abcampbell

He's participating the democratic process, would be interested to hear his rationale rather than a bunch of speculations about what he may or may not believe.

so people can, and will, and should, ask

this also calls into question the general practice of "forfeit right X to get benefit Y" that appears common

In cases where "benefit Y" is actually "right Y", then it raises the question of whether these agreements are valid.

I don't know if that's actually happening, but probabilistically would not be surprised if it were - just given the legal complexity involved in these documents.

The issue is the huge can of worms this (could) open up if every shareholder realizes access to financial information is a #right and not a #privilege

At least as far as I understand the law, which is (admittedly) limited.

Why not call it Cruise Control 2.0?

That's why Toyota calls is cruise control and not autopilot

The point is not that this is the UI of the future, the point is that there are other ways to conceptualize doing knowledge work with a machine, this is one.

Real innovation takes time...

Here's the man himself, Alan Kay, on the topic.

http://www.fastcodesign.com/3046437/5-steps-to-recreate-xero...

Money is whatever other people will accept as money.

CBcoin accounts could be more stable form of money (though as many emerging markets show, it's not like central banks are always risk-free), but that doesn't mean it would crowd out all other forms. On the contrary, just seems like a return to fractional-reserve gold standard, where instead of gold, people use CBcoins...

But in practice they have

1) operational risk - insofar as they are the middle-man and so are exposed to investors suing them when the loans go south

2) Implicit credit risk - in that if their loans blow up the losses suffered by their levered investors will likely prevent them from coming back to the market place to 'roll the loans'

3) Explicit credit risk - in that they have invested capital in a subsidiary HF (Cirrix) which buys their loans and is on the hook for the losses (which could flow up to the parent)

http://www.inc.com/business-insider/inside-lending-club-scan... https://personalmoneyservice.com/lending-club-fraud/

Key passage:

"As a result, the company may need to use its own funds to purchase these loans in the coming months."

In other words, LendingClub is going to fundamentally shift its business model from taking no risk to taking on the risk of borrowers defaulting. The startup sold itself as simply a marketplace, connecting borrowers with investors, but now it is buying its own product. The equivalent would be Airbnb buying up loads of houses to list on its own platform, to keep it growing."

If we don't want people to treat it like autopilot, maybe we should come up with a different name.

Maybe:

"You need to pay a little attention because we are overconfident about AI" - pilot

"With or without tariff issues being resolved — which are actually irrelevant to the access issue — the claim is false. Tariffs do not prevent access to a market. They simply impose a tax on entry. The actual barrier is regulatory conformity — what is known generally as a non-tariff barrier (NTB) or, sometimes, as technical barrier to trade (TBT)."

https://medium.com/@WhiteWednesday/what-s-wrong-with-the-wto...

Regardless of commercial application, this guy can do #hardtech

That's why shares that trade openly are called 'public market' shares.

Reading this thread is fun, it's like trying to see Silicon Valley try to reverse engineer something hiding in plain site.

95% of these problems would go away if these companies were forced (by investors or employees) to go public.

Britain could and should declare free trade unilaterally with every other nation, whether they reciprocate or not. They would become an incredibly dynamic and prosperous trading hub.

First, not sure if you understand how trading hubs work.*

Second, not sure you are listening to why people think Brexit is bad for the UK economy if you think this is the solution.

The biggest economic risk to the UK from Brexit doesn't come from the fact they now have to renegotiate access to the EU internal market, it comes from the fact that Scotland might decide to go independent.

In turn, that has unleashed a ton of uncertainty for banks like Royal Bank of Scotland that, you know, take deposits and make loans denominated in British pounds to Scottish people.

Even if you could manage the transition across independence, redenomination and recapitalization, the potential shock to credit/liquidity is sufficient that a LOT of babies are likely to get thrown out with that bathwater.

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* It's not really tarrifs that are the big constraints to trade these days, it's stuff like regulations (please no plastic in our baby formula, thx China), IP, 'dumping' etc.

That and the fact that giving nonreciprocal market access would mean you end up spending even more on imports than you receive in income from exports (they already do this...a lot).

Meaning you have to borrow money to finance consumption...until you borrow so much that the rest of the world stops lending you money...

this is (partially) why trading hubs tend to form in places that export a lot vs import a lot.

~~~

World Bank tarrif data: http://bit.ly/293JtWZ Melanin in baby formula: http://bit.ly/29nVRQH

Not arguing for secondary sales, arguing that we take these companies public to clean up that crap.

Classic example of good maths, bad thinking.

This is nonsensical. For employees where these options represent 90% of their wealth, the benefit from marginal time value in these options is trivial when compared to getting liquidity and diversification.

"The bottom line is that if companies are going to continue to stay private longer, we need to fundamentally re-think the stock option compensation model. We need better, careful, and more thoughtful solutions."

Seems like the simplest solution is just for the investors to force the company to go public.

Going public creates the liquidity that solves this problem. It might be at a lower sticker price, but at least employees can arrange financing to pay for excercize and tax needs.

That and they might be able to actually diversify from a portfolio no self-respecting LP would tolerate.

Then this is is kinda like telling a soldier about to deploy to Afghanistan that they don't need Kevlar because it's never been a better time to bring democracy to the middle-east.

Darkweb shows that there is a (small, but real) market for an anonymous, decentralized web. I don't know anyone that prefers to navigate the web in a way that is permanently stored in NSA/advertiser servers forever.

Which implies that the reason there is not widespread adoption of a more decentralized, anonymous web is thus more of a product question.