4 ms·

It's almost like we should be optimising people getting stuff for creating actual value.

bryanrasmussen 4y ago
A decade ago I had lunch with a friend through kindergarten (our daughters were friends) he was a financial advisor and things were going good for him. I complained, as people who 'make' stuff often do, that finance was unbalancing everything and taking too big a share of profits (not to be annoying to him, just sharing a viewpoint) and he replied that the reason why finance was getting more of the share was because finance was where the innovation was nowadays. He later got charges for corruption and there was a big investment scandal where some people who had done well with him before ended up loosing money later.
- nly 4y ago
  He is probably right. So many businesses have become financialized now. In the UK, John Lewis, which is/was an upmarket department store (and also owns Waitrose, a grocery store), is a mutual, owned by it's employees, but is now in the built-to-rent property market. Its literally burning the reputation and diversifying in to all kinds of gimmicks as it dies. Sainsbury's, one of the biggest supermarket chains in the UK, has been in to lending (credit cards, loans) for decades now.
  - jen20 4y ago
    Does Sainsbury's lend directly or does it put its name on credit cards issued by (e.g.) MBNA like many other companies? I've never looked too much at what they're up to.
  - rcarr 4y ago
    Not only that, it was in the paper the other day that the CEO of John Lewis wants to sell a chunk of the company to a private investor so it won't even be a full mutual any more.
- _0w8t 4y ago
  There is an observation that the real salaries stagnated since seventies for an average American because all the growth went into financial industries. Those rose in the last 50 years from few percents to close to a quarter of economy essentially resulting in a hidden tax paid by everyone to bankers.
  - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
    essentially the point I was making. Although I think real salaries also stagnated because every household became a two-income household so people's household incomes rose hiding the fact that they were actually getting screwed over.
    - hgomersall 4y ago
      Which people are now starting to realise!
    - HPsquared 4y ago
      It the economics version of "software getting slower as hardware gets faster".
  - BurningFrog 4y ago
    Those calculations are very tricky in conflict with the obvious huge increase in living standards since the 70s.
    - baremetal 4y ago
      >Those calculations are very tricky in conflict with the obvious huge increase in living standards since the 70s. People used to be able to buy a house and raise a family on one salary. Tell me where exactly the standard of living went up since the 70s. Sounds nice though.
      - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
        Well, let's see. That family with one salary probably also only had one car. That car needed a tune-up regularly, and was lucky to make it to 100,000 miles. They had a house, but it was a small house by current standards - maybe 1000 square feet. They had one landline phone - no cell phones, and certainly no computers. The breadwinner could retire at 65, but the median age of death was 68. They could afford medical care, but the medical care that was available didn't lengthen their lives to what we expect today. So that's where it went - bigger houses, more cars, computers and cell phones, and better medical care. But if you're willing to live in a 1000 square foot house, only have one car, no computers or cell phones, and inadequate (by current standards) medical care, you can probably raise a family on one income still today.
- csomar 4y ago
  That's the future according to Horowitz: https://a16z.com/2020/01/21/every-company-will-be-a-fintech-company-2/ https://a16z.com/2020/01/21/every-company-will-be-a-fintech-... I feel bad for your friend, however. He was not systemic enough.

A decade ago I had lunch with a friend through kindergarten (our daughters were friends) he was a financial advisor and things were going good for him. I complained, as people who 'make' stuff often do, that finance was unbalancing everything and taking too big a share of profits (not to be annoying to him, just sharing a viewpoint) and he replied that the reason why finance was getting more of the share was because finance was where the innovation was nowadays. He later got charges for corruption and there was a big investment scandal where some people who had done well with him before ended up loosing money later.

nly 4y ago
He is probably right. So many businesses have become financialized now. In the UK, John Lewis, which is/was an upmarket department store (and also owns Waitrose, a grocery store), is a mutual, owned by it's employees, but is now in the built-to-rent property market. Its literally burning the reputation and diversifying in to all kinds of gimmicks as it dies. Sainsbury's, one of the biggest supermarket chains in the UK, has been in to lending (credit cards, loans) for decades now.
- jen20 4y ago
  Does Sainsbury's lend directly or does it put its name on credit cards issued by (e.g.) MBNA like many other companies? I've never looked too much at what they're up to.
- rcarr 4y ago
  Not only that, it was in the paper the other day that the CEO of John Lewis wants to sell a chunk of the company to a private investor so it won't even be a full mutual any more.
_0w8t 4y ago
There is an observation that the real salaries stagnated since seventies for an average American because all the growth went into financial industries. Those rose in the last 50 years from few percents to close to a quarter of economy essentially resulting in a hidden tax paid by everyone to bankers.
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  essentially the point I was making. Although I think real salaries also stagnated because every household became a two-income household so people's household incomes rose hiding the fact that they were actually getting screwed over.
  - hgomersall 4y ago
    Which people are now starting to realise!
  - HPsquared 4y ago
    It the economics version of "software getting slower as hardware gets faster".
- BurningFrog 4y ago
  Those calculations are very tricky in conflict with the obvious huge increase in living standards since the 70s.
  - baremetal 4y ago
    >Those calculations are very tricky in conflict with the obvious huge increase in living standards since the 70s. People used to be able to buy a house and raise a family on one salary. Tell me where exactly the standard of living went up since the 70s. Sounds nice though.
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      Well, let's see. That family with one salary probably also only had one car. That car needed a tune-up regularly, and was lucky to make it to 100,000 miles. They had a house, but it was a small house by current standards - maybe 1000 square feet. They had one landline phone - no cell phones, and certainly no computers. The breadwinner could retire at 65, but the median age of death was 68. They could afford medical care, but the medical care that was available didn't lengthen their lives to what we expect today. So that's where it went - bigger houses, more cars, computers and cell phones, and better medical care. But if you're willing to live in a 1000 square foot house, only have one car, no computers or cell phones, and inadequate (by current standards) medical care, you can probably raise a family on one income still today.
csomar 4y ago
That's the future according to Horowitz: https://a16z.com/2020/01/21/every-company-will-be-a-fintech-company-2/ https://a16z.com/2020/01/21/every-company-will-be-a-fintech-... I feel bad for your friend, however. He was not systemic enough.