Ask HN: What are some scams that are yet to go bust?
What's are some widely believed to be sound but hanging by a thread things around us that are not sustainable? Usually something a minority knows and talks about but most people aren't aware of. The fact that security by user/group ID with a default of accessing almost everything still is the norm baffles me. The US dollar backed by nothing still keeps going, thanks to Petrodollar Recycling. On top of this is the 0% effective interest rate for the Banking class, with no effective reserve requirements, and socialized risk. The Bitcoin boom fascinates me. The Stock Market, that most famous graph of rich people's feelings, has been overrun with front-running profiteers, yet pretends to be trustworthy. How the working class haven't strung up the rich yet escapes me. Civilization takes a huge amount of labor to keep going, yet we have yahoos cheering on the end of it all because G*d will sort it all out, and they'll be in Heaven... yeah, right. This morning on the newspaper there was the story of a local artist who has auctioned his latest artwork for the equivalent of $30K. The great work of art is a magnificent invisible statue. Not a word in the article about how strange a transaction where a signed piece of paper representing nothing tangible is sold for a relevant amount of money. Perfectly normal. Invisible artwork, I don't get it. As I can't understand NFTs in general. Scam? I don't know. Money laundering? Yes. Time will tell. If he manages to auction it off at a profit some time in the future, something is definitely up. In London Ontario a few decades ago, there was a furor over a million+ dollar painting purchased by the museum. The artist wasn't and still isn't famous. It was entirely blue with a single red stripe down the center. But at least it was a real thing. Barnett Newman was huge in the abstract movement. Like, founding member, broke new ground, legit The Man. “Wasn’t and still isn’t famous” is bs. Voice of Fire cost less than $2M and is now worth over $40M. The furor was also bs. VoF/B.N. were not scams. https://www.wikiart.org/en/barnett-newman But abstract paintings, controversial as they may be, are still paintings. Even if no painting is involved, take Fontana's "Tagli" (cuts), at least you have something in your hands. I mean, as a museum curator, after investing some money, I have something to attract guests and sell tickets. Imagine going to an exhibition to admire an invisible artwork, that requires a whole new level of faith. I rest convinced that buying nothing, even if this nothing is backed by a certificate of authenticity, is a stupid thing to do. But since auction houses are everything but stupid I feel that's something else going on, and no, it's not abstract art. Large institutional asset managers like Invesco. All they do is sell underperforming investments on nearly every metric and charge a pretty penny for the “privilege”. I would say Tesla's "FSD". For years they have promised it and cashed in the money, making it even non-transferable. FSD is still years away from working. That is true for FSD in general, but Tesla advertise it as "being around the corner" Part of the problem with FSD is that it is difficult to make and test incremental improvements on a larger scale. At some point you need to send a big fleet of cars and let an "average" driver drive it without any special safety measures Another part of the problem is public perception of safety, people are willing to accept fatalities due to human mistakes but even minor accidents caused by FSD are highly publicized The social acceptance of many autonomous applications hinge on accepting that someone was hurt or killed in a way that was trivial to prevent for a human in control. The other side of this is that a machine may prevent other accidents that a human cannot prevent. As long as our machines aren't truly superhuman we will have to find an optimal middle-ground (between human and machine control). In the 1600s there was the Dutch Tulip bubble. At its height, tulips sold for the equivalent of a mansion. Take that in for a moment and think about the prices of things like NFTs today. Social securityis a pretty well known ponzi scheme. Commercial real estate rents are a bubble waiting to pop. I'll get downvoted for this: Religion and Capitalism. Religion is the ultimate vaporware. Nothing there but air and community. Capitalism is 100% dependent upon an unfair exchange: unless there is an unfair exchange generating profit, no capitalist will accept such a deal. Capitalism relies 100% on individuals in no position to refuse the offer, because Capitalism creates and relies on a population of people unable to refuse such offers. Community is incredibly valuable to most people. Religious venues are also places of belonging, mutual support, hope, shared activity and moral values. Unfair exchanges exist in monopolistic forms of capitalism, but in a more competitive free market system, most exchanges will be purely voluntary. Is there value in distinguishing religion from organized religion? I'd hardly call the Catholic Church paragons of virtue. YC companies and startups Nfts