Someone in management read and misunderstood "The Velocity of Money" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money)?

Or understood way too well. I promise it isn't Altman that will be left destroyed or jobless if this crashes.

An important thing that this joke misses is that both economists now also owe federal income tax and social security tax.

Were the payments considered income?

Yes, but they just didn't tell the IRS and nobody was any the wiser

Yes, but they were under the 1099 reporting limits, while they both owe taxes on them, neither were required to report it to the IRS... assuming this is the one and only time they paid each other for services rendered.

If they routed the payments through a shell company it would be written off as business entertainment expenses.

The replies explain all there is to explain in that example. If each economist thinks that eating shit is worth $100 then, well, that's what it's worth.

HN is fascinating. What other website on the internet can one visit where one tells an obvious joke with an obvious point where the characters themselves explain the joke and yet we can be certain someone will point out “no no, actually eating a random pile of shit you see on the floor is worth it” and believe it?

Has it occurred to you, especially since one of the economists in the joke admits they feel they ate shit for nothing, that they actually do not feel the exercise was worth it? Have you never spent money on something, thinking it would be worth it, then afterwards realised it was a waste of money? Have you also never taken a job and then realised “I didn’t charge enough for the trouble”?

It is fascinating that someone can tell an obvious joke with an obvious point, where the characters themselves spell out what’s wrong, and yet we can be certain someone will genuinely believe and defend that “no no, actually eating a random pile of shit you found on the floor makes sense and is worth it”.

Has it occurred to you, especially since one of the economists in the joke admits they feel they ate shit for nothing, that they actually do not feel the exercise was worth it? Have you never spent money on something, thinking it would be worth it, then afterwards realised it was a waste of money? Have you also never taken a job and then realised “I didn’t charge enough for the trouble”?

I’m reminded of a bit of news I heard a while back, where one teenager challenged a friend to eat rat shit they found on the street. The eater died shortly after, because the poop contained rat poison. I doubt any of them found it worth it.

It's a political joke that uses a rhetorical sledge hammer to make it impossible to defend a particular principle. Is it so surprising that someone will still defend the principle?

It's not an obvious joke. It seems closer to a puzzle in that the reader must discover that the $100 was for entertainment. This is a common class of puzzle where money changes hands between two people and results in a surprising conclusion.

Bro, there’s something really wrong with your head if you seriously believe that the gist of the story is “eating shit is entertainment”.

A better gist may be the value of entertainment is temporary.

If instead it was just one person and they went to a movie theater. If you ignore the entertainment value it may just look like the person through away the admission cost.

Why else would the economist offer the other to eat shit if not for entertainment? Like what other purpose would it reasonably be?

They don’t call it the dismal science for nothing!

More like not everyone agrees with the point of the joke. They didn't eat shit for nothing, the watching economist paid for the entertainment, why else would they have offered to pay to watch them if not for the entertainment? It's really no different to getting offered money to do a dare. The fact that they felt bad about it later is irrelevant, when the money was initially offered they both felt that they did get value from the act.

Mass layoffs and the wellness camp industry will easily account for $600+ billion a year in contracts, for at least a few years.

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/rfk-wellness-farms-us-disabi...

Either Nvidia eventually runs out of chips for OpenAI to buy or OpenAI runs out of equity Nvidia can buy.

The chips OPEN AI is buying don't even exist, they're hypothetical chips that will potentially exist at some point in the future.

Even future chips might run out. But I think OpenAI will run out of equity to sell first. Even tough they can print it, it gets dilluted.

Smells like "Banco Master" (Brazil) scandal.

investment is not revenue tho... this is equivalent to nvidia buying its own chips...

It is equivalent under scrutiny, but casually looking the books and seeing Nvida making a sale to Nvida sticks out like a sore thumb a lot more than Nvida making a sale to OpenAI. The latter is much more likely to pass as revenue.

The classic "Where's the $20 you owe me?" sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-ycvJC-qIQ

am i wrong to think that this sketch isn't at all applicable (besides the surface level joke of money being passed around) to the ai bubble or ""modern banking"" as mentioned in the youtube comments? i keep seeing it referenced like it is an explanation of some crazy conspiracy thing, so i don't know if i just don't get it.

No it's actually perfect.

GDP measures exchange of money with the assumption that this is a proxy for actual economic output... except cases like this where monetary exchanges like this which accomplish nothing.

i assume the joke is that the three stooges are too stupid to realize that because they all owe each other $20 there is no debt, and they show this by accident by passing a $10 dollar bill around until it ends up back with larry. it says nothing about GDP.