Comment by tolmasky | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tolmasky | Hacker News Reader

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It really sucks for Etsy’s sellers so maybe… Etsy learned a lesson? Here’s the confused lesson by association argument again. The majority of your argument is around learning lessons, but you momentarily acknowledge that perhaps there are in fact people hurt here who it would be hard to accuse of deserving it due to a lack of due diligence, but you then immediately resolve the cognitive dissonance by reassuring yourself that perhaps that will make the lesson Etsy learns that much stronger.

The majority of your argument revolves around the idea that only rich people in this “rotten system” will be affected, or that this is an important lesson. When it’s pointed out that there are many types of employees who aren’t rich, you say they don’t count because they’re contractors, ignoring that even if true, which I’m not necessarily granting, it still doesn’t matter since that contracting job will still probably disappear and there is a high likelihood that they can’t just be immediately positioned somewhere new. The rich developer may have an easier time landing a new position than the cook getting a new shift from the contracting company somewhere new. But I suppose that’s irrelevant, because the point about cooks being contractors actually had nothing to do with the topic at hand of whether they deserve to be colateral damage. Rather, it was meant to derail the conversation into a long digression about how these contracting agreements further prove how “rotten” these startups are… and thus deserve to learn a lesson about treasury performance.

> It really sucks for Etsy’s sellers so maybe… Etsy learned a lesson?

I hope so. I don't expect the sellers to have done anything different. Corporations, however, have a responsibility to manage their finances effectively. "We weren't smart enough in that space" is no more an excuse than it would be if sellers were having problems because Etsy's web infrastructure broke down due to lack of proper planning for redundancy and fault tolerance.

And I never said nor implied that only rich people will be affected. But they're basically the only ones with power to do anything different here. The rest of us are along for the ride.

Here's the question. Now that this happened, do the rest of us just accept that this is how it works? Because if we do, nothing changes, and we just get to sit back and wait for the whole system to unspool again. Or, we could stop treating the machine in California like it's better than a Vegas slot machine for most players and start building something better.

> I hope so. I don't expect the sellers to have done anything different. Corporations, however, have a responsibility to manage their finances effectively.

Just so I understand correctly, if the seller has an LLC they made through legalzoom.com for their Etsy bowl business (which is very common and highly recommended), then does your sympathy for them immediately evaporate since they now have a “responsibility to manage their finances effectively”? Why exactly is the Etsy seller off the hook in this scenario? Is it a headcount requirement? If the Etsy seller LLC is 3 people (two sisters and their mom), now are they irresponsible for using Etsy? Are all those 3 person startups in YC different somehow? Only in that they make “useless” things and the Etsy people make “useful” things, and that translates to whether a corporation needs to be responsible?

> Here's the question. Now that this happened, do the rest of us just accept that this is how it works? Because if we do, nothing changes, and we just get to sit back and wait for the whole system to unspool again.

Accept that what is how it works? It depends on the solution. If the solution is providing temporary backstops to depositors so that a sale to another private bank can be more attractive, then I don’t think that’s anything earth shattering to accept? Especially considering it would probably result in a private solution happening faster at little to no cost to the taxpayer. If congress empowers the FDIC to claw back SVB share sales to help make depositors whole, I think that’s also not anything that people would have a problem accepting? Like part of the problem here is that completely different parties are lumped together and in this fury the only acceptable answer is “no help!” No one is arguing for SVB to be bailed out. Those shares are going to zero. That is a sufficient market result. Enabling a bunch of assets that still have value to be maximized to avoid the philosophical dilemma of our Etsy seller doesn’t seem to be the “end all” nightmare scenario it’s being chalked up to be here. If anything, maybe the focus should be on plummeting interest rates to zero making precisely the kinds of “full liquidity paid for checking accounts” become an endangered species in the first place. Or maybe then raising rates at break neck speed despite having questionable results on the inflation they’re targeting, while clearly affecting random pieces of the economy.

> Or, we could stop treating the machine in California like it's better than a Vegas slot machine for most players and start building something better.

It seems like choosing a random 30% of Silicon Valley companies to put in hard mode is a close approximation to the Vegas slot machine than fad imitating zero interest checking accounts that were in no way high risk irresponsible investments that had the chance to wildly benefit the depositors if the bet would have “paid off” vs. if it crashed to zero. Especially given the high likelihood that there are sufficient assets to make depositors either whole or almost whole, it seems even more the case that those disproportionately affected will be workers, and not companies. Not to even mention the fact that those most responsible (Thiel) aren’t going to suffer, nor are the mega tech companies that can easily survive this, and may even end up just absorbing some of these companies and consolidating even more.

I am super curious as to what “something better” looks like though. Because right now, the world 6 months from now where a random subsection of tech and wine workers had their year ruined, while big tech companies and VCs are still doing just fine, doesn’t exactly seem like fertile ground for whatever amazing new system you have dreamed up.

> is it a headcount requirement?

Headcount and age. Etsy is a +1,000 employee company that's been around over a decade. Practically bedrock by Valley standards. I personally draw the line between "small" and "big enough to know better" at 100+ employees (around where the EEOC draws the line for mandatory reporting). I acknowledge people may disagree on this topic; that's where my line happens to be.

FWIW, I don't disagree on the mechanics of your suggestion for back-stopping SVB enough for most folks to be made whole. I'm more concerned about the mechanisms that led to one bank becoming such a linchpin for the whole system. We should have learned about "too big to fail" already.

> It seems like choosing a random 30% of Silicon Valley companies to put in hard mode is a close approximation to the Vegas slot machine.

Yes... That's what SV just did to its ecosystem due to over-reliance on one bad bank because "optimization is king" is the mantra of the whole machine. For us to not find ourselves in this boat again in 20 years, the people with money power in SV need to un-learn the lesson that's been driving SV for decades. Someone needs to be less-than-optimal for the system to not be so fragile.

> Headcount and age. Etsy is a +1,000 employee company that's been around over a decade. Practically bedrock by Valley standards. I personally draw the line between "small" and "big enough to know better" at 100+ employees (around where the EEOC draws the line for mandatory reporting). I acknowledge people may disagree on this topic; that's where my line happens to be.

To be clear, Etsy is not my concern here. They will probably survive just fine regardless of whether we deem them to be responsible or not. That's part of the point. The sole question was the sellers, and trying to examine why they inspire more sympathy to similar-sized companies that may be directly banking with SVB. Hence my question of whether the mere existence of a legal entity is the difference, given that in fact many Etsy sellers do of course have simple LLCs set up. I would fine "Hey, Etsy sellers need to look into Etsy's bank to be responsible too" consistent with "3 person YC companies need to be responsible about the bank they choose", or acknowledging that's a tall order for both. But not one and not the other, was my only point here.

> Yes... That's what SV just did to its ecosystem due to over-reliance on one bad bank because "optimization is king" is the mantra of the whole machine.

If it puts your mind at ease, I think the result is going to be the same regardless of what happens to depositors: everyone now will try to spread out their money and sweeps will become part of startups 101, etc. In that sense, the system has worked: the irresponsible bankers are being punished, they and their investors lost their bank. I promise no one is going to wake up and say "well, glad that got magically solved" and not be super paranoid going forward. If anything, if depositors aren't made whole, this particular demographic is more likely to, to your point, over-optimize in that direction (perhaps create investment vehicles to short regional banks or something, who knows).

> The majority of your argument revolves around the idea that only rich people in this “rotten system” will be affected, or that this is an important lesson.

I think the main issue is that the status quo is that more often than not such classes never learn any lessons, so people are cheering on any hurt they receive, no matter who else gets in the way. Discontent is such a state that people are becoming, as they say, Jokerfied.

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