Boy am I tired of that one. We desperately need more smaller companies and actual competition but nobody seems to even be trying
A friend of mine has been trying to get into law school for a few years; she's technically competent and plenty intelligent, but it's been hard going for her to get in, plus multiple years of education to even attempt the bar. All of that sounds like far too much sunk-cost to me to dally in and figure out if it's a path I would truly enjoy.
What ways could I engage with policy coming from a technical background that would serve as a useful stepping stone to a more policy based career, but doesn't require such an upfront cost as a law degree?
Which brings me to the next point. Doing a law degree and passing the bar is perhaps the obvious path to doing policy things. It’s basically the only way that you can end up actively participating in courts, for example. But there are many other options! For myself, the plan is to stay in academia and not take any bar courses (then again, who knows what will happen!). Academics have lots of potential to shift policy, especially as neutral agents who aren’t paid by either side of particular debates. Our papers are read by policymakers and judges, who often don’t have the time or resources to think deeply about particularly gnarly topics. But there are lots of other options which could also work, and I guess finding a "niche" would depend on your specific circumstances, connections and skillset.
If you’re looking to spend more time thinking about policy issues, I’d start by simply sleuthing online. Bruce Schneier, for example, regularly writes excellent pieces at the intersection of technology and policy, which are very well hyperlinked to other high quality stuff. These kinds of blogs are a great way to get into the space, as well as to learn about opportunities which are coming up. Reading journal articles that sound interesting is a good option too (and US law journal articles are often quite accessible). There are also spaces offline, such as conferences which encourage both law and tech people (there’s one happening in Brussels soon [1]), or even institutions set up specifically to operate in this space and which have in-person events (Newspeak House comes to mind [2]).
[1] https://www.article19.org/digital-markets-act-enforcement/ [2] https://newspeak.house
For posterity, if you're reading this and are interested, feel free to drop me an email if you have questions.
Law school is the same as med school: if you can’t see yourself living life as something that requires a JD, skip it. Just do the thing you want to do; unless that’s “dispense legal advoce to paying clients and represent them in legal disputes” you can probably do it legally without a JD.
Also be aware you are a lawyer when you graduate law school and you don’t have to pass the bar unless that’s a requirement for your practice. For example, a general counsel of an internet startup might not have to be a member of the bar, but someone going into trial court to represent clients does. I would think you could be a staffer for a congressperson with a JD and without bar membership prettt easily.
Yes, mosedef, I'm all in.
Please post/share any news or tips you find. TIA.
The point of VC, specifically, is to grow software monopolies - but it's very easy to pick up VC funding if you happen to live in the Bay Area.
While his Nobel prize was for "physics", his domain is AI.
Paraphrasing: Capital will use / is using AI to further bludgeon Labor.
We are at the awesome moment in history when the AI bubble is popping so I am looking forward to a lot of journalists eating their words (not that anybody is keeping track but they are wrong most of the time) and a lot of LLM companies going under and the domino crash of the stocks of Meta, OpenAI to AWS, Google and Microsoft to Softbank (the same guys giving money to Adam Neumann from WeWork).
The current absolute balloon of a market is about to pop, and sadly, the people who hyped the stocks are also the ones knowing when to jump ship, while the hapless schmucks who believed the hype will most likely lose their money, along with a lot of folks whose retirement investment funds either didn't due their diligence or were outright greedy.
In a way, as a society we deserve this upcoming crash, because we allow charlatans and con people like Musk, Zuck and Sam to sell us snake oil.
Certainly not people regularly buying stocks or stock ETFs/Funds.
So many investors get this concept wrong. I suppose they get excited because what they bought went up in value and they have a sense of being enriched. But, that is backwards. That is what they want 20-40 years from now when it will almost certainly be the case that prices are not just higher, but much higher, than today. But, when they are buying shares, the goal is to pay the lowest price possible. If I am 20 years old, I am screaming: crash and burn baby! Crash and burn! Gimme those shares at 50% off yesterday's price.
Sure, but once you reach the point where you have a lot of money in the market you probably won't enjoy watching 50% of it disappear, even if it means your next auto investment is for a nice bargain price.
Also, when the stock market crashes usually bad things accompany it. Like a depressed economy and job losses.
I assume I am investing to build wealth. That means my goal is to never spend down my wealth. When I retire, I am withdrawing a maximum 4% a year and expect my portfolio to average >6% per year. When I die I will own the largest number of shares I ever owned in my lifetime (assuming for simplicity sake I own a total stock index fund as my sole investment).
So, my goal remains to celebrate buying low since I never intend to sell shares (how this is managed upon retirement is a slightly more complex subject, probably involving 'buckets' of assets to cover withrawals so a 50% crash doesn't change the overall thinking that the price of shares is irrelevant to stock that will never be sold).
edit: speaking theory when I say "when I retire" because I've already been retired for almost a decade. My portfolio continues to grow (highest ever literally at yesterday's close).
Never spend it, but you're ok with it being taken from you? You're a special case retiree if you can watch the market take half of your life savings and cheer it on. Especially with a 4% withdrawal rate, which fails a lot of 30 year backtests.
> I am withdrawing a maximum 4% a year and expect my portfolio to average >6% per year. When I die I will own the largest number of shares I ever owned in my lifetime.
A lot of successful backtests end with significantly fewer shares, too. There are no guarantees here.
There has to be some floor where you stop cheering on a market crash, because if it drops low enough for long enough then you are screwed and so are your heirs.
Be careful what you wish for.
It's our own fault for tying the stock market performance to our economy's performance. Why would I, a train worker, should have my pension affected by Sam a Altman's bad decision making or by Enron's lies and deception.
It's our own fault that the stock market is so volatile and that we tie so much of our economy to a financial gambling machine that's become increasingly divorced from reality in the last couple of decades. Like you are putting money on a stock that trades at 1000 on a company that is 10 years away from being profitable? You deserve your money to go poof.
Who is suggesting that?
NVDA trades at 57x earnings, MSFT 37, GOOG 22. The article is about META and they are 27x. These are the big companies that dominate the s&p that we're talking about.
I don't think anyone is suggesting to put their life savings into Anthropic. They can't anyway, it's not public.
The s&p PE is 30, which is high, but still lower than it was in 2020 before the AI "bubble" started.
At some point that will collapse, and it won’t be pretty.
TINA (there is no alternative).
Inflation will eat your cash.
Bonds hardly generate (real) returns unless you want to take big risks with duration.
Real estate is over inflated.
Gold is speculative.
Crypto is...not real.
What's left?
The difference from public ownership to public gambling is huge in its impact to society, especially when the markets crashes.
This is a losing strategy for the large majority, and it's been demonstrated repeatedly that even professional investors can't beat the market especially after considering fees.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/030916/buffe...
Social media was a quality of life upgrade where it wasn't promising too much, and it delivered on what it promised. (maybe a little too much)
AI on the other hand just like blockchain feels like hype.
Now if you're not on linkedIn, people question whether you are a real person or not.
I hope AI ends up like blockchain. It's there if you have a use-case for it, but it's not absolutely embedded in everything you do. Both are insanely cool technologies.
[0]: He only has about 13% of the shares, but the dual allocation means that his class B shares are worth 10 votes. And he owns 99% of those shares. https://observer.com/2023/06/mark-zuckerberg-2023-shareholde...
Lehman brothers, Enron.
When this bubble pops, its going to be absolute chaos maybe just like last time
Even if Meta tanked, unless Messenger/Whatsapp stop working, it’s kind of beside the point how much their stock trades for. Everyone will just use whatever has or keeps the most public interest, whether that is Meta-owned or something else.
The worrying aspect is that for Meta to really tank in value, the shit has to have already hit the fan, and it probably would not be isolated to Meta.
My point in my prior comment was that Meta serves the purposes of the IC status quo just by doing what they’re already doing. Cloudflare too, in a way.
The problem is that their products are getting worse and worse. Signal is already taking a huge share from WhatsApp (ads and AI chat bots, really?) and Messenger.
TikTok absolutely obliterated Instagram. Facebook is sliding into irrelevancy, and most importantly, they have a lot of failed products like Oculus, Metaverse (wtf is it anyway), LLAMa, etc. Now they are sliding into even more irrelevance and burning money even faster trying to poach extremely expensive OpenAI folks. My conspiracy theory is that Facebook ads earning numbers are somehow a scam.
After so many bad decisions on their part, so much waste and bad execution that I can't see them surviving the next 5 years.
Signal serves IC interests too by requiring phone numbers.
No, what they could do in the past is not at all how they can operate today. They can't afford to pay the rockstars anymore, they went through multiple rounds of layoffs. They can't afford to drop the stock too low also. Basically they are in a corner, and I love it. Fingers crossed that within the next five years they shake up upper management and Zuck is out.
I doubt Zuck is out anytime soon, unless folks stop using their products compared to alternatives. I think it’s possible, but I think the odds are at best even for him to go in 5 years. In 10 years, who can say? Facebook users are pretty locked in because there’s nothing else like it for the users that regularly use it. Facebook users who aren’t on alternatives aren’t just going to switch to Reddit or TikTok overnight. Why would they? I can’t follow your reasoning, but I understand not being a fan of Zuck or Meta, I guess, but I think their business seems pretty strong right now, though that is subject to change along with consumer whims.
They better get their shit sorted.
I mean, theoretically you could short a company for a really long time it seems like, I just searched, I always assumed it to usually be of 14 days but still.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_(finance)
> The practice of short selling was likely invented in 1609 by Dutch businessman Isaac Le Maire, a sizeable shareholder of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC in Dutch).
And like...LLAMa?
Maybe also like adding ads in WhatsApp cause we gotta squeeze our users so we can spend on... AI gurus?
Meta has not had a win since they named themselves Meta. It's enjoyable to watch them flail around like clueless morons jumping on every fad and wasting their time and money.
Maybe this sounds selfish but its a little fun to me to see them lose. I just don't like meta and its privacy in sensitive ad network bullshit.
Like the fact that if someone clicked a photo and deleted it then show them beauty ads because they are insecure. I can't give 2 cents about the growth of such a black mirror -esque company
I would donate my two cents or even more to witness their downfall though. I left WhatsApp years ago, and haven't used any of their other services like fb or Instagram. I don't want to contribute to a company that actively helped a couple of genocides (Myanmar), help elect a dictator or two (Philippines) and spread racist propaganda and, most recently, allowing women to be called 'personal objects'.
Their tech is far from impressive, their products are far from impressive, the only impressive thing is that they are still in business.
I do however think that this is a business choice that at the very least was likely extensively discussed.