The last paragraph:
"Yes, of course everyone deserves access to the Internet. But they deserve access to an open Internet where they can own their Digital Selves..."
Does everyone actually deserve internet access? Is that an inalienable human right?
If people want something of value, they have to provide value in return. If Google and Facebook see value in the people's data, then they are willing to give them "free" internet. It is a choice to give those corporations your data in exchange for their services.
Saying that people deserve something can be dangerous. Who provides these things that we all deserve? If there's no economic incentive, why would someone spend the money to provide goods and services for other people?
There are hundreds (thousands?) of years of discussion on positive versus negative rights, and not everyone is convinced either way. It doesn't seem particularly fruitful to open that can of worms here.
I completely agree with this, especially for us living now, since we have access to virtually any information on the internet.
However, I can see why Edison would ask seemingly pointless questions. First, while that information is readily available in books, going to a library to find the book with the information needed was much more time consuming than pulling up Google, so there is the convenience factor of memorizing random tidbits of information. Second, and perhaps more important, is the fact that Edison was an inventor, hiring people to help invent things. As an inventor, one needs to have a vast array of knowledge in many fields, and then to be able to make connections between seemingly unrelated items/topics. In our case (hacker news readers), we seek to combine separate entities in ways that no one has done before, creating a new product (read: app/website). Making connections no one else sees is at the heart of entrepreneurship, and invention as well, so having that wide array of knowledge could be see as invaluable.
When I was in the Army the officer in charge of my section commented that another PFC was better because he read the software manuals so he could answer questions that came over the phone.
I said I memorize things that I can't look up easily.
>>For job like programming or CEO, I kind of think that 70 year olds can do better than say 20 year olds.
Maybe in 50 years, but currently I'd say a 20-30 years old is the prime programmer age. Young people tend to learn new tech quicker, and be faster/more efficient at typing and using computers.
A 53 year old who has been programming for 30+ years is likely to be a good programmer because they managed to keep programming for all those years. How many of the less-talented people you started out with are still programming?
But I do agree that it without hard evidence, it's unfair to assume older programmers are slower or less capable. I have personally worked with some exceptional older programmers.
...typing and using computers? So you're comparing 20-30 year old programmers with 40 year old people who aren't even comfortable with computers? Yeah, I'd say apples are way better than oranges.
Great idea in theory, but there's a reason young people work such long hours: money. If a 22 year old graduates from college and works 25 hours a week, they won't have enough money to pay off their (almost certain) debt and live comfortably, much less have excess money to spend traveling and doing fun things. Young people work so hard so they can have the money to buy and do the things they want. Most just never stop working that hard in order to enjoy those things.
Working 25 hours/week would basically push "life" back a few years, meaning maybe you rent a small apartment and drive a old car until you're 35-40.
As they saying goes, young people have lots of time and no money, but older people have lots of money and no time.
Costs of stuff like rent and cars are normalized to average income levels. (Though of course with cars there is a base cost of manufacture that makes them less flexible than something like rent).
Which is to say, if everyone works 25 hours a week, rents will go down (because if they don't, you have most properties sitting empty). If instead everyone works 60 hours a week, rents go up.
Of course, economics is really complicated and rarely works out this simply. But that's the idea. It's a little silly to post here presuming that someone in Mr. Vaupel's position has somehow not thought of the fact that when you work fewer hours your nominal earnings go down. (I think this qualifies for what pg was calling Middlebrow Dismissal). It's a more reasonable response to say, well, of course he has thought of that, but I wonder what the answer is?
Sure, I'm sure he thought of that, and I'm sure prices would change since there would be less money earned and therefore less money in circulation. This would also require a change in standard of living though. My point is simply that people cannot maintain the same standard of living and work less, even if the entire world cut back hours at the same time. Less goods would be produced, so with the same demand then prices for everything would rise, or standards of living would fall.
As a 21 year old, I'd love to only work 25 hours a week. I'd just get involved with more FOSS projects and work on what I want to rather than what someone paying me wants me to do.
I'm sitting in a intro web development class at my university. We're learning C# and basic HTML/CSS. I didn't know when our exam was, and I showed up one day and got a 100%. Intro programming classes are a waste of time for someone who knows how to code.
Part of the reason not to let users pay is it could decrease the value of the ads they do show. The 8% or so of people who would pay for twitter are probably also the more influential, heavy twitter users. Thus, the 92% of people getting ads might be the lower-value users. That means their current ad revenue might drop drastically. But they could still make a few hundred million dollars from that 8%...
Good point. But remember, the 8% is presumably using third-party apps and not seeing ads now anyways. They would be willing to pay to continue to use the third-party apps ad-free.
You are exactly right that bitcoins are exactly like fiat money, and have no intrinsic value.
You actually unintentionally explained what you don't understand.
Fiat currency is a problem because it can be so easily manipulated by the governments behind it. Just like the dollar, bitcoins have value only because people believe they have value. Your statement that at least the dollar has a government with big military behind it is exactly what the problem is that bitcoin solves. Bitcoin does NOT have a big government or organization controlling it, so unlike the dollar, no single party can inflate the currency. Central banks are able to create money out of nothing, therefore creating something with perceived value without offering anything of value in exchange (i.e. inflation). That leads to all kinds of problems, as we're seeing with the global economic crisis right now.
While Bitcoin does not have any intrinsic value, it also does not have a way to be inflated. The system by design creates DEFLATION instead, so the currency becomes more valuable(infinite divisibility handles issues with deflation).
Since there is a finite number of bitcoins that can ever be mined, it acts much more like gold than like the dollar. Gold cannot be inflated by any government. If bitcoins gain mass adoption, then they will begin to look very similar to gold. The main difference being that they are purely digital and have no intrinsic value(thus making gold still a better currency).
That depends on your perspective, and what you value in a monetary supply.
If deflation outstrips investment returns, then yes - that would cause capital to stay in one place, as people wouldn't want to spend money that would be worth more tomorrow. Investment would stop, businesses couldn't get financing, and everything would grind to a halt.
That's not a sustainable situation though; there will never be a time when all units of currency are held, nothing changes hands, and value is infinite. Instead, as value increases there will be profit-taking, which will hold down the value to some point. With the current relative lack of liquidity, you get a boom/bust cycle (the price will shoot up as more people try to get in on the value incrase, then confidence falters and the price crashes back to near baseline).
This has already happened once for Bitcoin, and it's important to note that the value over time has been somewhat linear when you account for the impact of the boom/bust.
As the liquidity of the market increases due to wider adoption, then you'll start to see the cycles increase in duration, as the market seeks balance. There will always be fluctuations, though, so the ultimate goal is ubiquitous use of Bitcoin in the general economy, and years- or decades- long variance in value.
I believe we're entering a new phase of growth, which will be sustained. I predict we'll see a good-sized correction relatively soon, and lots of smaller ones on the way up, but otherwise the value of Bitcoin in USD will steadily rise for the foreseeable future.
This doesn't look like another boom to me. This looks like people moving wealth to Bitcoin, and actually using it to buy things other than banknotes.
Bitcoins are like gold, but better in a many ways. It's much faster to send bitcoins around the world than gold. It's also easier to verify payment in bitcoins as opposed to weighing and verifying the gold you received is actually gold and not fake.
There is no intrinsic value in gold either. In fact, all value is subjective and individual. If for you the gold may have technological value, it may not have such value for me. But it may have exchange value for me because you or other people demand gold for their own subjective reasons. And yes, technological value is still subjective because there is no objective measure why you should be involved in that particular technology requiring that much of gold. It all depends on your own decision (which may take in account equally subjective valuations of your customers who demand products of your technology).
Gold may have started being used as money because it was already demanded for, say, jewellery. Bitcoin may have started for "fun" or belief in future growth and even bigger demand. The truth is in both cases the initial value was purely subjective.
> You actually unintentionally explained what you don't understand. Fiat currency is a problem because it can be so easily manipulated by the governments behind it. Just like the dollar, bitcoins have value only because people believe they have value. Your statement that at least the dollar has a government with big military behind it is exactly what the problem is that bitcoin solves.
I think you misread my comment. I'm aware of the fact that people like Bitcoins because there is no government/central bank that can manipulate them. To me, that's a red herring though, the proverbial 'itch that Bitcoins scratch' for some people. I don't think Bitcoins solve any issues related to wealth preservation, and I don't think they offer any advantages as a store of value compared to other forms of wealth/value or currency that are not (directly) government controlled (at least not in similar ways as fiat money), such as commodities, precious metals, art, production capacity, etc. In fact, I think anyone holding lots of wealth in Bitcoins will someday lose all of it, in an instant.
The point is, that even though there is a limited amount of bitcoins, and even though governments have no influence on the supply of bitcoins or who holds them, they can still affect the value of bitcoins in dramatic ways. For example by legislation that makes any form of bitcoin trade illegal. Or maybe it doesn't even require legislation, maybe just the threat of legislation to curb bitcoin trade will cause people to lose trust in Bitcoins altogether. Just because the government can't inflate Bitcoins, doesn't mean it cannot destroy the trust some people have in it.
I mentioned military power not because I think it's a good thing, or an insurance against the depreciation of wealth expressed in fiat money, but as an example why fiat money is at least backed by something, unsustainable as it is. In times of resource scarcity or world-wide economic collapse, military power will 'buy' you (or at least some) the means to survive, not some virtual currency that nobody has a use for in times of distress.
> Since there is a finite number of bitcoins that can ever be mined, it acts much more like gold than like the dollar.
It acts like gold, but it is not gold. Gold is a tangible asset that has been a proven store of wealth since as long as we know about the history of human civilization. Gold is shiny, you can store it somewhere, make handy pieces out of it and and take it with you, people like holding and looking at gold, almost anybody, anywhere in the world will take gold in exchange for other goods or services. Smart governments are stockpiling gold at an accelerating rate, because they damn well understand that someday in the future dollars, euro's or yens will be worthless. Bitcoins are nothing like that. They are purely virtual, strings of bits, just like Linden dollars, or WoW gold. I think it is extremely unlikely people will ever lose faith in gold as a store of wealth, but I can imagine many scenario's where people will lose faith in Bitcoins. It will happen, trust me.
The money supply and inflation/deflation thing is purely theoretical. Hyperinflation doesn't occur because governements purposefully manipulate the money supply, but because paper rectangles and metal circles are useless if nobody has a use for them. I know the same can be said about gold, but I would bet everything on gold outliving Bitcoins as store of wealth. You don't need a PhD in economics to recognize this.
My advice: don't put your money in bitcoins. If you don't trust fiat money, buy tangible assets, invest in yourself, learn how to generate utility and wealth after the inevitable fiat money crash.
It acts like gold, but it is not gold. Gold is a tangible asset that has been a proven store of wealth since as long as we know about the history of human civilization.
Once somebody mine an asteroid full of gold, the whole Gold as money will come to an end. However, gold will become a more useful commodity in industrial/medical/electronic/etc applications since they are cheap.
Thousand years of history mean nothing when something change the whole playing field. There's nothing remotely implausible about asteroid mining except the necessary development of a space industry. As far as I am concerned, gold is living on borrowed time.
Commercial asteroid mining will be reality within this century, and is already attracting investment. Look up Planetary Resources & friends.
There are individual asteroids that have more easily extractable precious metals than the entire present earth supply, should we have a good method of returning them to earth. The mere existence of these ought to start playing a number on the metals markets once planetary resources starts doing something newsworthy.
People who I assume know much better what they are talking about (space agencies, scientists) have already commented on these wild space mining fantasy you are referring about. It's a ridiculous idea that is nowhere near technical or economical viability, and there really is no horizon on which it will be. To mine asteroids you would first have to build a permanent moon base, and drive down the costs of space missions down to the point that a single payload brought to earth would be worth more than the required investments.
Just because some nutters invest their excess money in some sci-fi fantasy doesn't make it real.
Gold is a tangible asset that has been a proven store of wealth since as long as we know about the history of human civilization. Gold is shiny, you can store it somewhere, make handy pieces out of it and and take it with you, people like holding and looking at gold, almost anybody, anywhere in the world will take gold in exchange for other goods or services.
Outright bullshit. Gold became money because you could make statues of the Sumerian gods out of it. Silver for almost exactly the same reason.
There is nothing actually valuable about some rotten piece of metal, or at least, their industrial uses can't back up their price.
What does it matter why gold and silver became 2 of the most reliable stores of value. Fact is they are both in limited supply, they both are labour intensive to 'produce', they both have a tradition desirabilty, and they both have been used as a medium of wealth for as long as people have had access to them.
> There is nothing actually valuable about some rotten piece of metal, or at least, their industrial uses can't back up their price.
Not valuable compared to what? A string of bits identifying some kind of cryptographic hash? Give me a break. If you really think it will be Bitcoins that will provide for your well-being after a complete monetary collapse, sooner than tangible, hard assets such as gold, you should get your head checked.
Forgetting about gold for a moment, go check how many proven, explorable reserves of silver there are right now, and at what rate they are being dug up for industrial use.
> Good luck when the gold bubble pops.
People have been saying this since as long as I can remember. Wait until the bubble pops... It just shows a complete lack of understanding of what actually constitutes a bubble, in economic terms. But feel free to disagree, who am I to tell you how to manage whatever fortune you have managed to gather.
That said, anyone with a brain will make sure they diversify into different asset classes. Apparently you seem to think I'm a goldbug or something, but this couldn't be farther from the truth.
You realize that 'money', in whatever form, shares that property with gold, right? Money only exists because it isn't really convenient to barter bushels of wheat for sheep, just so you can barter said sheep for the apples you need, but the sheep farm doesn't have. The only value money has, is what people will assign to it.
With that said, I'd recommend you to lookup some history of monetary systems, and see what systems survived for how long, and how they came to collapse. Just because bitcoins are digital, a product of technology, doesn't make them any different from tally sticks. It's just a way to exchange stuff without having to barter. Maybe bitcoins are much harder to counterfeit then tally sticks, but then again, it is probably also much easier to sabotage the systems required to trade them. In the end, the currency that sticks around the longest when all the other systems fail, will be the most reliable one to preserve wealth. It's a self-reinforcing process even.
Now go try and see how many bushels of wheat you can get your hands on with just exchanging tally sticks. Then try to buy some using gold.
Well I think they would if you actually tried, but anyway, this is going nowhere. I was just making the point that gold has always had value, and has outlived every form of currency that has ever existed, and will continue to do so, just because there are no real alternatives for it.
I think the most common are probably Ad-supported, Subscription, and Freemium(especially for games).
As we're seeing with all the issues being brought up about Facebook, Twitter, and Zynga, these current models do not always work. And even when they do, there are still issues.
There is huge potential right now for new revenue models, so I would recommend getting creative with how your idea could potentially make money.
If app.net succeeds, then there will be more of a transition to subscription services versus free, ad-based services. Currently though, the majority of users prefer free. The challenge is figuring out how to make money from them, which is why ad-supported services are so prevalent.
So try something new. And don't be afraid to ask for money.
Skills:
- Full-stack web development | Java, Node.js, React.js
- Data | SQL, Cassandra, Neo4j, MongoDB, Kafka
Experience:
~7 years, building systems for both early-stage startups and Fortune 100 enterprises.
mattschoch@gmail.com