yeah i think the biggest elephant in the room is the way the us government has juiced the stock market, which is a public policy choice that has gone back literally centuries, the NYSE can trace its roots back to 1792. treatment of long term capital gains definitely a big one, makes no sense that one of the biggest opportunities for "wealth creation" is taxed the least.
another prominent in my mind are 401ks and how they've displaced relatively safer fixed-income pension funds, the government basically seeing all that money locked up in pension funds (which aren't as equity-weighted as 401k plans) and deciding it's better to allocate that to the stock market; now there's a permanent fixed bid on the S&P 500 to the tune of $20k a year multiplied by all W-2 employees in america, with an employer match to boot.
― 龜, Tuesday, 3 January 2023 18:24 (one year ago) link
Lmao heading rapidly for $100, down almost 15% today
― bit high, bitch (gyac), Tuesday, 3 January 2023 18:26 (one year ago) link
the guy who originally proposed the idea of a 401k based on a possibility given financially legislation is one of those dudes who goes around explaining why his idea was misused now
― mh, Tuesday, 3 January 2023 18:27 (one year ago) link
financially? financial
the government basically seeing all that money locked up in pension funds (which aren't as equity-weighted as 401k plans) and deciding it's better to allocate that to the stock market
should be pointed out that "the government" cited in that sentence consisted of members of Congress, who most definitely were having cash shoveled in their direction by businesses that would benefit from a move away from pensions and toward 401Ks.
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Tuesday, 3 January 2023 18:31 (one year ago) link
OK, I'm going to get off of the Calacanis beat after this, but... jesus christ what a thin-skinned dorkhttps://himariapetrova.medium.com/why-does-jason-calacanis-hate-scott-galloway-3ada7784c9a3
― mh, Tuesday, 3 January 2023 19:39 (one year ago) link
xp dan to get back to the original point about valuing startups via extrapolating from privileged investments is just basically that the investors are getting better deal than say the employees, thats why they want it, how much more is it worth idk, but its not nothing
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 3 January 2023 21:17 (one year ago) link
yeah I agree with that, at the end of the day it's the classic battle between Labor vs. Capital
― 龜, Tuesday, 3 January 2023 21:35 (one year ago) link
musk of all people gets that. so much of his management style seems like class-based revenge rather than liberatian market-based capitalism tbh. which is why the lack of tech unions is so maddening.
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, 3 January 2023 21:36 (one year ago) link
i was too new to have any social capital to push for this myself, but the almost total lack of any serious conversation about unionization at twitter over the summer was baffling to me.
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, 3 January 2023 21:37 (one year ago) link
theres the classic dynamic where affluent or even merely middle class people identify with the ruling class, unions are for people who work in factories, its so wrong headed, feel like someone just needs to organize a campaign around getting privates offices (or i guess now home offices) instead of open floor plans and tech workers might start to see the benefit of collective action
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 3 January 2023 21:51 (one year ago) link
i know it's a running joke but twitter really was the "wokest" set of employees i've ever worked with. if not there, it's difficult to see it happening anywhere in tech. the 90th-99th income percentile really don't get it.
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, 3 January 2023 21:58 (one year ago) link
yeah it would prob take a larger union wave to sweep them along, which could be happening tbf, but its got a ways to go
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 3 January 2023 21:59 (one year ago) link
even at somewhere like twitter you've got a non-trivial number of libertarian, vocally anti-union cranks among non-management, which is surprisingly chilling for discussion, especially when it happens on slack rather than in break rooms.
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, 3 January 2023 22:08 (one year ago) link
just to threaten to tell the irs about their crypto dealings and theyll shut up
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 3 January 2023 22:13 (one year ago) link
but in all seriousness if one really wanted to do it theyd prob need a plan that involves marginalizing those people, im sure someone will attempt to organize a tech company at some point, i know there was some agitation at google a while ago but they were going with the wobbly wildcat model thats about a chunk of workers taking ad hoc action rather than actually forming a union, which prob reflects the fact that the demand just wasnt there
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 3 January 2023 22:18 (one year ago) link
iirc etsy may have done it?
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, 3 January 2023 22:19 (one year ago) link
oh its the sellers that are doing it thats interesting i hadnt heard about that https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/31/23330758/etsy-strike-boycott-indie-sellers-guild-union-fee-increase
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 3 January 2023 22:20 (one year ago) link
i guess the other problem is that the social and professional boundary between management and ICs is especially porous in tech, which makes forming an org that excludes management trickier.
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, 3 January 2023 22:21 (one year ago) link
kickstarter is probably the most famous (and maybe first?) tech company to have a union
DM me to learn more
― 龜, Tuesday, 3 January 2023 22:22 (one year ago) link
oh yeah i forgot about that thats cool salute to them
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 3 January 2023 22:24 (one year ago) link
a little ironic because Kickstarter has said in the past that they intend to never go public, so the equity kind of exists in a limbo https://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/17/kickstarter-paid-a-dividend-even-though-it-never-intends-to-go-public.html
― 龜, Tuesday, 3 January 2023 22:32 (one year ago) link
ah yeah kickstarter was what i was thinking of, not etsy, i.e. the other brooklyn success
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, 3 January 2023 22:33 (one year ago) link
meanwhile the memestock elves on the trading floor after closing time: https://i.imgur.com/UBlrQlm.png
― mark s, Tuesday, 3 January 2023 23:04 (one year ago) link
160 what shenanigans is that
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 3 January 2023 23:05 (one year ago) link
wtf
― sleeve, Tuesday, 3 January 2023 23:10 (one year ago) link
what the shit
Jordan Peterson has a "Twitter suit" with a tie featuring Elon Musk heads pic.twitter.com/U7TXC7m6aD— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) January 3, 2023
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 3 January 2023 23:11 (one year ago) link
xp happens all the time A/H. volume is tiny. shows up particularly on google finance for some reason.
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, 3 January 2023 23:11 (one year ago) link
i know it often jumps around in a fairly meaningless way, the image is p funny though
― mark s, Tuesday, 3 January 2023 23:19 (one year ago) link
There's a thread on Peterson with a surprise guest:
there's a very painful period when you see guys start to pay attention to clothes and they start to dress worse than they did before they started paying attention to clothes pic.twitter.com/RWNGjiv6SB— derek guy (@dieworkwear) December 18, 2022
― Andrew Farrell, Tuesday, 3 January 2023 23:43 (one year ago) link
good thread
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 3 January 2023 23:59 (one year ago) link
damn wow makes u think
pic.twitter.com/dJvUeO2P5t— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 3, 2023
― lag∞n, Wednesday, 4 January 2023 00:15 (one year ago) link
Ah, the guy who has all our personal information and never reads probably thinks those books describe Utopia.
― Lord Pickles (Boring, Maryland), Wednesday, 4 January 2023 01:26 (one year ago) link
wow matt levine must be reading this thread, today's money stuff is all about the silliness of private company valuations and also some lol twitter tidbits https://archive.ph/5j4kj
― 龜, Wednesday, 4 January 2023 19:51 (one year ago) link
hi matt
― lag∞n, Wednesday, 4 January 2023 19:53 (one year ago) link
i didnt know there were preferences where you get back multiples of yr investment before anyone else gets anything, thats even worse! its much worse
― lag∞n, Wednesday, 4 January 2023 19:57 (one year ago) link
https://enersection.io/twitter/
this is good because i forget that twitter had some cheap debt they issued pre-elon that is now very expensive debt lol
― 龜, Wednesday, 4 January 2023 19:59 (one year ago) link
well yeah - the bad thing is that VC investors have a lot of leverage in these kinds of situations, private companies are nearly always on a runway to bankruptcy, so the choice can be take this cash that has a 2x/3x liquidation pref attached to it or go bankrupt xp
― 龜, Wednesday, 4 January 2023 20:00 (one year ago) link
they should go bankrupt it would good since then there would be fewer apps
― lag∞n, Wednesday, 4 January 2023 20:02 (one year ago) link
We’ve had enough of apps!
― G. D’Arcy Cheesewright (silby), Wednesday, 4 January 2023 20:07 (one year ago) link
apps are out
― lag∞n, Wednesday, 4 January 2023 20:07 (one year ago) link
Rare sympathy for landlords
The landlord said in the suit that it had informed Twitter in mid-December that the company would be in default on its rent if it failed to make payments for space on the building’s 30th floor within five business days.Other parties, including a software provider and transportation company, have also sued Twitter in recent weeks to recoup overdue payments, the Wall Street Journal reported.
― bit high, bitch (gyac), Wednesday, 4 January 2023 20:09 (one year ago) link
"I mean free speech let me tell you that if somebody's got to pay the servers okay so those features gotta cost at least eight dollars oh because otherwise how do we pay the freaking server bill um you know there's like a billion and a half ish you know of oil and server-related costs um and you know we're trying to get that lower but it's a lot it's like not trivial um and a minimum you know like there's like somebody's got to pay the bills"
― bit high, bitch (gyac), Wednesday, 4 January 2023 20:14 (one year ago) link
hot take: The only reason Tesla was so over valued as a stock is crypto-bro orgy of valuation
― | (Latham Green), Wednesday, 4 January 2023 21:30 (one year ago) link
twice as much as the electric f150 and as much as a gas f250, almost certainly a lie, the infinite mass part also not true
The tesla website claims that the new truck can pull "near-infinite mass" hhjjkhjslsl this company is so unserious pic.twitter.com/bMLMgHSUdj— Human Mel (@melhuman) January 4, 2023
― lag∞n, Wednesday, 4 January 2023 21:48 (one year ago) link
the overvaluation of Tesla would have made some sense in like 2016 when all those charging stations were getting installed and there was talk of a $30k Model 3, not to mention Full Self Driving on the horizon. I can tell you insurance companies took that pretty seriously because in theory the Auto line could be unprofitable mighty quick. I guess it wasn't quite apparent back then how full of shit Elon Musk was. why it blew up after the pandemic when the cracks were starting to show kinda baffles me.
― frogbs, Wednesday, 4 January 2023 21:54 (one year ago) link
always funny how the fascists who cry fascism seem to think only three dystopian novels have ever been written
― Fash Gordon (Neanderthal), Wednesday, 4 January 2023 21:58 (one year ago) link
xp the trump trick of making an obviously false claim/error to encourage haters to amplify the announcement
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Wednesday, 4 January 2023 21:59 (one year ago) link
Brave New World not far off the mark, but not in the way I am sure Elon thinks it is.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 4 January 2023 22:08 (one year ago) link
"near infinite mass" surely video games bear some responsibility for this
― ꙮ (map), Wednesday, 4 January 2023 22:16 (one year ago) link