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The line has to go up, and the slack has to be taken out of every last source of revenue. Like that story that was here yesterday about insurance companies moni

The line has to go up, and the slack has to be taken out of every last source of revenue. Like that story that was here yesterday about insurance companies monitoring customer's insured assets with drones and AI. Every unexploited dollar left on the table is slack, and a perfect market leaves no dollar unexploited. Therefore a more perfect market can be built with more perfect machine-powered decisions to more perfectly screw you out of every nickel they can. "Oops, sorry your brother cut his leg and you had to speed to the hospital, but you better get a second job if you wanna keep your car." Fuck this shit. Fuck all of it. And fuck all the status quo warriors sitting on the sidelines bleating about "it's just the way it is" because the axe hasn't swung for them yet. You're safe now because the market has more vulnerable people to grind up first, but rest assured, as it churns through them, your time will come too.

alfiedotwtf 2y ago
You’re on a website run by venture capitalists who use this platform to increase the value of their portfolios… so unless you’re an agent provocateur, your comment needs to be read as ironic performance art because I hate to break it to you - you’re also part of the problem
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  I operated under this mental model originally as well. But, based on all available information, while HN allows running ads for YC portfolio companies and uses it for other promo purposes (YC applications), I have come to the conclusion tha pg, dang, et el are running this place as part science project, part public good, funded by YC returns (which, while not exact, can be predicted with high confidence from public information wrt portfolio liquidity events). Certainly, you need funding, look what happened to Reddit's quest to squeeze community for returns. HN runs lean (two servers in colo, a few mods) and small (less is more), so they can be more flexible in what they're optimizing for. I will argue there is something intangible that exists they are cultivating. More for another thread, but I would be cautious about saying "You cannot speak truth about capitalism failings because YC runs HN and YC is a VC fund." Simplicity is rare, and the evidence does not indicate this forum runs to maximize profit.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  If the problem you're referring to is capitalism, it is not possible to not participate in capitalism because capitalism operates every nation state and every portion of the planet. If the problem you're referring to is venture capital, I don't work at a VC firm and have no intention to.
- harimau777 2y ago
  https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1259257-we-should-improve-society-somewhat https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1259257-we-should-improve-so...
- kelnos 2y ago
  Kinda tired of hearing this over and over. By and large, most HN readers and commenters are just regular people. Certainly we are regular people of a certain demographic, but we're not all venture capitalists or startup executives or whatever. Not even close. If you have evidence that the people who run and moderate HN are doing so with a heavy bias toward projecting some sort of venture-capitalist narrative, please present that evidence. My interactions with dang, at least (reading his comments here, and a few email interactions) suggest quite the opposite.
- tacocataco 2y ago
  There is no ethical consumption while living a capitalist way of life.
- alfiedotwtf 2y ago
  [flagged]
shadowgovt 2y ago
And relatedly, I'm sorry that while you were speeding your brother to the hospital, you blew through a red light you couldn't stop for and caused a three-car pileup that killed an elderly woman. There's a reason we have these rules, and the problem of better enforcement leading to more application of the rules isn't a late-stage-capitalism problem; it's a "rules require flexibility" problem (but it's not great if the nature of the flexibility is "you didn't get caught").
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  > And relatedly, I'm sorry that while you were speeding your brother to the hospital, you blew through a red light you couldn't stop for and caused a three-car pileup that killed an elderly woman. Firstly, surveilling every person in the world at all times to ensure safety is a gross misapplicaiton of tech that flies in the face of personal freedom and privacy. Secondly, we're not even talking about authorities surveilling you to prevent safety situations (which would, by itself, already be plenty vile enough). We're talking your insurance company checking on you to make sure your roof doesn't have moss on it, and jacking your price/nuking your policy if they feel your behavior is too "risky," according to a model you (and probably they) don't fully understand how it works. There's so much wrong with this and if you don't think so I doubt a comment here is going to change your mind. If you place ANY value at all on personal autonomy and privacy, I don't believe it's possible to, at the same time, say your insurance company by virtue of insuring your car, has the right to surveil that car at a time and via a method of their choosing, with no notification, and with no oversight, solely for the purpose of jacking up your price and/or rewriting your contract on the fly. These relationships already heavily, heavily bias in the favor of the corporation. Do they really need YET MORE unearned, unchecked authority in our lives?!
  - shadowgovt 2y ago
    > surveilling every person in the world at all times to ensure safety is a gross misapplicaiton of tech that flies in the face of personal freedom and privacy Not at all times, of course. But if we built the technology to do it whenever someone is operating a multi-ton vehicle on a shared roadway (similar to how we require police to wear body-cams), I wouldn't actually be sad about it or feel unduly watched. I do concur, however, that routing it through the insurance company is pretty sub-optimal; I'd much prefer a public authority that I could vote out if they screw up.

alfiedotwtf 2y ago

You’re on a website run by venture capitalists who use this platform to increase the value of their portfolios… so unless you’re an agent provocateur, your comment needs to be read as ironic performance art because I hate to break it to you - you’re also part of the problem

toomuchtodo 2y ago
I operated under this mental model originally as well. But, based on all available information, while HN allows running ads for YC portfolio companies and uses it for other promo purposes (YC applications), I have come to the conclusion tha pg, dang, et el are running this place as part science project, part public good, funded by YC returns (which, while not exact, can be predicted with high confidence from public information wrt portfolio liquidity events). Certainly, you need funding, look what happened to Reddit's quest to squeeze community for returns. HN runs lean (two servers in colo, a few mods) and small (less is more), so they can be more flexible in what they're optimizing for. I will argue there is something intangible that exists they are cultivating. More for another thread, but I would be cautious about saying "You cannot speak truth about capitalism failings because YC runs HN and YC is a VC fund." Simplicity is rare, and the evidence does not indicate this forum runs to maximize profit.
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
If the problem you're referring to is capitalism, it is not possible to not participate in capitalism because capitalism operates every nation state and every portion of the planet. If the problem you're referring to is venture capital, I don't work at a VC firm and have no intention to.
harimau777 2y ago
https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1259257-we-should-improve-society-somewhat https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1259257-we-should-improve-so...
kelnos 2y ago
Kinda tired of hearing this over and over. By and large, most HN readers and commenters are just regular people. Certainly we are regular people of a certain demographic, but we're not all venture capitalists or startup executives or whatever. Not even close. If you have evidence that the people who run and moderate HN are doing so with a heavy bias toward projecting some sort of venture-capitalist narrative, please present that evidence. My interactions with dang, at least (reading his comments here, and a few email interactions) suggest quite the opposite.
tacocataco 2y ago
There is no ethical consumption while living a capitalist way of life.
alfiedotwtf 2y ago
[flagged]

shadowgovt 2y ago

And relatedly, I'm sorry that while you were speeding your brother to the hospital, you blew through a red light you couldn't stop for and caused a three-car pileup that killed an elderly woman. There's a reason we have these rules, and the problem of better enforcement leading to more application of the rules isn't a late-stage-capitalism problem; it's a "rules require flexibility" problem (but it's not great if the nature of the flexibility is "you didn't get caught").

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
> And relatedly, I'm sorry that while you were speeding your brother to the hospital, you blew through a red light you couldn't stop for and caused a three-car pileup that killed an elderly woman. Firstly, surveilling every person in the world at all times to ensure safety is a gross misapplicaiton of tech that flies in the face of personal freedom and privacy. Secondly, we're not even talking about authorities surveilling you to prevent safety situations (which would, by itself, already be plenty vile enough). We're talking your insurance company checking on you to make sure your roof doesn't have moss on it, and jacking your price/nuking your policy if they feel your behavior is too "risky," according to a model you (and probably they) don't fully understand how it works. There's so much wrong with this and if you don't think so I doubt a comment here is going to change your mind. If you place ANY value at all on personal autonomy and privacy, I don't believe it's possible to, at the same time, say your insurance company by virtue of insuring your car, has the right to surveil that car at a time and via a method of their choosing, with no notification, and with no oversight, solely for the purpose of jacking up your price and/or rewriting your contract on the fly. These relationships already heavily, heavily bias in the favor of the corporation. Do they really need YET MORE unearned, unchecked authority in our lives?!
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  > surveilling every person in the world at all times to ensure safety is a gross misapplicaiton of tech that flies in the face of personal freedom and privacy Not at all times, of course. But if we built the technology to do it whenever someone is operating a multi-ton vehicle on a shared roadway (similar to how we require police to wear body-cams), I wouldn't actually be sad about it or feel unduly watched. I do concur, however, that routing it through the insurance company is pretty sub-optimal; I'd much prefer a public authority that I could vote out if they screw up.