LurkingPenguin

No, I didn't. Maybe if HN had an effective system for mods to message users...

It's strange to me that voicing an opinion about predatory businesses and lamenting the fact that these are supported by an investor class smart enough to see their predatory nature would be labeled as doing "ideological battle". Can you tell me what my ideology is? I'd love to know what ideology has an exclusive on calling out predatory business models and the people who fund them without any apparent moral qualms.

In your other comment, you stated "It also looks like you're mostly using HN to argue about ideological and politically inflammatory topics." It's quite confusing. If there are "ideological and politically inflammatory topics" being posted on HN, any comment on them could be also conveniently deemed "ideological and politically inflammatory", no?

You don't have to ban my account. I'll do you the favor of logging out permanently as apparently, Hacker News is a place where "it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it" determines what's considered acceptable.

Before I log off, one final note: I've traveled extensively in SE Asia (and in "poor" countries in other parts of the world) and have friends in places like the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, etc. If you get a chance, I hope you can travel to some of these places. Try to spend some time with people who don't have much and maybe you'd understand how utterly harmful and shameful these predatory businesses are. Perhaps, having made real-life connections with the people targeted, you too might even see a post about these predatory practices and feel the urge to speak up about it.

The vast majority of people aren't that dense, and in fact, a lot of people actually have a reasonable sense of humor.

> Credit is useful for the single use case of buying a house.

I haven't paid a cent in interest on a credit card since I was in my early 20s. Thanks to credit card points/miles, I've flown all over the world (often in business class), enjoyed stays at hotels, had access to airport lounge access, received various upgrades on hotel accommodations, car rentals, etc. -- all for next to nothing.

Credit cards are an excellent tool if you are willing and able to use them properly.

So what's your intent in calling out machine learning?

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I had the exact same reaction. It's like the NY Times is stuck in the past and totally out of touch with the present, and hung up on stereotypes and ideological generalizations that aren't very accurate.

> ...cafes and restaurants seem like natural partners for charging parks.

$30 Avocado toast and $15 lattes.

> So I'm very sure that my most effective means of improving the situation is to put cameras on their affairs from my house and get all the other adjacent neighbors to do likewise. The dealers have felt the heat, and now their clients are normally more respectful and quiet, presumably at the prompting of the dealers.

Do you really believe this is going to be effective? In your scenario where the police are unresponsive to reports, what makes you think that they're suddenly going to care if you send them a bunch of surveillance video of illicit activity?

The drug dealers know when they're operating in safe territory. In places like San Francisco, people openly deal and use drugs on the street because they know that they are likely to get away with it.

I bet if you posed as a journalist, some of these people would even let you photograph their activities, all while flashing big smiles.

You should look up the term "multiple expansion."

I can assure you there are people in San Francisco who would be very excited if you told them that you had finely-ground Antarctican coffee.

> Some in the investment community say that much like Tesla's rally to become the most valuable car company on Earth, Rivian's value is also a sign that valuations have gotten out of hand.

> "Despite the popularity of the electric vehicle market and huge gains in Tesla's stock, we think investors should avoid the temptation to buy Rivian shares," investment research firm New Constructs said of the company ahead of the IPO.

> The firm notes that when Tesla went public in 2010, it was valued at $1.7 billion US, was at least already delivering vehicles to paying customers, and was on track to sell 1,500 vehicles that first year. That's more than Rivian says it will do, despite now being worth about 50 times what Tesla was worth then.

> "To buy the stock at such a high price before the company has shown it can consistently produce more than a handful of cars seems ridiculous to us," New Constructs said. "Investors shouldn't buy a stock just because it's in a hot sector."

Rivian might very well prove to be a horrible investment at current prices. It would certainly impossible to justify its valuation in a sane, "normal" market. But the market hasn't been normal for over a decade and just keeps getting less and less sane.

Is there really any point in trying to warn people about valuations anymore? As far as the market is concerned, we're basically living in a post-logic, post-sanity world and sadly, investors who stick to logic and sanity are going to miss out on most of the gains.

Of course, if and when the bubble pops, a lot of people will lose money but that doesn't mean that the logic and sanity folks will profit because, well, you'd have to be insane to be heavy short almost anything in this market.