DNA exonerations: How many more are innocent? - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/archives/2010/04/29/how-many-more-are-innocent

<comment><USER2> A better question is, how many people get fair trials? The answer is "not very many", because the system is stacked against justice. Seems like even the most minor crimes carry sentences like 10-20 years. When confronted with this possibility, most people will opt to plead guilty for a shorter sentence. But, of course, a condition of pleading guilty is that you agree to never appeal. So there are many innocent people in prison for this reason.

(I'm pretty sure that the death penalty only exists to get people to take plea bargains. Life in prison seems better than being tied to a chair and being injected with drugs that make your lungs stop working.)

Even better is that the government often sizes your assets _before_ trial, so you can't even hire a good defense lawyer.

I'm pretty sure that when the Framers were writing the Constitution, this is not what they had in mind. I'm surprised there's anyone that's _not_ in prison, actually.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you need part time help? - <AUTHOR> In order to bootstrap my startup while paying off debt, I'm looking to provide business development / sales / growth hacking opportunities on a contractual basis paid for performance. <comment><USER2> Try Northrup Grumman or the like as a sub. If you've got special skills, you can probably work 20 hours a week for about 80k a year.</comment>


7 Things I Did and I Didn't Get from University - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@datalab/7-things-i-did-and-i-didnt-get-from-university-fb1753190b94 <comment><USER2> The problem with universities is they create a self fulfilling prophecy, one that most students graduating from their will support, willingly or unwillingly, for their own benefit. If I go out and tell that XYZ uni I graduated from is not worth it, I would also be decreasing my chances of getting a job.

I know the 4 years I spent in my college were not worth it in an industrial perspective. Yes, I made friends, I learned how to learn, and I also got a degree to show to potential employers. But going back 4 years, would I repeat my decision? Absolutely not.

It's hard to accept what you did. But then again, you never graduated, so it might as well not affect you.</comment>


55% of the US National Debt Is the Result of Repaying Debt with More Debt - <AUTHOR> http://thesoundingline.com/taps-coogan-55-of-the-us-national-debt-is-the-result-of-repaying-debt-with-more-debt/ <comment><USER3> I think the biggest thing to keep in mind is that the Federal Government of a monetarily sovereign nation (like the US, UK, Japan, Australia, etc.) plays by different rules to a household or business.

This could be a massive problem if the debt was denominated in a currency other than US dollars (which the US Government controls the monopoly currency issuer for). But since all of the US's debt is in US dollars, and they're not constrained by artificial limitations like commodity convertibility or fixed exchange rates, it's just an interesting fact that doesn't actually really matter much.

The real killers are excessive private sector debt, and even worse, debt denominated in a foreign currency.

<comment><USER4> The notion this can go on indefinitely with no repercussions just bc the debt is denominated in our own currency doesn't square with reality. Everything has a cost.

<comment><USER5> The big cost of the national debt is that we have stuff now instead of later.

<comment><USER6> That's only true of external debt. I.e. debts owed to other currency areas. Government debt is just the number of funds from the currency originator (central bank) to it's distributor (treasury). Both institutions are a subject of the nation state, which is controlled by the government. So it's not a "debt" in any colloquial sense of the term, neither is it an intergenerational transfer, since the souvereign nation state is an institution that both creates and enforces it's own currency... which by definition implies it can create as much money ("debt"/"credit") as it seems fit.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, "instead of later" would have been better constructed as "instead of waiting".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Articles like this are killing us, because they reinforce a false analogy that the federal government is like a business or a home. This is killing us politically. Its a shame.

This is the way modern monetary systems work (sovereign fiat money). Its healthy and totally normal. Federal debt is not debt that private citizens are liable for. A treasury security is like a CD, or savings account. Since the Federal Government Complex ( including the Federal Reserve Bank) can issue currency to infinity, there is no problem here. When a treasury security expires or is redeemed, they merely changes numbers in a spreadsheet. 99% of the time those "funds" are moved back into a new treasury security. There will always be demand for interest bearing risk free government debt.

go read [http://neweconomicperspectives.org/](http://neweconomicperspectives.org/) its all there.

<comment><USER8> > _Since the Federal Government Complex ( including the Federal Reserve Bank) > can issue currency to infinity, there is no problem here_

You just broke central bank independence, and with it the political independence of monetary policy. Historically, that leads to rampant inflation. The federal debt isn't like household debt. But it can't be printed into infinity. The U.S. government's debt incurred as a result of fiscal policy ( _i.e._ not including the Federal Reserve's debt, which technically includes every dollar bill) has real consequences in constraining the government's taxing and spending power without tripping up inflation.

<comment><USER6> Government debt isn't "debt" in the classical sense. Let me suggest an analogy: a bank lends you a loan at intrest, but no expiry date. You can pay back the loan at _any_ point in the future. Not only that, the bank has no ways of enforcing you to pay it back through legal action. On top of that, you are infinitely credit worthy, you can get as much loans as you want, including loans to cover existing loans. Would you consider this a "debt". The answer is that it's nothing like a debt in any meaningful sense of the term, it is merely a label used because of accounting convention.

Could you "print"* an amount of money several times the world GDP and get inflation?

That depends whether te money is circulated at all. Inflation is not a function of the money stock, it happens when sellers collectively mark up their price above current market rate. This is easier to do with rising expectations of higher return. The money stock is not some magical denominator on top of a real goods numerator.

*(it's really just incrementing a number in a database, zero production cost, so print is another misnomer)

<comment><USER9> Forget the currency aspect, which is nothing but a distraction. What matters is the balance between production and consumption. Without debt one must first produce goods before one can consume. Individuals can get around this by taking out loans, borrowing the opportunity for consumption in the present from someone else with a positive balance. For society as a whole, however, there is no avoiding it: goods which have not yet been produced by _someone_ are not available to be consumed. Introducing new currency in order to fund consumption disrupts the balance, since there is no production to offset the consumption. The result is that society becomes poorer; capital is consumed without replacement, productivity falls, and goods become less affordable. (By this I refer not not only to rising prices, but to prices rising faster than wages, a increase in the cost of goods even after adjusting for the change in money supply.)

> Inflation is not a function of the money stock, it happens when sellers > collectively mark up their price above current market rate.

The term "inflation" has multiple definitions. Yours is popular in political circles but is not very useful as an economic indicator because it conflates ordinary changes in prices due to supply and demand of goods and available production capacity with changes due to shifts in the money supply. The general increase in prices which results from consumption of capital is nothing like the change in prices which accompanies a deliberate increase in the supply of money. The former is a useful economic indicator which suggests a need for more saving and prudent investment, while the latter offers nothing but noise and tends to encourage malinvestment and waste.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A couple of ways I can think of real quickly that this is meaningless:

1\. All money is debt insofar as it only represent goods as services yet to be rendered, an I Owe You as it were

2\. If an entity is able to continue borrowing (more and more) money it represents a willingness of lenders to _lend_ , which is a direct representation of their faith in that entities ability to service the debt

3\. Whether a nation-state should balance it's budget is more a philosophical question coloured be ideology rather than a pragmatic concern.

4\. If you believe the good times are going to keep rolling, and any bad times will, on average, pass relatively swiftly (people do have a tendency to persevere), then not borrowing money results in a lost opportunity cost.

I'm sure someone can respond with some equally convincing reasons as to why nation-states shouldn't run a deficit.

Go!

<comment><USER11> > _1\. All money is debt insofar as it only represent goods as services yet to > be rendered, an I Owe You as it were_

You're drawing a false equivalence. A dollar (or a gold bar) does not represent a _specific amount_ of goods or services that any _specific counterparty_ is bound to deliver. So in general no, money is not inherently debt.

> _4\. If you believe the good times are going to keep rolling, and any bad > times will, on average, pass relatively swiftly (people do have a tendency > to persevere), then not borrowing money results in a lost opportunity cost._

On the flip side, creating inflation channels wealth up towards the top, to those who are able to better bear the burden of roundtripping through the inflating assets rather than saving in dollars. Plus the lagging effect of wages means that they only rise after the people earning them are feeling enough pain to demand more.

Even taking the CPI calculation at face value, it does not represent the whole of inflation. We would expect prices in a technological economy to be level or _trending downwards_ , due to basic market optimization. Every time some innovation makes things "cheaper" and yet their real prices still go up, we're getting hit twice!

I'd say the long term effects of centralizing the economy (ie the wealth imbalance we're dealing with now) are more harmful than forgoing a little top- down metric of "growth". We have a "shortage of jobs" precisely because people at the bottom are still stuck chasing 40 hours a week to service debt, rather than having been able to build wealth (ie economic negotiating power) in dollars.

And of course all that too-hot "growth" is occurring by churning through real natural resources, suboptimally even. If you care at all about sustainability or global warming, and you don't look at the US's monetary policy and weep, you need to study deeper.

<comment><USER6> > You're drawing a false equivalence. A dollar (or a gold bar) does not > represent a specific amount of goods or services that any specific > counterparty is bound to deliver. So in general no, money is not inherently > debt.

This is confused. A dollar is a debt/credit dual created by central bank and private finance operations.

A dollar is a unit of monetary accounting, a physical dollar is a token representation of a debt/credit entry inside an accounting ledger.

A bar of gold is a commodity denominated in a monetary value. It is not a token representation of a state enforced contract.

<comment><USER11> Yes, a dollar does represent a coupled obligation of someone out there to collect it (or another dollar) in order to satisfy their debt. I do agree that a dollar is therefore debt-based money.

What I was refuting was OP calling all currency in general "debt" based on it having little "intrinsic use", and therefore only useful for what it can be traded for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's a lot of talk about how the Federal Gov't isn't like a household or business. It is different, but not to extent that people who preach that like to pretend.

That aside, I wonder what opportunities and paradigm shifts we are missing out on by being ok with all this debt, good or not.

The American gov't is so far in the hole that it doesn't have ANY wealth! What if we built up a Sovereign Wealth Fund such that we could completely eliminate taxes and fund all government activities from the interest? What would that world look like?

<comment><USER13> Funding the government on interest is going to require more than 100T in capital.

<comment><USER12> US GDP is 18T, which means we only need 5 years worth of GDP.

If we saved/invested a surplus each year equal to the amount we reduced the public debt under Clinton in the year 2000 - $230 billion and assumed the 4% annualized returns - the same rate you're requiring for your 100T figure - <USER2> 75 years, we'd have 100T.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's an interesting point and something that we should talk about. But the article doesn't really make the case that this is a waste of money. If it was advantageous to take on the debt in the first place, it might also be worthwhile to keep the debt on the books now. Presumably there is an interest rate at which it will stop being worth servicing the debt, but I don't really know where that point is.

<comment><USER15> well the game will continue until you cant service your debt payments anymore. Then you default. Crisis, pain, recession. Rinse then repeat.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_debt_crises](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_debt_crises)

<comment><USER14> There's an alternative to defaulting on debt and that is to pay it off. Is there even a case to be made that we are in or near a crisis?

<comment><USER16> > _There 's an alternative to defaulting on debt and that is to pay it off._

I think it's in one of my CFA books -- definitely in other materials I have or have viewed--, but I think the point of the game is to trade as much intrinsically worthless fiat for extrinsically valuable stuff as possible. If and/or when one exhausts one's ability to trade the fiat, then one is supposed to walk away _a winner_ , so to speak.

This sort of came yesterday in a C-Span program, when a caller essentially asked what backs the USD.[1]

[1] [https://www.c-span.org/video/?448590-3/washington-journal- ch...](https://www.c-span.org/video/?448590-3/washington-journal-chris-condon- discusses-federal-reserve-us-economy&start=1699)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was much more sad when I initially thought this was talking about the debts of individuals.

<comment><USER15> Consumer debt is at all time high as well.

[https://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/hhdc.html](https://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/hhdc.html)

<comment><USER18> With inflation, GDP growth, and population growth, that is generally true at any time.

<comment><USER19> I briefly searched for inflation-adjusted debt per capita but couldn't find it.

There is the federal debt to GDP ratio, which is 105%. This is at least a 50-year high[0]. FRED's household debt to GDP data doesn't go back very far, but we can see it's off the highs off 2008[1]. (edit: added household debt to GDP)

[0] [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/gfdegdq188S](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/gfdegdq188S)

[1] [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HDTGPDUSQ163N](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HDTGPDUSQ163N)

<comment><USER8> > _I briefly searched for inflation-adjusted debt per capita but couldn 't > find it_

You're looking for household debt to GDP [1]. It is a real (versus nominal) statistic because it's a ratio between two nominal terms. It also communicates financial health better than a per-capita term, since it measures against production.

[1] [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HDTGPDUSQ163N](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HDTGPDUSQ163N)

<comment><USER19> I managed to find that - thanks!

A few other interesting angles: Household Debt Service Payments as a Percent of Disposable Personal Income[0] (10.3%, near 40-year lows), Consumer Debt Service Payments as a Percent of Disposable Personal Income[1] (5.9%, near 40-year average), Personal Saving Rate[2] (3.2%, near 50-year lows).

[0] [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TDSP](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TDSP)

[1] [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CDSP](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CDSP)

[2] [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT)

<comment><USER15> Part of the problem might be that it became harder for folks to obtain debt (mortgages specifically).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What happens if the US inflates away the national debt?

<comment><USER21> The interest rates go up on the new debt instruments issued to make payments on the old debts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This reminded me of a documentary I watched quite a while ago: The Money Masters - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBk5XV1ExoQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBk5XV1ExoQ) I always wondered which parts are an accurate description of the current monetary system and which are unfounded conspiracy theories.

</comment><comment><USER23> Where are these interest payments going to? Who profits off the US being perpetually in debt?

<comment><USER14> The treasury has a one-page breakdown of the kinds of debt. [https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/mspd/2018/opd...](https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/mspd/2018/opds062018.pdf) It's not a deep dive but I thought it was a great overview for fitting on one page.

(edit: more recent link)

<comment> 5874-4b22-a4e0 19k could be paid off by a single person, has this increased in the last two years?

<comment><USER24> Take another look at the table - the values are denominated in millions of dollars, and that second symbol is a comma, not a period, so it's 19 million million.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> From whom do the borrow all that money? Who "owns" America?

<comment><USER26> A sizeable majority of US Treasuries are owned by American citizens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> If you lend money to yourself, why not just write the debt off?

<comment><USER9> Because we're not actually borrowing from ourselves, we're borrowing from future generations. That said, there is no plan (or will) to ever pay back the debt, so the difference is academic. The politicians will just keep borrowing (i.e. spending; it makes zero difference whether the funds come from loans or inflating the currency supply) until there is no capital left to consume.

<comment><USER27> How can there be no capital left to consume if the borrowed money has no support to back it up? You're saying we're borrowing from future generations which is like saying we're borrowing money from air. If we're borrowing money from non-existent source then there is an endless supply of the money, isn't there?

And if there's no plan to pay it off, then why not just write it off? It makes no difference, the whole effect is psychological.

<comment><USER9> Money _per se_ is irrelevant; it's what you can buy with it that counts. Normally, to get money you have to produce something; when you spend that money you're claiming your share of what has been produced. If you buy on credit (with intent to repay) then you're committing your own future production capacity towards paying off the loan, with interest. If we want to hand our descendents a world at least as good as the one we received from our ancestors then we need to produce at least as much as we consume—more, actually, since some of that production will need to be dedicated toward the preservation and maintenance of capital (production capacity). If we borrow without any intention of ever paying down that debt, or (equivalently) introduce new money out of thin air in order to fund consumption, then the equation is unbalanced; there is no production to offset that consumption. That implies a reduction in capital investment (again: production capacity), which means goods will be harder to produce and thus more scarce in the future, which means a poorer quality of life for future generations.

> And if there's no plan to pay it off, then why not just write it off? It > makes no difference, the whole effect is psychological.

On that point I agree with you. However, I am arguing that we _should_ plan to pay it off, and thus do our part to maintain and improve this world before handing it off to our children.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> And it breaks my heart that both parties are to blame.

<comment><USER29> Yes, a real heart-breaker. [http://zfacts.com/p/318.html](http://zfacts.com/p/318.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> "Debt Is the Result of Repaying Debt with More Debt"

Actually, you can pay debt only with more debt. This is fundamental to capitalism and reason for it's dynamic and future downfall.

"In order to pay back debt with interest, it is necessary to have economic growth, and financial growth and growth in fossil fuel use are very closely tied." [https://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady- sta...](https://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-state- economy-except-at-a-very-basic-level/)

</comment><comment><USER31> This reminds me of selling Bitcoin in order to pay off debt.

<comment><USER15> more like paying off one credit card with another that has higher APR.

Next big crisis might be a sovereign debt crisis on a global scale. The only question is how long this can continue...until SHTF.

<comment><USER32> I don't think you read it correctly. What we're doing, indeed what we've done since 2008, was borrow at a historically _low_ interest rate to pay back interest and debt bought at a higher interest rate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> _" This interest includes repaying principal."_

Stop right there. Something's fishy with the terminology/math/reasoning then, no? If the "interest" includes principal, then _what is the interest?_ It's like saying "Use one cup of flour and water" or "The size of my penis is 6 feet including my height."

Here's what let's do: subtract the principal from the interest. That should leave you with the interest only. Therefore

I - P = I

Subtract I from both sides...

-P = 0

Divide by -P...

1 = 0

This is the axiom of Black Math.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the way reporting on the repayment of the national debt is done. The point of the article is unchanged. Those familiar with Treasuries will understand

If I run a deficit of 100 dollars, borrow 100 dollars and I repay the loan by borrowing 100 dollars and the interest on both is 10 dollars, than I owe 220 dollars but I only got 100 dollars of real spending.

That is what the article is saying. of the $21.4 trillion in debt, only $14 trillion funded deficits and half of those deficits were the results of rolling debt over.

No funny math at all

<comment><USER33> My point is that it's bad terminology, which I show by proving it leads to bad math. I notice at no point do you refer to the $10 as including part of the $100 in either case, so apparently you agree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is an inevitable consequence of basing the money supply on debt. The Federal Reserve banks are responsible for making money and loaning it out into circulation. There is never enough money to pay back the interest on the loans, so the federal reserve loans out a little bit more every year.

A solution to this quandary was figured out in 2011. Due to a quirk in the laws, the US Government has the ability to issue platinum coins of any value. These 'coins' never have to be paid back. The U.S.'s national debt could be retired by minting a couple "trillion dollar coins":

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion_dollar_coin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion_dollar_coin)

The Federal Reserve does a decent job at keeping the money supply growing at less than a hyper-inflationary rate, but the value of our money has collapsed since I was a kid, since we all were kids...

<comment><USER8> > _This is an inevitable consequence of basing the money supply on debt_

Not really. The U.S. government ran surpluses in the nineties. This led to hand-wringing as banks imagined a world without Treasuries, which would make collateralisation quite complicated. (We had the same "not enough safe assets" conversation after the financial crisis.)

The U.S. government could wipe out its debt. The Federal Reserve couldn't, as every dollar bill is technically a Federal Reserve note, but that's a different beast.

<comment><USER34> I'm saying that under the Federal Reserve system, the total indebtedness of the U.S. economy must always increase. If the government starts to pay off its debt, the private sector must increase its debt levels. If the economy doesn't keep borrowing money, the money supply would rapidly collapse, leading to a deflationary spiral.

The only money that never has to be paid back are coins.

Do you have an alternate understanding of our monetary system?</comment></comment></comment>


SoftBank expects $24B in losses from Vision Fund, WeWork and OneWeb - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/13/softbank-expects-24-billion-in-losses-from-vision-fund-wework-and-oneweb-investments/ <comment><USER2> It's funny how it's named Vision Fund and invests in a company like WeWork. I'd be more forgiving if they have lost money investing in companies working for techonological breakthrough like nuclear fission or drug research for incurable diseases. Instead they invested in a real-estate office space sharing company trying masquerade itself as a tech company.

<comment><USER3> I made this same point when it was announced three months ago that Wag (another major Vision Fund investment) was struggling: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21095990](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21095990)

Yet somehow people still seemed to defend the strategy ("you underestimate biotech ROI" or "investing in moonshots was not the point of the fund").

Most criticism is invalid because it misses the underlying flaw of the Vision Fund: If you're going to waste $24+ billion on the Adam Neumann's of the world, you could not have performed any worse by taking on riskier projects.

It was obvious to everyone that WeWork was going to flop (even if Softbank got some money back from an IPO, the ensuing stock price crash would've tarnished their reputation and who knows how quickly they could've exited) and that Adam Neumann was a con. So the return there was going to be heavily negative.

I doubt $10+ billion into drug research would've yielded as negative of results, especially in this era.

The only valid critique of our approach I've heard is that it's a logistical pain to try and spread and manage $100 billion around $5 million at a time.

<comment><USER4> Biotech is a weird space for "tech" like ventures.

Generally actual tech startups don't have a lot of patience.

Biotech research as I understand it is naturally highly iterative and immediate payouts are rare.

<comment><USER5> > Generally actual tech startups don't have a lot of patience.

This wasn't true in the pre-2000. It was only the DotCom(tm) era that spoiled VC's who all wanted hits within 36 months.

The history of the valley was the history of _slow_ investments. Semiconductors are money hungry and slow--yet VC's invested in them until about 2000.

I would argue a lot of the lack of progress in tech is because all the VC money is chasing _fast_ returns.

I find Musk insufferable, but, credit where it is due, he put investment money into two _VERY_ slow industries.

<comment><USER6> Do you know if the standard 10 year fund life was different back then? If not, I'm curious how that interacted with their relatively slow investments.

Maybe it's just that companies went public at a much earlier stage back then.

<comment><USER7> >Maybe it's just that companies went public at a much earlier stage back then.

This. My father worked for a few semiconductor startups in the 80's, e.g. Xicor. Liquidity events were trivial compared to now. Small company's with competency and focus could exit with a proprietary tech play which satisfied everyone all around (founders, vested employees, investors, industry). Rinse and repeat for two-three decades and we get the foundations for Information "Tech" startup culture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm actually not happy with this news. They are the only one interested on some of the long term researchy projects especially in robotics area. In my opinion, this would be one of the highest impact area in next 10 years given all the advances in computer vision and reinforcement learning. It will take time, but imagine, one day, freeing up humanity from the burden of all the repetitive mind-numbing boring low paying jobs. You might say that people will lose jobs but I think we will be fine. If you ask where is the $1T business opportunity that would be powered by AI, I would point to this rapidly evolving field. To our misfortune most of the big tech with big wallet have strangely disorganized, if any, efforts. SoftBank is one of the biggest long term game in this area which believes in this promise.

<comment><USER9> >You might say that people will lose jobs but I think we will be fine.

I'm curious to hear you expand on your thoughts here.

<comment><USER10> He probably means fine in the long term. Nobody laments the loss of farm laboring or a coal mining jobs now that they are (mostly) gone. In fact the farm jobs that haven't been mechanised yet (picking apples etc.) are mostly done by immigrants with no other options.

I did apple pruning one hot summer. Trust me, nobody will miss that job when machines take over.

<comment><USER11> Tell that to the coal mining communities that were affected by the closing of coal mines by Thatcher in the 80s. From the reduced expectations of the multi- generationally unemployed, to the social isolation that a lack of community services brings, to the paucity of opportunities for both young people and those who want to change career. 40 years later those communities are still dealing with the consequences of these actions.

<comment><USER10> How many young people living there do you think want to get a job in a coal mine?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love the conspiracy theory that masayoshi son is a CIA plant designed to drain Saudi money.

<comment><USER13> I've read it as not only "draining" but siphoning it to the US. Even if the US plays don't work you've injected money into the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Moral of the story: extreme wealth is a function of luck, assuming otherwise will only make you look foolish. Masayoshi Son has tried to prove otherwise and largely failed. Appreciate your luck, not your ego, you won't make as many stupid decisions that way.

<comment><USER15> This is not a good moral. You're generalizing from one example.

Warren Buffett has made many successful investments for example, over a damned long period. There's clearly skill in his story. Skill that Masa didn't have.

<comment><USER16> [https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/03/01/144958/if- youre-...](https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/03/01/144958/if-youre-so- smart-why-arent-you-rich-turns-out-its-just-chance/) (MIT Review: If you're so smart, why aren't you rich? Turns out it's just chance)

<comment><USER15> This is a computer model.

> So some people are more talented than average and some are less so, but > nobody is orders of magnitude more talented than anybody else.

It seems likely that in some domains, some people are orders of magnitude more talented. Assuming this is false begs the question.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, its insane to claim talent isn't orders of magnitude apart. I'm probably a better programmer than 99% of the population, but then I see those insane luajit or llvm people and realize I'm just another noob.

<comment><USER18> I think you're misunderstanding talent. You always have to compare yourself to people who invested an equal amount of time training the skill.

For example I go to the gym regularly (at least before the pandemic). I'm probably in the upper 10% of the population when it comes to strength. But compared to the regulars in the gym I'm below average.

<comment><USER19> Well if you take training time into account separately, then the "talent vs luck" comparison becomes even less meaningful.

<comment><USER20> Possibly your skill level isn't talent + training but talent * training

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> From the news articles I've seen I get the impression that aside from an early investment in Alibaba, SoftBank has a very poor track record. Is that actually true or typical for VCs, or is it just a bad impression from only knowing about them from headlines?

<comment><USER22> Sometimes VCs are a bit like hedge fund traders. They have a lot of terrible investments but one great one that made them some money and made more people want to invest. Often though there is little indication the initial one success was much more than just luck and they then proceed to lose a bunch of money for the investors that came in based on their "great track record."

There are of course those that truly do have a great record over a long period of time but they are much less common. We're coming off a period where VCs and others could probably have thrown darts at the wall and made a half decent return. Now that's all changed so we'll see who gets washed out and who can stand on their results long term.

As I think it was Warren Buffet once said, when the tide goes out is when you get to see who wasn't wearing any pants.

<comment><USER23> As a bank you could probably hire 30 analysts who make random predictions over a few years. One of them would probably be right and you have your superstar who can attract clients.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, there's actually an old sports betting scam that works similarly. You send out letters to tons of potential gamblers saying something to the effect of 'The <team>'s games are fixed and I've got the inside info. To prove it, I'll predict the winner of the first n games' Then each week, you send half the group one prediction and the other half the other. Whichever half was wrong, you ignore, and the the 'correct half' you repeat with the next week. After n weeks, you have 1/(2^n) of your original group who've seen you be right each week, and at your desired n, you ask for money to keep going.

<comment><USER25> It's an interesting scam, but we all know how quickly n grows in this scenario. You'd need 66k potentials to have one correct guess, per team, per season in the NFL. And the "winner" of you lottery needs to have enough scratch to make your scam worthwhile, and be dumb enough to part with it for a peak of your post-season picks.

<comment><USER23> I think with some common sense and understanding of the sport you can probably narrow down things quite a bit.

<comment><USER26> Point spreads negate common sense and understanding. Remember touts sell you who to bet on, not who is going to win.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The CEO of the SoftBank did lose a ton of money back in the Dotcom bust. I guess he is a huge risk taker. From Wikipedia:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masayoshi_Son](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masayoshi_Son)

>According to Forbes magazine, Son's estimated net worth is US$23 billion, and he is the second richest man in Japan,[1] despite having the distinction of losing the most money in history (approximately $70bn during the dot com crash of 2000).[3]

<comment><USER28> Huge risk taker or just a terrible investor?

<comment><USER29> Both.. I know nothing about this person but very possible he just got lucky on some really big investments but anything he tries to really do is shit.

Luck is such a huge factor sometimes...

<comment><USER27> I think his second big chance was Alibaba.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Masa was given money and lost it _again_? Unthinkable. If he lives long enough to the next late stage bull market will he repeat his signature move? Will people let him? Those that read Irrational Exuberance know the likely answer.

This was a good interview, recorded close to the peak of this cycle: [https://youtu.be/Sa2_VBu0d7k](https://youtu.be/Sa2_VBu0d7k)

</comment><comment><USER31> While this is a great misfortune, consider how SoftBank advanced WeWork towards IPO. They were selling a pile of overvalued garbage, hoping that that the rest of the world was as brain dead as its own investors and not notice.

<comment><USER32> I'm pretty sure this all happened in spite of what SoftBank tried so that investors would not discover how bad WeWork is as an investment.

We could start from the fact that is a real estate company and not a tech unicorn...

<comment><USER33> Honestly I was routing for for WeWork to IPO as I had most of my IRA lined up to short them. Yes you can't short in an IRA but I was going to buy near money PUTS against them. I was salivating for months waiting for this windfall, too bad it didn't come to pass :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Has anyone estimated how close the Vision Fund is to defaulting on its guaranteed dividend to preferred investors, _e.g._ the Saudis?

</comment><comment><USER34> >The amount of $ 24,000,000,000 would have in 100 Dollar Notes a weight of 240.00 t (217.72 short tons). A single stack of money with 240,000,000 new banknotes would be 24.00 km (14.91 miles) high und would have a volume of at least 248,373.60 litres (262,453.46 quarts).

>For transportation, you should already have a fleet of trucks.

[https://1000000-euro.de/how-much-does-a-million-dollars- weig...](https://1000000-euro.de/how-much-does-a-million-dollars- weigh/index.php#weigh-dollar)

<comment><USER35> Gotta use the 1000 Swiss franc bills.

<comment><USER36> At one point the US had $100,000 bills, so that would cut down on the stack quite a bit. I believe they have all been discontinued now though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It should probably be renamed the Double Vision Fund.

</comment><comment><USER38> We Work failure was more to do with bad corporate governance and that was the primary reason Wall street shunned it.

The core problem of VF was pushing companies for growth at all costs which led to companies not focussing on unit economics, not caring about profitability and becoming too big to ever take care of those things. Fixing your unit economics when you are so big is akin to repairing a rocket and changing direction which it is hurtling aggressively to crash. I hope now entrepreneurs will try to build sustainable business hoping for an IPO rather than growing fast to come in eye of VF and take softbank money

<comment><USER39> Was WeWork actually poorly governed, or was it governed extremely well with a goal other than shareholder value?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I remember several years ago SoftBank has purchased ARM Holdings and everyone commented on that as a "smart money" move. Where are those smarts now?

<comment><USER3> Compared to WeWork, Uber, and Wag, buying ARM was not their worst idea.

<comment><USER40> It was definitely a good idea! But they ran out of good ideas very quickly after that, apparently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The whole point of the Vision fund is to take large longer term risks. Whether WeWork belongs in that category is a matter of opinion (I think not). But you can't judge the fund on one investment or one quarter. People here complain about short termism usually don't they?

</comment><comment><USER42> This does not surprise me at all.

I worked at a company once where the ceo was enamored by Masayoshi (who had also invested in our company). He asked me to help him with a presentation he was going to give to masayoshi as part of some kind of competition to be his protege or something.

I remember thinking the whole thing was strange: why was the CEO spending his and my time on a personal competition instead of growing the company, but what did I know, it was literally my first few months in the tech industry. So I did my duty, got a thanks, and the CEO left the company a month later to parts unknown.

Him and masayoshi were hype men, and the latter is obviously good at it. But now we will see if he is great - it's one thing to hype with unknown track record, it's another thing to hype when you have some large losses.

<comment><USER43> Masayoshi has actually had a known track-record since about 2000 or so. He's been the man who's lost the most money in history since about the same. Seventy-billion dollars!

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Techcrunch doesn't work if you block advertising.com

I guess I don't need techcrunch in my life after all

</comment><comment><USER45> The problem is it's simply a whole lot _easier_ to spend $100 Billion when you do it in large chunks. But then fewer bets means less diversification, more risk. It doesn't help that Vision has a few large correlated investments.

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm confused about the numbers in the report linked in the article: [https://group.softbank/system/files/news/en/press/2020/20200...](https://group.softbank/system/files/news/en/press/2020/20200413/pdf/20200413_en.pdf)

In particular, the "Change (C-A)" row of the table does not make sense to me. If it would say "Change (A-C)" (not "C-A") then the "Net sales" and "Income before income tax" columns would make sense but the rest still would not. Does anybody know how to read this?

</comment><comment><USER47> Maybe the story isn't that many companies they invested in did not work out. Maybe the story is that they are bad investors.

</comment><comment><USER48> So did Adam Neumann get that 200M consulting contract + the huge ~1B payout as he departed a few months ago - no right?

<comment><USER49> Its in court, but softbank hasn't paid the corporate structures that controlled wework the money noted in their deal. Its pretty crazy that no one really talks about how weird the weWork corporate structure is: [https://twitter.com/tomgara/status/1161762187590995974](https://twitter.com/tomgara/status/1161762187590995974)

All of the "deals with wework" are really deals with different parts of this weird structure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> softbank and son could've taken the monkey blindfolded approach from a random walk along wall street and won't have lost 24bn. hell they could've picked 10 kids and asked them to name coolest things they want and they wouldn't have lost money. you've to be pretty incompetent to lose 24bn

</comment><comment><USER51> If you're throwing that much money around why not put it in companies like Stripe? Even just putting it in existing big players like Apple would have a good return.

Why dump so much of it in things like Wag?

Did they invest in anything that was actually interesting?

<comment><USER52> Satellite internet? Autonomous vehicles? Nvidia and Arm? What's "interesting" to you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I wish even a tiny bit of the $24B came to my bank account. Where did it go exactly?

<comment><USER54> > Where did it go exactly?

The $24B is a loss as a result of repricing assets and creating reserves. So it is just some virtual moves in the balance sheet of Softbank, a record in a computer essentially. Do not imagine stacks of dollars being burned on some altar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> My impression is softbank's profits are based on valuation increase. Where they kind of drive the valuations by investing in companies.

</comment><comment><USER56> it should be clear from the mounting evidence like this that having (access to) capital is no guarantee of efficient allocation.

that's not an indictment of capitalism _per se_ but of plutocracy. the greater the wealth concentration, the less efficient we become.

<comment><USER57> This makes sense. Each person has limited bandwidth... If the vast majority of the wealth becomes concentrated in very few hands, those hands will simply start making bigger deals.

When you divide an investor's total thinking capacity by the total amount of money they have to invest, you end up with less thought going into each dollar. The average amount of thinking per dollar drops and you get less efficient allocation of each dollar...

Allocating capital is clearly very challenging and yet the argument which advocates for increased concentration of wealth relies on the assumption that people are getting better at it on a per-dollar basis.

All evidence would suggest that people are getting worse at allocating capital on a per-dollar basis. The more dollars someone has, the less they will care about each individual dollar. An increasingly complex world should require increasingly more thinking going into each dollar.

<comment><USER56> great exposition. many get so caught up on the government vs corporate dichotomy when considering excess and waste, but size and scope relative to human capacity is the better correlate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is there a way to buy put options on softbank from north america? Have wanted to do so for a while, but doesn't appear possible at my broker.

<comment><USER58> SFBTY is the ADR. but just don't, you have no edge here.

<comment><USER15> Thanks! Not buying, just want to be able to check prices for if/when volatility drops again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I guess that, given the recent trends, their stocks will grow up to the sky. P.S: I am obviously joking

</comment><comment><USER60> And whatever happened to improbable?

</comment><comment><USER61> Masa is a CIA asset and this is the fastest way to drain money from the Saudis /s

<comment><USER41> If only...

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Yikes. I wonder if they will sell Alibaba shares to shore up funds?

</comment><comment><USER63> How does SoftBank not go out of business?

</comment><comment><USER64> I'm curious as I believe I'm fairly skeptical myself, are many people in this community genuinely surprised by this news?

</comment><comment><USER65> Wow, how surprising! No one could've seen one this coming!

</comment><comment><USER66> Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

</comment><comment><USER67> Mohammad bin Salman, Yasir bin Othman Al-Rumayyan, Masayoshi Son

debut

Bonesaws-N-Harmony

</comment><comment><USER68> Incredible, with that much money, they could have given every American a million dollars a month, and still have a lot left over. I feel like a million dollars could help a lot of families right now.

<comment><USER69> This is a joke, right?

<comment><USER19> [https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/kyle- drennen/2020/03/06...](https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/kyle- drennen/2020/03/06/msnbc-fail-bloomberg-could-have-given-each- american-1-million)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: job or no job? - <AUTHOR>

I'm at possibly my last year in college. The last months I've been working on as a remote developer for a company in order to get enough runway for living this year without working for another company.
I'd like to finish college and start a business this year but the problem is the ideas I've doesn't motivate me enough to pursue them, so I don't have a specific idea in mind in order to start working on it right away.
1) Continue working for the company and try to come up with an interesting idea for a business. I won't have free time to experiment with new things but I'll have extra money to use, maybe, in an intelligent way.
2) Stop working and invest the time learning new things, talking with people, making small projects... Maybe this way I'll come up with an idea faster than (1). But I have to take into account the opportunity cost here.
3) Maybe I can get some freelance projects while doing (2) but taking care of not converting that to (1).
I'd like to know what you think about it, what option(surelly there are more) do you think is best, maybe you could help me realize something I'm not considering. <comment><USER2> 1</comment>