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The price has gone down it seems. A few years ago I'd estimated it at a million, but acknowledged that technology could be a multiplier. So maybe a quarter mill

The price has gone down it seems. A few years ago I'd estimated it at a million, but acknowledged that technology could be a multiplier. So maybe a quarter million isn't that far off my estimate. But $250K adjusted for individual wizardry does lay bare just how daunting that climb is. Information technology is wizardry, but it's the upstart in a land where finance has basically been Sauron for hundreds of years. Engineers believe they can beat finance by working smarter, by learning more powerful spells and correspondences. It fails more often than not. When it does work, watching successful startups slowly sell their soul to the devil by incorporating finance strategies is a bit of a hobby of mine. Invariably they take their competitive advantage, the goodwill they've built up with their customers / workers, and commoditize it, making it as close to a negotiable financial instrument as possible. Uber drivers are no longer people, they are financial resources with dollar values. Uber sold them the vision of a life bounded only by your ambition to enable it to reach for the brass ring, then clawed it back once it had it out of sheer, pure greed. People who freely gave their time and attention to make Facebook something more interesting and mainstream than existing social networks which at the time seemed to be trending inexorably towards ever more niche audiences found that time and attention farmed, commoditized, and sold. Watching new money slowly morph into old money, the moral adventures of the new demigods, as well as the public's unholy fascination with them, better than any Marvel movie could possibly be. Better, because I can participate in the morality play just by opening up my phone and calling an Uber. These truly are interesting times.

chosenbreed37 8y ago
> People who freely gave their time and attention to make Facebook something more interesting and mainstream than existing social networks which at the time seemed to be trending inexorably towards ever more niche audiences found that time and attention farmed, commoditized, and sold. I assume you're talking about the users. If so you could argue that they were given a service free of charge. That service enabled them to fulfill some need/whim. They're weren't necessarily interested in making Facebook better. They just wanted to use it for what it could do for them. In return Facebook users their data. You're right though. These are interesting times.
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  > If so you could argue that they were given a service free of charge. Sure. And so are Uber drivers. But the only real way the service continues to be of value is if the value proposition remains the same. Facebook and Uber made a promise, maybe not explicitly, but implicitly, that the service would continue to offer the same value on Year 10 as it did on Year 1. And those early adopters, those without which the companies could not have gotten as rich as they have gotten, bought that promise, hook, line, and sinker. They probably didn't realize that the platform they were building, the devil whose promises they bought, would turn into the monster that it has. Heck, some probably still busy themselves defending that monster as we speak. To make this clearer, the trade for the early adopters isn't just for what those early adopters immediately got for it, but also for a promise. Without the promise, nobody would bother. This is what makes a startup so hard to get off the ground in the first place. I have to either not care about the money or really buy into the promise in order to fund a Kickstarter. I have to trust your company's SaaS offering before I'll add it as a dependency to my own business or my own life. Without a promise of future value, no company would ever get off the ground. Everybody is complicit, some more than others. That's what makes a morality play so riveting, you are participating just by watching it. When I call an Uber, I sell a little bit of my soul to make my life a little bit more convenient. The nature of technology and modernity is such that you cannot avoid making such choices. All you can do is make them anyway and hope you don't get screwed.

chosenbreed37 8y ago

> People who freely gave their time and attention to make Facebook something more interesting and mainstream than existing social networks which at the time seemed to be trending inexorably towards ever more niche audiences found that time and attention farmed, commoditized, and sold. I assume you're talking about the users. If so you could argue that they were given a service free of charge. That service enabled them to fulfill some need/whim. They're weren't necessarily interested in making Facebook better. They just wanted to use it for what it could do for them. In return Facebook users their data. You're right though. These are interesting times.

vinceguidry 8y ago
> If so you could argue that they were given a service free of charge. Sure. And so are Uber drivers. But the only real way the service continues to be of value is if the value proposition remains the same. Facebook and Uber made a promise, maybe not explicitly, but implicitly, that the service would continue to offer the same value on Year 10 as it did on Year 1. And those early adopters, those without which the companies could not have gotten as rich as they have gotten, bought that promise, hook, line, and sinker. They probably didn't realize that the platform they were building, the devil whose promises they bought, would turn into the monster that it has. Heck, some probably still busy themselves defending that monster as we speak. To make this clearer, the trade for the early adopters isn't just for what those early adopters immediately got for it, but also for a promise. Without the promise, nobody would bother. This is what makes a startup so hard to get off the ground in the first place. I have to either not care about the money or really buy into the promise in order to fund a Kickstarter. I have to trust your company's SaaS offering before I'll add it as a dependency to my own business or my own life. Without a promise of future value, no company would ever get off the ground. Everybody is complicit, some more than others. That's what makes a morality play so riveting, you are participating just by watching it. When I call an Uber, I sell a little bit of my soul to make my life a little bit more convenient. The nature of technology and modernity is such that you cannot avoid making such choices. All you can do is make them anyway and hope you don't get screwed.