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The Refragmentation

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Refragmentation

#111

Post by ericd »

lkrubner wrote: post #105
jessriedel wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are those studies equating "starting a small business" with "startup"? Paul Graham only uses "startup" to refer to business that start small but grow large is a short time, as he says in the OP article itself (and elsewhere). If you equate those two ideas, you won't be able to talk clear about this topic.

When he refers to "the spread of computing power" he seems to be talking about software startups in particular. But when he says "The ultimate way to get market price is to work for yourself, by starting your own company" he is either talking about every imaginable form of business, or he is talking complete gibberish. If everyone goes into one sector, the economy would soon suffer an abundance in that sector, and a…

There are "tech startups" that serve lots of "non-tech" sectors of the economy. One of the major beliefs in SV is that this is going to happen more and more, with companies making tech that augments or replaces entire sectors of human work. There's obviously a ways to go before this will be possible with some areas.

Re: The Refragmentation

#112

Post by warrenmar »

roeme wrote: post #13

If this piqued your interest; or left you wondering, I'd recommend reading Piketty's "Capital in the twenty-first Century". As Graham's piece concludes; if we don't do something , we'll get into trouble. - « Terrific work causes us to think of additional questions. »

The Economist has a four paragraph summary of the book.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/05/ec...

Low growth causes more income to come from capital, which causes more inequality due to inheritance and the rich getting richer. The solution is a global progressive tax on capital.

Re: The Refragmentation

#113

Post by petra »

wpietri wrote: post #80
csours wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read a comment once that the steel industry collapsed in the US because they failed to innovate or continuously improve (much like the Big 3 automotive companies). Do you know of any concrete examples of this? or books about how US Steel lost?

I don't know about steel, but Rother's Toyota Kata makes this case for cars. There's one graph in particular that shows carmaker productivity per worker over several decades. Toyota, working in a Japan decimated by war, definitely came from behind when competing with Detroit's big 3. Toyota starts lower than the other 3, and all of them improve gradually together. But at some point US carmakers plateau. Toyota just k…

>> Toyota works hard to teach them

Why did Toyota did that ?

Re: The Refragmentation

#114

Post by mindslight »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #91
dhimes wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. After 9/11 you probably could have convinced Americans to invade anybody.

They did. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but got invaded because the cabal behind the U.S. President had declared they wanted to invade Iraq already during the Clinton administration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_C...

There's a huge difference between maintaining public support to send a voluntarily conscripted army somewhere, and actually instituting a draft and wartime command economy. Do you think your early 2000's out-of-touch war cheerleader would have been so zealous if their family were forced into the army, or if fuel rationing meant they could only drive one of their SUVs? It is all too easy to be pro-war when its only effect is a new genre of reality TV.

Re: The Refragmentation

#115

Post by _delirium »

gotchange wrote: post #79
cushychicken wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good observation. Paul's definition of "startup" seems to be "company that grows explosively to a massive size/valuation in a short number of years". The sort of businesses you cite seem to fall under the "small business" moniker, and would probably be one of the mouse-sized companies he referenced in the essay as one that tried to avoid trampling by the elephants of BigCo.

Here's the specific part in question: " People did start their own businesses of course, but educated people rarely did, because in those days there was practically zero concept of starting what we now call a startup: a business that starts small and grows big. That was much harder to do in the mid 20th century. Starting one's own business meant starting a business that would start small and stay small."

That part is a bit questionable. Educated people starting small companies that grew big is not something new in American business. Not even educated people starting small technology companies that grew big. It's possible there has been a quantitative change, with it being more common now (I'd need to see numbers to be convinced of that, but it's possible). But "practically zero concept" prior to the 1980s?

Re: The Refragmentation

#116

Post by wyager »

gotchange wrote: post #101

A very fascinating article that I have truly enjoyed reading minus the last 10 or so paragraphs where Paul expressed it unequivocally that he's a status-quo warrior and that nothing can be done to remedy the problem of the ever widening gap of income inequality in the global economy and more specifically in the US and that it's a "natural" product of the state of affairs in our world. A classical example of « the nat…

The appeal to nature fallacy us to claim that something is right because it's "natural". It's not necessarily wrong to say that something can't (practically) be changed because it's natural. In this sense, natural means "an (emergent) property of nature". For example, as much as we may dislike it, people will continue to fall to their death in the near future, as gravity and its associated risks are natural.

I believe Paul means that these economic properties are to be expected because they arise naturally and it is not practical to eliminate them.

Re: The Refragmentation

#118

Post by panic »

harryh wrote: post #40
sce wrote: post #32

Regarding income inequality, I recommend listening to some of the speeches/debates with Bernie Sanders. E.g. he argues that the greatest receiver of welfare in the US is the wal-Mart family, because they get even richer paying their workers so little that the workers have to live on welfare. (In other words the welfare is "paying" the workers so that Wal-Mart don't have to.) He proposes to rise the minimum wage. http…

This assumes an obligation on Wal-Mart's part to pay people according to their need. In a market economy, people are paid according to their ability.

In a market economy, people are paid just enough so they don't leave. Salary depends more on the typical economic situation of an employee than their ability.

Re: The Refragmentation

#119

Post by zackmorris »

gotchange wrote: post #101

A very fascinating article that I have truly enjoyed reading minus the last 10 or so paragraphs where Paul expressed it unequivocally that he's a status-quo warrior and that nothing can be done to remedy the problem of the ever widening gap of income inequality in the global economy and more specifically in the US and that it's a "natural" product of the state of affairs in our world. A classical example of « the nat…

I've been thinking about this a lot lately and will ride your coattails for a moment by pointing out that if economics is darwinian, then a possible way out of this situation might be human planning.

It doesn't have to be central, it can be a way of living that amplifies the changes you'd like to see in the world. So for example, say a person acquires a certain amount of wealth and wants to make his or her home solar to stop feeding investment in the fossil fuel industry. He or she should consider installing double the number of photovoltaics necessary and give back to the grid to lessen someone else's burden.

Now apply that philosophy of cooperation to our daily lives and I think that we can achieve a fairly rapid change in the status quo, and that we are seeing it happening all around us.

Re: The Refragmentation

#120

Post by return0 »

gotchange wrote: post #101

A very fascinating article that I have truly enjoyed reading minus the last 10 or so paragraphs where Paul expressed it unequivocally that he's a status-quo warrior and that nothing can be done to remedy the problem of the ever widening gap of income inequality in the global economy and more specifically in the US and that it's a "natural" product of the state of affairs in our world. A classical example of « the nat…

> the degree of infatuation or affection for the early 20th century years with central planning economy, crony capitalism, robber barons...

I think you 're being deliberately inflammatory here. He's probably well read about the period but there is no "degree of affection" for that kind of capitalism.

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