Did you just assume with zero justification that everyone has a laptop? Seriously WTF.

Next, Minecraft by the hour!

But that means it's no longer a market as we understand it, and no longer capitalism as it was envisioned.

When the money seeking other fortune is on a scale where it can't behave like micro-economics, it's time to observe the behaviors and ask how the system's working. Think of it as scalability issues. This has to be designed for. That's what the Fifth Silicon Valley might do, if they can be a little 'meta' about it.

We've already got many countries in the world where the capitalization of the country's private banks completely dwarfs the GDP of the actual country. When the market capitalization of companies expand to completely dwarf the GDP of all countries, the companies are now the world's government for good or ill. At that point (hopefully before that point!) you start asking what the purpose of the system is, what its dependencies are.

If market capitalization is the only thing, does it still exist in the absence of humans? If it requires humans to matter (it might not, you can have automated systems weighing the values of these things), what kind of humans does it require?

Would you say that it's a keen interest to replace systems based on human intervention, with systems based on algorithm and automation?

This can go two ways, it seems. On the one hand you can have automated systems competing to supplant entire industries while also maximizing their valuation as corporate entities: which means, taking all the money and keeping it, while putting entire industries out of work. For instance, transportation of goods. Truckers are a significant industry for employment and for the many subsystems that support them, but if you automate the whole thing with truck-sized robots (or national/global hypersonic cargo capsule networks) you can compel entire countries to turn to the automated solution by relying on its native efficiencies.

This quickly heads toward total collapse of society, as you've got very efficient goods distribution but only a few hundred kazillionaires who don't really need to buy many goods.

On the other hand, you can use the automation and efficiency gains to produce a world of leisure, and then deal with the problems of that as they arise. You have to sacrifice the score-keeping factor of capital, which also means the process of corporate valuation has to be re-thought: if nobody gets to win the grand prize that whole game changes. But, if feeding a human for a day (all agriculture, storage, foodmaking, transportation) used to cost $20 and with everything automated it costs $0.20, the nature of society changes radically. If letting a human ride any imaginable roller coaster requires the maintenance of expensive theme parks at $200 a day, but you can deliver exactly the same experience in VR for $0.002, reality starts to look like a mighty lame deal.

What I'm seeing is a keen interest to corner every possible market by automating it and starving it until it dies, in order to persuade Wall Street that you're a unicorn. This seems not quite ecologically sound, systemically, though I can't fault the accuracy of the perception. YES that's how the world works. We might want to have a look at all that. All of these systems, right down to markets and capitalism, are only human inventions

You're quite sure that turning the lights off is still up to you? An electric circuit has switches at both ends ;)

I suspect you're being sarcastic but you might as well be sincere for all the difference it makes. It's the system of continually ramping up the jackpots and pay-outs that is failing. It might be a natural consequence of market capitalism where people cannot fully inform themselves about all things.

In fact, with regard to public valuation, it's impossible for people to accurately inform themselves about this because it's purely a feedback loop of what other people think, making outright lying a winning strategy (especially when combined with bailing out before the thing crashes, like Enron did).

When you couple that with a culture that mandates socializing the losses from these games, to reward the wealthy people willing to play them and encourage them to play more and harder, truthfulness becomes completely unworkable and is at a devastating disadvantage. Basically you can't do that, it's a guarantee of tanking your valuation. Even if a person believes you, they're likely to conclude that other dumb investors will be tricked into acting against you, and therefore game theory says you've already lost.

So, literally, we do need to look at rewarding failures and low achievers simply in order to keep the wheels turning and the lights on at all. Making conscious decisions to reward the big winners inevitably means rewarding only the biggest liars, plus they're typically making a cash grab and running rather than building industries for the betterment of all.

Silicon Valley doesn't EMPLOY. The highest aspiration is to have a massive server farm minded by the CEO and one hapless sysadmin, replacing worldwide industries with millions of employees. You're right: it is over and people are gradually figuring that out. Whatever does end up replacing the system won't look like Silicon Valley. It's sort of a cancerous growth, diverting the resources of market capitalism into a feedback loop.

The amount of "printed currency" in circulation has almost nothing to do with the size of the money supply. It's amazing how many gold/bitcoin fans don't understand this. Heck, the US recently concluded "QE", in which a couple of trillion dollars were created by the Fed without any of it being physically printed.*

When you deposit $US with a US bank, in a savings account or CD, it can loan out 100% of your deposit. If banks offered BTC-denominated savings accounts, they'd work the same way. If you're thinking "but wait, that means there wouldn't be enough bitcoins in existence to allow everyone to withdraw their deposits", then congratulations, you understand how banking works.

There's only ~$1.3 T in physical US currency, but there is ~$10 T in total bank deposits (of various kinds). That wouldn't change if we adopted gold or bitcoins as the national currency.

*To further complicate things, the money supply actually didn't grow during that time, as bank deposits with the Fed grew at about the same rate. When the banks start finding investments better than the rate the Fed pays, we'll start seeing the inflationary effects - it's a very new idea by the Fed, and time will tell how crazy it was.

Perhaps it's because you are looking to become rich beyond the dreams of avarice selling people an address book, to-do lists and email mass marketing, using a splashy website with big excited-looking people from stock photography. I see that

and further that

I'm looking for content-acquiring behaviors but mostly what I'm seeing is a pattern where your company connects a service with a customer and is then paid instead of paying the service provider: plus if there are disputes, the service provider can skip arbitration or legal process and make the customer pay, not them for the damages, but pay your company instead. I guess that might be a hook for service providers, especially if they intend to file fraudulent damage reports. I'm not sure what you do about things like chargebacks: in my business I've found I'm relatively helpless against the things as credit card companies will do as they please.
Oh wait, I found the boilerplate:

Transferable, huh? Sublicense, adapt?

Me, I just code DSP plugins for people. I don't advertise and my approach is rather the opposite of yours: far from jockeying into position for an IPO, I think mostly in terms of cash flow and living frugally so I can continue while living up to my principles. I don't need to recruit anybody and in fact it's sort of useful for me to fly under the radar: I've even been shouted out as a 'great small plugin developer' by a Massive Corporate Industry Leader (who disguises himself as another indie, but he's definitely playing your game and not mine) because I'm unthreatening, too small to be a serious rival in IPO World.

I figure if you have an Evil Hollywood CEO archetype, it's for a reason. And if there's negative GDP this quarter, it's because there are too many of you people doing what you do. You are NOT advancing human civilization. And to the extent that you're trying to paint your Bizlifter business as something Facebook/LinkedIn etc. aren't already doing, you're lying. What you're proposing is not only already happening, it may not be a great thing to be happening.

In that light, the fact that the lie of Silicon Valley is failing, is a good thing.

I do understand the defensive nature of all that legalese: it's actually dangerous for me to mouth off against you because I'm somewhat vulnerable against incurring the wrath of some internet jerkwad who'll botnet me to death or sink me with massive fraudulent sales and chargebacks. That's the internet for you. That's Silicon Valley for you. The idea is to be not only the biggest jerk on the block, but so aggressive that other sociopaths can't damage you. It doesn't leave a lot of room for little Vermont craftsmen hacker types such as myself (original context for hacker, not 'script kiddy tyrant of all destruction').

This is the reason I'd want to demonize that 1%. Firstly, you're not in it, you just want to be and you're acting like them to fit in. Secondly, they're not advancing human civilization, they're impeding it. I'm afraid you've got things sort of backwards.

So, you're telling me that Magic the Gathering Online Exchange stored its assets by printing them on paper cards? I never saw that coming. I hope they were at least kept in protective sleeves!

Well, he seems to be saying a lot here The myth of startup success is just that: a myth. Declining infrastructure, a confluence of events, absolutely requiring the Big Lie merely for Silicon Valley to function. His conclusion is devastating and disheartening. So, seeing that he has proven his point, why don't we just give up? Silicon Valley is a failure. We need to change to a sustainable, workable system that provides benefits to everyone over the long run, instead of enriching a few people. Let's start turning the lights off and winding things down, everyone. It's over.

You right-wing nutbags make me laugh, shaking your tiny fists in rage at your holy Constitution being violated like an altar boy after Mass. African-Americans had no voice in its creation, it's invalid by definition. The people who wrote it were slaveowners. It's time for your kind to fade into history. There, there, Grandpa, put down your gun, TEH COMMIEZ aren't going to get you, it's nap time now.

From your neutral and measured tone, I'll assume you're not speaking from personal experience.

What you say is a total lie. Multiculturalism is learning to live with other cultures in peace. It makes the entire nation stronger because of diversity. Diversity is a strength, not a punishment.

sorry, i forgot the source

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

they can rule against them in an international tribunal

The Philippines' attempt to haul China to an international tribunal is a problem because it is invoking the very compulsory jurisdiction which China has disavowed since 2006. But even if the Philippine attempt to arbitrate fails, any marshaled argument can subsist, and that case may be fielded in other venues. If a military engagement were to ensue, the same case could be brought to the United Nations Security Council -- the principal repository of enforcement powers under the UN system. A state can be found to be in violation of a substantive legal norm even without a coercive or compulsory judgment in a given venue, provided, of course, that there is truth to the argument supporting a violation, and that it is acknowledged by an alternative venue.

While China is disavowing the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) against the Philippines, it is expressly invoking UNCLOS provisions in its claims against Japan -- so it wants to have its cake and eat it, too. In 2009, China submitted a claim over the Senkaku Islands (which, like Scarborough Shoal and the Spratlys, are believed to be fuel rich) and turned to UNCLOS rules in defining and delineating its continental shelf beyond the 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone, again within the meaning of UNCLOS. There is some international legal doctrine supporting the view that a state's acts in one place can be used as an admission and adversely bind that State in another set of circumstances.

a legal claim against china won't make the han imperialists move, but the ruling will stay dormant

then, after any sort of conflict in the future where china loses, china is going to lose these islands in the peace treaty

Which mythical frequency is this?

Hint, not IR, not Visible, not RF, not UV, not most of the frequency range of like anything

Radar doesn't handle poor weather well, it never has, so the car that uses radar and visible is screwed. We haven't invented something that does well with this, but I guess if you want to pay for magnets to be installed in the road surface, that might help.