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Every time I think I know a little bit about economics, I read articles like this and realise I'm playing with wooden blocks while the big boys are playing with
by Daneel_ 11y ago
Every time I think I know a little bit about economics, I read articles like this and realise I'm playing with wooden blocks while the big boys are playing with space shuttles. ...except they made the space shuttle out of wooden blocks, and they're just pretending really hard that it's going to work.
- mathattack 11y agoIf you have a small group of brilliant computer scientists, they can create world changing software. How many folks were required to get Snapchat or Youtube off the ground? What happens when this level of genius in small groups is cut loose on financial markets where "Make money is the only goal"? You get these space shuttles. They are so complex because that's all these people ever think about.
- cm2187 11y agoThe silicon valley is hardly a counter example of "make money is the only goal". In fact for those who question the compensation of bank executives, the compensation of silicon valley executives should raise a few eyebrows.
- adwn 11y ago> If you have a small group of brilliant computer scientists, they can create world changing software. How many folks were required to get Snapchat or Youtube off the ground? Snapchat is world changing and the work of brilliant computer scientists? Did I miss something? I can only hope that your post was intended to be sarcasm.
- ccvannorman 11y agoI think the meaning is "It only takes a small high powered team to 'change the world'/add tremendous value if they have skills and a good idea." Snapchat is one example of many.
- pjc50 11y agoYoutube owes just as much of its success to an army of lawyers achieving two things: filling up with copyright content without getting sued and/or jailed, and banging codec licensor and standards body heads together until video worked everywhere without wildly unreasonable cost or transcoding for every device.
- mathattack 11y agoThe analogy holds, then. A couple smart people surrounded by a phalanx of lawyers.
- mmaldacker 11y agoTechnological advancements are made. UDP Broadcast was completely broken in the 90s in Linux and was fixed by people in the finance industry. High speed network cards are constantly improving thanks to those same people.
- kropotkinlives 11y agoI'm playing "with the big boys" i.e. 500 million market cap enterprise financial. I'm not sure why I do this other than it's easy to disappear into the noise occasionally and put my feet up. In fact if we disappeared tomorrow there would be a chorus of "meh". The space shuttle we have is, to paraphrase [1], made from piss-soaked snowflakes and we are crossing fingers that it isn't all going to melt in our hands overnight. Sometimes it does dissolve in our hands and at that point, that's when the extensive hordes of ancillary staff roll out to lick butt. So when you think that you're playing with wooden blocks, you're right, but you're probably doing it a bit better than piling them up randomly for the highest margin to support a massive hierarchy of unnecessary staff. And you're right, it is pretending. But it makes money, and that's all they care about at the end of the day. Good luck for you still have hope of doing an honest job. [1] http://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks http://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
- phyalow 11y agoLOL @ 500 bucks. Thats small cap.
- kropotkinlives 11y agoIt's the arse end of the ranking but the rate of growth is scary and that's what matters.
- justincormack 11y agoThis is not economics. Its "finance", well really just a bunch of very long contracts that people pretend to "value", by making up numbers as you see from this article, in order to make money from people.
- Daneel_ 11y agoYou're correct, although I'm unable to edit the original post now. Thanks for the correction too - it made me look up the definitions of both. Always good to learn something!
- tormeh 11y agoYes. The investment distribution machine are driven by people playing musical chairs with each other. It's insane.
- kasey_junk 11y agoFor the record, you can say the same thing about insurance but people don't.
- wpietri 11y agoThe major difference being that traditional insurance is heavily regulated, limiting the shenanigans. Finance, on the other hand, is more an anything-goes-until-you-catch-us model.
- kasey_junk 11y agoHaving worked in both, I'm not sure I agree. I will agree that the incentives to skirt regulation seem higher in finance than in insurance, but my personal opinion (and I could be very wrong) is that is a result of the regulation not due to its lack.
- PhantomGremlin 11y agoIn theory insurance is heavily regulated. In practice AIG managed to get itself into a situation where the Fed needed to give it $182.3 Billion dollars to keep it afloat. That's $182.3 Billion, not Million. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aig#Liquidity_crisis_and_government_bailout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aig#Liquidity_crisis_and_gover...