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> You borrow. Debt is good as long as you pay it off I think this is where software and other sectors come together to demonstrate why something that seems goo

> You borrow. Debt is good as long as you pay it off I think this is where software and other sectors come together to demonstrate why something that seems good ends up evil. What is to stop someone from borrowing slightly further beyond their means than you? What does that mean for the market? Housing is unaffordable, turning us into slaves and also in a wired crisis, software is either free, vaporware or impossible to discover under all the vapourware and the website needed to compete with vaporware.. Without standards, ratings, limits, strong unions and trade associations, everything becomes a market for lemons since someone will take the risk of faking it all when the penalties are only partial revocation of the profits.

galoisgirl 6y ago
> What is to stop someone from borrowing slightly further beyond their means than you? In Europe, banking laws.
specialist 6y ago
Nice. "everything becomes a market for lemons..." Long I've been pondering how our notions of technical debt (managing risk, complexity) might apply to government, regulations, bureaucracy, etc. There's so many analogs. eg René Descartes said our cities would be simple and orderly if designed by a single mind. Now your comment makes me realize I ignored the flip. What are our analogs (in software, design) to regulatory capture, rent seeking, and other pathologies. Thank you.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Cities designed by a single mind are often simple, orderly, ... and dysfunctional. Evolution over time, successfully addressing challenges, accumulating wisdom, avoiding classic blunders, works pretty well.
sokoloff 6y ago
> What is to stop someone from borrowing slightly further beyond their means than you? There's always a spectrum of risk-taking. Some people will borrow every last dollar their bank will let them. Others will not. I was shocked at the size of the loan that the bank pre-approved me for back in 2007 (fairly crazy times in US housing market). I borrowed substantially less than that because I wasn't comfortable taking out a loan at that high of a debt-to-income ratio. On the flip-side, had I taken out a maximum-sized loan, I'd have made more paper gains in housing in the last 13 years, so there is often reward for risk-taking.

galoisgirl 6y ago

> What is to stop someone from borrowing slightly further beyond their means than you? In Europe, banking laws.

specialist 6y ago

Nice. "everything becomes a market for lemons..." Long I've been pondering how our notions of technical debt (managing risk, complexity) might apply to government, regulations, bureaucracy, etc. There's so many analogs. eg René Descartes said our cities would be simple and orderly if designed by a single mind. Now your comment makes me realize I ignored the flip. What are our analogs (in software, design) to regulatory capture, rent seeking, and other pathologies. Thank you.

dredmorbius 6y ago
Cities designed by a single mind are often simple, orderly, ... and dysfunctional. Evolution over time, successfully addressing challenges, accumulating wisdom, avoiding classic blunders, works pretty well.

sokoloff 6y ago

> What is to stop someone from borrowing slightly further beyond their means than you? There's always a spectrum of risk-taking. Some people will borrow every last dollar their bank will let them. Others will not. I was shocked at the size of the loan that the bank pre-approved me for back in 2007 (fairly crazy times in US housing market). I borrowed substantially less than that because I wasn't comfortable taking out a loan at that high of a debt-to-income ratio. On the flip-side, had I taken out a maximum-sized loan, I'd have made more paper gains in housing in the last 13 years, so there is often reward for risk-taking.