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My job is to watch dreams die
- pseudonym 15y agoBoth interesting and depressing. No matter who you think should ultimately take the blame for the housing crash, it's easy to forget how many people other than just the homeowners are affected by this crap.
- mirkules 15y agoThe irony, of course, is that people's economic hardships are creating jobs. Which means there's enough money in foreclosures alone to warrant having an employee to evaluate the extent of foreclosures. It's sickening.
- jerf 15y agoBroken window fallacy. Jobs aren't really being created. The people in question are doing the economy a service by facilitating the correct valuations of these assets, so their jobs are bringing value to the economy, but it's value they shouldn't have had to bring in the first place. The net impact on the amount of wealth in society is still hugely negative, as is the "jobs" impact. (These people are the cleanup crew, in the "broken window fallacy" story they are the ones making the new windows and installing them. They aren't the ones who broke the window.)
- mirkules 15y agoI don't quite understand the fallacy. If there is a spike in broken windows -- more than the cleanup crew can handle -- new people need to be hired. How is this not creating new jobs?
- forinti 15y agoTom Waits should put a melody on that.
- patrickk 15y agoThere's a Hollywood blockbuster waiting to be made out of a story like this (as noted in some of the Reddit comments). Something along the lines of Fight Club (grimy house scenes, top-notch monologue) or Lord of War/Up in the Air (someone doing a toxic job but good at it).
- arethuza 15y agoIf you want a fictional account, rather than a documentary like the excellent Inside Job, I think a black comedy in the style of Dr. Strangelove might be more appropriate.
- jackpirate 15y agoThank you for Smoking might be a little closer?
- marknutter 15y agoOr at least a very decent reality TV show.
- davedx 15y agoInteresting, but hacker news? Come on... if I wanted general news, then I'd go to Reddit.
- vladd 15y agoHN is mainly aimed towards insightful stories about "hacking" any system that is not tuned properly and still has room for improvement in order to be more close to our desires. Entrepreneurship is the main way to hack society and its systems (I put most politicians in the "those that cannot do, teach" department). But the first step in fixing a system is to find out about its issues. From this perspective, this is very much an on-topic story on HN. See also the meaning of "hacker" written by pg: http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html .
- yariang 15y agoRepeating from above: "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Stories don't have to be about hacking. In fact, the Hacker News guidelines used to explicitly mention that good hackers were interested in things other than hacking. I am upset at the trend in HN to increasingly post only technology-related posts. A news submission with no intellectual undertones can be voted up dozens of times as long as it's related to Apple, Android, or something similar. Posting shallow content just because it's tech is the quickest route to becoming Reddit. And that's not a bash on Reddit, I enjoy reddit--but it's not where I normally go for "deeply interesting" content.
- simonw 15y ago"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ristretto 15y agoSince i m not going to read it, can somebody please post a tl;dr here: http://tldrplz.com http://tldrplz.com ? </shameless-plug>
- ristretto 15y agoBury it all you want, i have sympathy for the evicted, not this sleazy redditor. Posts like these are the reason i removed 'reddit.com' from my reddits.
- molbioguy 15y agoLooking at a beautiful albeit narrow slice of something can hurt you (even though it feels good) because you fail to see the larger picture (which may not be so pretty). It introduces a bias that may lead you to incorrect conclusions and bad decisions. Enjoy the craft, but be wary.
- sudonim 15y agoI've been following the housing bust. In 2009, I remember reading a resignation later by a guy who made his "F* you money" betting for a housing collapse. He blasted the big banks, ivy leaguers, and old boys network. I bought complex derivatives (SRS, SKF) but lost betting against the market. I read http://calculatedriskblog.com http://calculatedriskblog.com for a while and educated myself about the macro factors in the markets. Through "calculated risk", I learned of Jim the Realtor http://www.bubbleinfo.com/ http://www.bubbleinfo.com/ who videos (vacant) casualties of the housing collapse. Seeing it made it real for me. Over time, I've realized that the further from reality that decisions are being made, the more likely we are to make destructive decisions. When soldiers kill people with drone aircraft in video game-like conditions, it removes the reality from something that would be extremely traumatizing when done with bare hands. In our wonderfully complex world, we sow complexity, and reap disaster. Im not sure what the answer is, but there is something terribly wrong when destruction is more profitable than creation.
- alecco 15y ago> I remember reading a resignation later by a guy [...] http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2008/10/17/17194/andrew-lahde-bows-out-in-style/ http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2008/10/17/17194/andrew-lahd... A very good read. Andrew Lahde bet against the "too big to fail" financial institutions. He was an outsider. And he only closed his operations because he considered those institutions wouldn't be able to pay back [further] bets.
- sudonim 15y agoThanks! I tried to find it without much success.
- alecco 15y agoMore context: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Lahde http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Lahde > Andrew Lahde (born 1971) was a California-based hedge fund manager > who in 2007 earned some fame for achieving return rates in the vicinity > of 1000% with his Lahde Capital, based in Santa Monica, > California. The fund speculated on increases of U.S. subprime > mortgage defaults.
- jamaicahest 15y agoAnd the influx of redditors on HN is complete.
- sgt 15y agoNearly read "My dream is to watch Jobs die". I am far too tired to read HN right now.
- tonio09 15y agothis was very emotional article. very sad indeed. isnt it weird that all front page articles on reddit are overtly emotional? it seems that plain groundbreaking research papers will never make it to the frontpage...
- count 15y agoYou realize that reddit is one of the most visited sites on the Internet now, right? It's not the little lisp-hackers, YC-funded, nerd-centric community that it started as, and it will never be that again. 19M uniques tends to alter things.
- pavs 15y agoYour reddit experience is as good as the sub-reddits you follow. Subscribe to sub-reddits of your interest and you will only see stories from those sub-reddits on your front page. Stick with the default options and you only see the top stories from default selected sub-reddits. In a way its like twitter and facebook, the quality of tweets and wall posts you will see are only as good as the people you decide to follow.
- mike55 15y agoIt thought it will be a post by a VC.
- nazgulnarsil 15y agoFirst world problems....