There was such a magic to ega games, then vga, that I think was lost a bit in the transition to 3d engines. I count myself lucky to have experienced the surprise he mentions about doom and a monster jumping out at you, the land unfolding worlds of sierra games, and quirkiness of Lucas arts stories. It's a good reminder that graphics capabilities can change, but our human software can be entertained by all the old tricks.
Great question! Maybe they are, maybe they're not, and you're right that this should influence how the company is structured. But our current system goes quite a bit past simply "solving" this problem with investor shareholders, because that sole shareholder is entitled to any future profits the company makes, regardless of whether it makes a completely different game, and regardless of the massive contributions future employees may have made in the meantime. What do you think? I discuss this in more detail in this essay: https://vladh.net/alternatives-to-wage-labour
It's the same argument if someone should take options in lieu of salary in a startup, and the answer is almost always no. Options tend to end up worthless as most startups fail.
IMO, a better question is to ask what allowed the single investor to become an investor to begin with. The nature of investing means the investor must be able to also lose all their capital. What can we do as a society to make easier for the 99 other employees to 'invest'. For me this means having social safety nets like healthcare and UBI so that people can take less salary or risk what little they have in a venture like you originally described.
The challenge is that the company you work for is almost never the best investment on its own. That's why retirement funds are diversified. I would worry about giving everyone the ability to bet 99% of their wealth on a single company. The reason there are investors is because they've previously invested their money in a risk appropriate way. Now there's a whole argument around intergenerational family wealth which skews everyone's starting point, but it's probably better than concentrating that wealth in a single point of failure (the state who gives you UBI). Probably the right approach to wealth inequality is more tax on non-beneficial uses of money(yachts), and more incentives for mutually beneficial pursuits (cheaper energy).
Bolt (the 1-click payment) company tried this, and immediately after (justified) layoffs you saw articles about people taking out (relatively) massive loans to buy now-worthless options: https://www.wired.com/story/bolt-stock-loans/amp
Had Bolt made it, those employees would have become investors...
This is great! Would love to join the discord. A couple things that I'm curious about: can you make a script/app start by default, can you use a node library (murmur specifically), can you interface with peripherals (led and knobs). I'd like to turn my old androids into screen-less walkie talkies, and phonk feels like I might be able to avoid android studio, which would be a relief.
1) Yes, you can make a script that starts on device boot.
2) Sadly you cannot use node libs. The JS engine I use is pretty dated (Mozilla Rhino) and I dont have time these days to do big changes.
3) Yes, you can interface with Arduino compatible hardware via USB serial or Bluetooth / Bluetooth LE.
4) If you want to do something screen less, you can run a script as a service (background). A bunch of years ago, when the ESP modules were not common I used an Android device as a network interface for my Arduino :)
If you're founding a coop, you're probably more interested in organizational theory than doing the work. There are cost savings when it comes to group buying or trade; so works well for farmers. But to do this for software is not about building better software IMO.
You can kinda see a hint of this in the spelling of Toronto as Tkaronto. I don't think this benefits the list. It's a kind of meta work, a convenient distraction from doing something of value.
If you're a builder you'll preoccupy yourself with the thing you're building. If you're driving by an ideology, you'll spend most of your time there, and legal frameworks will be of secondary concern, a means to an end.
> If you're a builder you'll preoccupy yourself with the thing you're building.
If you're one person building a thing that one person can build, that might be true.
If you're building a thing that needs or merely benefits from having more people doing the building, you almost certainly need to think about how to structure and coordinate what people do. That's true even if your decision is "no structure and no coordination".
Sometimes, that process will be implicit (and likely a more or less direct reflection of the personality of the initial builder). But for the most, once you start involving other people (or they involve themselves), organizational structure and behavior starts to become a thing you have to start paying attention to. Getting it wrong can destroy whatever you're trying to build.
I just read a review of this book with seems worth a read for a man of any age. Take solice that you're not alone in the feelings of uncertainty, and good on you for sharing.
For most men, the life structure of the late twenties is fragmented and unstable. They’re unsure if they chose the right career path. The possibility of marriage becomes a more pressing concern. They feel aimless if they don’t already have a solid relationship, home base, and career path.
From here, men enter what Levinson terms the “Age Thirty Transition.” In the late twenties, men realize that if they are going to make a change, they must do it soon, otherwise it will be too late.
This change could be about their careers, what city to live in, whether to fully commit to their romantic relationship or pursue other partners, and so on.
Levinson writes that this transition is often stressful. He calls it an “Age Thirty Crisis.”
This happens when a man’s current life structure is intolerable, but for whatever reason, they are unable to form a better one. A moderate or severe crisis is common during this period.
The Age Thirty Transition often begins with a vague uneasiness, a feeling that something is missing or wrong in your life. At this point, men sense that they must either find a new direction and make new choices or strengthen their commitment to the choices they’ve already made.
For some men, the process is smooth. By 30, they feel their lives are reasonably complete. Still, it’s possible that they are not acknowledging flaws in their lives, which “often surface at a later time, when they exact a heavier cost.”
62 percent of the men interviewed in the book went through a moderate or severe age thirty crisis.
Levinson concludes:
“A stressful Age Thirty Transition was more the rule than the exception in our study...Many young adults as they pass 30 have serious doubts about the value and viability of our society and about the possibility of forming a life structure worth having. Perhaps every generation feels that its life problems are unique in character and severity—and each of them may be right.”
