-5 karma · joined April 21, 2022
Zuckerberg keynote was received very coldly and the cartoonish avatars can't possibly be taken seriously in a working enviornment.
The whole metaverse can't be even defined as a space to work or play. If it's a space to play then how is it different than VR headsets and why it merits a whole world to upsell it as an ecosystem?
During an auction you always know the price and hence the bids are somewhat incremental. You can bid in 1$ increments or even lesser increments.
When the network is congested people put a fee on their transaction without knowing anything except that more = better.
It is a market failure. The time preference BS is something made up by "true believers" who think that "bad news is good news" because it supposedly supports the winner take all mindset that crypto enthusiast love.
Except when the winner is Ken Griffin, in that case we should stop playing , throw a tantrum and ask the refs for a redo lmao
Music is the most age dependant business. It's literally impossible to discover your favorite song at age 35+ and it's most likely already buried in your brain forever between 14 and 20.
Same things for movies, franchises sell because there is a familiarity to it. Stuff that isn't franchise just doesn't sell. A possible exception would be biopics.
I predict a huuuge amount of high budget biopic to integrate revenues from franchises.
JFK, MLK, Reagan, Hendrix, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan...they will all get a biopic with a budget of no less than 175M a pop.
Companies should always do them, it puts the ball back into shareholders court. If Apple ever needs to shore up its supply chain they can do an equity raise by issuing stock, then shareholders can decide if they want to partake in it or not.
Shareholders should receive their capital back at regular intervals because the CEO can ask it back again.
Meaning familiarity, networking and feedback are vital for success.
On the other hand, even in regular social interactions if you disappear for a while and then show up some time later driving a Porsche or a Ferrari that trumps familiarity, networking and feedback.
I'd say unless you are sure to show up with something that is essentially a Home Run, then the familiarity, networking and feedback of the building in public will be a tad better.
In the end it's also about the individual's personality. If you are driven by the journey then building in public is essentially some sort of diary, whereas if you are driven by results it's only natural that like an athlete you just want the spotlight on you during decisive moments.
Right. If this is so crystal clear then you'd not have any problems finding people who'd put up their own money instead of extorting them.
Crystal clear + you'd have to convince a bunch 90 year olds it should not be too hard...then everybody is happy. Even scammers have the decency to convince old people to give them their money as opposed to extorting them under the threat of violence .
For sure when I am 90 I'd do everything in my power to avoid being sucked into paying for stuff that I'll never get to see or use. Old people are not jailed for tax evasion, even today...so I guess unless something changes if I get to that ripe age it would be the same.
The investment only started paying real dividends in terms of generalized quality of life in the 2010s.
You want to say it was 35 years and not 40? Fine. If you are a guy who was in his 50/60 back in the 1970s then 40-35-30 or even if I give you 20 years if you consider that the investment totally repaid itself when the early adopters started buying GPS (which is a very bad way to calculate it )....it's all the same. You didn't see improvements in your quality of life because given life expectancy back then chances are you'd not be having a life at all (and this includes when the very early adopters bought it)
Most likely Tesla, GME, AMC.. If it's not stocks then it's crypto.
It's not about Soros opinion. It's about his track record predicting outcomes of political movements and how those impact the money markets.
With BTC is even easier because the price is a sign of the health of the socio-political movement, whereas back in the days he had to rely on the news on the ground about German re-unification or European Union coming together and adopting a common currency.
Pop-culture phenomenons have nothing to do with the individual's abilities or sector or even net worth. It's about virality. A concept which is not understood yet.
> It's crazy how much hate Elon gets when it's obviously just different politics... a different set of opinions. It's similar to how much some people hate Bill Gates, for no reason, and with zero perspective as to how much he has changed the world.
Bill Gates first put a PC on every desk and only then got paid for it. Him, Allen and Ballmer did so without ever having to raise external money up until IPO. People are suspicious about Musk and his motives because he engineered a way to get paid before doing the bulk of the work (Tesla is a 20 year old company and only accounts for 1.2% of cars sold globally as of 2021), SpaceX is still a startup, NeuraLink is just an idea, The Boring Company is essentially just a meme, Hyperloop completely faded into irrelevance...
Him being at the top of the Forbes list considering all the above lack of presence of his products in the real world makes people wonder about his extremely promotional nature, obsession with pumping the stock and Wall St. excess.
The stock market changed because society changed. People have much more disposable income, much more free time and a willingness to predict the next big thing and get rich quick as opposed to have long term sustained gains.
There are many ways to skin a cat, especially in finance.
Soros made most of his money betting on political and social trends. People just don't talk about Soros as much because he's too far from the top of the Forbes list. Poor guy is only worth 27B or something, he's betting on bitcoin and cryptocurrencies
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/reviews/garmin-street-pilot-ii...
"the manufacturer lists $1,272"
1,272$ in 2002 = 2120$ in 2022.
This is what people mean when they say techno-utopianists, space fans and SV types are completely detached from reality.
Living in the world of fairy tales and unicorns.
In the end when things are not done with enthusiastic consent from all parties involved, it's only a matter of time before the chicken come home to roost and people will look to get their money back from the organizations that took them
Rockets and Mars helicopters are cool but the vast majority of the population has other priorities. The companies providing actual quality of life to Americans are Walmart, Costco, Google, Microsoft, Exxon, IBM, Shell, McDonalds, Berkshire...not spaceX
Humanity is like a plane at some point there is enough lift that unless somethnig traumatic happens the plane is in the air and would still be . The analogy is that people would still get interested in stuff on their own and they'd finance those things even without extorting them.
And it would be a much better distribution of capital and human resources.
This model where we extort people was valid maybe in the 1800s.
Speaking of today's situation NGOs, foundations, endowments are much better than governemnts because they can't use violence, hence they have to convince and only those who they manage to convince end up giving them money.
Those things emerged for the general public circa 2010.
So 1970 to 2010 that's 40 years not 20. Also those who paid the lionshare of that were of course not young but in their 50 or 60, because that's the demographic which pays more taxes.
Highly unlikely they got to see it.
That's the reason why every person talking about space should know that the state goes out for them to take money from people's pockets.
A brief stint into an insurance company, pension fund, Sovreign wealth fund or hedge funds would render them much more pragmatic about costs and tradeoffs.
They should surrender to Musk and let the Elon-mania spread like a wildfire among the population.
Opposing him only prolongs the mania.
At some point such social phenomenons do end on their own. Paul McCartney couldn't walk through London in 1964-65-66-67-68-69-70-71-72.
All of the sudden in 1973 there were other bands and he went back being a human.
Why do cities lean left?
If the ideology of the right is based on individualism it's only natural that it cannot be the base of large social organizations.
The organization reaches a certain size and then collapses under the weight of its members who are all individualist free riders.
Organizations which are based on the ideology of the far left on the other hand don't ever get off the ground due to zero credence given to merit and assigning credit to whom credit is due.
At the end of the day data doesn't lie. GDP doesn't lie. The peak of mankind up to now are Western megalopolis (NYC, LA, London, Tokyo).
As a collective they lean left, it's undeniable. Similarly it's also undeniable that those who do great in such cities lean slightly right and have a bit of free riding and selfish-gene within them (but not so much, or in such great numbers that makes the whole thing collapse).
It's the same for Kavanaugh, he's an expert in the field of law. Nobody would have doubted his character if he was as great at public image as say George Clooney in one of his many lawyer movies that he made.
But unfortunately Kavanaugh is not Clooney and half of the country labels him as an untrustworthy drunk and a liar... much like you label Biden and Fauci idiots.
If you are an expert and all of a sudden you are catapulted into the public life the only sentiment you'll find there is hatred and distrust because love and admiration are already assigned to other people, and as every accountant knows the 2 entries must balance.
The possible exception would be Albert Einstein.
You know who are the expert at public image? Politicians, influencers, musicians and actors. They are so great that they suck all the love and admiration out of the population to attribute it to themselves and so only hatred remains, which of course it's duly offloaded onto experts.
Nobody would doubt Fauci if he was as great at public image as Brad Pitt, much like nobody doubted Brad Pitt would beat the virus in World War Z...people did grab onto their theatre seat, but only to see how it would happen.
The goal should be marketshare. That's the true measure of future profitability because it means that you have a huge moat.
Tesla is a 20 year old company and in this timeframe it managed to gather 1.3% share of all the cars sold in 2021.
There is a reason why Porsches and Ferraris are just as common as Teslas on the road. Porsche and Ferraris might be slightly more expensive but they have been doing it for longer so it balances itself out
Tesla was founded in 2002. That's 20 years ago. During the same timeframe Microsoft managed 95% share of Computer OS, Google 90% share of search, Standard Oil 85% of oil production.
Hell, even Escobar managed to get 80% of the global cocaine market.
They are both successful because they speak to our best part and give us hope
Of course the Bible is much more successful, but it also had like 100,000,000x the "marketing campaign" of Star Wars...also it was a marketing campaign at loss, whereas Star Wars had to make money for the studio.
But I wholeheartadly agree with the above message.
As you said new elements could come in to make you re-evaluate your admiration
By the same token new elements could come in for me to re-evaluate my stance and if we are indeed at the dawn of an era where CEOs become even more politcians, showmen, pop-culture icons then I'd have no problem tipping my hat to Musk as a pioneer of such new powerful trend.
Similarly I'd also tip my hat if "creative accounting" becomes the norm and also embracing the concept of manifestation and "self-fulfilling prophecy" concerning the stock price which has to be pumped at all costs to make sure that there is always enough air flowing on the wings to keep the company in air.
For a guy who is working like a dog , he has plenty of time to tweet nonsense to the masses. And now he owns the asylum.
But I think he's doing all the right things to be successful in this environment.
As I said when the population consumes culture at an unprecedented rate, you gotta become culture to be relevant. Hate the game, not the player.
Paraphrasing Tony Montana:
"In America first you get the attention, then you get the power, then you get the money, then you get the women"
It's the unprecendented amount of time that Americans devote to following pop-culture and Musk wants to become pop-culture squared.
China is approaching this thing differently, they make it very clear if you want to become a pop-culture icon you should sing or act. It's not allowing businessmen to become influencers or politicians, nor to put their nose into public health or education.
According to them the roles should be clearly separated, so his style and twitter purchase won't work there (or would work there for different reasons such as China using it as a trojan horse in the AMerican society)
It was completely different social landscape, people participate in culture at a much higher rate today.
The time people devote to catch up with latest social trends, celebrity news, rivalries etc. is unprecedented.
Say if a culture icon like the Beatles were in their prime today they'd have something like 1.2B instagram followers.
The stock price isn't seen as a KPI anymore, back in the days businessmen would make sure the company would sell quality products and services in the real world and then the stock price going up was just a mere consequence of that.
Nowdays it's all about transforming the company into a mission, a political movement or an outright cult. The stock is seen as a something to sell and if you can do so without any product sold in the real world then it's so much better because as a CEO you managed to efficiently skip a very labor-intensive and capital-intensive process to get to what you really want: Market Cap glory.
It used to be that corporate America had a certain arrogance of being superior to politics, religion and cults. People who resorted to that were singled out as desperate and it was the hint that their company was about to go under.
Nowadays it's the opposite: CEOs and companies which don't shitpost, don't talk politics and don't try to recruit people in their cults are left behind.
It's "fake it till' you make it" on an unprecedented level out there. And the worst offender is the one is worshipped the most on here, irony because game should recognize game.
I think if we coldly examine the moves like in a chess game, he's doing all the right things to be successful in this environment.
As I said when the population consumes culture at an unprecedented rate, you gotta become culture to be relevant. Hate the game, not the player.
If they buy the title to the Golden Gate Bridge from you and then try to cash in and suddenly realize they have been had....well it's only fair game if they come looking for you with the intention of making themselves whole (and then some)
Or if they are civilized they'd go to the police and they'd be the ones coming for you.
As you see the subjective theory of value can be extended to everything and anything. It doesn't stop working once the transaction is settled. Per the subjective theory of value the transaction can always be reversed: judicially, politically or violently.
That's the reason why scammers who are smart try to put as much geographical and jurisdictional distance between themselves and those who were scammed