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by 21723 1493 days ago
Most venture-funded startups solve silly non-problems or in fact cause serious harm to society, but make billions of dollars in doing it.

Meanwhile, we haven't been to the moon since the '70s, life expectancy in the US is declining, and a substantial percentage of our energy comes from coal. Oh, but if you want to bet your life savings on (entries in a distributed ledger that say you own) digital pictures of dog penises, I imagine there's a way to do it.

Technology didn't fix the evil of neoliberalism. It didn't clean anything up. It accelerated the corrosion.

1 comments

How many of your arguments would apply to a casino?

Do you feel that the world shouldn’t be allowed to have casinos?

Casinos are regulated.

Casinos don't dominate the economy.

Casinos haven't wasted the bulk of a generation's top talent to enrich a small number of pederasts in a tiny geographic area.

My view of "morals" laws is that harm reduction should be the policy. Do I like gambling or drug abuse? Of course not. Do I think they should be illegal? Probably not, because empirical evidence shows that harm is better reduced by making these things legal and then regulating them.

Of course, if I found that casinos were having huge negative externalities, then my opinion would change.