PolarKraken

Grift. It's all scam, all the time.

It's funny, this kinda stuff reminds me of the best parts of the (largely bygone) punk rock and hacker subcultures. Feels like almost the specific overlap between the two. And lately it feels like there's been more and more of that, like the condition of the world is causing those ethos to reawaken, to recapitulate their evergreen salience, maybe even to combine.

Probably projecting a bit, to be fair. I feel I've internally stayed an old punk rocker and hacker, and feel those old flames reigniting, despite the indignities and compromises that come with middle age and spending eventual adulthood trying to survive in corporate America. Not so punk after all, lmao

Edit: minor grammar

:(

Yep, this is what's going on. As is usual with Trump, there's no actual ideology or goal, it's all scam all the time. When you can unilaterally announce at any moment of any day that you are about to grenade the global economy, that's going to have a guaranteed response from the markets. Predictable as the fuckin sunrise. Especially because everyone rightly knows Trump truly doesn't give a shit about the consequences and absolutely might just do it.

Then he says some wildly different shit a different day, with again 100% predictable market movements (even announcing on Truth Social ahead of time to buy, which is truly beyond the pale), and everyone he knows gets even richer, again. That grift will wear out and stop working and he'll switch to something else.

And again, and again, and again. All scam, all the time. I mean, plebes like us are aware of multiple concurrent grifts the guy is using the presidency for. Imagine what we don't know about! It's kleptocracy of the highest order.

Any interesting patterns in the users being systematically targeted for downvotes? Wondering if this is personal grudge or enemy action, basically.

You're not really engaging with my points or questions so I'm gonna move on. I understand how the current situation works quite well, having been involved in many businesses in many different roles throughout my life. Most of us agree the way things work today is awful. I was here to explore fruitful changes to make to the status quo. Not to be told how one can, in fact, seek risk through the joys of sole proprietorship.

Cheers, have a good weekend.

That's a super naive understanding of how it works to "setup a business", outside of I guess a sole-proprietor tiny little situation.

And regardless - let me ask you, why must it be all or nothing? Under your scenario, I either take all of the risk myself by founding the business, or I am strictly paid in dollars by someone who did, and nothing in between - but why? What's the argument that this is a good way to do things? Am I not taking some risk by buying into the company I work for? Why is that only an option for the very top of the company? Because "risk" is a misnomer that focuses on the wrong part, and actually it's freaking great to have a true stake in your place of employment?

I'm not arguing that it's impossible to start a business, or to work and scrape and get lucky and transition into the ownership class in some small capacity. I'm saying having only a few people have true skin in the game for any business is frickin stupid, a bad way to do things, likely to produce half-hearted efforts from employees, and guaranteed to produce the extreme wealth inequality we see today.

Edit: bit more detail on my preferred approach

Thank you, very useful to have someone who has done it in the thread. Would you agree that being born into one of the wealthy families in America would dramatically reduce the difficulty and risk of everything you've described above? All that stuff sounds so much easier if you're rich enough to pay others to do a bunch of it, and rich enough to still be fine (even still rich, usually!) if it doesn't work out.

What if instead of zero profits, all employees are paid in part via some amount of ownership stake in any company?

My issue with the "we take all the risk, tho!" argument is that I'm never even allowed to take the risk, too. For example, my current company is small, compensation has grown disappointing after we were acquired by VC, and there is no pathway for me to begin purchasing any kind of ownership stake. We're just the labor, despite all of us having been here longer than the new owner, in many cases having been here to build the thing the new owners bought.

So it must be pretty damn attractive, actually, for those at the top to continually offer that to one another, while withholding it from anyone below executive leadership. I'm pretty tired of hearing it as a justification when those "taking all the risk" end up doing so goddamn well, and the rest of us are locked out of it in the first place. It's just abusive language we've all internalized.

Edit to add: ya know, it was probably easier to swallow and originated in the prior eras, where a steady paycheck was a safe and stable way to go through life. These days being an underpaid wage slave is far riskier than being any kind of investor. I don't think "all the risk" is even meaningful or remotely accurate anymore.

"Shoulda kept me in, now look what ya did, there's folks even shittier than me who've been waiting for this opportunity"

True or not, these are the words of a guaranteed abuser lmao

Sounds like a RINO to me lol

I called this shit from the beginning, that the tariff bullshit was just a legit-seeming way to make the market do stuff he could easily predict (by directly causing). Didn't realize he was literally communicating, nakedly, when to buy and sell though. Fucking WILD. And I promise before long he uses that exact mechanism to do the opposite thing and fuck all the folks who get used to listening to such announcements.

And nothing will be done. Stock market itself is such a fuckin scam, and I say that as a dude with a 401k.

Edit: actually, to add, one thing I didn't notice initially is that these naked manipulations, with some ability for randos to profit too during the ride, that really has the Musk stink all over it. Same shit he's gotten away with often, just now with the goddamn US President as the mouthpiece, scamcoins and all. Truly bananas, where we're at.