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While I'm not necessarily defending Buffett, he (like everyone else) is playing by the rules. The problem isn't the people playing the game, it's the system itself and the rules of the game.

The HN community has always been about finding ways to get rich. The startup/VC culture is entirely about getting rich. Pretending it's not is a big lie that SV has always perpetuated.

So, naturally, people admire those rags to riches stories.

For the record, I'm not against people trying to get rich, but I really dislike the fact that so many people try and pretend it's about something other than getting money.

Being a VC is not a charity, it's literally about growing an investment. Starting a company is not about charity, it's about generating revenue and ROI.

Probably the most obvious place to start would be to end programs like QE by the central bank, and replace it with UBI. Instead of giving free money to big banks and high net worth individuals, put that money directly in the hands of consumers and those who need it most.

QE can be thought of as a tool to accelerate the wealth transfer from poor to rich. Every time we go through one of these cycles the whole thing speeds up.

Additionally, I think we should reconsider the idea of making it easy to acquire debt. An economy based on debt serves only to inflate assets that are easy to acquire debt for (i.e., houses) and prices out everyone who isn't in a position to acquire debt (which is a huge number of people, mostly young and poor people, including myself).

Yes, I include myself in that. The system doesn't work, and it needs to be reconfigured. We've listened to decades of BS from politicians and rich people on TV telling us we just need to work harder, but the truth.

The more I learn about the financial system and how it works with government, the more I have become convinced that the whole thing is a scam, robbing the working class in a way that only benefits the very wealthy.

This should surprise no one, the whole system is designed to move wealth away from poor people working for wages, into the hands of rich people who earn returns on capital. Surely this comment will get downvotes, but it's useful to learn about how the entire financial Rube Goldberg machine works in order to understand this in depth. Ray Dalio's talks (you can find many of them on YouTube) are a good place to start if you want a light introduction.

IMO it's time to rethink the financial system (and I'm a strong proponent of UBI as a way to redistribute wealth). Just because it's been done a certain way for decades doesn't mean it should continue to operate that way.

The financial system as we know it today was designed in an era where information did not flow freely, and we did not walk around with an internet connected computer in our pockets.

Idk, it's basically been the same thing for as long as I've been following it, and I started around 2017. The only thing that's really changed is the number of subscribers has exploded.

Here's the front page of WSB from 2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20160706011305/reddit.com/r/wall...

Honestly I think the average IQ on WSB is pretty high, you just have to learn to sift through the junk. There are plenty of gold nuggets to be found.

Also the memes are great. What's the point in life if you aren't having fun?

Also check out r/investing or r/wallstreetbets, lots of free opinions on what's happening in the world.

I understand you're trying to be funny, but I think insults are against the HN site guidelines.

This is somewhat off-topic, but I'm worried about closed ecosystems, the shift towards censorship, and the end of private ownership. Good examples of this are walled gardens that break basic web links (Twitter for example), or DRM-encumbered digital books.

If I buy a physical book I can lend it to someone, or sell it if I want. If I buy a digital copy (which for some reason often costs more), not only can I not lend it but I can't sell it to anyone either. I also need to ask permission from the platform to read the book I rightfully purchased.

The Google/Apple app store duopoly is another example of this. Apple for example only allows you to use Safari, and makes it very hard for you to have any choice about what software you run on your own device.

It feels like there's a slow slide into a world where we no longer have any choice about what content we consume or how we consume it. Instead, we're spoonfed what the platform decides is good for us, and in most cases good means most profitable for the platform.

That's a good point. I think we need to have a better understanding about how the brain works before we can properly answer that question. At this point there's a lot we don't understand about the brain, and psychology for that matter, it's basically a black box that we can observe through a microscope or other imaging system but we don't really understand what's happening.

An ant only has around 250,000 neurons, yet they're still more intelligent than the most advanced "AI" we've managed to produce.

An ant may not be able to paint a painting or write a novel, but I think most people agree they qualify as an intelligent being.

I still find it odd that we call this "artificial intelligence" when it's advanced mimicry at best. There's no "intelligence" in the strict definition of the word, it's just elaborate pattern matching.

But I get it, it's exciting, and it's an easy way to get VC money. Perhaps one day we'll get something useful aside from the various pattern matching applications (image recognition, speech to text, etc). I'm skeptical but willing to be surprised.

I appreciate your comment, even if it's unpopular. I agree that our priorities (as a society) are out of whack and not supported by the data. In my opinion I think we have much bigger problems than corona, but people are largely driven by whatever makes the front page of their preferred media platform every day.

If anything, this corona thing has taught us that we can make real changes if needed. The truth is, people don't want to fix many of the problems we face day to day, for a variety of reasons, but largely because fixing them would be unprofitable for a small number of people who control most of the means of production.

"tank home prices" - isn't the US supposed to be a free market economy? Price controls only exist in states with planned economies.

I imagine many companies are doing this, only a small number have been caught. Some of them might yank the code before they get caught.

People like Bezos have far more influence on shaping the world than most of us mere mortals, and they are not going to make it easy to redistribute wealth.

The cool thing about debt is that you can make it go away by printing more money (which is exactly what the government does).

Ever wonder why homes cost so much? It's inflation caused by cheap debt and money printing.

Like others have mentioned, the current political atmosphere is one that seems to have embraced xenophobia, thus making it harder for talent to emigrate. If you can't move the talent to the work, you can move the work to the talent. In that sense the internet is a great equalizer.

My guess is that most investors don't want to touch non-US companies.

Maybe that was true at one time, but is it still true? I think China seems like the counter example, since these days China has been innovating much more rapidly than the US on many things.

I don't know, that's why I'm asking. I have worked at a startup that used a firm in Ukraine which actually did really great work, however. It was perhaps more expensive than India, but still much cheaper than the US.

I used to think this was a bad thing, but these days I'm not so sure. Assuming you can get the same (or similar) talent in India instead of the US, doesn't it make sense to do your development in a place where your money goes farther?

The capitalist in me sees this as a win: more value for shareholders, and a big life improvement for Indians.

Can someone explain to me why it's a bad thing? I understand it might be bad for current and future US-based Uber employees, but aside from that, what's the downside? The way I see it, this helps more people overall (and I don't really care about which national flag you identify with).

Fun fact: in some states they passed laws that make it illegal to pump your own gas just so gas station attendants wouldn't lose their jobs.

Sounds like a boon for Mexico, good for them. I guess it's kind of satisfying to see these policies have the opposite of the intended effect.

Location: New York (NYC)

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: For the right opportunity

Technologies: recently been spending a lot of time working with Elixir, Phoenix, TypeScript, React, and Rust. I've worked with all the trendy tech/tools/frameworks.

Résumé/CV: https://github.com/brndnmtthws/resume/blob/master/resume.pdf

Email: hn@brenden.brndn.io

I'm a serial entrepreneur, technologist, engineer who's been building and scaling companies and products for 20+ years.