As much as I hate the idea of enabling the desperate masses to gamble like this, LLMs are very aligned tools for sentiment analysis, which can be the foundation of a trading strategy. I think it's extremely irresponsible to use them for execution, though.
I would take this advice a bit further even -- I don't think savings alone is the key, because inflation and de-dollarization are exponentially eroding purchasing power. The key is ownership of income-producing assets. In late-stage capitalism, the vast majority of people who work in exchange for wages will be members of the debt class; workers who manage to escape debt will still be living on a knife's edge where you can be laid off at any moment regardless of how well your company is doing. The only people living with stability will be those whose lives are paid for by the assets they own, rather than by the hours they sell.
A society where the only people with stability are those who parasitize on a increasingly emaciated wealth-producing population surely doesn't seem like a stable society, nor one that would be pleasant to live in.
There's no true stability in the world, but if the only option for "safety" we see is to be one of the few who snatch self-perpetuating generational wealth, aren't we just speeding up the unraveling of the very system off of which we desire to subsist on?
It sounds like a return to the way things have been for a long time. Our post-WWII abundance has been a bit of an aberration compared to most of our history.
I'm not saying it's good, I think it's very concerning and potentially very destabilizing. But it is the way things are right now. It's also possible to be on the wealth-producing side and not see your savings disappear into the ether while still providing things of value to people that appreciate it. "rent-seeking" is a real thing, and much of finance doesn't actually provide any real value to society, but this isn't a simple black and white dichotomy across the have's and have-nots.
We ought to find ways out of this mess, ideally something that doesn't involve communism and the typical humanitarian nightmares that usually come along with it.
> aren't we just speeding up the unraveling of the very system off of which we desire to subsist on
Self-perpetuating generational wealth is not a zero-sum game if said wealth is put to good work.
Having wealth morally obligates its holder to put it to use to benefit others. I think we all intuitively understand this; it's the impulse behind calls to "tax the rich!"
People the last 500 years who put wealth to good use, even in modest proportions, are part of the reason western culture is so rich. We would not have Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven today if someone hadn't employed them (though I do decry the relative poverty some composers lived in and some OSS maintainers currently live in - come on, people). And modern infrastructure wouldn't exist if capitalists hadn't at one time thought it worthwhile to invest in railroads.
If OP said the important thing is to be appropriately generous with your blamelessly earned wealth as you safeguard it against future perils, I would not have replied.
This really just sounds like a return to slavery via indentured servitude. If the working class is the debt class, someone owns that debt as an “income-producing asset”.
Passive investing is a fairly new phenomenon and we don’t actually know if it works long term. The premise of the stock market is that it’s a market. Blind and wide investment goes against the principles of how investment works. We could be accelerating bad outcomes because we are basically rewarding and punishing companies based purely on momentum, not performance.
Basically, I think it’s possible that passive investment only works when it’s a small slice of total investment. Essentially, then you ride off the expertise and decisions of others.
What happens when it’s the majority of investment? We don’t know.
We need to figure out how to effectively organize boycotts, and find a way to actually incentivize participation.
I'm spitballing here, but what if we created a browser extension that gives users the option to block various monopolistic/oligarchic tech platforms. If the browser navigates to a blocked platform, we show a "consider these alternatives" page instead. Competitors to the monopolies could offer incentives (raffles, discounts, etc) in exchange for promotion on the recommended alternatives list, creating an incentive to participate in a boycott.
Example: a user opts into an Amazon boycott, but later clicks an affiliate link that leads them to a book listing on amazon.com. The browser extension intercepts this and displays a list of other places to shop for that book. Barnes and Noble offers a 10% discount for people who boycott Amazon, so they're the top recommended alternative, and the user gets the book for a discount.
I was working on something adjacent to this for a little while.
It was a Chrome extension which allowed a user to upload a list (pluggable community-maintained lists, akin to ublock). It would light up when a user was on a site in the list with details about the site, the ownership/board, recent news, etc.
It also had a space for recommended alternatives. I built it because I was tired of giving money to companies who used the profits to make society worse.
I’d be down to pick up work on it again and get development going in the open or shift to work on the more commercial oriented design you describe. Lmk a good way to reach you if you’re open to it.
If you’d rather I can set up an email for this alias I just don’t have one handy to post publicly at the time of writing.
That’d be cool. I am not good at negotiating, sales, or anything g of that sort so I’d be the wrong person to help get companies on-board. I’d love to see something like this tho. I’d certainly use it.
While I'm ok with the notion of boycotts, they aren't effective in a world dominated by monopolies.
It's basically impossible to boycott amazon completely because of AWS which powers everything.
The hard thing needed is better politicians. And to get better politicians we need a better and more politically literate voting public. To get that, we need better journalism.
It's a real hard battle to win especially since a huge portion of the electorate will vote for the incumbent and the incumbents will deploy every dirty trick in the book to stay in power. Including getting people to run to split tickets.
But that's ultimately what must happen. The thing Amazon or Walmart actually fear is a government willing to regulate them or their employees unionizing. And the only way to get regulations is voting for politicians that do that and voting out politicians unwilling to do that. For unions, you have to convince people that even though it may cost them their jobs, it's worth it to drive the likes of Walmart out of town to support more local businesses. It helps to get union friendly politicians into office.
(Un)fortunately, there's a pretty big generational divide. As boomers expire, I have hope that Gen X and Millennials will make things better. The question is how bad things will get before that happens.
This is the kind of thinking that has resulted in an economy where losses are socialized and gains are privatized. There is strategic business value in managing your company in a way that doesn't contribute to the collapse of the middle class.
> This is the kind of thinking that has resulted in an economy where losses are socialized and gains are privatized
Socializing losses is definitionally a byproduct of government action, not of a private business.
> There is strategic business value in managing your company in a way that doesn't contribute to the collapse of the middle class.
I genuinely don't know what this means, and I'm not trying to be snarky. People, and Americans in particular, are considerably more wealthy today than they were in some imagined golden age of the middle class. If you want to keep your capital in a bank that is out for some imagined social restructuring, by all means go ahead, but I do not think a compelling banking product that will make.
I hate that I agree with you. But there's a difference between whether AI is as powerful as some say, and whether it's good for humanity. A cursory review of human history shows that some revolutionary technologies make life as a human better (fire, writing, medicine) and others make it worse (weapons, drugs, processed foods). While we adapt to the commoditization of our skills, we should also be questioning whether the technologies being rolled out right now are going to do more harm than good, and we should be organizing around causes that optimize for quality of life as a human. If we don't push for that, then the only thing we're optimizing for is wealth consolidation.
My theory is that Zuck has profound imposter syndrome due to the public knowledge that his joke of a side project in college went uber-viral and he has had to play CEO dress-up ever since. He has been desperate to prove that he actually has deep technological insight with his big bets on wearables and the metaverse and AI, but the truth is that his entire dynasty is built on people's need to snoop on pictures of their crushes and their exes. I think the company has actually done some impressive things with staying alive via acquisition as facebook has rotted, but he wants to be known as a tech genius, not an M&A suit.
One can only hope that he just fully turns to philanthropy a la Bill Gates sooner rather than later, and gives up trying to "connect" people (which somehow always turns into privacy nightmares).
Funny thing about internal work is that it cannot happen via changing one’s external circumstances. And it’s super tempting to numb it out with status symbols.
The evidence for this is rather plain to see at this point in history. ;)
The disincentive to provide a durable product is unfortunate. Ideally businesses pair high-ticket one-time sales with low-cost recurring sales of related products and services.
If you want to me to care about what you have to say, I'd prefer if you cared enough to write it yourself. Especially on on taxpayer money. If I can spot it as slop, you have a problem.
Weird take. When it comes to trying to compel tech companies to not be evil, trying to use legal precedent for crimes you can charge them with is usually difficult and turns into a semantic debate. I think what's more important is that we recognize when people and companies abuse power to do evil things, regardless of what legal precedent or written corporate policy is relevant. These companies act exactly as evil as they can possibly get away with without pushing us to other products and services.
One year before 1969 we had never been to the moon. In the 70s credible scientists and physicists predicted that large martian colonies would exist before the year 2000.
If a metric goes from 0 to 2 it doesn't mean it's on a long-lived exponential trajectory.
Even if there is a growth pattern that doesn't say how long it will continue. Some things can grow for a while and then hit a ceiling. Sometimes they are a fad that dies (when was the last time you bought a pet rock), sometimes everyone has one - you get a few sales of replacemets but no growth (you have a washing machine and won't buy another until the old wears out)
What if I fold you... that using 1960s technology it would be easier to just go to the moon than it would be to fake it? Have you SEEN a 1960s movie with SFX?
reply