The big question is how do we get more women into tech and crypto who are honest, not like Theranos. Although she may have been swayed by a bro. Tech, especially crypto, needs the same oversight as other financial institutions. Humans ( I called us funky monkeys in an article) aren't good at self-regulation.
Nov 17, 2022·edited Nov 17, 2022Liked by Stacey Eskelin
I don't mind you slappin' the boys around a bit. It's good fun. But, principally, I sorted through the fun stuff to extract the main thrust of your analysis and arguments with which I agree. There's something niggling at my thought processes, though, something about how things are far more complex than my usual surface assessments. In the capitalist ecosystem all things are connected and interrelated, I suppose. The tech guys are not just exploiting their tech, they also leverage the power of other corporations in their search for quarterly profits and growth, not least the so called main stream media and those who feed at that trough. When a unicorn comes trotting into view, it is showered with attention and a certain credibility is bestowed upon it. We are led to believe that unicorns are not only interesting and beguiling, but real, because most of us are gullible and prey for the confidence men, who are all boys.
"Because most of us are gullible and fall prey to the confidence men, who are all boys." That one wins a prize.
They're clever, those boys. Clever and competitive. All of them want to get out on top--just like their hero, Musk. The problem with capitalism is the growth model. Perpetual growth isn't good for the planet, and it's not good for us. Yet, how do you keep people who are wired to want more to stop wanting more?
"[W]e deserve protection from megalomaniacs like Musk, Zuckerberg, and all the rest of them." Why? Because when sociopaths come after your money, an individual has little real chance of escaping collateral damage. And when those in Congress are too fucking old to know how to send a email, we're screwed.
I've always operated under the credo that if you don't understand crypto (I don't), you shouldn't invest in it- and if you do understand it, you know why you shouldn't invest in it. It's the old "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" conundrum. But so many people see easy money and they send common sense out for a beer or six.
Twitter? Ah, fuck Elon Musk. I hope he ends up broke and in a flop house with a coked-up hooker from Haiti. It's about what he deserves.
Oh, if only wishes came true! I would settle for Musk getting a hemorrhagic disease or being thrown in jail for a decade, which is what he richly deserves.
"But its utopian belief that people, if left to their own devices without regulation and oversight, will do what benefits everyone is wildly misguided. They won’t. There is zero evidence indicating that people ever will. We are, underneath the designer suits and $500 haircuts, primates with a little bit of polish." - EXACTLY!
I would love to believe humanity has evolved past this tendency, but we haven't...yet. Instead we have a society where narcissism is increasingly celebrated which means people are increasingly motivated by self-interest and limited (if any) empathy. Also, these techbros weren't created in a bubble, society created them - that means society needs to change to prevent this from happening again.
Bingo. What's fascinating (in a horrible way) to me is how well-intentioned these people are. Most feel as though they are behaving out of sheer altruism (Zuckerberg is a prime example of this.) But they end up epitomizing that old chestnut about the road to hell being paved with good intentions.
We are WELL on that road right now. And I don't like it.
"Brojob" -- I almost destroyed my computer by snorking my beverage through my nose and all over the keyboard. Happily, as all guys like to hear, I swallowed first.
My hobby is Economic theory. Not the math side (which is frankly pretty useless and stupid) but the conceptual side. So I'd like to drop a few distinctions on you that many folks fail to make. None of these are my invention:
1. Capitalism is a *legal* system; "market" is an *economic* system.
1a. Capitalism is a legal system in which the laws favor the holders of capital and property. Its opposite is socialism, which is a legal system in which the laws favor the providers of labor and service.
1b. Market is an economic system in which forces of supply and demand determine the availability of goods & services, and their relative prices; its opposite is a "command" economy, in which all of the preceding are determined my top-down fiat.
2. We know these things are different because we've seen them in all combinations. Thus, both Nazi Germany and South Korea under the military junta of the '70's were capitalist systems that operated with a command economy. Meanwhile, both Hungary under the communists and Sweden prior to its recent fascist take over were socialist legal systems that operated according to market economics.
Historical side note: Adam Smith, of "The Wealth of Nations" fame, often called the "father of market economics," DESPISED the people we now call "capitalists." The word didn't exist when he published "Wealth" in 1776. "Capitalism" was first used in 1790, and "capitalist" came along some time after that. Smith referred to them as "merchants and manufactures." I've known of professional Econ professors who had a standing offer of an automatic "A" in their class to any student who could find a single kind or favorable word from Smith about the people we now call "capitalists." He never had to pay up. This is because Smith's sympathies were entirely on the side of labor. He was a fucking "socialist."
With regard to regulation, Smith argued quite forcefully (and here the terms are entirely my own) that one could no more have a free economy without regulation than one could have a free society without law.
I'm less sanguine than you about capitalism. Saying that capitalism "works" is a little like saying "slavery works." The latter certainly did, for thousands of years, in every society across the globe. One of the few times I had a serious interview for an academic job, one of the interviewers (who'd already made up his mind against me) challenged me on account of my first book, saying that physical cosmology has a theory that "worked."
Um, yeah. No. Einstein's vaunted general relativity has been repeatedly and catastrophically falsified by indisputable empirical evidence. It "works" because rather than deal with the fact, physicists fabricate magical stuff called "dark matter" and "dark energy" which comprise 98% of the universe and yet are completely undetectable. And on that (and other!) account, general relativity "works."
So my enthusiasm for late capitalism is, shall we say, equally tempered.
Things aren't altogether rosy for market economics -- with or without regulation -- either. The entire slave trade, the middle passage and all of it, was driven by market economics. It was not until the middle- to late-19th C. that European powers had the military strength to project themselves directly into the African continent. Up until that time, it was the power of the market that induced the Africans themselves to provide the Europeans (who never went deeper that the coasts) with the slaves that their insatiable market demanded.
And modern computers are already proving to powerful enough to get around the complexities that the market was supposed to solve by itself. Many corporations already employ forms of AI to determine the flow of goods and services, thus controlling prices and costs, which even 50 years ago were things so subtle it was impossible to imagine how one could trump the automatic functioning of the market.
Dammit, Gares, now I'm going to have to go right down the rabbit hole reading about Adam Smith--who I have long dismissed as the father of this "invisible hand of the free market" nonsense.
I've got his stupid "invisible hand. I've got i"t right here.
To clarify: to me, capitalism works, more or less, if it is sensibly regulated, but as you know, I lean more democratic socialist.
Smith is not exactly "lite reading." Fucking late enlightenment Scottish philosophers never saw a sentence they couldn't make longer and more turgid. It required the 20th C. French to out do them. "Market Economics" "works" if properly regulated. I'm not sure we can say the same about Capitalism (which is a *legal* system, and as such can adopt any economic system deemed useful or convenient.) Saying that something "works" is always a little tricky. Evolution "works", right up until the moment a species goes extinct, when all the things that had been "working" no longer do.
Before I moved my dad into assisted living, he had this very old microwave, the type with the mechanical rotating "egg timer"? Well the timer no longer functioned, you could turn the microwave on, but then you had to turn it off manually. I tried to get him to buy a new one, but he was like, "Why? The old one works." Yeah, right up to the point you've forgotten (again! He had dementia) that it was on, and you burn the whole house down. That's what I hear when someone tells me "it works."
This was a concise, insightful overview of, "tecbroism," with the customary humor that is a hallmark of your writing, Stacey. I appreciate the subject matter resources you referenced, I will definitely check them out, I've saved the documentary to my "Watch Later," list. Your take on this issue is evidentially based and impressively nuanced, not despite your opposition to these people, but because of it. These tech bros are the inevitable result, the apotheosis, of the libertarian triumphalism sold as "freedom," that is arguably Ronald Regan greatest legacy; that's not meant as a compliment, only recognition of his significance. Would that these crypto scandals, and Musk's mangling of Twitter, cause the termination of them both. I think that Twitter's collapse is plausible, crypto's less so. But barring it going away then my hope is that it becomes the niche backwater currency that it deserves.
I like how China banned crypto. As if they could! If crypto could be crushed like a garden slug, I'd be out there with my clogs on, too, doing a tap dance. But like you say, that probably won't happen.
"Libertarian triumphalism sold as freedom." That's a keeper.
Oh, human nature…what sins we commit in your name.
I strongly disagree with the notion that all humans are greedy by nature. If that were the case, we simply wouldn’t survive, at least as a social species. Moreover, children are more charitable, so what often gets passed off as human nature can more accurately be called “adulture.” <— Shall we normalise this term?
Don't worry, the REAL money guys in crypto are doing just fine. Aka narco trafficos. Crypto was an ocean of money washing. Dirty in, clean out. I am reminded of the scene in Breaking Bad where Walter walks unto a storage locker and finds an industrial size pallet with packets of $100 bills 6 feet tall. It was impossible to wash the sheer volume of drug $ until the invention of crypto. The ponzi went on just long enough for them to cash out. The guy with his 25 mil? He's an alligator's lunch in Florida. The 25 mil now parle Español.
I really can't summon up any compassion for anyone stupid enough to have invested. I tried to warn 2 people I knew. Me vs greed. Guess who won?
The big question is how do we get more women into tech and crypto who are honest, not like Theranos. Although she may have been swayed by a bro. Tech, especially crypto, needs the same oversight as other financial institutions. Humans ( I called us funky monkeys in an article) aren't good at self-regulation.
Eleven years she got. I don't like perpetuating the idea that women are crazy, but ... that woman is crazy. She even has crazy eyes.
You are so right about our inability to regulate ourselves individually or in groups. And the more opaque the conditions, the bigger the crime.
Women need to be invited to tech. They already see it as a scary, Incel, bro-club. We need to make it less scary, more appealing, and way less bro-y.
I don't mind you slappin' the boys around a bit. It's good fun. But, principally, I sorted through the fun stuff to extract the main thrust of your analysis and arguments with which I agree. There's something niggling at my thought processes, though, something about how things are far more complex than my usual surface assessments. In the capitalist ecosystem all things are connected and interrelated, I suppose. The tech guys are not just exploiting their tech, they also leverage the power of other corporations in their search for quarterly profits and growth, not least the so called main stream media and those who feed at that trough. When a unicorn comes trotting into view, it is showered with attention and a certain credibility is bestowed upon it. We are led to believe that unicorns are not only interesting and beguiling, but real, because most of us are gullible and prey for the confidence men, who are all boys.
"Because most of us are gullible and fall prey to the confidence men, who are all boys." That one wins a prize.
They're clever, those boys. Clever and competitive. All of them want to get out on top--just like their hero, Musk. The problem with capitalism is the growth model. Perpetual growth isn't good for the planet, and it's not good for us. Yet, how do you keep people who are wired to want more to stop wanting more?
This is the source of my pessimism.
"[W]e deserve protection from megalomaniacs like Musk, Zuckerberg, and all the rest of them." Why? Because when sociopaths come after your money, an individual has little real chance of escaping collateral damage. And when those in Congress are too fucking old to know how to send a email, we're screwed.
I've always operated under the credo that if you don't understand crypto (I don't), you shouldn't invest in it- and if you do understand it, you know why you shouldn't invest in it. It's the old "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" conundrum. But so many people see easy money and they send common sense out for a beer or six.
Twitter? Ah, fuck Elon Musk. I hope he ends up broke and in a flop house with a coked-up hooker from Haiti. It's about what he deserves.
Oh, if only wishes came true! I would settle for Musk getting a hemorrhagic disease or being thrown in jail for a decade, which is what he richly deserves.
"But its utopian belief that people, if left to their own devices without regulation and oversight, will do what benefits everyone is wildly misguided. They won’t. There is zero evidence indicating that people ever will. We are, underneath the designer suits and $500 haircuts, primates with a little bit of polish." - EXACTLY!
I would love to believe humanity has evolved past this tendency, but we haven't...yet. Instead we have a society where narcissism is increasingly celebrated which means people are increasingly motivated by self-interest and limited (if any) empathy. Also, these techbros weren't created in a bubble, society created them - that means society needs to change to prevent this from happening again.
Bingo. What's fascinating (in a horrible way) to me is how well-intentioned these people are. Most feel as though they are behaving out of sheer altruism (Zuckerberg is a prime example of this.) But they end up epitomizing that old chestnut about the road to hell being paved with good intentions.
We are WELL on that road right now. And I don't like it.
"Brojob" -- I almost destroyed my computer by snorking my beverage through my nose and all over the keyboard. Happily, as all guys like to hear, I swallowed first.
My hobby is Economic theory. Not the math side (which is frankly pretty useless and stupid) but the conceptual side. So I'd like to drop a few distinctions on you that many folks fail to make. None of these are my invention:
1. Capitalism is a *legal* system; "market" is an *economic* system.
1a. Capitalism is a legal system in which the laws favor the holders of capital and property. Its opposite is socialism, which is a legal system in which the laws favor the providers of labor and service.
1b. Market is an economic system in which forces of supply and demand determine the availability of goods & services, and their relative prices; its opposite is a "command" economy, in which all of the preceding are determined my top-down fiat.
2. We know these things are different because we've seen them in all combinations. Thus, both Nazi Germany and South Korea under the military junta of the '70's were capitalist systems that operated with a command economy. Meanwhile, both Hungary under the communists and Sweden prior to its recent fascist take over were socialist legal systems that operated according to market economics.
Historical side note: Adam Smith, of "The Wealth of Nations" fame, often called the "father of market economics," DESPISED the people we now call "capitalists." The word didn't exist when he published "Wealth" in 1776. "Capitalism" was first used in 1790, and "capitalist" came along some time after that. Smith referred to them as "merchants and manufactures." I've known of professional Econ professors who had a standing offer of an automatic "A" in their class to any student who could find a single kind or favorable word from Smith about the people we now call "capitalists." He never had to pay up. This is because Smith's sympathies were entirely on the side of labor. He was a fucking "socialist."
With regard to regulation, Smith argued quite forcefully (and here the terms are entirely my own) that one could no more have a free economy without regulation than one could have a free society without law.
I'm less sanguine than you about capitalism. Saying that capitalism "works" is a little like saying "slavery works." The latter certainly did, for thousands of years, in every society across the globe. One of the few times I had a serious interview for an academic job, one of the interviewers (who'd already made up his mind against me) challenged me on account of my first book, saying that physical cosmology has a theory that "worked."
Um, yeah. No. Einstein's vaunted general relativity has been repeatedly and catastrophically falsified by indisputable empirical evidence. It "works" because rather than deal with the fact, physicists fabricate magical stuff called "dark matter" and "dark energy" which comprise 98% of the universe and yet are completely undetectable. And on that (and other!) account, general relativity "works."
So my enthusiasm for late capitalism is, shall we say, equally tempered.
Things aren't altogether rosy for market economics -- with or without regulation -- either. The entire slave trade, the middle passage and all of it, was driven by market economics. It was not until the middle- to late-19th C. that European powers had the military strength to project themselves directly into the African continent. Up until that time, it was the power of the market that induced the Africans themselves to provide the Europeans (who never went deeper that the coasts) with the slaves that their insatiable market demanded.
And modern computers are already proving to powerful enough to get around the complexities that the market was supposed to solve by itself. Many corporations already employ forms of AI to determine the flow of goods and services, thus controlling prices and costs, which even 50 years ago were things so subtle it was impossible to imagine how one could trump the automatic functioning of the market.
And I'm still laughing about "brojob."
Dammit, Gares, now I'm going to have to go right down the rabbit hole reading about Adam Smith--who I have long dismissed as the father of this "invisible hand of the free market" nonsense.
I've got his stupid "invisible hand. I've got i"t right here.
To clarify: to me, capitalism works, more or less, if it is sensibly regulated, but as you know, I lean more democratic socialist.
And any day I can make you laugh is a good day.
Smith is not exactly "lite reading." Fucking late enlightenment Scottish philosophers never saw a sentence they couldn't make longer and more turgid. It required the 20th C. French to out do them. "Market Economics" "works" if properly regulated. I'm not sure we can say the same about Capitalism (which is a *legal* system, and as such can adopt any economic system deemed useful or convenient.) Saying that something "works" is always a little tricky. Evolution "works", right up until the moment a species goes extinct, when all the things that had been "working" no longer do.
Before I moved my dad into assisted living, he had this very old microwave, the type with the mechanical rotating "egg timer"? Well the timer no longer functioned, you could turn the microwave on, but then you had to turn it off manually. I tried to get him to buy a new one, but he was like, "Why? The old one works." Yeah, right up to the point you've forgotten (again! He had dementia) that it was on, and you burn the whole house down. That's what I hear when someone tells me "it works."
This was a concise, insightful overview of, "tecbroism," with the customary humor that is a hallmark of your writing, Stacey. I appreciate the subject matter resources you referenced, I will definitely check them out, I've saved the documentary to my "Watch Later," list. Your take on this issue is evidentially based and impressively nuanced, not despite your opposition to these people, but because of it. These tech bros are the inevitable result, the apotheosis, of the libertarian triumphalism sold as "freedom," that is arguably Ronald Regan greatest legacy; that's not meant as a compliment, only recognition of his significance. Would that these crypto scandals, and Musk's mangling of Twitter, cause the termination of them both. I think that Twitter's collapse is plausible, crypto's less so. But barring it going away then my hope is that it becomes the niche backwater currency that it deserves.
I like how China banned crypto. As if they could! If crypto could be crushed like a garden slug, I'd be out there with my clogs on, too, doing a tap dance. But like you say, that probably won't happen.
"Libertarian triumphalism sold as freedom." That's a keeper.
Lord help us all.
Oh, human nature…what sins we commit in your name.
I strongly disagree with the notion that all humans are greedy by nature. If that were the case, we simply wouldn’t survive, at least as a social species. Moreover, children are more charitable, so what often gets passed off as human nature can more accurately be called “adulture.” <— Shall we normalise this term?
Don't worry, the REAL money guys in crypto are doing just fine. Aka narco trafficos. Crypto was an ocean of money washing. Dirty in, clean out. I am reminded of the scene in Breaking Bad where Walter walks unto a storage locker and finds an industrial size pallet with packets of $100 bills 6 feet tall. It was impossible to wash the sheer volume of drug $ until the invention of crypto. The ponzi went on just long enough for them to cash out. The guy with his 25 mil? He's an alligator's lunch in Florida. The 25 mil now parle Español.
I really can't summon up any compassion for anyone stupid enough to have invested. I tried to warn 2 people I knew. Me vs greed. Guess who won?