Ask HN: What are some scams that are yet to go bust?
What's are some widely believed to be sound but hanging by a thread things around us that are not sustainable? Usually something a minority knows and talks about but most people aren't aware of.
The US dollar backed by nothing still keeps going, thanks to Petrodollar Recycling. On top of this is the 0% effective interest rate for the Banking class, with no effective reserve requirements, and socialized risk.
The Bitcoin boom fascinates me.
The Stock Market, that most famous graph of rich people's feelings, has been overrun with front-running profiteers, yet pretends to be trustworthy.
How the working class haven't strung up the rich yet escapes me.
Civilization takes a huge amount of labor to keep going, yet we have yahoos cheering on the end of it all because G*d will sort it all out, and they'll be in Heaven... yeah, right.
Invisible artwork, I don't get it. As I can't understand NFTs in general. Scam? I don't know. Money laundering? Yes.
In London Ontario a few decades ago, there was a furor over a million+ dollar painting purchased by the museum. The artist wasn't and still isn't famous. It was entirely blue with a single red stripe down the center. But at least it was a real thing.
Voice of Fire cost less than $2M and is now worth over $40M. The furor was also bs.
VoF/B.N. were not scams.
https://www.wikiart.org/en/barnett-newman
Even if no painting is involved, take Fontana's "Tagli" (cuts), at least you have something in your hands.
I mean, as a museum curator, after investing some money, I have something to attract guests and sell tickets. Imagine going to an exhibition to admire an invisible artwork, that requires a whole new level of faith.
I rest convinced that buying nothing, even if this nothing is backed by a certificate of authenticity, is a stupid thing to do. But since auction houses are everything but stupid I feel that's something else going on, and no, it's not abstract art.
Part of the problem with FSD is that it is difficult to make and test incremental improvements on a larger scale. At some point you need to send a big fleet of cars and let an "average" driver drive it without any special safety measures
Another part of the problem is public perception of safety, people are willing to accept fatalities due to human mistakes but even minor accidents caused by FSD are highly publicized
The other side of this is that a machine may prevent other accidents that a human cannot prevent. As long as our machines aren't truly superhuman we will have to find an optimal middle-ground (between human and machine control).
Take that in for a moment and think about the prices of things like NFTs today.
Religion is the ultimate vaporware. Nothing there but air and community.
Capitalism is 100% dependent upon an unfair exchange: unless there is an unfair exchange generating profit, no capitalist will accept such a deal. Capitalism relies 100% on individuals in no position to refuse the offer, because Capitalism creates and relies on a population of people unable to refuse such offers.
Unfair exchanges exist in monopolistic forms of capitalism, but in a more competitive free market system, most exchanges will be purely voluntary.