It's not wrong, and it's also not wrong of any previous user to decide to move to a free alternative. Let the free market decide whether they are charging a fair price for the value they provide or if there is more value in other options. For as smart as many people are on HN, I've rarely come across a more clueless bunch of folks as far as basic economics
private jets and yachts depreciate at 5-10% per year and cost an additional 5-10% per year to maintain and crew. On the low end that's 10% per year in pure expense. Buy a $50M yacht and $50M jet and you are out $10-$20M per year right there. He has his own non-corporate jet for pleasure travel, not sure on yacht, but most of his stature do.
He probably also has several $10M+ properties that while appreciate some, have a lot of upkeep that likely result in a net loss. On top of that, I'm sure he takes plenty of pricey vacations and eats at $1000/person restaurants. It all adds up quickly if you are living a CEO lifestyle. Most here just haven't been exposed to that world.
150 million after tax = 75 million. Spend half and save half, left with 37.5 million. Investing 3 million a month at 10% returns gets you to 800M after 12 years. It's damn hard to become a billionaire, even when you make 150M. Most reports I've seen have Kotick's net worth significantly less than 800M though. He's known as a very high spender
I came to the same conclusion about passive media in general. Spending time, yet gaining nothing but being filled with others' mediocre thoughts describes it well. I'd rather spend that time building things, advancing our society's technology and productivity and at the same time being rewarded for my efforts.
Did you know terms evolve in English and often come to mean similar though not exactly the same thing after some decades or centuries? Of course it doesn't exactly match the original scheme of Charles Ponzi (even Madoff didn't), but there are enough similarities for it to be an apt comparison
Obesity is a far bigger problem in the world today than hunger, even in developing nations. 11% of the world suffers from hunger still, down from 40% 3 decades ago. The kind of starving absolute poverty is rapidly disappearing. In first world countries, the unequal distribution of wealth mostly means who gets to live in larger houses, travel more, go to restaurants more, send kids to better schools, etc, rather than who gets all of their needs.
There's only one entity to blame for this mess of a bubble, the US federal reserve. It started with Greenspan, and it's gotten worse with every subsequent chairperson
Hopefully the declines will continue so that we approach the levels in Scandinavia over the next few decades. Religion has been a force of oppression and division for far too long. It has negatively affected my life, to the point that I am nearly estranged from my parents due to religious conflict, so my loathing of it is perhaps more personal than most here.
400 years ago I would have been executed for my atheistic views. 200 years ago I would have been a social pariah. Today my views are largely accepted in silicon valley and among millenials and zoomers on the internet, though I still face discrimination in the bible belt where I happen to live. Progress is being made, however slowly it may seem at times.
I think it all goes to show that manipulation is a fact of life, and especially of markets. There's 0 doubt that both sides are trying to manipulate to make money from the other. Maybe some folks on WSB believe GME is fairly valued at $80 or $100, but no one with half a brain truly thinks that it's worth $400 or $4200.69 or whatever price they want. I think it'll fall right back down to $20 once this sorts itself out eventually, and I think most of the WSB crowd thinks that too. The only reason people are buying at those prices is to try to force a short squeeze, to effectively steal money from the hedge funds by forcing them to buy at irrational prices as they get margin called.
Now the hedge funds are of course trying to prevent this by calling favors from the brokers and putting out fake news that they've already closed out. Both sides are using manipulation and displaying the worst parts of our markets, our capitalism and even our character for the whole world to see.
At the end of the day, humans are greedy beings. It's totally natural, and we need to accept that. But as we accept it, we need to figure out ways to regulate that greed so that it is a force for good overall. Capitalism is based on greed, but that doesn't mean it's not the best economic system. On the whole, a group of entirely self-interested individuals can still work together in a sense to grow our economy, build new technology and make the world a better place.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe they disallowed opening of new positions. I.e. if you are currently long, you can sell to close your position or if you are short, you can buy to close position, but you are not allowed to open new longs or new shorts.
Perhaps that's the way a broker should be, but what Robinhood, TD and other brokers did is 100% legal and has been done thousands of times in the past. There's absolutely nothing new or illegal about brokers using their discretion to restrict trading of any stock or asset at any time for any reason.
Yea and Elon Musk made 170B. Meanwhile, the average HN user probably made somewhere around 200k. I made 1.3 million last year. I know it's not a lot because I know people several orders of magnitude richer than myself, but I also know that there are risks worth taking in life, and no one becomes Elon Musk, Ken Griffin, DeepFuckingValue or even myself by calmly working a desk job. You have to have balls to really succeed in life.
There's an argument to be made that it's not worth it, that you are happy enough with your low 6 figure existence, but the sentiment here clearly shows that's not the case. The sentiment here shows that people are not happy in their FANG and other engineering jobs, and they are in fact incredibly jealous of Musk, Griffin and the newly rich WSBers, and instead of admit that jealousy, they make up lies claiming that the WSBers aren't winning, when it's clear as day they are in this moment and big hedge funds are the losers.
I'm not saying WSB will continue to win, I think hedge funds will get their shit together and not get themselves into a GME-like position again in the near future. However, let's call a spade a spade while it lasts. DeepFuckingValue and his WSB brigade have scored a HUGE win, many becoming overnight multi-multi millionaires, and instead of bash them, why not celebrate them for a day.
Damn, here I was thinking /u/DeepFuckingValue was winning by turning 53k into 13M, more than any of the jealous fucks here will make in their lifetime working their miserable engineering jobs and afraid to take any risks in life
This post is so wrong on so many levels. WSB celebrates wealth inequality. Their two heroes are papa Musk and Bezos. They frequently clash with socialists cult subs like r/latestagecapitalism. This is classic example over-analysis, trying to find some deeper liberal societal problem, when really, this is just a group of immature gamblers who want to get rich quick without working too hard.
This author does a great job explaining that Japan is the most homogenous country in the G7. Just because it's not quite as homogenous as popular belief, does not mean that that popular belief is in any way incorrect.
Did you watch the video that was deleted? IMO it is treasonous to blatantly put forth completely baseless election conspiracy theories in order to undermine our democracy. Trump directly encouraged the insurrection today to "Stop the Steal", in other words, to start a coup to forcefully end our democracy and instate himself as our autocrat. This is blatant treasonous behavior
have you read his tweets? this has nothing to do with free speech. You are free to post as much conservative philosophy on twitter as you want, but you can't post blatantly treasonous and violence-inciting falsehoods. Twitter allows the accounts of 99% of republicans to go completely uncensored. This is not about censoring the right, it's about protecting our republic and way of life from a violent demagogue. We don't want another Mussolini on our hands.
For the record, I lean conservative/libertarian on most issues
Facebook is the most unconscionably bad company in tech, and it's a shame Zuck and friends try to pretend they are on this grand mission to make the world better. Come on, just admit it's all about the money and we'd have a little more respect for you. All FB does is lead to time-wasting, fake news, bigotry, envy etc. I'm glad I've signed out from desktop
Florida funds itself mostly through tourism taxes, however we also spend much less than CA overall. Just like different people spend different amounts of money, different states do too and need to tax less because of it. CA mostly spends money by paying cops, bart workers, toll booth collectors, etc 100-400k per year whereas Florida pays its government employees market wages.
Not the material aspect of what it can buy - but the freedom to not have to work is where the big boost of happiness came from for me, though I cannot guarantee it would for you if you truly love your career. For me, programming was always just a tool, a job, a means to an end. Sure it's kind of interesting, but there's far more interesting ways to spend my time.
Also, I hate bosses, performance reviews, bullshit non-producing jobs who make up the majority of your tech peers, commutes, forced social small talk with people you don't like, etc. So even if I 100% loved what I did everyday, I wouldn't like all that BS that comes with it.
Now, being able to spend my time as I please with full autonomy - that is where the incredible boost in my happiness has come from
salaries in the Bay Area are very high, and if you avoid the common pitfalls, you can save a lot. Personally I made about $200-220k average during my 10-year career and lived on 30-40k while saving the rest and investing mostly in equities (of course taxes take a big chunk). Now I spend $50k-ish but I pay for everything for me and my fiance. I plan on spending $75kish once we have a family of four eventually which is the maximum level I'd feel comfortable spending with my current wealth. It wouldn't cover all our wants but definitely most of them and all our needs, hence there is still some additional utility from growing wealth but not enough to justify the stress and anxiety of a career IMO
I shouldn't speak for everyone. For me personally, I was happyish during my career but I'm definitely much, much happier now that I'm wealthy and retired. And it's not a short term buzz, I've been retired for 2 years and the feeling hasn't worn off. I know it sucks we don't have unlimited resources for everyone in society to be free and 100% happy. Maybe someday we will with full automation.
In the meantime, most people tend to agree with me that at least to a degree more money = more happiness, it's the reason that capitalism works afterall, and it raises the standard of living - or choice of not working - for all of us over time
I felt like that until I got to around $2.5 million liquid net worth. Now I still like money, but each additional dollar is starting to show diminishing marginal utility. Though of course I'm still trying to grow my net worth, it's no longer the main focus of my life, especially now that I'm "retired" from my main career at least. I split my time between gaming, running, reading, socializing and working on my trading bot (got rich the old fashioned way of saving my salary, the bot is for fun and to grow hopefully faster than SPX with better Sharpe ratio, so far so good).
I think while you don't have "FU money" it's important for money to be the main focus of your life. You don't have freedom if you don't have a lot of money and you can't be 100% happy without freedom, at least in my experience, though I know opinions vary here.
Amazon is not predatory to me. It has greatly improved my life from a convenience and cost perspective. They also recently raised their wages for all warehouse employees such that it's one of the best places to work for unskilled labor in many locations. Amazon has made many small time merchants rich through their platform, and it's software engineers are among the highest paid in the industry, so I have to strongly disagree about the zon, but the rest of it agree wholeheartedly.
Just more reason to move out of California. California will tax away its elite economic status and force innovation to move to places where it is rewarded. This is basic economics.
Of course not, and I've attended public protests. But a public protest of the core tenets of capitalism--not just its excesses--is as close to Bolshevism as you can get. Bolsheviks started as a fringe group like Antifa, but look where they ended up. Reasonable moderates need to stand up for a form of regulated capitalism, one that protects workers and the environment, and reasonable tax policies that redistribute some of the elites' wealth to form social safety nets, but we also need to be wary of and even fight against any potential rise of radical, wealth-destroying and authoritarian socialism.
Oh yea, I agree the natural beauty is astounding. It's the extreme left wing, near Bolshevik culture and attitude that has destroyed it for me. I say this as a lifelong democrat.