i agree there are a lot of concerns with allowing teens / children to use social media as it is today without any sort of way to help them benefit from these tools instead of being harmed by them (which is sadly far too common).
but my concern is that will lead to a less educated population. there is positive, life changing learning that can happen on social media. kids finding their tribe by connecting with people like them in other parts of the country / world. kids discovering skills / crafts they become passionate about. heck, even learning how to communicate effectively with others. i think social media is a treasure when it is used correctly.
ofc, i agree with the concerns and ofc the right "solution" is one that enables the positives and minimizes (and ideally eliminates) the negatives. and having social media as a closed, proprietary, centralized product that can't be tweaked (e.g, choose your own custom algorithm, or filter out a "type" of content that you don't want to see, etc.) is the core problem here. a decentralized social media would allow even regulators to apply much more fine-grained controls so that they don't have to remove access entirely.
but sadly bec. we don't have a good way to apply fine grained controls to how we use social media, it seems blanket banning entirely for an entire group of people is the best approach. like, i get why it may be necessary (it seems like most / many australians are currently on board), but i really hope this inspires people to build better social platforms that give more control to users.
i’m a bit confused by the “new form of debt” framing. debt means you owe something back, on a fixed schedule, regardless of outcome. here, there’s no obligation to pay anything “back.” if a student never creates financial upside, they never owe a cent.
the teacher takes the risk. if the student succeeds, both share in the upside. if not, the student walks away free, unlike debt, where you’re burdened for life whether or not the education worked.
1. If the person doesn’t have money, they can bring in a new investor who does see potential. If no one is willing to invest and they can’t afford a buyout themselves, then the “toxic” teacher just stays on the cap table, but the student can disengage personally. As soon as new investors come in, the buyout can happen.
2. If the person has become far more valuable, I don’t see that as a problem. Yes, they might be paying 100x compared to their early valuation, but that’s because their potential has grown 100x. From the student’s perspective, spending 1% of a much larger pie to buy out a teacher (even if toxic) isn’t “robbing their future self”. The real benefit for the student is that they never take on debt. Ever. They are never burdened if they don't become successful (unlike our current system).
Teachers can still realize returns through secondary sales (with the student’s approval). In that case, the student gives up nothing (their life isn’t affected) while the teacher profits. That’s why I framed “giving up” only around equity sales by the student because only that results in the student "giving up" something. But from a teacher’s perspective they can clearly profit without requiring the student to give something up.
> They nearly always cave to pressure to produce more profit, so the investor can make their money back, even at the expense of the vision for the company or the long term health of the business
That happens in companies because investors hold voting rights and can push out founder(s) or make decisions about the company. With personal tokens, shareholders have no control: they can’t fire you, push you toward an exit, or override your vision. If someone becomes toxic, you could buy back their shares at market price and even cut off contact. Personal tokens are designed to keep individuals in full control. Unlike company shareholders, personal token shareholders don’t “own” you.
> If they are cut off as deadweight, it undermines the whole concept, as they were still a building block to get you to where you are.
Agreed. Unfair ejections would kill trust. That’s why all actions would be transparent. If a student ejects a teacher without clear justification, they’d damage their reputation and likely struggle to raise in the future. Transparency is what keeps the system honest. But even in an unfair rejection, the student would have to pay market price for that equity (or get a new investor that buys from the investor they are ejecting). Assuming the student’s value has gone up, then the ejected investor would still profit.
> For teachers, it just feels like a perverse lottery. Go for volume and hope one pays off.
In the same way the best investors don’t see startup investing as a lottery but as a skill: where you won’t bat 100%, but you can be orders of magnitude better than average. Great teachers would have a knack for identifying and developing talent and won’t view this as a lottery. And for teachers who don’t want to play this game, nothing changes: they can keep teaching in the current system. This is about adding another option.
I see it the same way I see selling equity in a company: I want to incentivize people to help me win. I’d only raise from those who grow the pie larger than the share they take.
If giving up 1% to a teacher-investor helps me create 10x more value, that’s a fantastic deal. Without factoring in their impact on outcomes, it’s misleading to call that “robbing.”
And let’s be clear about what’s actually at stake. If I sell equity in a company for $10M, and a teacher owns 1% of my personal token, they’d receive $100k — only at that exit event. Compare that to owing a bank $200k in student loans right after graduation, regardless of outcomes.
It’s also not indentured servitude: there are no guaranteed repayments, I keep full agency, and personal tokens could allow “ejection” of shareholders if needed. Startup founders don’t see themselves as servants of their investors, and neither should students.
And honestly, I wouldn’t even want to buy back equity from investors who are actively helping me win. I’d rather keep them incentivized to keep contributing. (Of course, if they stop actively helping me I would want to buy back shares from them because they are deadweight). I think this could be implemented in a way that gives such control to the individual (e.g., you can buy back shares whenever).
Education is already reduced to financial profitability today — just in a worse way. Tuition and student debt force students to pay up front regardless of whether the education actually helps them succeed.
This flips the incentives: teachers only win if students do. Instead of extracting value at the start, they share in the upside when their students succeed. That seems like a healthier alignment than the status quo.
It is a long-term investment, but it doesn’t have to be decades before there’s liquidity. Teachers could sell portions of their equity along the way through secondary sales.
For example, if a student shows strong potential - say they ship a prototype that gains traction online - new investors may want to back them. At that point, the teacher can sell some of her shares to those investors (with the student’s approval), realizing value earlier while still staying aligned with the student’s long-term success.
Oh absolutely, these students would be actively applying to be trained by the teacher. And you’re right, the student retains full agency; the teacher can’t (and shouldn’t) control what they do.
As for returns: there are no guarantees, just like in venture capital. The model assumes a power-law distribution — you might mentor many students, but only a few will generate outsized successes. As AI makes outcomes more extreme, this dynamic will likely intensify, which is why equity (rather than debt) is the only model that works.
Students wouldn’t be giving up much: typically no more than 5–10% of their personal token. And importantly, this isn’t tied to income, so nothing in their day-to-day life is taken away.
Dividends only flow to shareholders when the student realizes capital gains (e.g., selling equity in a company), not from salary. Even then, there can be sensible safeguards, like only triggering dividends once total gains exceed $1M.
So students still keep nearly all of their upside, while gaining resources and support they wouldn’t otherwise have access to.
It’s not a pyramid scheme because it’s ultimately grounded in real value: equities in companies, which themselves are grounded in revenue.
If someone becomes a teacher, they would earn equity in their own students’ personal tokens. When those teachers eventually realize gains by selling shares, their own teachers (as shareholders) share in that upside too.
And if the teaching doesn’t actually create value, then everyone in that chain loses, which keeps the system honest.
This also applies to people who join companies and receive equity as part of their compensation. So initially, it’s most applicable to those who are likely to earn equity in the future — whether by starting a company or joining one.
Over time, though, I see it spreading to more domains as venture-backed models expand. For example, more researchers now get equity upside because more companies are being built around various kinds of research.
based on my travels to many parts of the world, yes. being mis-aligned with reality has very real, negative, consequences when building companies, and therefore people here are forced to be more truth-seeking.
(not all ofc - i would say this forcing function applies to < 1% of the population in SFBay, but that is still a far greater concentration than anywhere else i've seen).
i find similar truth-seeking-ness in long-term investors. cultures that are more short-term oriented, and who have less feedback from the market, seem to deviate away from truth-seeking because the forcing function becomes weak: you aren't quickly penalized for being wrong.
> Because if you can vibe code… so can everyone else.
> And if everyone can do it, what makes you think Devin won’t replace you?
Devin won't replace you if you can create valuable products through "vibe coding" or whatever else you call it.
when coding itself becomes a commodity, value creation becomes more concentrated up the stack: what you choose to build, how well you market / sell it, how you connect with your customers, product design. Devin won't outcompete humans at these skills anytime soon.
instead of sticking to a skill that's quickly becoming a commodity (as the author recommends), moving up the stack is the way to go (outside of very niche, specialized engineering domains - e.g: training base models).
awesome. i can see future iterations of this becoming really useful.
e.g. "i'm traveling to Tokyo this summer, show me good areas to live in if i want to run 10k every day through nature, as well as work out of highly rated cafes.".
i want to see good areas highlighted on the map. and even better would be integrating with Airbnb / Yelp / Google business ratings, etc. to show places i can rent in those areas.
another e.g. "best times to land in XYZ city if i want to avoid traffic getting to ABC". - to check this now i have to toggle some dropdowns in Google maps. natural language is a much better "interface" for most of what i want to do with maps.
You're making a common pricing mistake: the price of a product has absolutely nothing to do with the cost of building it. Nothing. Price only depends on what people are willing to pay for it, i.e. on the perceived value.
Just because you aren't the target audience for such a product doesn't mean that audience doesn't exist. The world is large.
Personally I see a great business in premium tools for the elites in any domain. A professional writer probably wouldn't mind shelling out an extra $1000 a year or more for a premium tool that's better than anything else out there. Smaller audience, but it likely exists.
This goes both ways: if people aren't willing to pay even the price it takes to make the product, you go out of business. This happens often as well.
If photoshop saw an opportunity to increase the price to generate greater revenue, of course they'll try to do so. These changes in pricing and priorities often lead to opportunities for new products & companies.