I cannot deny the observation. I am not from the privileged, ivy league educated, nurtured and after all I am not an American, but I see the same patterns in Europe and cannot come up with any constructive suggestions.<p>As you can see, I don't search approval. I write from a big distance and react.<p>And seeing the individuals attacking the character of the messenger without getting the message makes me sad. Really sad.<p>When I started creating things for the web I had no idea that my web-browser in 2021 will look like Christmas Tree from installed plugins and I will modify countless settings in about:config. All of this to have somewhat private browsing experience.<p>All of this because, we as society cannot find a way to impose regulations and restrictions over a bunch of greedy advertising corporations.<p><a href="https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2021/08/06/consumption.html" rel="nofollow">https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2021/08/06/consu...</a>
More than a little hypocritical to complain about crypto scams, when he himself created this "cheap eth" coin, gave himself a bajillion coins in the fork code without telling anyone, and then started shilling it in his stream.<p>More info: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26175655" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26175655</a>
I agree with his first proposal.<p>My view is that the big AdTechs (mainly Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tiktoks and the likes) are one of the worst poisons that humanity has ever created.<p>They brainwash you, destroy democracies, create drama in order to shove ads down your throat.<p>And then they turn around and pat themselves on the back pretending to be good actors "making the world a better place". Leaders of those companies pretending to be good humanitarian beings drive me absolutely crazy.<p>I hope that we eventually all see them for that they are.
From the blog:<p>"Three policy proposals:<p><pre><code> A 500% tax on advertising. It’s a zero sum game with no benefit to society. If you are paying for eyeballs, you pay a 500% tax. Force companies with these trash addictive business models to find a way to work for the average person, not pimp them out.
1% tax on the full amount of every trade. Fuck off worthless HFT mega brain drain. Fuck off short termism in markets.
Separation of church and state. And that includes Harvard, Yale, and all the others. No funding, no loans, no Title IX BS. Separate!"
</code></pre>
I'm curious what event or thought process made #3 appear on the list.
> Continue to let huge ad companies (stop calling them tech companies) rent seek and nickel and dime you on everything<p>+1 for calling FAANG ad companies
> A 500% tax on advertising. It’s a zero sum game with no benefit to society.<p>I don't think a tax is going to fix the underlying problem, which is that ad publishers have no responsibility for the ads they show.<p>The problem is that the scummiest advertisers can afford to pay the highest prices.<p>Someone who defrauds you can always afford to pay more for advertising than someone who actually provides a service.
>1% tax on the full amount of every trade. Fuck off worthless HFT mega brain drain. Fuck off short termism in markets.<p>I think a much better solution would be to mandate "slower" exchanges, i.e. exchanges would accumulate orders in a hidden queue and resolve them for example every 1 second, after that it would publicly publish all orders submitted to the last tick. For most market participants this change will be virtually unnoticeable, but it would eradicate HFT and all microseconds shavings associated with it.
I completely dislike his tone but I like these three words he wrote "Perception is reality".<p>Bank accounts, bonds, stocks, crypto are all in the perception category. The first three try to model a real world process but they are not the real world. The latter is perceived to be outside the bounds of the real world.<p>In fact, people try to abuse flaws in the simulation (the model). The real world decays but money does not. So during a recession people flood into the security of money, that money is supposed to be the perception of the real world, people are flooding into a perception of security that doesn't exist. Strangely enough, the real world keeps getting worse but its perception keeps getting better.
> I don’t think they see themselves as scammers, I think they actually think quite highly of themselves [...] “Perception is reality”<p>Wilfully deceitful people are rare, the rest of us are exceptionally good at justifying our actions to ourselves - Undiluted honest self judgement can be self destructive, but eating gobfuls of bluepills is also extremely dangerous to society - I believe there is a middle-ground, awareness of this "cognitive bias" is the first step.
I read it. Its at best unhelpful and misguided and at worst actively harmful to the stated goals.<p>Ultimately he is advocating for a political solution for what he believes is an economic problem.<p>The issue here is that the cause of the problems he wants to resolve is not an economic problem at all, but a political choice.<p>The proposal of preventing companies from purchasing property, for example is a clear cut example. I want to be clear here, any shortage of housing anywhere in the developed world is the direct result of government policy intended to drive that shortage, not due to physical space limitations, or limitations driven by corporate greed (beyond where that intersects with politics)
I remember an interview with Mr. Hotz describing his negotiations with Tesla about the acquisition of self-driving technology he said something to the effect of "I don't need a bigger piece of the pie - I just want the pie to taste really good."
This reads like a spoiled brat who just realized something is going on in the world, but is wholly unable to understand the real world repercussions of his “genius” suggestions.
And i thought separation of church and goverment has mostly been archived. At least in Switzerland.<p>I would advocate separating capitalism from goverment. But thats equally unrealistic as church/gov separation was 200 years ago.
WTF? That guy is literarry a capitalist himself with a company full of shitty gatekeeping tactics ("solve a programming challenge before you even apply") and now he writes some communist shit?<p>Please - take his money away till he finds to himself again.
> Continue to let huge ad companies (stop calling them tech companies) rent seek and nickel and dime you on everything<p>What is he referring to here, out of curiosity? Does a company like Google own an apartment complex, or is it some sort of on-site housing programme?