[jongjong]

I was in relatively early in the web as a developer, I was in early on the crypto movement, also as a developer.

These technologies didn't fix the problems. There is too much regulation, you can't do anything without a license. The only solutions are political, not technological.

Everything feels like a scam within a scam. I feel dizzy just thinking about it. I'm completely demoralised. Everything related to career feels pointless, sisyphean because of the bureaucracy and monopolization. Any work that pays well is useless at best, harmful at worst. It's either illegal or impossible to do anything which might provide value to people. Even if all the hurdles could be removed, I'm not even sure I want to contribute... For whose benefit? And I feel totally disconnected from the broader society around me.

I basically completely checked out career-wise. I'm good at faking though so I just fake it. I just started bullshitting my way through life. I hate it but everyone is just eating it up and loving it. What can I do? Just give the people more of what they want I guess. Value creation doesn't pay, bullshitting pays... People are living a lie and they love it when you build on top of it. If you just say the right words, they will deny their own eyes; this is what COVID taught me and I can see this in my day-to-day life. It's depressing, they are good people, that's why they assume good faith. I was just like them before, living in a bubble, I understand, I'm no better than them, just less fortunate. If they saw what I saw, they would probably do what I do. Many would do worse.

I feel like I need therapy from being this way. I have bills to pay though. I think I did everything approximately right but I've been ridiculously unlucky. I was operating on limited info and incorrect assumptions. Now, I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place.

It's illegal to be homeless in my country. It's illegal to live in a tent on 'your own' property, you are not allowed to build your own house without some expensive license and approvals... You can't do shit within your means. All the things which seemed unimportant to me before are now the centre of my life and on that plane of existence, I see scams all around.

[roywiggins]

a bunch of people quite recently had their money zapped away when their fintech wildcat bank accounts disappeared so clearly there is still some room to dodge rules

> Bradley Lott-Tillery, 24, from Arizona also entrusted Yotta with his savings, thinking his money would be protected by the federal government. “I emailed [Yotta], made sure it was FDIC insured. Of course, they emailed me back and told me, yes, it’s FDIC insured, which we now know is not true,” Lott-Tillery said.

> While the banks with which fintech companies like Yotta and Juno partner are FDIC insured, this only kicks in when a bank is found to have failed. Since the intermediary Synapse filed for bankruptcy, but not any of the banks, the money is not covered by the regulatory agency.

https://businessjournalism.org/2025/03/synapse-collapse/

(their money was "insured" in the same way depositing money in a random guy's bank account is insured: it's not insured against the guy! these bank-shaped companies managed to convince a bunch of people that they were close enough to banks and about as safe, and then it turned out they all handed the money over to the same fintech company to interface with the actual banks, and that company went messily bust)

[always_smiling]

It is truly baffling to look at the issues in tech, your alienation with your own work and point at regulations. This field has been almost completely unrestrained and egged on by every opportunist and schemer holding political office.

You blame regulations and then mention that everything is pointless because everything is: "sisyphean because of the bureaucracy and monopolization".

The tech industry is lousy with scams, hell the entire model of the global economy is exit scamming everyone. No one builds anything because it is meant to last, everyone is fighting for the next IPO or buyout. You have pointed your ire in the wrong direction... because you were unable to scam first? Confusing...

[jongjong]

I guess it's possible that most people who turned out to be scammers had good intentions initially. Still, I had a real plan to drive adoption and create something positive in crypto. I did implement something positive on the tech side which largely fell on deaf ears but I sometimes think that it's precisely because I wasn't a scammer, that people sensed I wouldn't bend, that I wasn't 'allowed' to make it in that industry.

There is definitely a belief in this industry that its primary intent was to demoralise those fleeing the traditional system... Almost as a way to scare them back towards papa fiat.

Crypto, as it turned out, was likely a case of the fiat system playing good cop bad cop with the world's nerds. To push them around and demoralise them into apathy and compliance.

[airstrike]

> These technologies didn't fix the problems. There is too much regulation, you can't do anything without a license.

The regulation is there to reduce the amount of scamming and con artists. It's the same reason we have Blue Sky Laws.

[ryandrake]

> These technologies didn't fix the problems. There is too much regulation, you can't do anything without a license. The only solutions are political, not technological.

> Everything feels like a scam within a scam. I feel dizzy just thinking about it. I'm completely demoralised. Everything related to career feels pointless, sisyphean because of the bureaucracy. Any work that pays well is useless at best, harmful at worst. It's either illegal or impossible to do anything which might provide value to people. Even if all the hurdles could be removed, I'm not even sure I want to contribute... For whose benefit?

None of this is because of regulation. It's all because of greed and unchecked grift and profit capture. Technology is making the world worse because of greed and capturing profit, not because of regulations. The work most of us are doing is harmful because of greed and capturing profit, not because of regulations. Everyone is living a lie because of greed and capturing profit, not because of regulations. These uncountable scams are all because of unregulated greed and profit. People on HN are mad, but they're acting out against an imagined "regulation boogieman," not what's actually causing all of the shit.

[lmm]

> None of this is because of regulation.

Disagree. Zoning law and regulation-driven credentialism are the closest thing to a root cause you can find for most of the problems with modern society; sure you can say "greed" but that's a permanent part of human nature, and most societies find a way to live with it. Today's world where for a family to succeed both parents have to be putting 40+ hours into bullshit fake work in a circular economy of bullshit fake solutions to bullshit fake problems so that they can afford to get their kids the right bullshit fake qualifications is a distinctly regulation-based phenomenon.

> These uncountable scams are all because of unregulated greed and profit.

Sure. But are they actually any worse than the regulated scams? Often the licensed and regulated stuff hurts the end victim more than the direct scams.

[jongjong]

Sure, I agree that greed is the root of all problems. Regulations are a symptom of greed; people want to protect their interests and are willing to incrementally corrupt the system to achieve it; that's what a lot of regulations are.

But it's hard to fix greed. The solution to fix greed is way more radical, it's violent. The greedy will defend their interests with violence when confronted. The only non-violent solution I can think of is to let the system collapse, under their own direction. That's the only way the greedy would relinquish enough control to allow people the freedom to get things going again. There was a bit of this after COVID but it wasn't enough.

I just hope people can maintain their sanity through this. I hope it's not going to be an endless cycle of society repeatedly rebounding off from rock bottom... Never actually lifting itself out of the muck but basically always scraping rock bottom with only short temporary breaks.

As a developer, the system and code complexity we have to work with is increasing to the level that it should be considered mental assault. You need to develop a kind of apathy to get through life.

[ecocentrik]

Not all regulation is a symptom of greed. Regulation can be written and passed with the intention of protecting the public good, promoting public health, preserving fair competition... That it sometimes works counter to those goals is a function of greed, a lack of accountability and and a lack of transparency. We write these laws with consistent check on accountability and transparency, but we keep electing sociopaths that want to game the system and sometimes go as far as screaming "deep-state" or "fraud, waste and abuse"... when they want to completely remove those checks and people keep falling for that bullshit.

[jongjong]

True as well but personally I prefer people to regulate themselves though for that to happen, there needs to be very strong punishment for violations. Harm mitigation should be at the forefront of everyone's minds. Not quite compatible with the 'limited liability' legal construct. People won't regulate themselves unless they are afraid of consequences.

The regulation + limited liability combo takes away fear. The big companies doing harm love regulations, they breathe a sigh of relief when regulations are introduced. 'Regulatory clarity' they call it. They barely even know what harms the regulation is trying to prevent. They are disconnected from that.

[ecocentrik]

I have personal experience with companies that consistently violate environmental regulations with very little understanding of the regulations they are violating beyond their effect on profit margins. They pay the fines or pay environmental engineers to help them pass an inspection that could potentially disrupt operations and are violating the same statutes 6 months later. The only regulatory clarity they care about is knowing which regulations can impact production and which can be gamed or paid off.

[lmm]

> That it sometimes works counter to those goals is a function of greed, a lack of accountability and and a lack of transparency.

The whole purpose of regulations is to reduce accountability (because instead of taking responsibility for their actions, entities instead just follow the regulations). It's not an accidental bug, it's a fundamental design flaw in the system.

[imtringued]

The third paragraph hits too close to home for me.

You want to be a good person doing good things for other people and getting along peacefully? Sorry, but happy planet is that way. Don't come to earth.

[ta12653421]

>>It's illegal to live in a tent on 'your own' property,

want to elaborate which country this is?

[jongjong]

Australia.