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An awful lot of things these days get called Ponzi schemes these days which aren’t really, although they share some superficial characteristics of a Ponzi. Thi
by Biologist123 5y ago
An awful lot of things these days get called Ponzi schemes these days which aren’t really, although they share some
superficial characteristics of a Ponzi.
This isn’t a criticism of Strong Towns so much as a call for a better development of terminology to describe a whole array of economic arrangements which privilege insiders and early adopters at the expense of everyone else.
As an environmental economist trying to write a book on the exploitation of nature to the benefit of a few at the expense of many -
I feel the dearth of commonly accepted language on the topic acutely!
- prox 5y agoThat’s sounds like an interesting topic for a book. Is there no terminology yet or is the current terminology inadequate? Also do you have place to find out about the book ince it is ready? I am currently reading “The Value of Everything” which is great.
- Biologist123 5y agoI don’t think so! What I’m looking for is a sort of taxonomy of scams. Ponzi sits within that taxonomy but is only one species! I’ll advertise on HN once done. Thanks for your encouraging feedback.
- skybrian 5y agoIt’s not about coming up with a taxonomy but you might get some ideas from this book: Lying for Money: How Legendary Frauds Reveal the Workings of Our World <https://www.amazon.com/Lying-Money-Legendary-Frauds-Workings-ebook/dp/B078WFT5JV https://www.amazon.com/Lying-Money-Legendary-Frauds-Workings...> (Among other things the author specifically criticizes the loose use of “Ponzi Scheme”)
- Biologist123 5y agoThanks for flagging that - I look forward to having a deeper read. What Stronger Cities describe is probably closer to a control fraud.
- Jare 5y agoWikipedia suggests "Ponzi finance" > non-sustainable patterns of finance, such as borrowers who can only meet their debt commitment if they continuously obtain new sources of financing, often at an accelerating pace and/or ever-increasing interest rates until the borrower cannot secure more financing at any interest rate and becomes insolvent.
- Biologist123 5y agoThanks that’s interesting, but reliant on the all present word Ponzi!
- herbst 5y agoIMO more and more things are ponzies. Look at Dubai for example, only about 15% of their income is from oil. The rest is basically tourism. Yet they expand at a rapid rate, but only until tourists stop coming (which gets obvious when you followed their recent push to import influencers with an visa that forbids to talk bad about Dubai) It's not exactly Ponzi. But whatever one says it's very ponzi-ish
- dfadsadsf 5y agoWith how expensive and overbooked everything is this summer, bet on continuous tourism may prove right and Dubai will continue to expand. Demand for year round beach destination is higher than supply.
- herbst 5y agoRight but for how long? One can't grow on forever, that's not how things work with limited resources
- machinehermiter 5y agoTotally agree. Our economics language sucks. Ponzi, efficient markets, even "capitalism".. These words have so many degrees of meaning they are practically meaningless for communication. Then on the other end, mathematical rigour goes too far.