The Ponzi Career
drorpoleg.com
drorpoleg.com
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 hurt like hell, the first few times, but I realized that I don't have the personal skills to "sell" myself (like being able to spew jargon, sound like I'm TED-talking all the time, or beat LeetCode tests), so I can't blame folks for not wanting to "invest" in me. It is what it is. I come across as a socially-awkward dork, so people don't take me seriously. I'm actually fairly good at what I do, but If I mention that, it comes across as "arrogant," despite the enormous ocean of hubris that pretty much defines today's tech scene. I don't really have the skill to "humble-brag."
It taught me to live a conservative lifestyle, be Honest and Honorable, do top-shelf work, bust my ass, and not expect much from others.
I couldn't rely on anyone else to clean up my messes, or get me out of jackpots. It has taught me to learn what I have needed to learn, despite active roadblocks being tossed out by "gatekeepers," and it also prevented me from getting mixed up with some truly awful disasters; both personal, and business.
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.
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 leave you feeling empty inside.
I am definitely not politically conservative, but I live in a conservative way as well. I don't think it's superior, but it's nice to have peace and stability.
I used the word "Honorable," as it seemed more effective than "Integral" (as in "having Integrity).
As far as I know, that word isn't on any blacklist. If it ends up there, I'll find an alternative.
In the meantime, I'd gently suggest that accusing decent folks of supporting the murder of female children might not be the most effective way to start good relationships.
I don't think "honorable" has the same meaning and I did not even see it when I read you post.
I specifically edited my post to explain I was not accusing parent of supporting murder but maybe you were already writing yours and did not see that part.
No it is just on my blacklist and the only way I can enforce that blacklist is by trying remind anybody who uses it whence it came. Not trying to launch a censorship campaign by any means.
Of justice which the human mind can frame,
Intent each lurking frailty to disclaim,
And guard the way of life from all offense
Suffered or done.
-
Wordsworth.
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 right thing when it is unpopular or difficult.
There is no honor in killing people to enforce an oppressive power structure. It's about your personal choices, it's not inherently political.
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.
'honor killing' is a result of corporate identity -- cultural understandings of the self as inseparable from the family that created you. western culture generally does not carry this view, and treats people as individuals. individual honor is generally not burdened by the actions of your relatives unless one plays a direct role in them.
>that's a word that has a sad history and I hope we get rid of it in the context of our daily lives
Please dont start that cancel culture nonsense because the word has previously been used in a way you don't like. You are a symptom of a society that lacks personal and community values to live by, believing mockery of pursuing the narrow, straight path. Im not talking out of my anus either, Im guilty as much as anyone here of perpetuating tech that has and will prostitute whole generations of people in ways never seen in human history. Think a little before you write.
You're conflating honor and valor. Honor can be derivative of valor, certainly, but they are distinct. What you're insinuating is that the military teaches honor and valor, but that'd be impossible even if they wanted to. What they do teach is a team mentality, where the safety of your fellow team mates comes before your own. I'm reminded of the story of Jason Dunham [0], citation:
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as Rifle Squad Leader, 4th Platoon, Company K, Third Battalion, Seventh Marines (Reinforced), Regimental Combat Team 7, First Marine Division (Reinforced), on 14 April 2004. Corporal Dunham's squad was conducting a reconnaissance mission in the town of Karabilah, Iraq, when they heard rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire erupt approximately two kilometers to the west. Corporal Dunham led his Combined Anti-Armor Team towards the engagement to provide fire support to their Battalion Commander's convoy, which had been ambushed as it was traveling to Camp Husaybah. As Corporal Dunham and his Marines advanced, they quickly began to receive enemy fire. Corporal Dunham ordered his squad to dismount their vehicles and led one of his fire teams on foot several blocks south of the ambushed convoy. Discovering seven Iraqi vehicles in a column attempting to depart, Corporal Dunham and his team stopped the vehicles to search them for weapons. As they approached the vehicles, an insurgent leaped out and attacked Corporal Dunham. Corporal Dunham wrestled the insurgent to the ground and in the ensuing struggle saw the insurgent release a grenade. Corporal Dunham immediately alerted his fellow Marines to the threat. Aware of the imminent danger and without hesitation, Corporal Dunham covered the grenade with his helmet and body, bearing the brunt of the explosion and shielding his Marines from the blast. In an ultimate and selfless act of bravery in which he was mortally wounded, he saved the lives of at least two fellow Marines. By his undaunted courage, intrepid fighting spirit, and unwavering devotion to duty, Corporal Dunham gallantly gave his life for his country, thereby reflecting great credit upon himself and upholding the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service
Seeking honor in the service is generally a good thing - in so much as that you do the right thing even when people won't be looking; seeking valor is fairly frowned upon. Generally when I hear a story about people seeking valor you can tell the person in the story is highly annoyed, because it's considered excess risk and flies in the face of the values of the services.
I don't have dignity or pride? That doesn't make any sense... I can sell myself because I really believe in the product. I've done lots of good work in my life and I have genuinely useful skills that can help people or companies.
And I don't have honesty and honor? Seriously? You seem to think that all selling is the type that unethical used car salespeople do. That is wrong. Good salespeople are experts who work with you to understand a problem and provide a solution to it. This is what I'm doing when I sell myself - you need a product manager, and I've worked on many similar projects to the type that you need help with, ergo I think I'd be a great fit. Again, to call that dishonest or dishonorable is simply wrong.
There's nothing wrong with disliking selling yourself, nor do I think it's a character flaw - different people have different communication styles, some of which are not very self-promotional. Nothing wrong with that. But to make such vicious attacks on the ethics of anyone who can sell themselves is just baseless and cruel.
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?
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)
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.
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.
Actually you do. You've demonstrated them in this very comment. Maybe you don't realize this, or maybe your self-deprecation is a deliberate part of your strategy. Either way, it worked on me. This comment led me to your profile, which led me to your company web sites, which impressed me. I don't need an iOS app developer at the moment, but if I did you'd be at the top of my list of people to contact.
Neither do I. That the mark of a truly great con artist ;-)
We are, however, often perceived as arrogant, rude and unsympathetic.
Last night, I watched The Accountant again. I really enjoy that movie. It does kinda go a bit crazy in advocating for autistic people (I get the feeling it was written by people that studied hard, but maybe don't have a lot of personal experience), but it's really fun.
I wish I had a teak-lined camper and a Renoir in my bedroom, but I'm fairly happy how things turned out.
Grifters interview and hire grifters because their org/team/company relies on the grift more than the truth to make ends meet. If you can't grift, you frankly don't have the skills for that job. It's an unfortunate side-effect of the nature of grifting that they can't tell you this upfront.
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 look at this as a fault. If i felt more confident about interviews perhaps i'd feel more confident about my stability.
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 matter how big that paycheck is.
It doesn't, for me. I'm sitting at ~12mo with full expenses. I budget everything, so i do me full expenses, all the niceties, enterainment, etc. If i lost my job i could probably stretch it to ~24mo with the fat cut away.
Still, i worry. Keep in mind i do partially agree with you, paycheck to paycheck is a massive concern for people. It's why i obsessively envelope budget. But the concern i described in my prior post is a concern of skill, interview success, etc. Ie, feeling unsure in success of finding a job in my career path.
BUT All of an individual's interviews are a terrible sample from which to draw any inferences about the industry and your place in it. Successful interviews give a signal. Failed/Not-followed-up-on interviews give none at all. My point being, tuning and training yourself must be a separate endeavor from interviewing or you will always be in for a bad time.
If you have the wherewithal to put away a year of expenses, and the self-restraint to double that if you needed to, I'm pretty sure you could find some gainful employment during that time.
You could also probably stretch things a bit farther if you really had to by doing things you'd rather not do. Skipping rent or mortgage payments probably doesn't fit with your ethos, and will have negative consequences eventually, but it'll take time to go through eviction or foreclosure procedures, and that gives a bit more time to figure out something.
As a bonus though, my worry results in true appreciation for my current status. I feel undeserved, and compared to middle America i often struggle to imagine how they get by.
I make enough to budget nicely. I can start paying off my mortgage. I can start saving for retirement. Yea, it's far from perfect, but i truly feel like i "make enough" for a happy life. I have money to work towards my goals, be it retirement or whatever.
I can't imagine making half as much and still being expected to retire. To have safety. The state of the world confuses me. But i am grateful nonetheless.
It's easy for me to say that I will only work with those I want. I'm set, and don't actually need the work (the money would be nice, but it's not a need).
I refrain from being an "OK Boomer," but I would gently suggest that folks starting out, devote significant portions of their income to savings, and conservative (not politically "Conservative," real "conservative") investments. I'd further suggest against looking to your peers for guidance in spending habits or lifestyle choices.
The ageism in tech is really quite puzzling. We're all gonna become old. White people won't become black, men won't become women (well, they can, but it requires some really significant dedication and resources. I have friends that have made that transition. It is not something for the faint of heart); but we will all become old. The alternative is not something we like to think about.
A lot of young people that treated their elders like crap, are now, suddenly, on the receiving end of the behavior. I don't find it satisfying, in any way at all. It's heartbreaking.
I do, but this is unfortunately not what i'm describing in the post. Yea, i don't have enough to retire, but i've got ~12mo full expenses.
My concern is a concern for the long term, the career.
When a bunch of us quit 18 months later, we had stuck around for 6 months for a bonus that worked out to about 7-8 weeks’ pay. As we sat around having a beer down the road, I asked if it was worth it to stay the extra six months. Almost 3/4 said no.
It’s getting harder and harder to teach my kid that honor, integrity and hard work are still important, when you can easily find counter-examples, and they are more and more becoming the norm.
I like your site (> I wear many hats, but graphic designer is not one of them).
This looks cool: http://graceofgodmovie.com
Looks like you're a great conversationalist.
Thanks. That, too, is a learnable (and teachable) skill. It did not (and still does not) come naturally to me. Took me about 20 years of concerted effort to really figure it out (and I sometimes lapse even now). But in retrospect well worth the effort.
Your comments do just that, though. Perhaps writing is a good medium for you to make the point to others -- I recommend you do more of it. It makes a great first impression, from which you can follow-up. Be genuine in person as you are in your writing.
Thanks. I’ll let you know when I do the ICO...
That's really insightful as I've definitely noticed many people judge by looks and impression more than the content of what's said. Unattractive/awkward people are frequently treated as insufferable when they are correct.
I'm extremely fortunate, in that I don't really need to "play the game." I'm quite grateful to be in that position.
There are definitely people who would benefit from this. Some of my friends would have said 'some people just put everything in their char stat'. In fact, I have this HS friend. When we were growing up, he could barely turn his PC on. Now he is an IT manager for a major US brand. He either has gotten better or he was able to BS everyone with his cool guy persona ( and he is cool ). In short, I would buy his personal IPO.
I actually found a company that worked with me, for 27 years. I did not find them to be as gratifying a venue as I'd have wanted, but they did have a similar set of values, and we were able to find common ground. I found that having folks that appreciated my personal values was important. They paid well enough, and actually treated me with a lot of respect. I think they made some unfortunate choices, as the time went by, and I did my best to help them through the consequences of those choices, because doing stuff like that is how my value system works. I don't "cut and run." It was appreciated, but I don't think it was enough to make that much of a difference. Long story; tears, laughter, joy, despair, etc.
That stability was extremely valuable to me. It allowed me to set things up, so I am in the position I'm in, now. I can't even imagine what it would have been like, if I had spent my career in two-year stints, like everyone does now.
It also allowed me to work on some side projects that have been quite successful, in their own rights. None have been monetarily profitable; but they weren't meant to be. I like to help people help people.
It has been interesting (at first, infuriating, but now, amusing), watching people ignore my bona fides. I happen to have a pretty vast trove of open-source material (see "side projects," above). It's really not difficult to do. All you need to do is click on a link. It takes to to my SO Story, which has a chronologically-sorted history of my work since 1987.
> I'm actually fairly good at what I do, but If I mention that, it comes across as "arrogant," despite the enormous ocean of hubris that pretty much defines today's tech scene.
> "I couldn't rely on anyone else to ... get me out of jackpots."
Huh? TIA for clarifying.
“Jackpot” === “Clusterfuck”
I think the origin is from something like “You hit the jackpot in the shit sweepstakes.”
Usually refers to a self-inflicted disaster.
I can relate to a lot of what you said. Specifically, I've overheard people say things like "grog454 does it so how hard could it be?" when deciding to try to get in to software dev (they failed). 10+ years ago a talented comp sci major was openly hostile toward me when I spoke or gave a presentation on multiple occasions.
I like to think I know what I'm doing. My personal software projects made me a millionaire before age 30 with no outside investment and minimal employees (0-1). Like you, I think I lack soft skills in the traditional sense of convincing other people that I know what I'm doing. I am routinely approached by recruiters for FAANG, and will occasionally begin the interview process just to see what it's like. In 4+ processes I've gotten to the final round of interviews but never received an offer.
What I do have is a different kind of "soft skill". Search algorithms love me. I attribute the success of my projects and (apparent recruiter magneticism) to clever SEO more than anything else, followed by luck, followed by a kind of relentlessness with which I approach my work, followed by meaningful software dev skill / business acumen. 100% of revenue is from end-users, 99.9999+% of which have no clue who I am.
I don't mean to come across as hostile, but its eye-opening to see what "I've always been on my own" and "not expect much from others" looks like to other people.
I am currently keeping my dance card [very] full, working for nothing, on stuff that interests me. I would have been happy as hell to work for others at a fraction of the cost of many, as I don't especially care about the money, as I do about the working environment and project goals.
I like working. I really do. I just get quite tired of having my work destroyed and hamstrung by others[0], so I'm actually living the dream, these days.
Recruiters..love me...until they find out that I'm not young. Then, the call gets interrupted, and I never hear from them again. I've taken to just making sure everyone knows my age up front, so we don't waste each others' time. That seems to have stopped a lot of those types of contacts.
And I have not "always been on my own," as I worked on huge teams, consisting of people all over the world, but I haven't found any team that was willing to cut me much slack. I've always worked in environments where I was expected to hold up my end of things without a need for much extra support. No safety net. The trapeze is all mine.
The "always been on my own" was a quote from your original post.
Sorry about that.
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 break out as an entrepreneur.
Market cap is now almost $1 million with a coin price of $0.15. Considering the initial offer was $0.002 per ALEX it seems like he's doing really well.
Of course he's now running a NFT startup https://tryshowtime.com so perhaps the 15% share of his income has the potential to max out at the $100k return he offered. I don't think I'd bet against him at this point.
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 choice". Just take this further and apply it to some drone worker in an Amazon fulfillment center or other precarious employment. People who don't have a choice and would end up uneployed and hungry on the streets if they don't agree to terms put in front of them. The only thing between the worker and such a deal is labour laws, and we all know how popular those are in "entrepreneur" circles.
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.
Why people continually can’t understand this, and keep saying “buh buh buh mysql and lawyer fees! No need for blockchain!” is a failure of imagination.
Tokens, on the other hand, are the favorite tool of scammers.
I don’t think cryptocurrency is near mature enough to replace traditional contracts, but technology changes a lot in 5-10 years.
Many of the situations required in this article still require real-world contracts to make them work. The crypto tokens are additive on top of the contracts, but they don't replace contracts.
Someone could sell you an NFT that represents 15% of their future earnings over the next 3 years, but the blockchain can't enforce that. Even if we had all payments occurring on the blockchain, the person could simply create a new blockchain wallet and give their new address to future employers, claiming $0 earnings for their original blockchain address. The NFT itself is only valuable if supported by the weight of real contracts in the real world with real enforceability.
Crypto tokens only stand alone when the crypto token itself is being traded. Actual value still requires consensus that the token is worth something (Bitcoin, Ethereum) or a real-world contract that stipulates that whoever holds the token has a claim to some actual rights or asset.
It's likely that most of the real-world contracts for something of actual value have stipulations that the crypto tokens are null and void if determined to be lost or stolen. The crypto tokens are largely a distraction.
>Many of the situations required in this article still require real-world contracts to make them work. The crypto tokens are additive on top of the contracts, but they don't replace contracts.
There is no duality of 'real-world contract'/'digital contracts'. The question is if a digital document and signatures are accepted by a judicial system. In 50 years every judicial system will accept some format of digital contracts.
The potential upside of 'tokenized' and standardized/automated legal documents are: less ambiguous interpretations, automatic resolution, simpler trading, and easier cross-border contracts ( to some extent ).
All of this is possible by human hands, but legal systems are not known for their digital innovation. ( They don't even use standard 'diffs' to negotiate contracts )
This all requires contracts as code capable of ascertaining external facts. As far as I know the only such facts that have been made to work are facts about the prices of other cryptocoins.
Furthermore, most of the benefits can already be obtained by registering a contract to be traded over a commodities exchange. There are, for example, weather futures being bought, sold, and adjudicated without any need or use for a blockchain.
Do meatspace contracts ascertain external facts? No, a court of law does. For most things that will likely never change. But if the contract is of a fungible nature, then allowing it to exist on a blockchain means ownership can be traded with no additional infrastructure required. This is why I prefer to call blockchain “market-as-a-service”...
The same is true of the Chicago Board of Options, established 1848. The blockchain adds nothing. It’s the snake oil of the modern age.
And you can’t add a twist on the standard options contract, or experiment whatsoever, as a software dev fooling around. With blockchain you can experiment in infinite ways instantly. There is no permission.
Again, the lack of imagination and the total “blockchain equals bad! All of this tech is stupid because I say so!” nonsense is exhausting. You don’t want to learn so you won’t learn.
So stop doing it. No one is forcing you to push these get rich quick scams.
In any case, it’s not hard to imagine an evolution in our legal regime where tokens can gain the force of legal contracts. And then tokens will do everything that paper contracts will do, which is to say nothing except declare the terms of some mutual agreement between some meatspace entities. (obviously this only makes sense for fungible contracts)
Isn't that also basically what any interest bearing loan/mortgage is?
At the end of the day, a mortgage is a contract that allows the borrower to purchase a home in exchange for a share of their future income, paid as interest on the loan.
Personal loans also already exist today. The primary difference in the scheme in the article is that it is blockchain-based, instead of bank-based, and the trust establishment mechanism between borrower and lender is based on personal marketing, not credit agencies.
Perhaps a bigger factor is that if the currency in which such a loan is offered is deflationary in the BTC style, it is a disadvantage to the borrower who will see the cost of their loan escalate over time, so this should be accounted for by lowering the interest rate.
It’s how you calculate the payment. In a loan it doesn’t matter how much money I make, I owe what I owe.
In the proposed equity arrangement I owe a percentage of my income. If I don’t make anything, I don’t owe anything. If I’m the next Musk, I owe billions.
That's just another way of saying 0 collateral.
> In the proposed equity arrangement I owe a percentage of my income. If I don’t make anything, I don’t owe anything
I agree the calculation is different, but I doubt there is a lender that isn't going to demand the return of their principal at the least.
Depending on the enforceability of such a contract (questionable and depends on the legal teeth they have in the respective jurisdictions) and the likelihood of default, it would significantly alter the risk profile.
If you want to take an "investment" of this sort, it would have to taken by an LLC or similar entity, which is by definition isolated from personal liability and vice versa.
You win some, you lose some. Presumably the person/organization making the loan has calculated that the upside pays for the students who end up paying nothing.
To the sibling comment about debt and equity, they're not necessarily as different as some assume. In this case, if I called it debt with a payback schedule based on ability to pay up to some cap, does that make it into something fundamentally different just because it's unusual?
But there’s still a basic framework before you get into the messy middle. Taxonomies are a useful technology, calling everything a loan obscures more than it clarifies.
And I don't disagree even though I had a long ago finance professor who hammered on the point that a lot of financial instruments weren't necessarily that distinct from each other just because they have different names. But, yes, we can generalize about the distinct characteristics of normal debt and normal equity.
Which may depend on an external factor if say it's a variable rate loan pegged to the prime. At some level, this is just using a different formula to determine the payment.
Again, no. Brute force Nakamoto consensus is bad for the environment, but lumping all crypto into that bucket is ignorant/intellectually dishonest.
All human production processes use energy, and therefore all economic activity is “bad for the environment” in the exact proportion of its energy use.
Also Proof of Stake.
Maybe blockchain’s biggest value proposition right now is that it’s lightly regulated and has hype, so using it greases the wheels when growing an audience or building a usually regulated product.
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 seen it yet in it’s current implementations.
I don't think you and I would agree on what constitutes "average people".
> it’s easy to setup trust systems - Alex setup his own token in a weekend for a “human IPO”, rather than running through the cost and time of properly setting it up with a lawyer and contracts.
Easy to set up, but how easy it is it to enforce?
Blockchain is just a ready-made DTCC for whatever asset/contract you want to securitize.
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.
But what he describes, hedging risk, is not a new concept. It is something that people do every day when they diversify investments or buy insurance. ISAs and "person as tokens" just push this to new levels.
> In such a scenario, every career becomes a pyramid scheme.
In other words, the rich get richer--scalability works.
One thing the author left out (or that I missed) is that scalability increases overall wealth. If I have to learn calculus from an average teacher because of geographic limitations, and then my child gets to learn from the best calculus teacher in the world, in the latter case the world gets richer because the same knowledge is arrived at quicker at less expense. (Of course, there's fallout for the average worker, but this is something we've been dealing with in the developed world for decades and still haven't figured out.)
Blockchain isn’t magic. It can’t do very much “new”. But if it can take something old (contract) and make that more accessible to more potential contract buyers/sellers, then that’s actually interesting.
Technology that makes slow complicated things fast and easy can have a lot of impact.
I won’t be selling shares of myself nor buying shares of others. But this we’re close to the point where blockchain actually provides real value beyond tulip speculation.
https://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe
The Bowie Bond part of the post was fascinating by the way. Had never heard that story. He issued them in 1997 which is a high Shiller PE value also before the 2000 stock bust. Lots of money floating around looking for a home then too.
You loan someone $40000 @ 5% APR and he spends it on education. If the loan is to be paid back in a decade, he has to cough up $416 per month. Unlike a mortgage, he can't foreclose on his education.
Since he doesn't have any assets to sell, and is by law unable to get out of them through bankruptcy, his only choice is to work some amount of hours every month to pay off the loans.
If that is not slavery, then surely ISAs are fine too? And if that is slavery, then how are ISAs any worse?
Alex had his human IPO shortly after the march 2020 crash
The government is actively preventing a correction by minting new dollars at unprecedented rates [0]. In this environment, the Shiller P/E doesn't make sense anymore.
The pressure in the society is building up and it's gonna eventually blow up, but it will follow some completely unexpected path because the usual safety valve has been welded shut.
[0] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/money-supply-m0
How long before people are trading options on risk weighted batch of people? Leveraged buyouts if whole specialties? Movement controls to enforce greatest P/E? "I'm sorry sir, you can't leave the country without presenting a Holiday Risk Bond. Perhaps a Virtual Vacay is more affordable?"
And most of all: you, as an individual, have almost no information about the market, and are almost certain to get a bad price.
Anyone who thinks they are good at this should practice buying a new car. Once you get to the final sale price, with no finance, demand another 9% off. If you can get that, and the car isn't a lemon, you're ready to negotiate for a well understood commodity.
Selling people futures, when you've just given them capital up front with the goal of enabling higher returns, is less understood, though of course there are many immigrants who do just that. But already wealthy people? It seems much less certain.
Lol I actually love this idea. Funding an ETF of people who want to move to SF to start a career in tech, or LA to start a career in acting. Diversify your risk and support some people with potential. Could have an acting school equivilant of ycombinator and you can invest in all each batch and get a return if some succeed.
If we want a metiocracy this could help build it, by giving more capital to those who have potential but are disenfranchised by existing institutions.
So, instead of Indian SWEs and 3rd sons of teachers you thought you were investing in for grad school, you're paying people to be swindled at Trump University and indentured training for long haul trucking.
Meanwhile the YC30 talent bonds were sold to a select group of connected investors, and pension funds bought job lots of Invisalign techs from brokers making a steady commission.
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 ~30 years.
So in a way I do have exposure to some human investment :)
This is also why it makes sense for my taxes to fund tuition for everybody.
I'll pass.
I hear similar statements from my relatives in the US.
I can't believe that not even HN can get tax brackets into their head. It is not a hard concept!
I don't know if a better way to fund public services. Maybe we could tax work less and tax natural resources higher.. but I'm not expert on the long-term economic implications -- so who knows.
In any case: my point was that getting exposure to human capital as an investment instrument is probably best done through public pension schemes rather than ISA or human token IPOs :)
Investing in humans makes sense. Most countries already do it! Do we need to reinvent it?
Generally all income is taxed. I think the personal deductible is around ~10k USD. -- That's not meant to ask, but it's what you asked :)
Taking all taxes deductibles etc. then all in all I think I pay around ~48% of my income in taxes. Note. that lower income means less taxes too.
When I lived in SF it was around 38% (I think). Not that much considering cost of healthcare wasn't covered through taxes in the US.
None of this includes sales tax or VAT, just income.
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).
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".
This is why tax rates aren't constant for all incomes, they depend on income, costs (family, children, etc.), etc.
My tax rate would be slightly over 40% if I were single, but my partner's income isn't as high (still over >35% taxes), and we have two children. We get taxed as a family, so our incomes kind of get added and divided by four, and then our "family" tax rate is ~30%.
If you earn a lot of money and have no family / children to care for, then you get taxed with the highest rate which is slightly less than 50%.
If that's not your situation, your tax rate will be lower.
Also, there are some ways to delay paying at least a portion of your taxes (e.g. by getting stock compensation, and paying the taxes on the original price of the stock much later when you sell, etc.), which are often used for high paying jobs (somebody working on a dinner doesn't get "stock").
Having said all this, I've payed almost 50% taxes before, and it was ok. My net salary was still way above the median, and the cost of living here is relatively cheap.
The only real difference of this tax systems are (1) all the benefits that you get, and (2) the variable tax-rate widens the middle class significantly: it is harder to become "poorer" if your salary decrease because the tax rate decreases with it, and it is harder to double your net salary because the tax rate grows with salary increases, at least up to the almost 50% limit.
Many of the benefits are just the outcome of having a large number of people that live with 1 job, working 35h/week, and that don't have to look at their bank account ever to see if they'll make it to the end of the month.
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.
Average tax rate in Denmark is around 45%.
In San Francisco I was paying 38%.
Can you pay education for your kids with 7% of your income? How about healthcare?
What is a social safety net worth?
7% of 130k is that enough to cover education, healthcare, etc?
Note. To be fair, the us does have some pension through medicare. (But I was honestly shocked to learn that it was regressively taxed)
That's a recipe for a social conflict. Once the majority can't afford a house and a pension comparable to yours, they won't just stand aside and let you enjoy it. They will label you an oppressor and will come and take it. And the laws won't help you if the majority finds them unfair.
In reality, people cannot put aside that much, so the % is much lower, relying on higher returns (private) and population growth (public).
Instead, we're betting that future generations will pay through taxes.
Note. Public pensions are tiny, so you'll still want a private pension that is invested in stocks.
But both is fantastic, because you have diversified your pension into stocks (private pension) and humans (public pension).
But it means that your private pension doesn't have to be as big.
More importantly: the point is that your private pension depends on the stock market. You public pension depends on future generations.
So overall part of my pension is going to be private: the underlying assets it's invested into is private companies through stocks. Another part of my pension will be public: the underlying asset is humans that can be taxed.
In 1946, the US Supreme Court established the so-called Howey Test to determine if an investment opportunity is a security offering. These are the Howey criteria:
"Under the Howey Test, a transaction is an investment contract if:
"It is an investment of money;
"There is an expectation of profits from the investment;
"The investment of money is in a common enterprise;
"Any profit comes from the efforts of a promoter or third party."
IANAL, but these personal tokens seem to match every condition of the Howey test. I'd be extremely careful about conducting your own little security offering if you're resident in the US, or allow US residents to participate.
It's worth noting that Alex Masmej, the person mentioned in the article, conducted his token offering while in France.
Saying "not really" doesn't make something so. This is, literary indentured servitude. By definition.
That said:
- I agree that student loans ought to be dischargable in bankruptcy (indeed I think the government should have nothing to do or say with them at all)
- I still don’t think they are reasonably referred to as “literally indentured servitude”, though one step closer
This != That
I am not sure why that needs spelling out, but social issues are actually not resolved by making them a suffering contest.
The philosopher Debra Satz's book "Why Some Things Should Not be for Sale" has a great section on bonded labor that captures some of these consequences.
(I think the military isn't a good analogy because the public at large affords military personnel a special kind of respect that counteracts these social externalities.)
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 CNBC, if X then Y..." Even if you could you would need to prefund it with Ethereum which would make the fund raising aspect kind of pointless.
> In English, this meant Masmej was selling digital tokens under his own name ($ALEX). The token sale would sponsor his entrepreneurial journey. Owners of these tokens will receive certain rights over Masmej's future income and career decisions.
It's just a promise to backers. I can't see how its enforced by a contract. It's no different than just having people send you money via PayPal and you promising to hit them back when you make some money. I guess easier to administer and track woh you promised?
And I don't see how an income sharing agreement is a Ponzi scheme. A ponzi scheme is current investors paying out to previous investors. This is just a funding mechanism, selling equity instead of debt
You can't. Any agreement like this would still require a traditional, real-world contract to carry any weight. The contract would specify that the holder of the NFT is entitled to the benefits of the contract. Even in a hypothetical world where everyone gets paid on the Ethereum blockchain, the person could simply open up a second ETH wallet and collect payments there, because crypto wallets aren't people.
The unspoken catch is that these contracts would likely include a provision that the NFT is null and void in the event that it's lost or stolen. People entering into contracts aren't eager to give up their rights to hacks when they can simply add a contractual provision that limits it.
The NFT exists because it's a convenient placeholder to represent something that can be traded with commonly accepted (relatively speaking) tools.
A real-world contract would still be necessary to put any weight behind these NFTs.
So I think investing in future gains of a real world entity who can simply start over under a new guise or decide not to pay, without being able to enforce the contract isn’t going to work. But I’m not sure connecting current legal entities/contracts to onchain versions will be the answer either in many cases.
Sablier[1] is a service that is like payroll management on ethereum. Employers can deposit your monthly wage and it will be streamed to you little by little over the month. If alex had this setup he could 'pre-program' some of these payments to his token holders
In America, it used to be that parents and employers would invest a lot of money in raising and training young adults, respectively. But more and more, there's less money available to support these programs.
Given this situation, it makes sense that early-career people would have to look elsewhere for people willing and able to invest in them.
Incorrect. “Since 1980, college tuition and fees are up 1,200%, while the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for all items has risen by only 236%.” https://www.visualcapitalist.com/rising-cost-of-college-in-u...
1. If there is, say, a hundred or even ten possible candidates to pick from, due diligence becomes brutal. Health information, full social media dumps, detailed financial disclosures etc. Also rampant discrimination. If it is unregulated, it's basically what insurance companies would like to be doing but with no limits.
2. If it is for five years and with no big payout at the end, the value of such a contract (via discounted cash flows) is likely pretty low and accordingly would be the funding. Note that LambdaSchool owns the whole "equity" of a person (no splitting into X shares) and gives you a service (at scale) instead of cash, so it probably makes sense for them.
3. It would be fun to see the accounting sorcery possible for shielding and offloading your earnings to other entities, to pay your investors (?)... preferably nothing.
Besides, people, as opposed to companies, are rarely truly profit-maximizing entities. Maybe in the second year your guy decides to be content with a mid-range salary and devote all his time to studying meditation. But hey, theoretically you could try to escape inflation with such a crazy scheme if the interest rates on "real" bonds would stay very low...
Yeah, this sort of payback scheme probably needs a few characteristics to make sense which apply in this case.
- Incremental cost of a student is relatively low. So even if, say, 25% of the class doesn't pan out, they didn't cost you a lot that has to be somehow passed on to the other 75%.
- Likelihood that graduates can get at least a workaday job at a decent salary are pretty decent. This probably wouldn't work for film school.
I guess there is more "freedom"? but that seems to come at the cost of stability and more winner take all scenarios
like a lot of this stuff isn't new, but the degree to which is seems prevalent reads dystopic
It is essentially like a farmer selling futures contracts on their crop. The yield of the crop and market conditions at harvest time are so uncertain that trading upside for stability becomes a smart bet.
So one might think to themselves that they don’t feel certain about their ability to generate income for the next 20 years and sell a claim to their existing and future incomes for a payment today which they can diversify into other investments and tap in the future if things unravel for a period.
Of course the old fashioned way of doing this is putting part of your income into savings. But front loading savings has benefits like having a larger nut to start with and more time to compound.
And I don’t think it’s in lieu of a social safety net. This would exist to stabilize a lifestyle. A social safety net would still exist for adults that can’t take care of themselves through government funded shelter and food and other things.
I would expect a professional couple with plans of a family wouldn’t be able to (or want to) rely on the whims of government assistance. You’d maybe want to plan a lifestyle and getting up front money could have benefits. Similar to purchasing additional life insurance if you have kids.
At the core a ponzi relies on guaranteed return, paid for by other investors.
Just because you might not like or understand how something works, doesn't mean it's a ponzi.
But the conclusion seems a bit off. Basic income seems like the only recourse IMO
Is this just a failure of government to supply the upfront investment in its citizens so that they pay enough tax in ten years?
No. Its profit sharing akin to how companies do so by issuing dividend paying shares.
So far as the government is concerned theyre just looking out for their most important stake holders, wealthy individuals and monied interests, by keeping taxes extremelly low. Universities being underfunded to the point they need to raise tuition to the point where students need to take on crushing debt is a byproduct of that.
Profit sharing with your citizens is basically government. I think ...
The difference is that taxing is done in the name of public/government interest whereas profit sharing is done in the name of private/individual interest.
and governments should see education if their citizens as an investment repayable through future taxes
A similar problem to that of businesses financing education of their current or prospective staff.
What Im saying is that although taxation and dividend distribution are both wealth redistribution from an individual/entity with capital they are different in wthe underlying reasons for why they are done and who the intended beneficiaries are.
You dont "have" to go to college nor get a job nor even have money to stay alive neither.
You dont "have" to be a top performer if it would mean sacrificing your time and well being but God in heaven help you if youre not.
You dont "have" to take out loans to go to med school but if you werent born into money well... tough titty.
The definition of taxes is that they are taken by the government.
If you optionally sign a contract for something, it's not taxes.
You’re reduced to a slave, with many masters instead of one.
No thank you.
https://craphound.com/down/Cory_Doctorow_-_Down_and_Out_in_t...
I can absolutely see a future where people work on (and own pieces) of many projects, revenue share is tied much closer to measurable value creation, and “tokenised” future cash flows in almost anything measurable and enforceable (ie. on-chain activity) have liquid markets from very early on.
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.
The tokens described in this article don't necessarily depend on the sale price of the NFT, though. Instead, these NFTs would represent the beneficiary of real-world contracts. Whoever holds the NFT collects the future income of the person, as enforced by a real-world contract.
Of course, nothing stops them from wash trading these NFTs in an attempt to flip them.
"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...
That sounds a lot like social credit system? I can't imagine a future where a small fraction of people not related to you can decide what you should do, even if they are not the government.
If there are not a steady stream of new entrants with new money coming to the market, the whole thing collapses like a house of cards. And you will eventually run out of people. Anyone seriously looking into BitClout should look into the recent story of FootballIndex in the UK.
The Ponzi analogy is quite apt, and buyers into Ponzi schemes typically do not do well out of it.
I work for a large multinational in a country other than America. I put up with additional bureaucracy compared to the life of a freelancer/contractor because I know that A) The company has a high chance of existing in 12 months B) I won't be fired without cause. In exchange the company is provided value in excess of my wage, training and other overhead costs. How is this different?
For this to happen the blockchain gotta have a way to sync with events in the physical world. Moreover, all active blockchain nodes should have equal access to this data and get equal result at given time. This mechanism cannot be enforced by blockchain itself, so we are back to the issue of trust.
For ISAs, there isn't really any reason to put it on the blockchain unless the company is trying to sell it. Even then, the NFT on the blockchain would only be representative of the ownership, which still depends on the real-world contract. The contract would likely have provisions that the NFT is null and void if lost or stolen, as no reasonable company would voluntarily give up protections for their assets.
https://craphound.com/down/Cory_Doctorow_-_Down_and_Out_in_t...
Yes, and when people are making emotional/ideological financial decisions, I’ll buy the dip.
You'll meet a younger doctor who complains heavily about student debt and how impossible life in the US is. I'll offer to write a check for the debt in return for a negotiated percentage of their income from now on. Silence ensues.
Writing someone a check in exchange for their future earnings "from now on" is a terrible deal. You're essentially offering a loan that can never be paid back, yet requires payments forever.
Loans are a good deal because the terms are known ahead of time, payments end when the principle is paid off, and the cost can be calculated.
The idea behind ISAs is that they try to align the interests of the student and the educator, as the educator only gets paid proportionally to the students' future earnings. ISAs also have limits on how long they can collect from the student and thresholds that have to be met for collection criteria, as well as an upper limit on payments.
What you're describing is just facetious and condescending to those with six-figure medical debt.
The point is that medical debt is a very good deal for the reasons you point out and because the doctor cartel in the US has forced prices up to dizzying heights.
Yet people bitching and moaning about having borrowed $300k at reasonable interest rates for the right to earn many millions with almost no risk (when was the last time you met an involuntarily unemployed doctor?) don’t acknowledge that.
So, clearly not starving, and maybe even undeserving to be in the top 10--15% after working just ~24--36h/wk in night shifts. But won't make $$MILLIONS$$ and won't get as much as your average Googler with equivalent career experience to mine, I reckon. And also never made more than ~$50k in my life until my mid-30s.
Doctor pay is facing a whole lot of downward pressure from health insurers, private equity, and other FIRE people recently. Part of the C-suites' strategy has been to open self-funded residencies where they pay their residents much less than they would have to pay the equivalent lifelong salaried PA. This, then, creates an "oversupply" (from docs' perspective) of trained docs and forces pay down.
Personally I have no sentiment for the profession and do see how this could ultimately be good for patients. Unfortunately, in reality the FIRE people seem to just take all that cash for themselves and the patient is left paying the same amount or more than they did 20 years ago (via insurance or whatever you want to call it).
I’m not saying it’s the best set up in the world, but it’s pretty good. Certainly a lot of people would consider it worth the financial costs of admission. (The hazing parts of medical training are unnecessary and unfortunate, different people are going to suffer more or less from that.)
Edit: Everyone is entitled to blow off steam. Nothing is perfect and there’s always going to be downsides to every profession. It just seems like complaining doctors is something of a cliche but I’ve yet to have one convince me that’s it’s not a pretty sweet gig, loans and medmal notwithstanding.
May be 97% by hourly pay but that implies I can work as many hours as I'd like. But I effectively already work all the hours I can work for various reasons, making my family 80--90th percentile.
Unfortunately, due to the physician oversupply and other forces I described, it's getting very hard to find random doctor jobs anywhere in the country. Just another interesting thing about medicine that is changing.
And, if this is a lifetime thing, this is just a form of annuity which are fairly common. (Give someone $X and they promise to pay you $Y annually for your lifetime (or other term)). There are also annuities that track the value of some investment pool like an endowment.
Annuities often underperform inflation, and life annuities are typically offered by insurance companies with risk pooled assets, not by a single individual.
A better analogy would be taking part ownership of a man's livelihood and expecting him to pay dividends like a stock.
If he tied his career to an LLC this would make sense oterwise he's literally selling himself.
If we think about it in terms of pure game play, medicine is a part of the game where the strategy is to take on a massive amount of debt, high risk and uncertainty for incredible returns.
Not really. It's exceedingly rare for someone to complete medical school and then not be able to find a relatively high-paying job if they want one.
The risk would be something like later deciding not to pursue a career in medicine, but that's a personal decision rather than an external risk.
I wouldn't mind if private higher and trade education was required to only take in money through such setup.
And if people deem less practical education necessary it should be funded from taxes only.
Major complaint about paid US higher education is that for a lot of fields and universities what you get from them in the job market is less than tuition, often it's pretty much nothing. Not to mentioned yearsbof your life you've put into it.
I think it's absolutely wonderful idea to align interests of educational institution with your value in the job market after you finish it.
The future is like that a lot.
It's become increasingly common to see the word "ponzi" applied to what is just really a "speculative investment".
Its a shame this is continually being done, because its a real destruction of language meaning. A "ponzi scheme" is an intentional act to defraud...using a portion of investor funds to pay other investors in hopes of attracting more and more investors. The conman then times his exit appropriately once some critical mass of investors rush in.
A risky or speculative investment is just that. There is no intent to defraud. The continual lazy use of "ponzi" does lots of harm since it unfairly implies 'an intentional act to defraud'.