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Esther Dyson vs Bill Campbell: 2002 − 2012

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Re: Esther Dyson vs Bill Campbell: 2002 − 2012

#41

Post by _delirium »

natrius wrote: post #31
jberryman wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically invoking the term "class warfare" has been a way to scare liberals out of broaching issues of class and wealth disparity in America. Using it here makes you look like a shill. The Occupy movement is about finally having a discussion about these issues.

Allow me to restate my claim without the words of which you disapprove. The most common message of OWS reduces to "households that make more than $500,000 a year are against everyone else." This is problematic.

I read it to be something like: the American economy is structurally set up in a way that disproportionately benefits households making more than $500,000. Empirically, given how real wages have trended over the past 50 years (flat, with decreasing job security, for everyone except the top), that's at least close to true. People seem to disagree much more why that is, though I do agree that a substantial number of people have implausible theories on that point.

Re: Esther Dyson vs Bill Campbell: 2002 − 2012

#42

Post by michaelf »

dredmorbius wrote: post #6
noilly wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly... the political and economic institutions of Russia have not progressed and have likely regressed in the last 10 years. Who led Russia in 2002? Putin. Who is leading Russia in 2011/12? Still Putin and United Russia. The Litvinenko killing and Khodorkovsky imprisonment are chilling indictments of this regression. Also the run up of energy and commodity prices has only increased the allure and hold of the Dutc…

Hrm ... interesting thought: is a market dependent on financial services analogous to one dependent on natural resources? Particularly if those financial services are extractive in nature?

> Particularly if those financial services are extractive in nature?

Could you elaborate on that sentence? What do you mean by "extractive"? In the context of natural resources, I take that word to imply that the resource is depleted (e.g. non-renewable). Do you have a difference sense in mind?

Re: Esther Dyson vs Bill Campbell: 2002 − 2012

#43

Post by natrius »

olefoo wrote: post #40
natrius wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allow me to restate my claim without the words of which you disapprove. The most common message of OWS reduces to "households that make more than $500,000 a year are against everyone else." This is problematic.

It is problematic; more so because it is true. Households that make more than $500,000 a year pay less in taxes as a percentage of their earnings than households that make $50,000 a year. They also benefit disproportionately from the protections our society offers and suffer less from the economic uncertainty that has become the bane of middle-class existence in the last two decades. Now I am certain you can find mor…

Many. This is the exact problem with class warfare. Without evidence, it assumes that an overwhelming portion of a certain class is out to maximize their gains at the expense of everyone else. If you don't have a citation, your argument is invalid.

My responses to this will be minimal, as we're considerably off-topic.

Re: Esther Dyson vs Bill Campbell: 2002 − 2012

#44

Post by AJ007 »

pbz wrote: post #12
AJ007 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Political change must go hand in hand with cultural change. It is easy to blame a democratically elected leader, yet quite difficult to identify the underlying problems of those who elected that leader to power. Russia is decades ahead of other countries, but they have a long path ahead of them. A good start would be teaching English in elementary school.

I'd be very surprised if they don't teach English in elementary. In Eastern Europe they start teaching English from kindergarten.

I have not met any Russians who were proficient in English, that learned it locally in school. I have met Russians who were fairly good with English that learned it after living in the US for a while.

Compare that to, for example, someone from the Philippines who will be proficient enough in English that you think they are an American.

Re: Esther Dyson vs Bill Campbell: 2002 − 2012

#45

Post by danbmil99 »

WildUtah wrote: post #35
vtail wrote: post #33

Since it's obvious that Dyson's statement is way too optimistic, I assume that for her it is (was) a good marketing - you bet a lot by investing in Russian startups, why not bet a little bit more to show to your future partners how confident you are? Here is why the statement is way too optimistic: - Resources always move to places where they can be used most effectively (econ 101) unless there is a significant frict…

>> When I was helping some friends to find VC funding in 2008 in Russia, I learnt that most VCs in Russia require kick-backs(!) from startups that they're investing in There are stories on HN all the time about US investors requiring the same. There are fancy meals on the company's tab, first class airplane tickets from all around the world for board meetings and various other abuses that HN founders complain about.…

The more prevalent US version of this is pressure to 'do business' with portfolio companies.

Re: Esther Dyson vs Bill Campbell: 2002 − 2012

#46

Post by bermanoid »

nirvana wrote: post #19

I found this one on bit coins: http://longbets.org/611/ Nobody has taken the other side of it. I'm skeptical (but intrigued) by bit coins, but I wouldn't take the other side of this bet, simply because bit coins have just started out and aren't yet a "fully mature form of money". That is to say, its a lot easier for a penny stock, or any other cheap commodity, to double (or outperform by 2 orders of magnitude) a glob…

I wouldn't take the other side of this bet

You should be more than happy to take this bet, at any amount that he's willing to offer. I know I would be, as long as it was denominated in USD.

Let's say the wager was $10k - if you buy about $198 worth of BTC at the start of the bet, you're guaranteed to come out ahead by at least $9,802, regardless of what happens. Do the math if you don't believe me - that's a bet I'd be happy to take...

If the bet was in terms of Bitcoins instead, then I'd be a lot more hesitant - you could still hedge against an unbounded loss by buying the BTC up front, but if the price of BTC went down by more than 50% you'd end up losing USD even though you won the bet (also if the price went up by a factor of more than 100 but less than 101, which is unlikely enough to mostly ignore), so you'd need to be somewhat of a BTC bull to be comfortable with that.

Edit: I see now that Longbets mandates that proceeds go to charity, which means that if you followed my strategy you'd be making a donation in some cases since you don't see winnings from the bet. I suppose that changes things a little bit, but even so, I'd happily throw in $198 of my money to make sure with 100% certainty that $10k went to charity.

Which makes it extra scummy if it's true that the offerer of this bet won't accept any challengers...

Re: Esther Dyson vs Bill Campbell: 2002 − 2012

#47

Post by bermanoid »

jessriedel wrote: post #25
nirvana wrote: post #19

I found this one on bit coins: http://longbets.org/611/ Nobody has taken the other side of it. I'm skeptical (but intrigued) by bit coins, but I wouldn't take the other side of this bet, simply because bit coins have just started out and aren't yet a "fully mature form of money". That is to say, its a lot easier for a penny stock, or any other cheap commodity, to double (or outperform by 2 orders of magnitude) a glob…

The problem with longbets is that you can post a challenge without being required to accept a bet. I emailed the organization and they helpfully confirmed this. >[Me:] "Must the makers of predictions (eventually) accept a challenger? I get the impression that several of these predictions are dubious yet have been sitting for awhile without forming a bet. It seems against the spirit of the site to allow predictors to…

The problem with longbets is that you can post a challenge without being required to accept a bet.

That's pretty shady, especially since it sends a misleading message to see a bet being offered with no challenger - without knowing about that part of the policy, I'd assume that meant nobody had the balls to take them up on the bet, not that they themselves didn't have the balls to accept any challengers!

Longbets should be removing bets from public display if too many reasonable challenges have been submitted without an acceptance. I'd leave it to them to decide what "reasonable" means, maybe something like falling within a certain range of amounts (perhaps making the offerer specify this beforehand?), with argument content that passes a cursory review.

I'd at least suggest that they manually review "bets" that pass a certain threshold of page views and/or challenge requests, and tried to determine whether the bets were proposed in good faith or not, up to and including interacting directly with the people offering the bet and asking them for explanations about why the challengers didn't meet their requirements.

Re: Esther Dyson vs Bill Campbell: 2002 − 2012

#48

Post by brc »

martythemaniak wrote: post #7
javert wrote: post #5

People tend to assume that in today's era, progress is inevitable. The is a dramatic illustration to the contrary. Progress depends on a stable, pro-business system of government. Which, in turn, depends on a certain kind of underlying culture. (This is why I find Occupy Wall Street threatening.)

OWS is a protest movement, the core of which is against corporations buying laws. The corporations do this because they want to protect their inefficient business models by enshrining their way of doing things into law. For example, content owners wish to censor the internet so they can keep selling consumers crap, while banks wish to tax everybody when they make a loss on their trades. OWS is not anti-business, it i…

I think I can agree with your points, however, the images of OWS protestors have failed to get this across. In the worldwide spread of the OWS theme, the further you get from Manhattan, the muddier the statements. My local occupy demonstration is a rag-tag collection of the usual suspects with signs calling for socialism.

I guess this is the problem with any protest movement - you have no top-down control, and so any good messages can get lost in the noise. I think the occupy 'brand' is pretty much damaged beyond repair for now, but if the core of the people believes what you say, then it's possible to create a new organisation and leverage from occupy before it's forgotten. But a new organisation would have to be top-down and control the message to get the point across.

For my part, I agree with the points about regulatory capture and corporatism. Large businesses pretend to like capitalism, but in reality, they get terrified of smaller startup companies stealing their lunch money and rendering them irrelevant in a decade or less.

Too big to fail is indeed too big to exist. The role of governments must be to prevent monopolies from forming, not to legislate them into existence.

Re: Esther Dyson vs Bill Campbell: 2002 − 2012

#49

Post by [deleted] »

vtail wrote: post #33

Since it's obvious that Dyson's statement is way too optimistic, I assume that for her it is (was) a good marketing - you bet a lot by investing in Russian startups, why not bet a little bit more to show to your future partners how confident you are? Here is why the statement is way too optimistic: - Resources always move to places where they can be used most effectively (econ 101) unless there is a significant frict…

[deleted]

Re: Esther Dyson vs Bill Campbell: 2002 − 2012

#50

Post by krookoo »

lucisferre wrote: post #2

In the interest of being completely fair to Dyson, I'm not sure anyone could have fully predicted just how bad of a regime Putin's would be. That said it seems like a long shot just the same.

They're a world leader in underground and criminal computing activities alright.
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