Can't believe they settled in just two hours. The claim must have been as specious as it appeared, but like most trolls, they might have lost the battle, but they'll crawl back to wherever they come from and regroup for the next battle.
It seems like of course you should be able to do this, but the article brings up some valid concerns. Still, I think it's a bit condescending to say to people we're just protecting you when most of us understand the risks involved with a startup. Most aren't Facebook. Most are the company you never heard of because it failed after 6 months.
"...most of us understand the risks involved with a startup."
With all due respect, I think that's a dangerously optimistic assumption. If anything, the tech bubble of the '90s showed us that most people clearly do not understand the risks involved. (And that was with publicly disclosed companies!). Even some ostensibly very sophisticated people, like Wall Street traders and bankers, were unable to parse the tech landscape back then -- to say nothing of the legions of retail investors who jumped into the fray.
I think there needs to be a give and take here. If we're going to allow retail investment in private companies, then private companies who open their shares to secondary retail markets should have to have some sort of public disclosure of financials, performance, and trading volume[1]. You really can't have one without the other, or else you're inviting speculative bubbles and other such clusterfucks. I can almost guarantee you that 9 out of every 10 retail investors in America would blindly -- blindly -- leap into startup speculating. The results wouldn't be pretty.
[1]Thereby blurring the line between public and private, but that's a whole different can of worms.
Understanding the risks and ignoring the risks are two entirely different things... The current law basically says that anyone without $1 million and $200k in the bank is too stupid to invest in a startup but someone with that money is smart enough to. If they don't have to make those disclosures to people with lots of money now, why should they have to make them if they're crowdfunded (where people actually stand to lose less because the risk is spread over a larger pool)? I could see an argument for making those disclosures even with the system as it is now, but that argument is something entirely separate from the crowdfunding argument.
Edit: It seems I missed your "can of worms" comment. I guess I just really don't like the fact that the US govt has and is continuing to treat its citizens like they're mentally incapacitated. Now a lot of us do behave that way, but I don't think it's the government's place to try to change that behavior. The market will do that when they lose their money. If they don't learn their lesson, that's their own problem.
"but that argument is something entirely separate from the crowdfunding argument."
True, but I'm actually less worried about the danger to individual retail investors, and more worried about the externalities to the system imposed by a mass influx of speculative crowdfunding -- externalities that can easily wipe out the retail investors, even if their losses aren't concentrated too heavily in any one company.
"The current law basically says that anyone without $1 million and $200k in the bank is too stupid to invest in a startup but someone with that money is smart enough to."
There are two ways to look at the meaning of the current law. The first is that yes, the law views net worth as a proxy for sophistication, and therefore those without high net worth are deemed "too stupid" to invest in private companies. The second interpretation is that those with net worth in excess of $1 million (or whichever benchmark we choose) are capable of absorbing speculative losses, while others are not.
I agree with you that crowd-pooling gets around this issue, and it's interesting in that respect. But I still think it opens the door to too many unintended consequences.
I agree with what you're saying, but in thinking about this we can also have crowd funding without implying an equity stake in the company. Diaspora, the Facebook alternative started by some young NYU grads a couple of years ago, got off the ground with $10,000 in crowd funding without any equity stakes being sold. People did it because they wanted to support the idea. I think this is probably true about most crowd funded projects whether it's the arts or someone's cross-country trip.
When you do the math on $10 in Facebook stock at founding vs. what it's worth now, you find out that you could have invested in 20,000 startups and even if every single one of them failed except for Facebook, you would have lost NO money. The risk is non-existent. It's a fear tactic.
2011- 1,100 seeded startups.
2004- Year Facebook formed.
2012-Facebook's valuation: est. $100 billion.
If you say that 1,100 companies are seeded a year (which is not true, only 885 in 2009, 850 in 2008) and multiply that by 8 years (2004-2012), you get 8,800 startups to invest in. So EVEN IF 8,799 of those companies failed, if you invested in every single one you'ld have a 250% return in 8 years during a down market. That's amazing.
But those 8,799 didn't fail. If 1% succeeded you'ld have 88 companies still left in your portfolio IN ADDITION to your Facebook stock.
This is why we need crowdfunding so badly. Without it, wealth is pumped to people who have so much wealth that they can't spend it all. With crowdfunding, capitalism works to spread that money around to people who can spend all of it. We're talking an explosion of wealth in this country and it wasn't from some stupid government debt plan.
You're right that there won't be another Facebook. Just as there hasn't been another Microsoft or Google. But thinking that there isn't going to be anymore large up and coming companies that change the competitive landscape is false. It'd be like saying in the 1800's that now that railways have drastically changed everything there won't be any new railways game changers. There wasn't much development/change in railways, but it was something new called airplanes that changed everything.
That's not a given by any means. For all we know, the next big thing is being started by some kid in a dorm room right this minute. I would hate to think it was otherwise and I believe there will always be a new disruptor. Technology marches on and we have not reached the end, not by a long shot.
I am sure there are plenty of us here who might have invested a small amount of money in facebook in 2004-2005, the first time I saw it I was pretty sure it was going to kill myspace.
This is outstanding reporting requesting and staying on the request for information, and it's a fascinating look at Jobs and the government process of vetting White House appointments in 1991.
Note that they are still obsessed with the idea of anyone belonging to or contributing to the Communist Party and even checked if had relatives in foreign countries who might have been Communists (they couldn't find any).
I also particularly like the comments from people who knew him in the background check documents--not always a flattering picture, that's for sure (but we knew that).
One of my favorite tidbits from "The Best And The Brightest" is that Dean Rusk, President Kennedy's nominee for Secretary of State, had to fill out a security questionnaire like this one, and to the question, "Have any of your relatives been part of an organization whose purpose was to subvert the government of the United States?" he answered "yes" because both his grandfathers had fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War.
When I was applying for permanent residency in 2003, this question also came up as part of my interview. I had briefly been a member of a small radical left organization in Canada, back when I was 18 or so - and since I didn't know how in-depth the background check would be, I decided it'd be best to disclose it.
Paraphrasing from memory:
Interviewer: "So, tell me about this thing."
Me: "Stupid kid stuff. I was in college."
Interviewer: "So you don't believe this stuff any more?"
Me: "No, I've made my peace with capitalism."
And that was that.
I came away with the impression that (at least for people from countries lacking a near-term history of guerrilla warfare) this was largely a formality.
To expand on liber8's point, the "red scare" and such seems funny and unreasonable now, but it's important to remember that during the cold war, the USA and the Soviet Union were very much enemies.
To put it in another way, would we think the FBI was out-of-bounds today if background checks today included determining if the person being vetted (or their family members) were associated with a terrorist organization? As much as most of us would consider the "terrorism" threat overblown, we'd accuse the FBI of gross negligence if an Al-Qaeda operative made it into a position in the US government.
It's not apparent these days with rose-coloured hindsight glasses, but when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, there was a very palpable fear that there would be a nuclear war, regardless of actual risk. Certainly there was in the west, a fear that 'those crazy russians' would start something because of ideology.
A russian friend of mine says the same was not true in Russia. They were aware of the cold war, obviously, but 'knew' that their leaders, no matter how incompetant or corrupt, would never initiate the exchange.
The trouble is that "terrorism" inherently contains violence, whereas "communism" can be completely peaceful and nice. Terrorist organizations are always bad. Communist organizations can be completely benign, and were generally considered bad purely by association.
To put it slightly differently, it's not like asking if someone is associated with a terrorist organization, but more like asking if someone is associated with a Muslim organization.
"Communism" as a general philosophy may not be violent, but if you look in the Communist Manifesto, and the entity which calls itself the Communist Party, the stuff they're concerned about - advocating "armed overthrow of the US government" - was a present and real threat.
Not that I'd care to throw out a blanket justification for any and all anti-Communist measures out there, mind you. But it's possible to downplay the threat excessively too.
Perhaps some forms of Anarcho-socialism could be argued to be both completely nonviolent (peaceful) and voluntary (nice). However any form of Communism calling for the abolition of capitalism, which asserts that others do not have the right to continue asserting claims to private ownership of capital independently, most certainly cannot be considered either.
Yes, that was my argument. I believe it stands until a semantic context for "completely peaceful and nice" can be proposed that is disjoint in meaning from "nonviolent and voluntary".
It seems so strange now, but remember, the Berlin wall only fell in November 1989. Even in 1991, the communist threat was still very much on people's minds.
Also, the people in charge of the FBI are old, and likely to have been the kind of people obsessing over this kind of stuff back in the day (during the cold war).
> Note that they are still obsessed with the idea of anyone belonging to or contributing to the Communist Party and even checked if had relatives in foreign countries who might have been Communists (they couldn't find any).
Their continued focus upon past drug use is also anachronistic. I have not yet read the the document all the way thought, but so far they have mentioned it no fewer than a dozen times.
The FBI's priorities seem to be... dated. I wonder if they are still thus.
They're looking for aberrant things that will lead them to compromising information. You get some leeway for the sins of the past -- provided that you disclose.
If you state that you don't abuse alcohol or use drugs, but individuals associated with you state otherwise, that will merit additional investigation. If you committed a crime and lied about it, what else did you do? Sell drugs? Grow weed in your apartment? Hang out with drug dealers?
Anachronistic or not, using drugs is illegal. If you're hiding some dark secret, that can be used to coerce or otherwise compromise you, it's relevant.
Do you want the US representative to some trade organization selling the country out, because he doesn't want someone to find out that did something stupid in his 20s?
> Do you want the US representative to some trade organization selling the country out, because he doesn't want someone to find out that did something stupid in his 20s?
No, I'd much rather they do it for a fist-full of money.
Maybe, but the whole point of these interviews are to try to determine how susceptible a person is to being "turned", that is, blackmailed/bribed/forced against their will to working against US interests.
Maybe the FBI is being stodgy, but if someone has been addicted to certain illegal drugs (I know, I know, use doesn't mean addiction) that's one additional angle an "enemy" could use to exploit this person.
I was told by the holder of a Secret clearance here in Aus that the interviews about background were largely about exposing potential blackmail levers and less about moral transgressions.
He also mentioned three general levels of clearance - classified, secret negative, secret positive. Negative is closer to a background check in style. Positive is the exhaustive fine-toothed comb.
Or even if they were particularly averse to friends/family members/church members/etc finding out about their use. I've known people who aggressively hid their (regular) weed smoking from their spouses. (Yeah, not exactly an optimal relationship, but it definitely happens...)
Joshu,
I'm not sure what exactly you're complaining about. The person who posted the link is not the same person who wrote it. They just happen to work at the same site with oh 50 or 60 other writers. But even if the author had promoted her own story, so what? I can tell you that as a writer, I promote my own work on social sites because being read is a goal of mine and also because page views make my editors happy and keep me working. I make no apologies for that. It's actually part of what any good writer should be doing. After I publish a post I usually spend a good 20-30 minutes promoting it on social sites--so people know it's there and actually read it.
self-promoters have awfully mixed reasons for promoting their own stuff. this leads to problems.
- they are free-riding, not helping the community. notice that OP doesn't really post things they are not involved with. i notice you do the same.
- they do not disclose it is self-authored.
- the behavior is often looked down-upon by communities. i certainly feel bad about doing it.
- when authors are chasing pageviews and not reputation they are often submitting everything rather than attempting to curate good stuff.
- there's an incredibly fine line between this and spam.
when someone submits something that they found, they are saying "this is good."
when someome submits something that they wrote, they are saying something subtly different: "please look at this"
it's forgivable when they are part of the community, because at least they know what the community is about. i notice that your first comment on this site is about self-posting.
you are unapologetic about submitting your stuff but the vast majority gets zero upvotes. wrong audience, probably.
joshu, The fact is that the writer of this post and the person who posted were two different people, so regardless of what you think of self-promotion, it simply wasn't relevant in this instance.
I'm the submitter. I'll write a little of what I know.
joshu, you wrote, "notice that OP doesn't really post things they are not involved with". In this case, I think you intend me when you write, "OP". At this point, http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=hn12 seems to tally sixteen items I've submitted to HN. The first fifteen were to pieces I'd written: the tiny minority of all I'd written in the past couple of years that I thought would particularly interest HN, but certainly related to me. The sixteenth, and most recent item, was the one which spawned this thread. In my mind, I had nothing to do with the piece on introversion, and know nothing about the author, but it's true that I write sporadically for the same site.
I submit rarely to HN in part because I don't understand it. While I scan it, I don't feel familiar enough with its ethos even to qualify myself as a lurker. I frequently post--mostly pieces I have not written--to Reddit, DZone, Stackoverflow, and so on, because I am far more comfortable with what "works" there.
My main personal conclusion from my submission is that I'm surprised--astounded, even--and pleased with the quality of the comments that have followed. I've found them more meaningful, in aggregate, than those for any other submission I've read in HN. This encourages me to believe that there must be much more to HN than I've found, and I simply need to approach it some different way.
joshu, in a nearby comment you suggested I "disclose". Please provide detail: how do you recommend I have submitted the article on introversion?
joshu, in a nearby comment you write about "chasing pageviews and not reputation". When I posted the piece on introversion, I was "chasing" neither pageviews NOR reputation; as I've suggested above, I understand the latter only dimly. I thought the article would interest HN readers.
I underline: rsmiller, hn12, and the author of the introversion piece are three different people. I suspect the three of us have never met each other, although of course I'm in no position to be certain of the other two.
I'm unsure what you mean, joshu, by "the submittor works for the submitted blog". I occasionally write for the HPIO site. It's possible I'll never do so again; I certainly am not an employee or otherwise related to HPIO with a duty to submit articles from the site to HN.
