"...even if it didn’t succeed as a political gesture, the ConstitutionDAO stunt certainly succeeded on the level of performance art. The pressing question for the next year or two will be whether this time will be different: Can we sustain this sense of fun and play while forging organizational structures that are antifragile in the face of capital’s inevitable attempts at co-option?
Because here’s the thing: Despite the best efforts of millions of self-styled online revolutionaries, there does not exist a tweet that will bring down Twitter, or ExxonMobil, or the NYPD. If getting owned mattered, neither Hillary Clinton nor Joe Biden nor Donald Trump would ever have won their party’s Presidential nomination; and yet, even after five years of abject failure, the enthusiasm for posting has not dimmed."
Being a Silicon Valley Master of the Universe is a pretty sweet gig. You fly around the world dressed like a 12 yr old to have well-dressed people tell you what a genius you are, women who wouldn't have bothered to sneer at you are begging you to notice them, and your accountants can't even define how much money you have. No wonder they want to keep the party raging as long as they can, and no wonder a new generation of MIT dweebs will break any law between them and that life to get in. Their problem is they can't find a model other than the one created by Fairchild and HP, perfected by Intel, Apple, and Microsoft, and blown to bits by Google and Meta. But as long as that VC money keeps sloshing around, there will be college dropouts promising to change the world Tuesday for $10 million today. It's going to take years of unbroken failure for that model to change, and probably the generation of funders trying to recreate that first $1 billion rush to die off as well. We can only hope and pray that this 2nd Guilded Age doesn't end like the first one.
People at the top have too much money. It always comes back to that they have too much money.
Wealth taxes are the solution. Windfall profits taxes are the solution. 90% marginal rates are the solution. Taxing capital gains the same as income at 90% marginal rates is the solution. There are many solutions!
You sub-'stackin me, Karpf?
"...even if it didn’t succeed as a political gesture, the ConstitutionDAO stunt certainly succeeded on the level of performance art. The pressing question for the next year or two will be whether this time will be different: Can we sustain this sense of fun and play while forging organizational structures that are antifragile in the face of capital’s inevitable attempts at co-option?
Because here’s the thing: Despite the best efforts of millions of self-styled online revolutionaries, there does not exist a tweet that will bring down Twitter, or ExxonMobil, or the NYPD. If getting owned mattered, neither Hillary Clinton nor Joe Biden nor Donald Trump would ever have won their party’s Presidential nomination; and yet, even after five years of abject failure, the enthusiasm for posting has not dimmed."
https://www.fwb.help/editorial/imperfect-union-how-constitutiondao-lost-its-way
Being a Silicon Valley Master of the Universe is a pretty sweet gig. You fly around the world dressed like a 12 yr old to have well-dressed people tell you what a genius you are, women who wouldn't have bothered to sneer at you are begging you to notice them, and your accountants can't even define how much money you have. No wonder they want to keep the party raging as long as they can, and no wonder a new generation of MIT dweebs will break any law between them and that life to get in. Their problem is they can't find a model other than the one created by Fairchild and HP, perfected by Intel, Apple, and Microsoft, and blown to bits by Google and Meta. But as long as that VC money keeps sloshing around, there will be college dropouts promising to change the world Tuesday for $10 million today. It's going to take years of unbroken failure for that model to change, and probably the generation of funders trying to recreate that first $1 billion rush to die off as well. We can only hope and pray that this 2nd Guilded Age doesn't end like the first one.
People at the top have too much money. It always comes back to that they have too much money.
Wealth taxes are the solution. Windfall profits taxes are the solution. 90% marginal rates are the solution. Taxing capital gains the same as income at 90% marginal rates is the solution. There are many solutions!
We are locked into repeating cycles of tulip mania.