[HN Gopher] The Ponzi Career
___________________________________________________________________
The Ponzi Career
Author : elsewhen
Score : 287 points
Date : 2021-04-11 14:26 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.drorpoleg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.drorpoleg.com)
| sgt101 wrote:
| "Isn't this the same as traditional student debt or, worse,
| indentured servitude? Not really"
|
| Saying "not really" doesn't make something so. This is, literary
| indentured servitude. By definition.
| gcheong wrote:
| By what definition? In the lambda school case you only pay back
| if you're in a job that pays >50k/year, it's a percentage of
| income, and it's capped at 30k. Indentured servitude requires
| you to do basically anything for your indenture holder for no
| pay until you've paid it back. Student loans that cannot be
| discharged regardless of circumstance sounds far more like
| indentured servitude than an ISA to me so "not really" I think
| is a fair assessment.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yes. I'm not sure how making the payback variable as a
| function of salary up to some cap is something unacceptable
| while a fixed payment obligation is a run of the mill loan.
| cochne wrote:
| No, by definition it is not, because the person is still
| earning a salary.
| paultopia wrote:
| Thank you. The indentured servitude character of this stuff is
| most clear when we look at the $ALEX example. Selling off a
| chunk of future autonomy and income in order to finance
| migration to a place with more economic opportunity is exactly
| what poor folks did circa the 17th and 18th centuries. Perhaps
| we should look at the history of how that went before
| replicating it.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| At least in the version that existed in early America
| indentured servitude allowed for coercion and there was no
| bankruptcy option. Whereas in modern law specific performance
| for personal service contracts are strictly forbidden and
| bankruptcy is out there.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| But student loans are exempt from bankruptcy, so in a way
| that particular investment in future earnings is a bit
| outside the modern protections.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| The grandparent's post "this" referred to the personal
| equity proposal, not students loans.
|
| That said:
|
| - I agree that student loans ought to be dischargable in
| bankruptcy (indeed I think the government should have
| nothing to do or say with them at all)
|
| - I still don't think they are reasonably referred to as
| "literally indentured servitude", though one step closer
| Igelau wrote:
| We got rid of debtor's prisons too, which is an improvement.
| Igelau wrote:
| > a person who signs and is bound by indentures to work for
| another for a specified time especially in return for payment
| of travel expenses and maintenance.
|
| This != That
| jcpham2 wrote:
| Thanks for this, it was an excellent read and these celebrity
| coins I personally was not aware of and that's an interesting use
| case I never thought of.
| andrewfromx wrote:
| Explains how people are selling ECR20 tokens with special rights
| to income from just one person. Also the right to message them.
| i.e. a fan can buy a token of a "celebrity" and get special inbox
| rights. But also upside if that person goes on to become very
| successful.
| SergeAx wrote:
| > these [blockchain issued] tokens are not simply "certificates
| of ownership"; they can be pre-programmed to behave in a certain
| way (for example, pay a dividend each time a predefined event
| happens)
|
| For this to happen the blockchain gotta have a way to sync with
| events in the physical world. Moreover, all active blockchain
| nodes should have equal access to this data and get equal result
| at given time. This mechanism cannot be enforced by blockchain
| itself, so we are back to the issue of trust.
| angry_octet wrote:
| We went through the 2008 financiy crisis and this is what people
| think is a good idea?
|
| How long before people are trading options on risk weighted batch
| of people? Leveraged buyouts if whole specialties? Movement
| controls to enforce greatest P/E? "I'm sorry sir, you can't leave
| the country without presenting a Holiday Risk Bond. Perhaps a
| Virtual Vacay is more affordable?"
|
| And most of all: you, as an individual, have almost no
| information about the market, and are almost certain to get a bad
| price.
|
| Anyone who thinks they are good at this should practice buying a
| new car. Once you get to the final sale price, with no finance,
| demand another 9% off. If you can get that, and the car isn't a
| lemon, you're ready to negotiate for a well understood commodity.
|
| Selling people futures, when you've just given them capital up
| front with the goal of enabling higher returns, is less
| understood, though of course there are many immigrants who do
| just that. But already wealthy people? It seems much less
| certain.
| caseyross wrote:
| Interestingly, there's nothing particularly novel about investing
| in a person's early career to reap late-career rewards.
|
| In America, it used to be that parents and employers would invest
| a lot of money in raising and training young adults,
| respectively. But more and more, there's less money available to
| support these programs.
|
| Given this situation, it makes sense that early-career people
| would have to look elsewhere for people willing and able to
| invest in them.
| robocat wrote:
| > there's less money available to support these programs
|
| Incorrect. "Since 1980, college tuition and fees are up 1,200%,
| while the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for all items has risen by
| only 236%." https://www.visualcapitalist.com/rising-cost-of-
| college-in-u...
| darkerside wrote:
| And with the amount of federal and state dollars going into
| scholarships and loans, it's hard to say with a straight face
| that society isn't directly funding its most promising youth.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| I've run into that with doctors now and again.
|
| You'll meet a younger doctor who complains heavily about student
| debt and how impossible life in the US is. I'll offer to write a
| check for the debt in return for a negotiated percentage of their
| income from now on. Silence ensues.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| That's probably because the deal you're offering them is
| objectively worse than their current deal.
| Klinky wrote:
| Please provide the full terms before you imply the young doctor
| was being unreasonable. The silence was probably because you
| were offering an awful predatory loan, not that you were
| delivering the ultimate gotcha zinger.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > I'll offer to write a check for the debt in return for a
| negotiated percentage of their income from now on. Silence
| ensues.
|
| Writing someone a check in exchange for their future earnings
| "from now on" is a terrible deal. You're essentially offering a
| loan that can never be paid back, yet requires payments
| _forever_.
|
| Loans are a good deal because the terms are known ahead of
| time, payments end when the principle is paid off, and the cost
| can be calculated.
|
| The idea behind ISAs is that they try to align the interests of
| the student and the educator, as the educator only gets paid
| proportionally to the students' future earnings. ISAs also have
| limits on how long they can collect from the student and
| thresholds that have to be met for collection criteria, as well
| as an upper limit on payments.
|
| What you're describing is just facetious and condescending to
| those with six-figure medical debt.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| > What you're describing is just facetious and condescending
| to those with six-figure medical debt.
|
| The point is that medical debt is a very good deal for the
| reasons you point out and because the doctor cartel in the US
| has forced prices up to dizzying heights.
|
| Yet people bitching and moaning about having borrowed $300k
| at reasonable interest rates for the right to earn many
| millions with almost no risk (when was the last time you met
| an involuntarily unemployed doctor?) don't acknowledge that.
| ghaff wrote:
| There is such a thing as a perpetual (consol) bond although
| it's rare. What happens is that, over time, inflation erodes
| the real value of the payments. (And at that point, it looks
| a lot like equity with a contractually fixed dividend payout.
| Debt and equity can look a lot like each other.)
|
| And, if this is a lifetime thing, this is just a form of
| annuity which are fairly common. (Give someone $X and they
| promise to pay you $Y annually for your lifetime (or other
| term)). There are also annuities that track the value of some
| investment pool like an endowment.
| Klinky wrote:
| A doctor's salary is unlikely to be eroded by inflation.
|
| Annuities often underperform inflation, and life annuities
| are typically offered by insurance companies with risk
| pooled assets, not by a single individual.
| 0x4d464d48 wrote:
| "You're essentially offering a loan that can never be paid
| back, yet requires payments forever."
|
| A better analogy would be taking part ownership of a man's
| livelihood and expecting him to pay dividends like a stock.
|
| If he tied his career to an LLC this would make sense
| oterwise he's literally selling himself.
| llaolleh wrote:
| Haha I love this.
|
| If we think about it in terms of pure game play, medicine is a
| part of the game where the strategy is to take on a massive
| amount of debt, high risk and uncertainty for incredible
| returns.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > medicine is a part of the game where the strategy is to
| take on a massive amount of debt, high risk and uncertainty
| for incredible returns.
|
| Not really. It's exceedingly rare for someone to complete
| medical school and then not be able to find a relatively
| high-paying job if they want one.
|
| The risk would be something like later deciding not to pursue
| a career in medicine, but that's a personal decision rather
| than an external risk.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Illness and accident can end anyone's career any time.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| That's why you need to purchase a half dozen doctors.
| bidirectional wrote:
| I heard a (probably invented) story that one year the Harvard
| Business School commencement speech basically boiled down to
| "you can earn an upper-middle class income for the rest of
| your life without ever working as hard as you did to get in
| to this programme".
| dasil003 wrote:
| I'm not sure I like the investment analogy for ones career
| since you have to actually put the work in to get the pay.
| Your time, effort and talent are at least as much of a
| contributor as the medical school tuition. Perhaps a name
| brand school gives you a significant bump in earning
| potential on the margins but "incredible returns" still feels
| reductive of what is essentially a very hard and traditional
| career path.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I can't imagine having "shareholders" governing whether I'm
| allowed eat meat or not, or how much I should be exercising.
|
| You're reduced to a slave, with many masters instead of one.
|
| No thank you.
| kristianc wrote:
| Each of these articles need to be treated with a degree of
| scepticism: in order to have a functioning market for any of
| these things - whether an NFT, a share of future earnings, or
| 'BitClout' - you need people who are willing to buy into the
| ecosystem.
|
| If there are not a steady stream of new entrants with new money
| coming to the market, the whole thing collapses like a house of
| cards. And you will eventually run out of people. Anyone
| seriously looking into BitClout should look into the recent story
| of FootballIndex in the UK.
|
| The Ponzi analogy is quite apt, and buyers into Ponzi schemes
| typically do not do well out of it.
| istjohn wrote:
| The unstated implication is that these investment vehicles are
| for suckers, as in any ponzi scheme.
| gruez wrote:
| Unlike a ponzi scheme (which is guaranteed to be a loss
| overall), a ISA token could theoretically work out for all
| parties involved. The article mentions that lambda school's
| business model is based off it. The problem is that the market
| for such tokens is a market for lemons, and the amount of due
| diligence you have to do to weed out the scammers vastly
| outweighs whatever risk-adjusted-returns you can get compared
| to the s&p 500. It's the p2p loan craze all over again.
| dyeje wrote:
| I am curious whether it is easier for a startup looking to get
| into this space to do their ISAs via traditional contracts or
| Ethereum.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Traditional contracts are required either way. Anything on the
| blockchain would still require a traditional real-world
| contract to back it up.
|
| For ISAs, there isn't really any reason to put it on the
| blockchain unless the company is trying to sell it. Even then,
| the NFT on the blockchain would only be representative of the
| ownership, which still depends on the real-world contract. The
| contract would likely have provisions that the NFT is null and
| void if lost or stolen, as no reasonable company would
| voluntarily give up protections for their assets.
| _red wrote:
| >ponzi
|
| It's become increasingly common to see the word "ponzi" applied
| to what is just really a "speculative investment".
|
| Its a shame this is continually being done, because its a real
| destruction of language meaning. A "ponzi scheme" is an
| intentional act to defraud...using a portion of investor funds to
| pay other investors in hopes of attracting more and more
| investors. The conman then times his exit appropriately once some
| critical mass of investors rush in.
|
| A risky or speculative investment is just that. There is no
| intent to defraud. The continual lazy use of "ponzi" does lots of
| harm since it unfairly implies 'an intentional act to defraud'.
| martindbp wrote:
| The nicest thing I've ever been told came from my best friend,
| telling me he'd buy stocks in "me" if it were possible. It
| wouldn't have been a particularly good investment, but I guess he
| was on to something with that concept!
| peytn wrote:
| How do you tackle issues with manipulation? Can't I get together
| with my friends and wash trade each other's tokens?
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Yes, wash trading should be assumed to be ubiquitous in the NFT
| space. It's too cheap and easy to create fake trades of NFTs to
| trust that transactions are all real.
|
| The tokens described in this article don't necessarily depend
| on the sale price of the NFT, though. Instead, these NFTs would
| represent the beneficiary of real-world contracts. Whoever
| holds the NFT collects the future income of the person, as
| enforced by a real-world contract.
|
| Of course, nothing stops them from wash trading these NFTs in
| an attempt to flip them.
| gruez wrote:
| At the end of a day it's still a token, so all the usual scams
| (eg. pump & dump) still apply.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Lambda school seems like an example of perfectly aligned
| incentives.
|
| I wouldn't mind if private higher and trade education was
| required to only take in money through such setup.
|
| And if people deem less practical education necessary it should
| be funded from taxes only.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| The European system with higher income tax and heavily
| subsidised universities practically has the same result. Anyone
| (that is a permanent resident) can go to a top school, but
| you're paying it back the 40 years after with 50%+ income tax
| if you get a good job.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Not really, because universities don't care if what the teach
| is useful in the job market because they get money from tax
| either way.
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "By letting other people invest in you, you are incentivizing
| them to promote your own story and do their best to increase your
| tokens' value."_
|
| In 1946, the US Supreme Court established the so-called Howey
| Test to determine if an investment opportunity is a security
| offering. These are the Howey criteria:
|
| "Under the Howey Test, a transaction is an investment contract
| if:
|
| "It is an investment of money;
|
| "There is an expectation of profits from the investment;
|
| "The investment of money is in a common enterprise;
|
| "Any profit comes from the efforts of a promoter or third party."
|
| IANAL, but these personal tokens seem to match every condition of
| the Howey test. I'd be extremely careful about conducting your
| own little security offering if you're resident in the US, or
| allow US residents to participate.
|
| It's worth noting that Alex Masmej, the person mentioned in the
| article, conducted his token offering while in France.
| airza wrote:
| The future outlined by these new and exciting investment vehicles
| is horrifying.
| nemo44x wrote:
| It is but you wonder if the instability of a career is even
| more horrifying?
|
| It is essentially like a farmer selling futures contracts on
| their crop. The yield of the crop and market conditions at
| harvest time are so uncertain that trading upside for stability
| becomes a smart bet.
|
| So one might think to themselves that they don't feel certain
| about their ability to generate income for the next 20 years
| and sell a claim to their existing and future incomes for a
| payment today which they can diversify into other investments
| and tap in the future if things unravel for a period.
|
| Of course the old fashioned way of doing this is putting part
| of your income into savings. But front loading savings has
| benefits like having a larger nut to start with and more time
| to compound.
| airza wrote:
| The entire line of thinking just seems to me like it is
| bending over backwards to avoid just... having income taxes
| and a social safety net.
| nemo44x wrote:
| I think it's more like insurance than a social safety net.
| It's also private instead of public and therefore by
| necessity, political, which is undesirable for many people.
|
| And I don't think it's in lieu of a social safety net. This
| would exist to stabilize a lifestyle. A social safety net
| would still exist for adults that can't take care of
| themselves through government funded shelter and food and
| other things.
|
| I would expect a professional couple with plans of a family
| wouldn't be able to (or want to) rely on the whims of
| government assistance. You'd maybe want to plan a lifestyle
| and getting up front money could have benefits. Similar to
| purchasing additional life insurance if you have kids.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Apparently there'll be Student Coin lauching soon. From what I
| understand it is supposed to be a platform built by students on
| ethereum that promises to make settingu up such personal IPOs
| super easy...
| bko wrote:
| > As I mentioned in an earlier piece, these tokens are not simply
| "certificates of ownership"; they can be pre-programmed to behave
| in a certain way (for example, pay a dividend each time a
| predefined event happens).
|
| I don't get how you can pre-program a contact to pay a percentage
| of your earnings. Ethereum is very restricted as to what you can
| program. I don't think you can just write "check stock price of X
| on CNBC, if X then Y..." Even if you could you would need to
| prefund it with Ethereum which would make the fund raising aspect
| kind of pointless.
|
| > In English, this meant Masmej was selling digital tokens under
| his own name ($ALEX). The token sale would sponsor his
| entrepreneurial journey. Owners of these tokens will receive
| certain rights over Masmej's future income and career decisions.
|
| It's just a promise to backers. I can't see how its enforced by a
| contract. It's no different than just having people send you
| money via PayPal and you promising to hit them back when you make
| some money. I guess easier to administer and track woh you
| promised?
|
| And I don't see how an income sharing agreement is a Ponzi
| scheme. A ponzi scheme is current investors paying out to
| previous investors. This is just a funding mechanism, selling
| equity instead of debt
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > I don't get how you can pre-program a contact to pay a
| percentage of your earnings.
|
| You can't. Any agreement like this would still require a
| traditional, real-world contract to carry any weight. The
| contract would specify that the holder of the NFT is entitled
| to the benefits of the contract. Even in a hypothetical world
| where everyone gets paid on the Ethereum blockchain, the person
| could simply open up a second ETH wallet and collect payments
| there, because crypto wallets aren't people.
|
| The unspoken catch is that these contracts would likely include
| a provision that the NFT is null and void in the event that
| it's lost or stolen. People entering into contracts aren't
| eager to give up their rights to hacks when they can simply add
| a contractual provision that limits it.
|
| The NFT exists because it's a convenient placeholder to
| represent something that can be traded with commonly accepted
| (relatively speaking) tools.
|
| A real-world contract would still be necessary to put any
| weight behind these NFTs.
| dharma1 wrote:
| You're right, the personal tokens like one the from Alex are
| simply an IOU based on trust and reputation. Reputation
| systems are really interesting and can work for some things,
| but I'm not sure you could sell the equivalents of Bowie
| bonds on trust alone - and the whole point of smart contracts
| is that they're supposed to be trustless.
|
| So I think investing in future gains of a real world entity
| who can simply start over under a new guise or decide not to
| pay, without being able to enforce the contract isn't going
| to work. But I'm not sure connecting current legal
| entities/contracts to onchain versions will be the answer
| either in many cases.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| It's just more top signals. There's too much money floating
| around if people want to invest in nonsense like this. When
| equities correct from the current Shiller PE ratio higher than
| 1929 I think you will find less people want to invest in a career
| token for someone.
|
| https://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe
|
| The Bowie Bond part of the post was fascinating by the way. Had
| never heard that story. He issued them in 1997 which is a high
| Shiller PE value also before the 2000 stock bust. Lots of money
| floating around looking for a home then too.
| xur17 wrote:
| I agree that there's a ton of money floating around /
| frothiness, but what's inherently _wrong_ or ill-advised about
| investing in future cashflows of a person. Assuming you
| diversify across a bunch of people in a bunch of fields, this
| actually sounds better than some of the stuff people are
| investing in in the stock market.
| SergeAx wrote:
| Because having a share in an individual sounds very much like
| slavery?
| furstenheim wrote:
| I'm surprised it didn't mention the more extreme case of Mike
| Merrill https://www.wired.com/2013/03/ipo-man/
| hwestiii wrote:
| I very vaguely recall the Bowie Bond issue being reported
| somewhere but confess to promptly forgetting it. Would have been
| interesting to have followed it in real time. It appears to have
| quickly lost news-worthyness.
|
| The future is like that a lot.
| RichardHeart wrote:
| Bitclout mentioned here steals your keys.
| https://twitter.com/_prestwich/status/1379963871792799744 If you
| used a non unique seed with them, consider it compromised.
| mollems wrote:
| The bit about monetizing one's influence / reputation reminds me
| of Cory Doctorow's novel _Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom_.
|
| https://craphound.com/down/Cory_Doctorow_-_Down_and_Out_in_t...
| gibybo wrote:
| If you're interested in this concept, you may enjoy the novel
| "The Unincorporated Man" which is set in a future where everyone
| (except the protagonist) has personal shares traded on an open
| market.
|
| It's a bit thick on ideological propaganda of the extreme
| capitalist/libertarian type, but I found the exploration of the
| concept fascinating enough to get through most of it.
| citizenkeen wrote:
| It launches a decent series with each book having different
| premises, as well.
| arberx wrote:
| To call this a ponzi scheme is pretty disingenious, probably
| great for views/clicks though.
|
| At the core a ponzi relies on guaranteed return, paid for by
| other investors.
|
| Just because you might not like or understand how something
| works, doesn't mean it's a ponzi.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I enjoyed the piece.
|
| Personally, I want no part of it, but I think it might work well
| for people who are not me.
|
| I've always been "on my own." My life really is a series of
| watersheds, where I've been the only person to believe in me,
| before the event, and a whole bunch of folks seemed to believe in
| me, after the fact. Not a particularly good setup for selling
| "Chris-Tokens(tm)."
|
| Not a bad thing, in the long run. It hurt like hell, the first
| few times, but I realized that I don't have the personal skills
| to "sell" myself (like being able to spew jargon, sound like I'm
| TED-talking all the time, or beat LeetCode tests), so I can't
| blame folks for not wanting to "invest" in me. It is what it is.
| I come across as a socially-awkward dork, so people don't take me
| seriously. I'm actually fairly good at what I do, but If I
| mention that, it comes across as "arrogant," despite the enormous
| ocean of hubris that pretty much defines today's tech scene. I
| don't really have the skill to "humble-brag."
|
| It taught me to live a conservative lifestyle, be Honest and
| Honorable, do top-shelf work, bust my ass, and not expect much
| from others.
|
| I couldn't rely on anyone else to clean up my messes, or get me
| out of jackpots. It has taught me to learn what I have needed to
| learn, despite active roadblocks being tossed out by
| "gatekeepers," and it also prevented me from getting mixed up
| with some truly awful disasters; both personal, and business.
| Wistar wrote:
| Such a marvelous comment.
| dustingetz wrote:
| to sell yourself at scale you need to appeal to the lowest
| common denominator, like politicians must. i don't think this
| is right or wrong- idealized value = how much you help someone
| * how many people you help. (idealized)
| darkerside wrote:
| It seems like you may be indexing on a reaction that either
| doesn't exist, or attributing a response from individuals as if
| it were coming from "everybody". In the latter case, it sounds
| like you've adopted the right mentality, which is to let the
| ball be on their court if they don't want to believe in you.
| Unless it's actually doing you from doing something you want to
| do, it doesn't really matter.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Oh, I'm not doing that whole "anecdotal evidence indicates
| totality" thing, but it has happened enough, that I've
| decided that I'm best off, being my own advocate.
|
| I actually found a company that worked with me, for 27 years.
| I did not find them to be as gratifying a venue as I'd have
| wanted, but they did have a similar set of values, and we
| were able to find common ground. I found that having folks
| that appreciated my personal values was important. They paid
| well enough, and actually treated me with a lot of respect. I
| think they made some unfortunate choices, as the time went
| by, and I did my best to help them through the consequences
| of those choices, because doing stuff like that is how my
| value system works. I don't "cut and run." It was
| appreciated, but I don't think it was enough to make that
| much of a difference. Long story; tears, laughter, joy,
| despair, etc.
|
| That stability was _extremely_ valuable to me. It allowed me
| to set things up, so I am in the position I 'm in, now. I
| can't even imagine what it would have been like, if I had
| spent my career in two-year stints, like everyone does now.
|
| It also allowed me to work on some side projects that have
| been _quite_ successful, in their own rights. None have been
| monetarily profitable; but they weren 't meant to be. I like
| to help people help people.
|
| It has been interesting (at first, infuriating, but now,
| amusing), watching people ignore my _bona fides_. I happen to
| have a pretty vast trove of open-source material (see "side
| projects," above). It's really not difficult to do. All you
| need to do is click on a link. It takes to to my SO Story,
| which has a chronologically-sorted history of my work since
| 1987.
| gedy wrote:
| > I'm actually fairly good at what I do, but If I mention that,
| it comes across as "arrogant," despite the enormous ocean of
| hubris that pretty much defines today's tech scene.
|
| That's really insightful as I've definitely noticed many people
| judge by looks and impression more than the content of what's
| said. Unattractive/awkward people are frequently treated as
| insufferable when they are correct.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I agree probably since my experiences were similar. Things are
| much better now, but I don't remember people telling me 'here
| is some money; remember me when you make it big'.
|
| There are definitely people who would benefit from this. Some
| of my friends would have said 'some people just put everything
| in their char stat'. In fact, I have this HS friend. When we
| were growing up, he could barely turn his PC on. Now he is an
| IT manager for a major US brand. He either has gotten better or
| he was able to BS everyone with his cool guy persona ( and he
| is cool ). In short, I would buy his personal IPO.
| noservice99 wrote:
| I'm not trying to be rude and I enjoyed your comment, but you
| say you don't have the skills to humblebrag or sell yourself
| but you're doing it pretty well here
| dave_sid wrote:
| You sound like an ideal colleague.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Thanks. I've always thought so, but I have to respect that
| many others think otherwise.
|
| I'm extremely fortunate, in that I don't really need to "play
| the game." I'm quite grateful to be in that position.
| lisper wrote:
| > I don't have the personal skills to "sell" myself
|
| Actually you do. You've demonstrated them in this very comment.
| Maybe you don't realize this, or maybe your self-deprecation is
| a deliberate part of your strategy. Either way, it worked on
| me. This comment led me to your profile, which led me to your
| company web sites, which impressed me. I don't need an iOS app
| developer at the moment, but if I did you'd be at the top of my
| list of people to contact.
| eplanit wrote:
| > I don't have the personal skills to "sell" myself
|
| Your comments do just that, though. Perhaps writing is a good
| medium for you to make the point to others -- I recommend you
| do more of it. It makes a great first impression, from which
| you can follow-up. Be genuine in person as you are in your
| writing.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Thanks.
|
| I like your site ( _> I wear many hats, but graphic designer
| is not one of them_ ).
|
| This looks cool: http://graceofgodmovie.com
|
| Looks like you're a great conversationalist.
| lisper wrote:
| > Looks like you're a great conversationalist.
|
| Thanks. That, too, is a learnable (and teachable) skill. It
| did not (and still does not) come naturally to me. Took me
| about 20 years of concerted effort to really figure it out
| (and I sometimes lapse even now). But in retrospect well
| worth the effort.
| musingsole wrote:
| To reiterate, it is very likely that those people who passed
| on you or didn't become interested due to the lack of self-
| marketing are not the people you would want to work with and
| doubly are not actually offering the job you thought you were
| applying for.
|
| Grifters interview and hire grifters because their
| org/team/company relies on the grift more than the truth to
| make ends meet. If you can't grift, you frankly don't have
| the skills for _that_ job. It 's an unfortunate side-effect
| of the nature of grifting that they can't tell you this
| upfront.
| adkadskhj wrote:
| My fear with this mindset of "They're people i wouldn't
| want to work with anyway" is that it's easy to say that
| when i'm not hungry.
|
| If my mortgage is on the line my desire for a paycheck
| increases. Perhaps i don't live simply enough - but i'm
| always concerned about stability and until i'm retired i
| will always be concerned about the next paycheck. I too
| lack skills to feel confident about common interviews, but
| i look at this as a fault. If i felt more confident about
| interviews perhaps i'd feel more confident about my
| stability.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Unfortunately, this hits the nail on the head for a lot
| of folks, these days.
|
| It's easy for me to say that I will only work with those
| I want. I'm set, and don't actually _need_ the work (the
| money would be nice, but it 's not a _need_ ).
|
| I refrain from being an "OK Boomer," but I would gently
| suggest that folks starting out, devote significant
| portions of their income to savings, and conservative
| (not politically "Conservative," _real_ "conservative")
| investments. I'd further suggest against looking to your
| peers for guidance in spending habits or lifestyle
| choices.
|
| The ageism in tech is really quite puzzling. We're all
| gonna become old. White people won't become black, men
| won't become women (well, they can, but it requires some
| _really_ significant dedication and resources. I have
| friends that have made that transition. It is not
| something for the faint of heart); but we will _all_
| become old. The alternative is not something we like to
| think about.
|
| A lot of young people that treated their elders like
| crap, are now, suddenly, on the receiving end of the
| behavior. I don't find it satisfying, in any way at all.
| It's heartbreaking.
| adkadskhj wrote:
| > but I would gently suggest that folks starting out,
| devote significant portions of their income to savings,
| and conservative (not politically "Conservative," real
| "conservative") investments. I'd further suggest against
| looking to your peers for guidance in spending habits or
| lifestyle choices.
|
| I do, but this is unfortunately not what i'm describing
| in the post. Yea, i don't have enough to retire, but i've
| got ~12mo full expenses.
|
| My concern is a concern for the long term, the career.
| [deleted]
| yarcob wrote:
| Having a few months to a year of expenses on the side
| fixes this. When you know that no matter what happens,
| you have enough savings to pay your recurring costs, you
| just aren't as vulnerable.
|
| You are going to find a job in a year, or you could find
| a cheaper place to live in a year... Things just aren't
| as scary anymore once you have enough saved up.
|
| If you live paycheck to paycheck it's going to be
| stressful no matter how big that paycheck is.
| adkadskhj wrote:
| > Having a few months to a year of expenses on the side
| fixes this.
|
| It doesn't, for me. I'm sitting at ~12mo with full
| expenses. I budget everything, so i do me full expenses,
| all the niceties, enterainment, etc. If i lost my job i
| could probably stretch it to ~24mo with the fat cut away.
|
| Still, i worry. Keep in mind i do partially agree with
| you, paycheck to paycheck is a massive concern for
| people. It's why i obsessively envelope budget. But the
| concern i described in my prior post is a concern of
| skill, interview success, etc. Ie, feeling unsure in
| success of finding a job in my career path.
| musingsole wrote:
| Yeah, building a bit of a nestegg helps, but I think I
| share your concerns on work security. And I think you're
| right to worry. If you walk out of every failed interview
| assuming they just weren't a fit _for you_ , you run the
| risk of arrogance and never properly tuning yourself to
| the industry and its opportunities. 100%
|
| _BUT_ All of an individual 's interviews are a
| _terrible_ sample from which to draw any inferences about
| the industry and your place in it. Successful interviews
| give a signal. Failed /Not-followed-up-on interviews give
| none at all. My point being, tuning and training yourself
| _must_ be a separate endeavor from interviewing or you
| will always be in for a bad time.
| ryandrake wrote:
| OP took the high road and the much harder path. All you
| have to do these days is put all your skill points into
| Charisma and bullshit your way through an entire career. No
| other skills needed. Look at Elizabeth Holmes and that
| WeWork guy. People were falling over themselves giving them
| money. Generational wealth achieved by having no ability
| bedsides running their mouth. Even normal jobs, so many
| people just blah, blah, blah their way through the
| interview and the job, and then by the time anyone checks,
| they're off to do it again at a different company.
|
| It's getting harder and harder to teach my kid that honor,
| integrity and hard work are still important, when you can
| easily find counter-examples, and they are more and more
| becoming the norm.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Especially so when these 'all talk no action' types are
| prominently displayed on television being lauded
| precisely for their talk.
| ghufran_syed wrote:
| I ended up working in sales for an investment bank and
| found out exactly how true this is...
| hinkley wrote:
| One of my favorite bosses got summarily fired for getting
| tired of the grift and telling a customer we were still in
| analysis on something that the founders wanted them to
| think was well underway. This wasn't the first time and our
| code was on the way to intractable due to layers of
| expediencies.
|
| When a bunch of us quit 18 months later, we had stuck
| around for 6 months for a bonus that worked out to about
| 7-8 weeks' pay. As we sat around having a beer down the
| road, I asked if it was worth it to stay the extra six
| months. Almost 3/4 said no.
| darkhorse13 wrote:
| I had the exact same sentiment. I'm a sucker for these types
| of reflective, self-deprecating descriptions for oneself. And
| good for him as well, because I don't doubt his honesty at
| all.
| lisper wrote:
| > I don't doubt his honesty at all.
|
| Neither do I. That the mark of a truly great con artist ;-)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| :) It would be nice. I'm a bit "on the spectrum," and we
| don't make very good con artists.
|
| We are, however, often perceived as arrogant, rude and
| unsympathetic.
| lisper wrote:
| Yes, I know :-) I also know (from first-hand experience)
| that managing the behaviors that lead you to be perceived
| that way is a learnable skill. It's not easy, but in my
| experience, putting in the effort pays handsome
| dividends.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Yup. I feel as if I have done well, in that arena. I was
| a manager, for 25 years. I managed a couple of people "on
| the spectrum," and they were (and still are) _amazing._
|
| Last night, I watched _The Accountant_ again. I really
| enjoy that movie. It does kinda go a bit crazy in
| advocating for autistic people (I get the feeling it was
| written by people that studied hard, but maybe don 't
| have a lot of personal experience), but it's really fun.
|
| I wish I had a teak-lined camper and a Renoir in my
| bedroom, but I'm fairly happy how things turned out.
| dorkwood wrote:
| I agree. I would buy some Chris Tokens.
| pmkiwi wrote:
| Hello Chris, I wanted to say that I found your comment
| extremely good especially this
|
| > I'm actually fairly good at what I do, but If I mention that,
| it comes across as "arrogant," despite the enormous ocean of
| hubris that pretty much defines today's tech scene.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Thanks!
| LB232323 wrote:
| It's not a character flaw or lack of skills in not being able
| to "sell yourself". It's a sense of dignity and pride as a
| working person.
|
| You are not a commodity, you are a human being. You may look
| like a commodity to a business owner, but you refuse to allow
| yourself to become one.
|
| Honesty and honor are worth more than money. There is money to
| be made in making yourself into a sort of corporate dog, but it
| will leave you feeling empty inside.
|
| I am definitely not politically conservative, but I live in a
| conservative way as well. I don't think it's superior, but it's
| nice to have peace and stability.
| tarsinge wrote:
| It's conservative only if you think of this ongoing extreme
| financialization of everything as progress.
| cassepipe wrote:
| I am not really sure of what it is you call honor though. To
| me it is a word whose meaning I don't really understand whose
| main purpose seems to justify leaders in sending people to
| their death at war and by men to justify murdering
| women/other men. It is at best anachronic, at worst
| dangerous. (Of course I am not accusing you of promoting
| murder but that's a word that has a sad history and I hope we
| get rid of it in the context of our daily lives )
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing
| LB232323 wrote:
| Honor just means doing the right thing, and it is also the
| respect you receive for doing so. The history of the word
| just means being a good person.
|
| Honor in terms of death and politics is often a manipulated
| distortion of what is right.
|
| Doing the right thing is often difficult, and this notion
| is used to manipulate people into killing each other.
|
| There is honor in not selling your dignity for money, or in
| doing the right thing when it is unpopular or difficult.
|
| There is no honor in killing people to enforce an
| oppressive power structure. It's about your personal
| choices, it's not inherently political.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Not sure if you are talking to me, or the parent.
|
| I used the word "Honorable," as it seemed more effective
| than "Integral" (as in "having Integrity).
|
| As far as I know, that word isn't on any blacklist. If it
| ends up there, I'll find an alternative.
|
| In the meantime, I'd gently suggest that accusing decent
| folks of supporting the murder of female children might not
| be the most effective way to start good relationships.
| cassepipe wrote:
| Look at the indentation, I am clearly responding to the
| parent. Especially to : "Honesty and honor are worth more
| than money."
|
| I don't think "honorable" has the same meaning and I did
| not even see it when I read you post.
|
| I specifically edited my post to explain I was not
| accusing parent of supporting murder but maybe you were
| already writing yours and did not see that part.
|
| No it is just on my blacklist and the only way I can
| enforce that blacklist is by trying remind anybody who
| uses it whence it came. Not trying to launch a censorship
| campaign by any means.
| techbio wrote:
| The word was used in a _sense_. You hijacked the thread
| with an antonymnic homophone. Seeing this a lot recently.
| selectodude wrote:
| The root word of "honor" is not honor killings, just to
| be clear.
| nyolfen wrote:
| honor means recognizing the divide between your self as you
| experience it or wish it to be, and the 'you' enacted upon
| the world, and working to align the latter with the former.
| this can be manipulated in bad ways, obviously, but to be
| honorable is to manifest your virtue.
|
| 'honor killing' is a result of corporate identity --
| cultural understandings of the self as inseparable from the
| family that created you. western culture generally does not
| carry this view, and treats people as individuals.
| individual honor is generally not burdened by the actions
| of your relatives unless one plays a direct role in them.
| ghufran_syed wrote:
| I personally like this definition, from one of Lois
| Mcmaster Bujold's books: " Reputation is what other people
| know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself....
| The friction tends to arise when the two are not the
| same....There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with
| your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public
| reputation wraps you in rewards. That's soul destroying.
| The other way around is merely very, very irritating."
| hug wrote:
| Say, what is honor? 'T is the finest sense
|
| Of justice which the human mind can frame,
|
| Intent each lurking frailty to disclaim,
|
| And guard the way of life from all offense
|
| Suffered or done.
|
| -
|
| Wordsworth.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Like Charles Cooley said "I am not what I think I am, and
| I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think
| I am."
| awillen wrote:
| Wow, this is a really mean attack on people who can sell
| themselves... I think I can do so reasonably well, and I
| wouldn't say it has anything to do with what you're
| describing here.
|
| I don't have dignity or pride? That doesn't make any sense...
| I can sell myself because I really believe in the product.
| I've done lots of good work in my life and I have genuinely
| useful skills that can help people or companies.
|
| And I don't have honesty and honor? Seriously? You seem to
| think that all selling is the type that unethical used car
| salespeople do. That is wrong. Good salespeople are experts
| who work with you to understand a problem and provide a
| solution to it. This is what I'm doing when I sell myself -
| you need a product manager, and I've worked on many similar
| projects to the type that you need help with, ergo I think
| I'd be a great fit. Again, to call that dishonest or
| dishonorable is simply wrong.
|
| There's nothing wrong with disliking selling yourself, nor do
| I think it's a character flaw - different people have
| different communication styles, some of which are not very
| self-promotional. Nothing wrong with that. But to make such
| vicious attacks on the ethics of anyone who can sell
| themselves is just baseless and cruel.
| mollems wrote:
| The bit about monetizing one's influence / social "capital"
| reminds me of Cory Doctorow's novel _Down and Out in the Magic
| Kingdom_ (which is a great read regardless).
|
| https://craphound.com/down/Cory_Doctorow_-_Down_and_Out_in_t...
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Is it just me, but isn't an Income Share Agreement ... taxes?
|
| Is this just a failure of government to supply the upfront
| investment in its citizens so that they pay enough tax in ten
| years?
| 0x4d464d48 wrote:
| "Is it just me, but isn't an Income Share Agreement ... taxes?"
|
| No. Its profit sharing akin to how companies do so by issuing
| dividend paying shares.
|
| So far as the government is concerned theyre just looking out
| for their most important stake holders, wealthy individuals and
| monied interests, by keeping taxes extremelly low. Universities
| being underfunded to the point they need to raise tuition to
| the point where students need to take on crushing debt is a
| byproduct of that.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I think we are violently agreeing?
|
| Profit sharing with your citizens is basically government. I
| think ...
| cortesoft wrote:
| Taxes and government are mandatory profit sharing, these
| agreements are voluntary. Whether that is good or bad is up
| for debate.
| 0x4d464d48 wrote:
| We agree that its wealth redistribution by anyother name.
| Certainly.
|
| The difference is that taxing is done in the name of
| public/government interest whereas profit sharing is done
| in the name of private/individual interest.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| what i am trying to say is that if a government supplied
| sufficient upfront investment in education (which is
| basically what's going on here) then no student would
| have an incentive to add an additional lieu on their
| future earnings.
|
| and governments should see education if their citizens as
| an investment repayable through future taxes
| mkingston wrote:
| One complicating factor: the repayment on this investment
| could very well be collected by another government,
| should said citizen leave.
|
| A similar problem to that of businesses financing
| education of their current or prospective staff.
| 0x4d464d48 wrote:
| Functionally, sure. Im totally on board with that and
| think its both practical and noble.
|
| What Im saying is that although taxation and dividend
| distribution are both wealth redistribution from an
| individual/entity with capital they are different in wthe
| underlying reasons for why they are done and who the
| intended beneficiaries are.
| mattzito wrote:
| There's literally nothing in this article that you couldn't
| replace "token" or "coin" with "contract" or "membership" and
| have it work exactly the same. The idea of selling contracts
| against future income is interesting but putting the blockchain
| here is yet another solution in search of a problem.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| Putting the contract on the blockchain allows it to be traded
| like, but not as, a security while the SEC et al. drag their
| feet on classifying crypto-tokens as securities. Something like
| that.
| joosters wrote:
| So it's a way to dodge the law? (while ruining the
| environment, of course)
| meowkit wrote:
| No. What law is being dodged here?
|
| Again, no. Brute force Nakamoto consensus is bad for the
| environment, but lumping all crypto into that bucket is
| ignorant/intellectually dishonest.
| [deleted]
| tjs8rj wrote:
| I'm usually in total agreement about blockchain just being
| stuffed anywhere, but observationally, there must be a good
| reason why blockchain shows up in these situations so often.
| There's definitely the hype factor, but blockchain does have
| value in that it's reasonably trusted by average people
| (perhaps unlike signing a contract everytime you wanted to
| purchase a piece of a creator - coins gamify it), and it's easy
| to setup trust systems - Alex setup his own token in a weekend
| for a "human IPO", rather than running through the cost and
| time of properly setting it up with a lawyer and contracts.
|
| Maybe blockchain's biggest value proposition right now is that
| it's lightly regulated and has hype, so using it greases the
| wheels when growing an audience or building a usually regulated
| product.
| prox wrote:
| Author mentions the ponzi scheme, and quite right. As long as
| the general trust is there and the investments are on the up
| and up you're fine.
|
| But the insidiousness is once you're in, you're in. Once you
| bought 4000 Tupperware to resell (insert any pyramid scheme
| here) , you can't find fault in it, and when it crashes
| you're burned.
|
| I don't want to bash blockchain, there might be interesting
| use cases, but I haven't seen it yet in it's current
| implementations.
| VRay wrote:
| It's sort of useful for sending money to Asia without
| losing 1.5 to 5% on transaction fees, but that doesn't
| involve actually investing in it
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _blockchain does have value in that it's reasonably trusted
| by average people_
|
| I don't think you and I would agree on what constitutes
| "average people".
|
| > _it's easy to setup trust systems - Alex setup his own
| token in a weekend for a "human IPO", rather than running
| through the cost and time of properly setting it up with a
| lawyer and contracts._
|
| Easy to set up, but how easy it is it to enforce?
| mooreds wrote:
| I get the point of the shocking title.
|
| But what he describes, hedging risk, is not a new concept. It
| is something that people do every day when they diversify
| investments or buy insurance. ISAs and "person as tokens" just
| push this to new levels.
|
| > In such a scenario, every career becomes a pyramid scheme.
|
| In other words, the rich get richer--scalability works.
|
| One thing the author left out (or that I missed) is that
| scalability increases overall wealth. If I have to learn
| calculus from an average teacher because of geographic
| limitations, and then my child gets to learn from the best
| calculus teacher in the world, in the latter case the world
| gets richer because the same knowledge is arrived at quicker at
| less expense. (Of course, there's fallout for the average
| worker, but this is something we've been dealing with in the
| developed world for decades and still haven't figured out.)
| seibelj wrote:
| It's protocol-ized finance. Sure you can do it all old school,
| but that takes a ton of effort and makes your situation a
| unique snowflake. If you do it the way everyone has agreed on
| with tokens, all of your tokens plug into the existing
| infrastructure, is standardized, and makes the cost of capital
| go down.
|
| Why people continually can't understand this, and keep saying
| "buh buh buh mysql and lawyer fees! No need for blockchain!" is
| a failure of imagination.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Standardized contracts trade all day every day on exchanges
| all over the world. That's how everyone doing legitimate
| business has agreed to do it. That's where the existing
| infrastructure is. That's where serious capital is.
|
| Tokens, on the other hand, are the favorite tool of scammers.
| natchy wrote:
| How is a large insurance company refusing to pay on a
| legitimate claim any less of a scam?
|
| I don't think cryptocurrency is near mature enough to
| replace traditional contracts, but technology changes a lot
| in 5-10 years.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Sure you can do it all old school, but that takes a ton of
| effort and makes your situation a unique snowflake.
|
| Many of the situations required in this article still require
| real-world contracts to make them work. The crypto tokens are
| additive on top of the contracts, but they don't replace
| contracts.
|
| Someone could sell you an NFT that represents 15% of their
| future earnings over the next 3 years, but the blockchain
| can't enforce that. Even if we had all payments occurring on
| the blockchain, the person could simply create a new
| blockchain wallet and give their new address to future
| employers, claiming $0 earnings for their original blockchain
| address. The NFT itself is only valuable if supported by the
| weight of real contracts in the real world with real
| enforceability.
|
| Crypto tokens only stand alone when the crypto token itself
| is being traded. Actual value still requires consensus that
| the token is worth something (Bitcoin, Ethereum) or a real-
| world contract that stipulates that whoever holds the token
| has a claim to some actual rights or asset.
|
| It's likely that most of the real-world contracts for
| something of actual value have stipulations that the crypto
| tokens are null and void if determined to be lost or stolen.
| The crypto tokens are largely a distraction.
| athrowaway3z wrote:
| I think this entire idea is insane, but that's not the
| argument.
|
| >Many of the situations required in this article still
| require real-world contracts to make them work. The crypto
| tokens are additive on top of the contracts, but they don't
| replace contracts.
|
| There is no duality of 'real-world contract'/'digital
| contracts'. The question is if a digital document and
| signatures are accepted by a judicial system. In 50 years
| every judicial system will accept some format of digital
| contracts.
|
| The potential upside of 'tokenized' and
| standardized/automated legal documents are: less ambiguous
| interpretations, automatic resolution, simpler trading, and
| easier cross-border contracts ( to some extent ).
|
| All of this is possible by human hands, but legal systems
| are not known for their digital innovation. ( They don't
| even use standard 'diffs' to negotiate contracts )
| danans wrote:
| > The idea of selling contracts against future income is
| interesting
|
| Isn't that also basically what any interest bearing
| loan/mortgage is?
| bradleyjg wrote:
| No, those are personal debts (in one case secured). There's
| been on and off again interest for as long as I can remember
| about creating personal equity interests (i.e. the payout
| depends on how much the person earns). Now with
| blockchain(tm).
| danans wrote:
| I agree that there is a difference in the collateral
| involved, but the collateral mostly functions as a risk
| adjuster (which is why mortgage rates are on average lower
| than personal loan rates: if a borrower defaults, the house
| can be sold to recover part of the principal).
|
| At the end of the day, a mortgage is a contract that allows
| the borrower to purchase a home in exchange for a share of
| their future income, paid as interest on the loan.
|
| Personal loans also already exist today. The primary
| difference in the scheme in the article is that it is
| blockchain-based, instead of bank-based, and the trust
| establishment mechanism between borrower and lender is
| based on personal marketing, not credit agencies.
|
| Perhaps a bigger factor is that if the currency in which
| such a loan is offered is deflationary in the BTC style, it
| is a disadvantage to the borrower who will see the cost of
| their loan escalate over time, so this should be accounted
| for by lowering the interest rate.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| The difference isn't the collateral, a personal loan like
| a credit card is unsecured.
|
| It's how you calculate the payment. In a loan it doesn't
| matter how much money I make, I owe what I owe.
|
| In the proposed equity arrangement I owe a percentage of
| my income. If I don't make anything, I don't owe
| anything. If I'm the next Musk, I owe billions.
| ghaff wrote:
| >I owe what I owe
|
| Which may depend on an external factor if say it's a
| variable rate loan pegged to the prime. At some level,
| this is just using a different formula to determine the
| payment.
| danans wrote:
| > a personal loan like a credit card is unsecured.
|
| That's just another way of saying 0 collateral.
|
| > In the proposed equity arrangement I owe a percentage
| of my income. If I don't make anything, I don't owe
| anything
|
| I agree the calculation is different, but I doubt there
| is a lender that isn't going to demand the return of
| their principal at the least.
|
| Depending on the enforceability of such a contract
| (questionable and depends on the legal teeth they have in
| the respective jurisdictions) and the likelihood of
| default, it would significantly alter the risk profile.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| It seems like you don't understand the difference between
| debt and equity.
| ghaff wrote:
| >I agree the calculation is different, but I doubt there
| is a lender that isn't going to demand the return of
| their principal at the least.
|
| You win some, you lose some. Presumably the
| person/organization making the loan has calculated that
| the upside pays for the students who end up paying
| nothing.
|
| To the sibling comment about debt and equity, they're not
| necessarily as different as some assume. In this case, if
| I called it debt with a payback schedule based on ability
| to pay up to some cap, does that make it into something
| fundamentally different just because it's unusual?
| bradleyjg wrote:
| There are hybrids all over the place. Preferred stock is
| a classic example.
|
| But there's still a basic framework before you get into
| the messy middle. Taxonomies are a useful technology,
| calling everything a loan obscures more than it
| clarifies.
| ghaff wrote:
| Also convertibles.
|
| And I don't disagree even though I had a long ago finance
| professor who hammered on the point that a lot of
| financial instruments weren't necessarily that distinct
| from each other just because they have different names.
| But, yes, we can generalize about the distinct
| characteristics of normal debt and normal equity.
| [deleted]
| dharma1 wrote:
| It's hard to say if personal tokens will take off or not, but I'm
| almost certain many more things will be turned into financial
| instruments in the future. Almost anything that can have provable
| (current term is "on-chain") revenue (future or current) can be
| "tokenised" and sold, bought and speculated on. Our definitions
| of employee, employer, nature of work and contracts, our
| definitions of companies, shares and financial instruments are
| arbitrary - we are just used to them. They will change.
|
| I can absolutely see a future where people work on (and own
| pieces) of many projects, revenue share is tied much closer to
| measurable value creation, and "tokenised" future cash flows in
| almost anything measurable and enforceable (ie. on-chain
| activity) have liquid markets from very early on.
| ausbah wrote:
| is this suppose to be good? this sounds awful. it just reads like
| finance and tech have eaten literally everything, down to a
| person's life
|
| I guess there is more "freedom"? but that seems to come at the
| cost of stability and more winner take all scenarios
|
| like a lot of this stuff isn't new, but the degree to which is
| seems prevalent reads dystopic
| tdeck wrote:
| This is simply an example of an ecomonic/political system
| creating problems (in this case lack of capital needed to start
| a career), then creating "solutions" to those problems (debt,
| commodification of people as investments) that reinforce the
| system and enrich its key stakeholders.
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| I can foresee a nation-state utilizing these as a citizen credit
| score, and utilizing them to control behavior.
| stereolambda wrote:
| A couple thoughts if we were to "scale" the income-sharing
| contract concept beyond a novelty:
|
| 1. If there is, say, a hundred or even ten possible candidates to
| pick from, due diligence becomes brutal. Health information, full
| social media dumps, detailed financial disclosures etc. Also
| rampant discrimination. If it is unregulated, it's basically what
| insurance companies would like to be doing but with no limits.
|
| 2. If it is for five years and with no big payout at the end, the
| value of such a contract (via discounted cash flows) is likely
| pretty low and accordingly would be the funding. Note that
| LambdaSchool owns the whole "equity" of a person (no splitting
| into X shares) and gives you a service (at scale) instead of
| cash, so it probably makes sense for them.
|
| 3. It would be fun to see the accounting sorcery possible for
| shielding and offloading your earnings to other entities, to pay
| your investors (?)... preferably nothing.
|
| Besides, people, as opposed to companies, are rarely truly
| profit-maximizing entities. Maybe in the second year your guy
| decides to be content with a mid-range salary and devote all his
| time to studying meditation. But hey, theoretically you could try
| to escape inflation with such a crazy scheme if the interest
| rates on "real" bonds would stay very low...
| ghaff wrote:
| >gives you a service (at scale) instead of cash
|
| Yeah, this sort of payback scheme probably needs a few
| characteristics to make sense which apply in this case.
|
| - Incremental cost of a student is relatively low. So even if,
| say, 25% of the class doesn't pan out, they didn't cost you a
| lot that has to be somehow passed on to the other 75%.
|
| - Likelihood that graduates can get at least a workaday job at
| a decent salary are pretty decent. This probably wouldn't work
| for film school.
| gattr wrote:
| I'll mention the SF novel "Black oceans" [1] again. It describes
| a scheme where someone extremely driven and confident of success,
| but utterly poor, can make a deal with certain shady
| organizations, which - in case you don't make it and repay them
| in agreed time - will simply harvest you for (very valuable)
| organs.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charne_oceany
| moonbug wrote:
| what a hideous vision.
| natchy wrote:
| > _For example, if Elon Musk succeeds in landing the first person
| on Mars, his coin price should theoretically go up. And if, in
| contrast, he makes a racial slur during a press conference, his
| coin price should theoretically go down._
|
| Yes, and when people are making emotional/ideological financial
| decisions, I'll buy the dip.
| ramblerman wrote:
| I think the author explains perfectly the risk of the future
| where we see more and more winner takes all scenarios.
|
| But the conclusion seems a bit off. Basic income seems like the
| only recourse IMO
| sturza wrote:
| If each individual would be treated like a public company, where
| others own a small part, it also makes sense for this individual
| to have a board. A group that protects the interests of both the
| individual and the investors. If this was true, decisions of the
| individual would have to pass the board and soon enough the
| individual would have their own advisors on what to do next: play
| a game of soccer with friends(injury risk) or go for a walk in
| the park. It's just fun to imagine a public individual's life.
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