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Generally I agree but this is crypto. Crypto is 100% zero-sum or negative-sum. The whole space is predicated on trying to take money from other participants rather than actually creating value. Creating at best the illusion of value is the goal. This guy nailed it.

It's not like he took $100M from an orphanage or something.

This guy was a part of creating that negative sum game in the first place. He shouldn’t be celebrated.

Genuinely curious:

Are people angry at coinbase (and generally crypto exchanges) because they believe that exchanges allow vast amounts of people to speculate on the price of crypto and treat it as an investment vehicle when it was supposed to be a currency? And therefore nobody working for coinbase is capable of creating value.

Or are people angry at crypto overall because it's a wasteful cesspool and so because this guy took a product role in the crypto industry he's not capable of creating any value whatsoever so fuck him and fuck everyone that paid him?

Or are people angry with this guy because he's a bad or underwhelming product leader and the salary does not reflect the value he did bring to coinbase (perhaps you hold coinbase shares)? And therefore you feel he was somehow dishonest about his value and conned coinbase for millions and this reflects poorly on the startup/tech/vc industry?

The only people who should be upset are the those who provided the cash that is going into this person's pockets. Otherwise, I don't have a care in the world about this departure compensation. It impacts me in no way.

One is allowed to be upset. Woke

Woke? In what way?

People are allowed to be upset. I’m old. And sarcastic.

If Alex makes $100M selling middle eastern despots tech to track and dismember journalists, Bob makes $100M with his new tech to inject adverts into our dreams, Charlie makes $100M by selling the taxpayer fighter jets that don't work and charging to fix them, Doris makes $100M by offering high-interest payday loans to desperate financially illiterate people, Eric makes $100M getting people addicted to his prescription opioids, Freya makes $100M by buying up property then paying politicians to block new construction, Grace makes $100M by getting a bailout from the government and spending it on exec bonuses, Harry makes $100M by running a for-profit prison that makes sure every inmate re-offends, Iris makes $100M by getting some chump venture capitalists to pay her that, and James makes $100M by persuading rich fools to pay that much for ape NFTs, why shouldn't we celebrate the fact James and Iris's actions are relatively less destructive than the others?

No, because that's what, 10 people? And there are millions of people who actually create value and enact good in the world. We should celebrate them.

I agree that crypto is 100% negative-sum in my experience. (Especially the ones that are proof of work which literally destroys our one biosphere through wasting electricity.)

Most recently, I got a "legitimate" (doxxed, "real") job offer via HN, got hired and scammed, wasted hours of my time. Crypto is scamsville.

I'd like to hear more about this.

Someone reached out via my Hacker News "who wants to be hired" comment offering a job. We did interviews, I got hired, onboarded and introduced to the team. They missed meetings and then disappeared before the first discussed paydate, ghosting me. They were set up in every way to do this. It seemed to be their standard M.O.

How do they profit from this?

I don't know if "profit" is the right word as it implies customers, but I guess they rip off devs and crypto investors they enter into contracts with then run away from, misappropriating investors' money and not delivering any value. The devs just help make it seem legitimate. There is no actual value creation involved.

Not quite orphanages, but it's definitely poor people:

* Locked out of traditional financial industry, more people of color are turning to cryptocurrency [0]

* Why the crypto crash hit black Americans hard [1]

[0] https://archive.is/slVPj

[1] https://archive.is/KhbuI

Can't anything just be intrinsically bad anymore, for practically everyone? Crypto scams and ubiquitous surveillance would be on my list, for example.

A lot (most?) of the public would say that child exploitative imagery is just such a 1-bit issue: we should always come down on it as hard as possible with whatever powers necessary. But a lot of the more libertarian/free-speech type thinkers that are highly represented on HN think that it is not by any means a black and white/1-bit issue, that it’s actually really nuanced.

On the other hand blockchain and Internet ads and seemingly little else routinely get the 1-bit treatment on HN all the time: GP is going grey at the time of writing for saying roughly that crypto hurts orphans.

I don’t understand this, and since my theories about why tend to be pretty polarizing I’ll leave it at: I’m against 1-bit thinking on HN. I’m guilty of it sometimes, but I try not to be.

Edit: Misread GP with apologies. I think the larger point stands.

Would say in all seriousness while nodding at your comment that America was founded on exploitation, not just of natives and Africans but of future waves of immigrants as well, etc, and of the idea of the supremacy of the owner class (within which there was some relative, legally enshrined equality). The history of America is literally one of enabling experimentation and innovation in exploitation, of the framing that there are suckers and subordinates born every minute. This is the case in every single business domain, and is as or more true today as it ever has been. The true equality in America is that anyone and everyone can be cheated and dominated (of course some more easily/painfully than others). This unbroken lineage of inherent danger leads to the rise of (in some cases famous/legendary/mythologized) collectives and movements that attempt to enshrine rights and protections. One does not exist without the other.

As a first-generation immigrant I completely disagree with your framing here and it makes me sad that you view the United States in such an incredibly dismal way. There are many problems here, to be sure, but the US is undoubtedly one of the best places in the world to live, and, like very few other countries, tries to improve on its past, generation after generation.

Forgive me, the intent was not to communicate a dismal attitude. Agree completely that it is one of the best places to live and all the rest.

I personally find the mental model that includes the dynamics of dominance and subjugation along with the responses of solidarity and resistance extremely helpful in understanding the world as a whole. Why are things a certain way etc? Because of X.

It is a physics, and is more completely predictive and reliable than a mental model that sees only oppression and anxiety (as many people are limited to) or one that sees only ambition and advantage (as many peoples' blinders dictate).

Going further, I would argue that the existence of exploitation in a system is in fact essential, as is providing tools to resist and join and brace against it. But eliminating it is impossible and a non-goal.

> America was founded on exploitation, not just of natives and ...

I believe these criticisms are true of essentially everywhere on earth. How much of Germany was French for a time or a vassal state of this one lord or another? Africa, the continent that invented slavery still enslaves people to this day. The Native Americans themselves faught with one another for land and treasure. Going back far enough, we cro magnons stole neanderthal land.

The United States didn't pop into existence in 1776 bringing with it some sort absolute barbarity that previously never existed, it's the other way around, the world was pretty backward and barbaric until the Americans got around to fixing it.

This is why the comment resonates—the "owner class" got swindled. Fatcats, not the littleguys.

For what it's worth, I think GP was being sarcastic.

Oh I'm not being sarcastic. The lemmings at the top of most tech companies are highly overpaid and continually fuck up Their One Job. The rare person who manages to trick them into paying a lot for little-to-no services has figured out the game and deserves some praise.

In my idiotic idealistic opinion, people who build useful things, deserve praise.

EDIT: apparently I was wrong and the poster was not sarcastic.

(I thought it was Poe's law.)

They replied the statement was not sarcastic and doubled down.

Always double down.:)

Also, let’s be honest here. It’s stock valuation. That’s basically good vibes and rich VC money. It’s not like the money came from real people.

Nobody would ever double-down on sarcasm.

No, I think its a genuine case of two people with different values.

I agree. And often, people don't draw the line at corporations. So many people in America are willing to screw over others if it means another dollar in their pocket.

The base elements of human nature do not care about national borders. I think you'll find such people, in similar proportion, in most places around the world.

"Fucking over others for personal gain" is actually not a "base element of human nature"! Plenty of other cultures are more altruistic, more about raising everyone up.

This philosophy of praising exploitation

I read that comment as sarcastic. I don't think your parent comment is praising him

> This philosophy of praising exploitation

FWIW the parent you are replying to was clearly jesting with some sarcasm and not actually praising it in the way you seem to think.

EDIT: apparently not, according to the other replies by that parent. But looks like several of us read sarcasm into the comment.

In the 90s, my relatives first came to the US. In those days, there were newspaper dispensing machines on the sidewalk, which worked like this:

1. It was a box on the sidewalk with a locked swing-out door facing forward.

2. You put coins into the machine and the door unlocks.

3. Inside are all the newspapers. You put your hand in and take only one.

4. You close the door and it locks.

The first thing my relatives asked after seeing this was "why do you only take one?"

If you model society as a Nash equilibrium, the impulse to veer towards social betrayal is present in all people and societies. It's an obvious instinct and the fact that people are so open about indulging it only indicates that we're returning to the historic mean for humans, that the trust required to have a society based on mutual cooperation is vanishing. The only galling thing here is that the people to whom the most social benefits flow -- software engineers, product managers, executives -- are so brazen about betraying it, or cheering the betrayal of others.

I don't know where you emigrated to, but unless it's Saudi Arabia or Singapore, I would doubt your observation. Americans and Euros have a tendency to view everyone else as Rousseau's "noble savage", i.e. a romanticized alien.

I emigrated up to Canada and it certainly is still present here but it isn't nearly as praised. In Vancouver a "starter" home is valued in the millions so wealth inequality is very much present here as well - but there is much more of a social rejection of wealth acquisition through under handed means. Trudeau got into a lot of political trouble over SNC-Lavlin and Doug Ford is currently getting a lot of crap over handouts of park lands to developer buddies. I don't want it to sound like everything is perfect but when people acquire power or wealth through exploitation they actually suffer for it up here instead of it being viewed as a virtue.

On the one hand, I guess you need a certain level of social trust for newspaper dispensing machines to work. On the other hand, there's very little value to be gained by taking 10 newspapers. I suppose you can hawk them on the street for a discount but the benefit is pretty small.

On the third hand, the idea to ask "is more actually better than less" can only occur to people after they've become accustomed to a certain level of prosperity.

I agree with you. I thought GP was sarcasm... but these days who can even tell. Including the people writing/saying... I don't know if this is a USA thing or a more global thing, but I think a lot of people literally don't know if they are being sarcastic or not, sarcasm is so pervasive.

I think it's more of a sarcastic / cynical take - kind of a "you reap what you sow" sentiment. This IS what capitalism is, with a weak social safety net and without controls on the accumulation of stupid levels of capital. If you don't believe that the people who invested in Coinbase should have had the ability to fling around billions of dollars on a whim, then it's difficult to feel bad when they spend it poorly.

> This philosophy of praising exploitation

I assumed the poster was being ironic.

Which countries have you lived in? Fleecing large orgs (corporations, the government etc) is seen as a Robin Hood virtue in many if not most countries in the world.

i'm pretty sure the comment, to which you responded, is a joke. i mean, the second sentence is overtly sarcastic.

if not intended as sarcastic, it works as sarcasm quite well!

I am almost certain that GP was being sarcastic.

It's because he exploited wealthy people.

Always surprising to me how many peoples’ moral framework is essentially the Code of Hammurabi with a few layers of indirection.

Why does that surprise you?

AFAICT, peoples' moral leanings seem pretty consistent over history. (I could be wrong; I'm haven't studied that much history.)

There's lots of very popular religions which have different expectations of moral behavior (in theory). It's also not a particularly pro-social moral framework.

Nah, it's because he exploited crypto people.

It’s not pervasive. Pound yourself in the face with sand everyday and you’ll think there’s sand everywhere.

There are 100s of millions of people in the US.

The largest financial crime in the US pretty much every year is wage theft. Wage theft isn't the grand larceny of millions - it's small business owners shaving tens or hundreds of dollars off the paychecks of people who are too powerless to object and accept the mistreatment because it keeps them out of poverty.

This is an issue from the top to the bottom.

We romanticize it when it's punching up (like at a crypto company that's probably been responsible for bankrupting a whole lot of suckers) but accepting it as a virtue also lets all those terrible bosses bask in the glory of how "keen" they're being by shaving off a bit extra for the retirement fund but punching down.

There's two ways to succeed (oversimplification): being conniving and being smart.

In an environment like the USA (where many of the world's smartest tend to flock and extreme wealth is relatively achievable), being conniving is rarer than being smart, so that's what people value.

I hope rarity is not your only marker for value. Otherwise I do have a rag to sell you which I've been using for 5 years now. Totally unique, nothing else like that.

I'm not sure how to respond.

I don't think being conniving is better than being smart, just sharing an observation.

Do you disagree with the premise?

Yup. Because the way I read it you are saying one thing has value because it's rarer than the other. Maybe I read it wrong?

>so that's what people value.

It's not what I value, it's an observation of what others value. I know people couch their own opinions in the views of others a lot, but nowhere did I express personal feelings.

It was just trying to dig one layer deeper to contextualize the situation OP was talking about (Americans valorizing confidence games).

Gotcha. I misread and wrote the comment addressing you.

For me there are two worlds:

- The world of Competition: Domination by action until one reaches a point of coldness that one loses oneself creating a "dark night of the soul" bringing change

- The world of Love: All efforts are aligned to create well being by avoiding harm of oneself and others.

If you are in the world of Competition, you will see the world in terms of black and white, gain and loss. Even my statement will be seen as a fool's position. One has to make a living in the world, even at the expense of others.

If you are in the world of Love, you will see the service you provide to others is an asset and you don't have to think about "Making it in the world", harming others at you own benefit because the world provides for you exactly what you need and you some how escape all of the consequences of others you have chosen the path of competition.

Which ever side you choose, will be the world you create for yourself and others. Right now the world of competition dominates, but it won't always be that way. Eventually we will all come-around, to love :D

Natural laws are neither cruel or kind. The are absolutely just. The cruelty of [competition] is a passing phase of evolution. - James Allen "The Competitive Laws & The Law Of Love"