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Congratulations. "We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us." -- Winston Churchill Though I barely understand such things, I'm very excited by your LTS

Congratulations. "We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us." -- Winston Churchill Though I barely understand such things, I'm very excited by your LTSE and Katsuyama's Investors Exchange (IEX). Listening to your interviews about LTSE, my takeaway is that your goal is to allow companies to be judged on their own merits, instead of someone else's. So one side effect may be to help migrate private equity funded companies back into the light. Terrific, right? I hope others see that our markets are designed. They are human artifacts. They are not natural laws to be accepted as-is. That we can shape and nurture markets as we see fit. That the rules matter. You and Katsuyama identified opportunities for improvement and engineered solutions. You're meta-geeks. Like programmers who make programming languages, so that others might benefit. Happy hunting.

eries 6y ago
Thanks for the kind words
- cdnpal 6y ago
  Eric, I saw you present at Twiistup years ago with that CEO guy from Demand Media, where you exclaimed that you crammed untested spyware toolbars into IMVU just to get money, knowing it would blow up your users' computers. It's clear you got some money since then, but other than that why would we trust you with a stock exchange in retrospect? Were you hoping we would forget?
  - jzig 6y ago
    There are not enough upvotes for this comment.
    - cdnpal 6y ago
      Eric, I see you've commented hours after my question was posted, but neglected to answer? You openly admitted to infecting IMVU users' computers with malicious toolbars on purpose to make quick, easy money at Twiistup in a speech on startups, and now you are asking us to buy stocks on your exchange? You're not even mentioning that SEC REGSHO applies to ANY US stock exchange, so all the brokers have to do is let certain clients borrow and that's the end of the "long term" regardless of your marketing of this. I guess you were a notch better than your Twiistup co-presenter Robert Scoble?: https://www.google.com/search?q=robert+scoble+harassment https://www.google.com/search?q=robert+scoble+harassment So reply Eric, tell us why you have become so trustworthy? Is it that you cajoled people into getting you truckloads of cash? Of course it is.
      - cdnpal 6y ago
        YASE - Yet Another Stock Exchange "This time I, Yes I, collect the listing fees! Yippee" - IMVU senior spyware deployer I fixed the marketing for you Eric. It's less abstract now. Almost like your startup speech at Skirball. https://victorcaballero.com/twiistup-7-agenda/ https://victorcaballero.com/twiistup-7-agenda/
- giantg2 6y ago
  Did you switch from r/wallstreetbets to selling gold miners their shovels? A very successful approach.
  - kirubakaran 6y ago
    Just don't get divorced. The "shovel guy": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Brannan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Brannan > Brannan's wife divorced him and he was forced to liquidate much of his real estate to pay her one-half of their assets. He died poor and in relative obscurity
    - giantg2 6y ago
      Better still - don't get married. It's just a piece of paper that says somebody else can take half your stuff.
      - giantg2 6y ago
        Why downvote if you won't correct me?
        giantg2 6y ago
        Now this is downvoted? Looks like someone's irrational and taking an unfounded emotional stance on the legal issue of marriage.
      - twic 6y ago
        Modelling marriage as an unhedged call option, interesting.
        giantg2 6y ago
        Not necessarily. The option could go either way - you might be the wealthier party but it could also be that your spouse is the wealthier one. You could also have a prenup, but that would still involve lawyers. I just don't see the benefit to the standard government marriage scheme. Domestic partner benefits have basically the same upside and very little downside these days. From a legal perspective marriage is almost entirely about property/money. There are plenty of people who have a loving and marriage-like relationship without getting the state's permission (piece of paper).
centimeter 6y ago
> I hope others see that our markets are designed. They are human artifacts. They are not natural laws to be accepted as-is. “Markets” are not the same thing as “the market”. Markets are human artifacts; the market is an emergent behavior. It’s governed by laws beyond our control as surely as the behavior of materials are governed by thermodynamics. If the behavior of your markets fails to match the reality of the market, the best you can hope for is to only introduce a small amount of inefficiency. Of course, utopians who ignore the real nature of the market usually find themselves lethally encumbered by deadweight loss. > your goal is to allow companies to be judged on their own merits, instead of someone else's. What is this supposed to mean? Why would a company’s subjective evaluation of themselves be a better basis for market valuation than the evaluation of the people who actually buy and sell interest in that company?
- mlyle 6y ago
  "The market" hardly exists in a bubble entirely outside of human sentiment and human institutions. Human institutions; the prevailing ways that capital moves; legal institutions; customary behaviors, mores, etc, all have a profound impact on not just markets but also The Market (tm). The edifices we create are important.
- munificent 6y ago
  > Markets are human artifacts; the market is an emergent behavior. If "the market" is a 2d array of 1 and 0 that emerges from a cellular automata, then "markets" are the rules for that automata. The human artifact defines the rules and incentives that cause the emergent behavior seen by aggregating all market participants. There is no Platonic ideal "markets" independent of the human structures where they operate any more than you can define how fast a pendulum swings without specifying its length.
  - centimeter 6y ago
    "Markets" (locations or brokers designated for trade) represent a very small fraction of all human economic activity. Conflating the rules of NYSE with the rules of the market is a mistake. > There is no Platonic ideal "markets" independent of the human structures You need to understand that there absolutely is a single "the market" and it's not platonic at all. It refers to the sum behavior of all human economic interaction, which is absolutely a physical reality.
ryan_j_naughton 6y ago
I concur! Market design is so important. Eric, I worked at the world's first carbon market over a decade ago (Chicago Climate Exchange) and a group of us are at the early stages of designing some new exchanges focused on fixing market failures across several sectors. I've been following your work for a long time, and I am excited to see LTSE finally launch. I am concerned about the ability for people to create secondary markets the undermine the intention of the LTSE. How do you resolve this?
- eries 6y ago
  If the reforms are embodied in the company's charter, they will follow the shares wherever they are traded
  - teruakohatu 6y ago
    Can you explain what this means?
    - eries 6y ago
      I'll try: The charter governs the relationship of the company to its investor. A share of stock is a contract between those parties. The charter controls what the stock "means" no matter where it trades.
      - biot 6y ago
        If I've understood the intent correctly, the individual investor side of LTSE is only a small part of the picture. The biggest part is that the company itself is setup for long-term focus via its principles[0] -- as one example, compensating executives not based solely on hitting a single quarter's numbers, but on performance over the long term. So long as a company adheres to those principles, it doesn't matter if an individual investor can obtain their shares via ShortTermScumbags.com or the like. Having investors who are along for the long haul is a nice-to-have, not a must-have, since the goal is long-term focused companies which will naturally, via its principles, eschew reacting to short-term trends in share price. [0] https://longtermstockexchange.com/listings/principles/ https://longtermstockexchange.com/listings/principles/

eries 6y ago

Thanks for the kind words

cdnpal 6y ago
Eric, I saw you present at Twiistup years ago with that CEO guy from Demand Media, where you exclaimed that you crammed untested spyware toolbars into IMVU just to get money, knowing it would blow up your users' computers. It's clear you got some money since then, but other than that why would we trust you with a stock exchange in retrospect? Were you hoping we would forget?
- jzig 6y ago
  There are not enough upvotes for this comment.
  - cdnpal 6y ago
    Eric, I see you've commented hours after my question was posted, but neglected to answer? You openly admitted to infecting IMVU users' computers with malicious toolbars on purpose to make quick, easy money at Twiistup in a speech on startups, and now you are asking us to buy stocks on your exchange? You're not even mentioning that SEC REGSHO applies to ANY US stock exchange, so all the brokers have to do is let certain clients borrow and that's the end of the "long term" regardless of your marketing of this. I guess you were a notch better than your Twiistup co-presenter Robert Scoble?: https://www.google.com/search?q=robert+scoble+harassment https://www.google.com/search?q=robert+scoble+harassment So reply Eric, tell us why you have become so trustworthy? Is it that you cajoled people into getting you truckloads of cash? Of course it is.
    - cdnpal 6y ago
      YASE - Yet Another Stock Exchange "This time I, Yes I, collect the listing fees! Yippee" - IMVU senior spyware deployer I fixed the marketing for you Eric. It's less abstract now. Almost like your startup speech at Skirball. https://victorcaballero.com/twiistup-7-agenda/ https://victorcaballero.com/twiistup-7-agenda/
giantg2 6y ago
Did you switch from r/wallstreetbets to selling gold miners their shovels? A very successful approach.
- kirubakaran 6y ago
  Just don't get divorced. The "shovel guy": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Brannan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Brannan > Brannan's wife divorced him and he was forced to liquidate much of his real estate to pay her one-half of their assets. He died poor and in relative obscurity
  - giantg2 6y ago
    Better still - don't get married. It's just a piece of paper that says somebody else can take half your stuff.
    - giantg2 6y ago
      Why downvote if you won't correct me?
      - giantg2 6y ago
        Now this is downvoted? Looks like someone's irrational and taking an unfounded emotional stance on the legal issue of marriage.
    - twic 6y ago
      Modelling marriage as an unhedged call option, interesting.
      - giantg2 6y ago
        Not necessarily. The option could go either way - you might be the wealthier party but it could also be that your spouse is the wealthier one. You could also have a prenup, but that would still involve lawyers. I just don't see the benefit to the standard government marriage scheme. Domestic partner benefits have basically the same upside and very little downside these days. From a legal perspective marriage is almost entirely about property/money. There are plenty of people who have a loving and marriage-like relationship without getting the state's permission (piece of paper).

centimeter 6y ago

> I hope others see that our markets are designed. They are human artifacts. They are not natural laws to be accepted as-is. “Markets” are not the same thing as “the market”. Markets are human artifacts; the market is an emergent behavior. It’s governed by laws beyond our control as surely as the behavior of materials are governed by thermodynamics. If the behavior of your markets fails to match the reality of the market, the best you can hope for is to only introduce a small amount of inefficiency. Of course, utopians who ignore the real nature of the market usually find themselves lethally encumbered by deadweight loss. > your goal is to allow companies to be judged on their own merits, instead of someone else's. What is this supposed to mean? Why would a company’s subjective evaluation of themselves be a better basis for market valuation than the evaluation of the people who actually buy and sell interest in that company?

mlyle 6y ago
"The market" hardly exists in a bubble entirely outside of human sentiment and human institutions. Human institutions; the prevailing ways that capital moves; legal institutions; customary behaviors, mores, etc, all have a profound impact on not just markets but also The Market (tm). The edifices we create are important.
munificent 6y ago
> Markets are human artifacts; the market is an emergent behavior. If "the market" is a 2d array of 1 and 0 that emerges from a cellular automata, then "markets" are the rules for that automata. The human artifact defines the rules and incentives that cause the emergent behavior seen by aggregating all market participants. There is no Platonic ideal "markets" independent of the human structures where they operate any more than you can define how fast a pendulum swings without specifying its length.
- centimeter 6y ago
  "Markets" (locations or brokers designated for trade) represent a very small fraction of all human economic activity. Conflating the rules of NYSE with the rules of the market is a mistake. > There is no Platonic ideal "markets" independent of the human structures You need to understand that there absolutely is a single "the market" and it's not platonic at all. It refers to the sum behavior of all human economic interaction, which is absolutely a physical reality.

ryan_j_naughton 6y ago

I concur! Market design is so important. Eric, I worked at the world's first carbon market over a decade ago (Chicago Climate Exchange) and a group of us are at the early stages of designing some new exchanges focused on fixing market failures across several sectors. I've been following your work for a long time, and I am excited to see LTSE finally launch. I am concerned about the ability for people to create secondary markets the undermine the intention of the LTSE. How do you resolve this?

eries 6y ago
If the reforms are embodied in the company's charter, they will follow the shares wherever they are traded
- teruakohatu 6y ago
  Can you explain what this means?
  - eries 6y ago
    I'll try: The charter governs the relationship of the company to its investor. A share of stock is a contract between those parties. The charter controls what the stock "means" no matter where it trades.
    - biot 6y ago
      If I've understood the intent correctly, the individual investor side of LTSE is only a small part of the picture. The biggest part is that the company itself is setup for long-term focus via its principles[0] -- as one example, compensating executives not based solely on hitting a single quarter's numbers, but on performance over the long term. So long as a company adheres to those principles, it doesn't matter if an individual investor can obtain their shares via ShortTermScumbags.com or the like. Having investors who are along for the long haul is a nice-to-have, not a must-have, since the goal is long-term focused companies which will naturally, via its principles, eschew reacting to short-term trends in share price. [0] https://longtermstockexchange.com/listings/principles/ https://longtermstockexchange.com/listings/principles/