is also known as "Fuck-you money"

https://thedeepdish.org/fuck-you-money/

Re: The Ponzi Career

#285

Post by ganafagol »

insert_coin wrote: post #248
ganafagol wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not saying that all employment is slavery. Far from it. A good employment arrangement is mutually beneficial. The employer gets a loyal worker that is productive, creative and motivated. The employee gets relative safety, a reasonable compensation and a sense of purpose.

What I'm saying is that the described scheme of Income Sharing Agreement is a step towards a dark age. Saying that it's always a choice is ignoring realities and just buys into the myth of "If you're poor then it's just because of your poor choices. Your fault." In the average western society, especially the U.S., there is a lack of social mobility that goes directly counter to that myth and can't just be explained by people making poor choices, compared to societies where mobility is higher.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#286

Post by ganafagol »

ahel wrote: post #281
CFA178B wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, if I am gifted child in a neglected place selling myself would be a way to get out. Limited options make a bad looking options look good.

Which is very fun, counting that wealthy investor could potentially keep certain areas of the world in an impoverished state so to reap young gifted childs.

Arguably, we do see that happening already today. All developed countries with merit-based immigration systems are essentially contribution to half of this. Not necessarily on purpose, but in effect. Now, realizing that most of western "development aid" achieves the opposite of independent development provides the other half. Again, not necessarily on purpose, but in effect.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#287

Post by zjs »

Related: the idea of income pooling schemes amongst baseball players.

"Income pooling is a concept for up and coming baseball players who would come together and contractually agree to contribute a small portion of their future earnings to the shared group. As their careers progress, even if only one person from that pool “makes it big,” everyone in that pool would receive a certain percentage of the income, thus creating a safety net for the rest of the players, ..." ([Forbes])

"Nobody has to pay a cent until they've made it to the majors and they've made $1.6 million. Then that guy has to kick 10% of his salary back to his pool mates." ([NPR])

[Forbes]:https://www.forbes.com/sites/igorbosilkovski/2020/06/26/meet...

[NPR]:https://www.npr.org/2019/10/25/773532516/some-baseball-playe...

Re: The Ponzi Career

#288

Post by LB232323 »

jkhdigital wrote: post #172
LB232323 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honor just means doing the right thing, and it is also the respect you receive for doing so. The history of the word just means being a good person. Honor in terms of death and politics is often a manipulated distortion of what is right. Doing the right thing is often difficult, and this notion is used to manipulate people into killing each other. There is honor in not selling your dignity for money, or in doing the…

> Honor just means doing the right thing You’re not wrong, but anyone can do “the right thing” when the incentives are aligned already. I’d say that honor requires one to do the right thing even when doing the wrong thing could be immensely profitable, and even when nobody would know.

Right, that's exactly what I said. Honor as a concept is used to manipulate people, and making a lot of money often involves doing dishonorable things.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#289

Post by jopsen »

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.

> So Denmark would forcibly take more than half of my income to invest in stuff I don't have a say on..

If you could invest in humans, you'd want a diversified portfolio anyways. Indeed to keep operating costs low, you might want a passive investment scheme, like index funds.

Paying taxes to fund education and pensions is kind of like investing in an index fund tracking all humans in a given country.

Only kind of like! Such schemes definitely shouldn't be the primary assets in your portfolio. But it's failure modes a very different from stocks, so some exposure is good.

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