If you're naked, cold & alone an IPO won't help.

Thom Hartmann discusses the FaceBook IPO and how creating more millionaires will not help poor Americans.

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News & Politics

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• FaceBook IPO

[Di0genesus]

@DeJach

The term engineer is overused and has become a "yuppie" word. Like I said, white collar techies are SOL, even if they can temporarily mesh local scale grid systems together. They cannot, and are not willing to build anything from the ground up. I've worked for enough of them to know what they think they can do versus what they CAN do. Even Facebook is nothing new, just a consolidation of existing apps and scripts combined with over-hype.

[Tasermaxx]

It's gonna be awfully hard to maintain a state of the art social network in a society that will be violently torn apart by economic inequality. Good luck updating your status when the next revolutionary war destroys your entire existence.

[DeJach]

@Di0genesus IBM, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Linkedin, Pandora, Raytheon, iRobot, VistaPrint, EMC, eBay, PayPal, Intel, ARM, Texas Instruments, AMD.... Yeah, I think I can write you off as completely uninformed.

[DeJach]

@oolong2 Almost isomorphically, I also know or know of a lot of engineers who are willing to set up a new wireless mesh network and a new power grid if the existing infrastructure goes kaput for some reason. Both your comment and the previous person's are completely different. Yes, Facebook itself does rely on millions of people having access to the internet. The individual engineers who built Facebook do not, they can (and many will) go on to do other things.

[oolong2]

@DeJach

I think you misinterpreted what the previous person said Generating local power is only failsafe for local power issues.

Facebook wouldn't be anything without everyone's global participation. Not only does that entail millions of people participating in Facebook for social interaction, but power grids, satellites, networks, computer, phone, & software companies.

FB is a great piece of software, but much of it's success is about being in the right place and right time.

[DeJach]

@Di0genesus Your original premise is wrong; all the CEs I know are aware of how to generate their own power if needed. Since your premise is wrong I won't address the rest of your comment.

[Di0genesus]

@DeJach

Computer engineers don't have shit if the grid is down, and can't adapt into a manual society like old school engineers (what computer techs refuse to call engineers anymore...because it's sooooo blue collar). So, as the infrastructure crumbles in the US, the facebook folks are going to have to leave the country if they want to keep using their so-called education.

[Di0genesus]

Tech companies don't last long when they go public and are thus subservient to a bunch of old, fat luddites.

[henleythecat]

Thom,

I had read somewhere that the reason that China is moving to a national health care system is that families, not knowing who and when someone would get sick or how much the medical care will cost, are forced to hoard cash.

The result of that idle cash, is that they are not purchasing what their own country is creating, leaving the countries economy tied to the economy of the US & Europe.

Now we are hording cash believing the GOP is going to dismantle SS and Medicare.

[DeJach]

Thom, you can't say "go out and take a risk" when you're not going out to take a risk. People who start startup companies are taking risks, a lot of them, that's why when they're successful they tend to be massively successful. If you eliminate a lot of the risks, that huge success goes away as well and the economy stagnates. Safety nets are useful, I agree, I'm very intrigued by the idea of guaranteed minimum income of $15k or so. But life is risky and making it risk-free doesn't yet work.