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I've been a user of your project and it's fantastic. I think you're being too hard on yourself. The proliferation of marketplaces and assets to trade (and all

I've been a user of your project and it's fantastic. I think you're being too hard on yourself. The proliferation of marketplaces and assets to trade (and all type of projects, automated trading, market making, etc... that your project enabled) can been seen as a net positive, as a win win for all parties involved and more. From a microeconomic perspective, your library enabled access to startup using js and with relatively simple tech stacks access to a tool that would otherwise be relatively complicated and time consuming and for which they would not necessary have the resouces. By doing so you lowered the cost of entry and allowed new entrants to challenge the status quo. And from a macroeconomic perspective I think it's one of the reason access to capital has been simplified and has lowered in cost, it's one of the reason for the low cost of mortgages and the relative resilience of economies during covid (central banks interventions are useless without bank and other financial intermediaries participation, it would be like pushing on a string). Don't be fooled by the contemporary contempt against finance. It's still the most important reason that explain the constant improvmements in prosperity and peace of recent years, and the best thing one can do is to make it less arcane and open it to more people. One of the achievements of your tool. You can be proud of your work.

nicoburns 5y ago
> Don't be fooled by the contemporary contempt against finance. It's still the most important reason that explain the constant improvmements in prosperity and peace of recent years I think the contempt comes from the fact that financial instruments have a tendency to concentrate those benefits in small proportion of the population. Low-cost mortgages are an excellent example: these have enabled wealth gain for those who were able to get them at a certain time. But that gain has come almost entirely at the expense of those who weren't able to (or simply didn't) get them, who now face greatly increased rent and house prices.
- lazide 5y ago
  It isn’t financial instruments doing that - it’s people. Be thankful that it allows this to happen somewhat transparently and peacefully, rather than at the hands of pinkertons, criminals, or the military - which is how historically it has happened.
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    The financial instruments (and the underlying rules of the economic system) are the enablers here. You're probably right that it's probably better than what came before, but that doesn't mean we can improve on the system we have.
    - lazide 5y ago
      Of course we can improve it - by identifying where people’s behaviors and systemic effects are causing undesirable behaviors. That probably doesn’t happen if we blame ‘finance’ for it though? Every system has exploitable loopholes and will become unbalanced once enough people start gaming it. Some of them (especially new ones) are easier than others. It’s easy to say ‘this is terrible’, but that can easily turn into rejecting a known system with adjustments and corrections for bad behaviors that isn’t perfect into a system that gets gamed even easier by bad actors and turns into an even worse (but different) mess. See 90% of all revolutions ever.
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        Judging from how utterly close that was to a well-worn idiom, I'm guessing what the GP meant to write was "that doesn't mean we can't improve..." Just so you guys don't get into violent agreement.
        nicoburns 5y ago
        Ha, yes I certainly did mean that. Sometimes I type HN comments too quickly.
        lazide 5y ago
        Haha, for sure. That’s it! Handshakes at dawn it is!
        CRConrad 5y ago
        The new Russian-roulette-ish form of dueling: Handshakes at dawn -- without hand sanitizer.
nicoffeine 5y ago
> (central banks interventions are useless without bank and other financial intermediaries participation, it would be like pushing on a string). Yes, the only thing financial intermediaries would be missing is the actual funds (largely paid by the middle class) to bail out corporations for the second time in less than twenty years. > Don't be fooled by the contemporary contempt against finance. There has been contempt for greed and corruption for a long time, and for the same reasons that finance continues to earn it today. If the middle class didn’t constantly bail out the banks and their related parasites, you would all be bankrupt. Frankly I don’t want to hear any advice from anyone in the financial industry until you demonstrate the ability to pay taxes and save enough to make it through the next crisis without crawling to the capitol building with your hand out.
- lazide 5y ago
  Pretty sure you’re blaming the wrong people. I’m not now and have never been in finance - but blaming banks or traders for the Fed’s actions is prima facia ridiculous. And throwing in the whole ‘greed is good’ stereotype doesn’t help.
  - nicoffeine 5y ago
    Did the fed lobby for the end of regulations and then immediately tank the world economy with a pyramid scheme? Blaming the fed for the bailout is like blaming firefighters for putting out a fire instead of the arsonist. That’s a pretty strange understanding of accountability. While the world economy burned to the ground and families went hungry, the financial industry awarded their executives with billions of dollars in bonuses. If that isn’t greed, what is it?
    - lazide 5y ago
      Which ones exactly and how did they pull off this apparent massive conspiracy? Near as I can tell, Greenspan pumping trillions of near free credit into the economy is nearly if not more culpable than the loose underwriting at these banks - after all, if they didn’t loosen them, they’d lose their market share in near free credit environments. And what about the borrowers that were signing up for these completely unrealistic loans? How do they fit in? And the poor bastards bidding crazy amounts trying to get a house, any house, and also way overpaying in any real sense because of these crazy bidding wars? It’s easy to blame amorphous entities, it’s hard to really nail down what was actually happening - and point out that everyone in the US was playing a part in a spiraling out of control mess.
andrepd 5y ago
The financial services industry is focused on helping those with the most wealth accumulate even more wealth. You can try to spin this any way you'd like, but this is their raison d'être, it's the business they're in. Don't try to pretend they're actually helping us all, especially after 2008 has revealed their true nature to the wider public. All you're saying would be correct if we had a sane system of property rights, (which we don't); then finance would be truly benefiting everyone. But that's not the world we live in.
- lmm 5y ago
  > The financial services industry is focused on helping those with the most wealth accumulate even more wealth. Every business is focused on making money, and that usually means serving the people with the most money because, well, they have the most money. > Don't try to pretend they're actually helping us all, especially after 2008 has revealed their true nature to the wider public. 2008, where it became clear that the banks had screwed over their wealthy investors (and each other) to help chumps get mortgages they couldn't afford? How does that show what you're claiming it shows?
logotype 5y ago
Thank you!
krageon 5y ago
The financial industry is a necessary evil because our entire financial system is so fucked up. I recognise that a certain amount of cognitive dissonance is required if you work in the industry, but I think saying it is a primary driver for social improvement is really taking that way too far. That said, if you write cool software that is cool. It doesn't need to have a huge social impact as long as you enjoy creating it, which appears to be the case here :)

nicoburns 5y ago

> Don't be fooled by the contemporary contempt against finance. It's still the most important reason that explain the constant improvmements in prosperity and peace of recent years I think the contempt comes from the fact that financial instruments have a tendency to concentrate those benefits in small proportion of the population. Low-cost mortgages are an excellent example: these have enabled wealth gain for those who were able to get them at a certain time. But that gain has come almost entirely at the expense of those who weren't able to (or simply didn't) get them, who now face greatly increased rent and house prices.

lazide 5y ago
It isn’t financial instruments doing that - it’s people. Be thankful that it allows this to happen somewhat transparently and peacefully, rather than at the hands of pinkertons, criminals, or the military - which is how historically it has happened.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  The financial instruments (and the underlying rules of the economic system) are the enablers here. You're probably right that it's probably better than what came before, but that doesn't mean we can improve on the system we have.
  - lazide 5y ago
    Of course we can improve it - by identifying where people’s behaviors and systemic effects are causing undesirable behaviors. That probably doesn’t happen if we blame ‘finance’ for it though? Every system has exploitable loopholes and will become unbalanced once enough people start gaming it. Some of them (especially new ones) are easier than others. It’s easy to say ‘this is terrible’, but that can easily turn into rejecting a known system with adjustments and corrections for bad behaviors that isn’t perfect into a system that gets gamed even easier by bad actors and turns into an even worse (but different) mess. See 90% of all revolutions ever.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      Judging from how utterly close that was to a well-worn idiom, I'm guessing what the GP meant to write was "that doesn't mean we can't improve..." Just so you guys don't get into violent agreement.
      - nicoburns 5y ago
        Ha, yes I certainly did mean that. Sometimes I type HN comments too quickly.
      - lazide 5y ago
        Haha, for sure. That’s it! Handshakes at dawn it is!
        CRConrad 5y ago
        The new Russian-roulette-ish form of dueling: Handshakes at dawn -- without hand sanitizer.

nicoffeine 5y ago

> (central banks interventions are useless without bank and other financial intermediaries participation, it would be like pushing on a string). Yes, the only thing financial intermediaries would be missing is the actual funds (largely paid by the middle class) to bail out corporations for the second time in less than twenty years. > Don't be fooled by the contemporary contempt against finance. There has been contempt for greed and corruption for a long time, and for the same reasons that finance continues to earn it today. If the middle class didn’t constantly bail out the banks and their related parasites, you would all be bankrupt. Frankly I don’t want to hear any advice from anyone in the financial industry until you demonstrate the ability to pay taxes and save enough to make it through the next crisis without crawling to the capitol building with your hand out.

lazide 5y ago
Pretty sure you’re blaming the wrong people. I’m not now and have never been in finance - but blaming banks or traders for the Fed’s actions is prima facia ridiculous. And throwing in the whole ‘greed is good’ stereotype doesn’t help.
- nicoffeine 5y ago
  Did the fed lobby for the end of regulations and then immediately tank the world economy with a pyramid scheme? Blaming the fed for the bailout is like blaming firefighters for putting out a fire instead of the arsonist. That’s a pretty strange understanding of accountability. While the world economy burned to the ground and families went hungry, the financial industry awarded their executives with billions of dollars in bonuses. If that isn’t greed, what is it?
  - lazide 5y ago
    Which ones exactly and how did they pull off this apparent massive conspiracy? Near as I can tell, Greenspan pumping trillions of near free credit into the economy is nearly if not more culpable than the loose underwriting at these banks - after all, if they didn’t loosen them, they’d lose their market share in near free credit environments. And what about the borrowers that were signing up for these completely unrealistic loans? How do they fit in? And the poor bastards bidding crazy amounts trying to get a house, any house, and also way overpaying in any real sense because of these crazy bidding wars? It’s easy to blame amorphous entities, it’s hard to really nail down what was actually happening - and point out that everyone in the US was playing a part in a spiraling out of control mess.

andrepd 5y ago

The financial services industry is focused on helping those with the most wealth accumulate even more wealth. You can try to spin this any way you'd like, but this is their raison d'être, it's the business they're in. Don't try to pretend they're actually helping us all, especially after 2008 has revealed their true nature to the wider public. All you're saying would be correct if we had a sane system of property rights, (which we don't); then finance would be truly benefiting everyone. But that's not the world we live in.

lmm 5y ago
> The financial services industry is focused on helping those with the most wealth accumulate even more wealth. Every business is focused on making money, and that usually means serving the people with the most money because, well, they have the most money. > Don't try to pretend they're actually helping us all, especially after 2008 has revealed their true nature to the wider public. 2008, where it became clear that the banks had screwed over their wealthy investors (and each other) to help chumps get mortgages they couldn't afford? How does that show what you're claiming it shows?

logotype 5y ago

Thank you!

krageon 5y ago

The financial industry is a necessary evil because our entire financial system is so fucked up. I recognise that a certain amount of cognitive dissonance is required if you work in the industry, but I think saying it is a primary driver for social improvement is really taking that way too far. That said, if you write cool software that is cool. It doesn't need to have a huge social impact as long as you enjoy creating it, which appears to be the case here :)