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The Refragmentation

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Refragmentation

#151

Post by acqq »

pcmaffey wrote: post #134

"And as long as it's possible to get rich by creating wealth, the default tendency will be for economic inequality to increase." This seems to be the ontological point of his essay, which reads as a loosey historical narrative manufactured to defend his belief that the fight against "economic inequality" will undermine innovation by disincentivizing the next Zuckerberg. But it misses the underlying point of wealth cr…

Exactly, no matter how much some people try to mystify everything, the "rich get richer, the poor become slaves" is something that history told us happened even before the democracy was introduced to the Ancient Greece, some 2600 years ago. It's nothing specific for the current times. The golden age and democracy we adore since then didn't start with the "more of that inequality" but with the total opposite:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seisachtheia

"the relief of burdens"

"The seisachtheia laws immediately cancelled all outstanding debts, retroactively emancipated all previously enslaved debtors, reinstated all confiscated serf property to the hektemoroi, and forbade the use of personal freedom as collateral in all future debts. The laws instituted a ceiling to maximum property size - regardless of the legality of its acquisition (i.e. by marriage), meant to prevent excessive accumulation of land by powerful families."

Re: The Refragmentation

#152

Post by rmason »

PG you may want to rethink the idea of networks of cooperating companies work better than a single big company. Just finished reading Ashlee Vance's biography of Elon Musk.

Real revelation for this Michigan boy was that at both Tesla and SpaceX Musk had failures trying to use existing supplier networks. By doing a lot of manufacturing in house Musk not only realized cost and time savings but gained an agility and nimbleness that blew away his competitors. Granted Musk didn't need to manufacture his own raw materials. But in doing his own manufacturing he was able to gain a further competitive edge by making his products better. For example the Big 3's supplier networks add to their sloth and look-alike products.

Re: The Refragmentation

#153

Post by rmason »

PG you may want to rethink the idea of networks of cooperating companies working better than a single big company. Just finished reading Ashlee Vance's biography of Elon Musk.

Real revelation for this Michigan boy was that at both Tesla and SpaceX Musk had failures trying to use existing supplier networks. By doing a lot of manufacturing in house Musk not only realized cost and time savings but gained an agility and nimbleness that blew away his competitors.

Granted Musk didn't need to manufacture his own raw materials. But in doing his own manufacturing he was able to gain a further competitive edge by making his products better. For example the Big 3's supplier networks add to their sloth and look-alike products. I think as 3D printers improve this advantage may make its way down to smaller companies.

Re: The Refragmentation

#154

Post by HillaryBriss »

rsync wrote: post #3

"Obviously the spread of computing power was a precondition for the rise of startups." If you live in San Francisco (or are visiting) you can visit the USS Pampanito - a retired WWII submarine.[1] One thing I think you will notice is the manufacturers plaques attached to every little piece of equipment in the submarine ... every one of them the plaque of some tiny little supplier that you have never heard of . Some l…

Interesting. That reminds me of the fact that, after WWII, US domestic producers, to a far greater extent than today, satisfied the US domestic market for all kinds of products. (I think this was largely due to the literally bombed-out industrial base of some US competitors.)

And that amounted to a large number of jobs which are no longer available to US workers.

Re: The Refragmentation

#155

Post by clarkmoody »

WoodenChair wrote: post #144

> It would be insane to go to war just to induce more national unity. It's probably out of the scope of this essay, but we have in fact been at war for 14 years. It's not at the scale of WW2, but it's war none the less. I think it has not induced national unity due to precisely what Graham describes - fragmentation in society.

Of course he means command economy total war when he says "go to war".

The US has been involved in foreign conflicts almost continually since the end of WWII, but none of them have been total war.

Re: The Refragmentation

#156

Post by AstroChimpHam »

PG started off talking about the fragmentation in politics, and I wish he would have wrapped that back in at the end. It feels to me like the two party system in the US is dying now as the oligopolistic system of just a few big companies began dying in the 90s.

The two party political system is more unnatural than the few-big-companies system. Libertarians and Evangelicals agree on very little yet they've been voting for the same party for years. Proponents of extreme reform on the other side don't want to vote for a moderate candidate. A Trump vs Clinton election is going to leave too many people without a candidate and force the beginning of the end of the two party system.

Re: The Refragmentation

#157

Post by randcraw »

13of40 wrote: post #71
tomjen3 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opportunity has increased massively. When I was a lad I got my hand on a great prize: a copy of Delphi 3 (already obsolete by then), which got me started coding. Today anybody can download much better tools (Visual studio, IntelliJ, etc for free). Any question you have can be searched on the internet, etc. Opportunity has increased _massively_ the last 20 years.

Seconded. I learned assembly code on a DOS 2.0 machine by disassembling tons of random bytes and making a hex->assembly lexicon that I could use to write programs in hex. Not because I was trying to be hardcore, but because I was in an information, and software, and hardware desert. My kid, on the other hand, has a 24-hour, 50 gigabit connection to any information he wants, a computer made in 2015, and his choice of…

And a significant joy of those 'desert' years was the need for and rise of the hacker community which brought learners and tech fans together socially and educationally. That sharing of common experiences and cool hacks is gone now, replaced with near infinite code repositories that send a clear message to neophytes, "There be no dragons ahead, only well trod pavement".

Re: The Refragmentation

#158

Post by WoodenChair »

clarkmoody wrote: post #155
WoodenChair wrote: post #144

> It would be insane to go to war just to induce more national unity. It's probably out of the scope of this essay, but we have in fact been at war for 14 years. It's not at the scale of WW2, but it's war none the less. I think it has not induced national unity due to precisely what Graham describes - fragmentation in society.

Of course he means command economy total war when he says "go to war". The US has been involved in foreign conflicts almost continually since the end of WWII, but none of them have been total war.

Yes, I think you're right. But since we are at war, I guess it's worth pointing out the difference, to help elucidate why the current war is not generating social cohesion. It just rings a bit hollow to not acknowledge that we have been in a very serious war now for 14 years.

Re: The Refragmentation

#159

Post by WoodenChair »

clarkmoody wrote: post #149
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…

Walmart employees are not compelled to work for Walmart; the employment contract is agreed upon voluntarily by both parties. The employees know how much they will be paid and agree to accept the terms. Walmart is operating within the legal employment framework set up by the government, including the welfare state and the minimum wage. That will not change by raising the minimum wage. Rather, Walmart will simply add a…

I must commend you - I have never seen the main detrimental effect of the minimum wage explained so succinctly. Not in Friedman, not in Hayek, not anywhere.

Re: The Refragmentation

#160

Post by marshray »

13of40 wrote: post #82
frik wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many startups from 1995-2001 are still around that took seed-money and a few rounds and then stagnated (newer took off) since 2001? How many small companies (self funded) survived from the same timeframe? Startups have usually a goal IPO or get bought or the disolve themself after some time - right?

The point is that Bob's Bearing and Brass Knob Corporation, even though they did contribute some parts to the submarine (a) probably failed shortly thereafter and (b) probably wholeheartedly intended to become the next General Electric.

The 'History' page of the Gorman [precision magnetic coil winding] Machine company is a fascinating read. http://www.gormanmachine.com/history.htm

There used to be many thousands of such manufacturing-based small businesses in America. They tended to stay focused on their competency or branch out tentatively into related products, flexibly grow and shrink to meet demand, or sometimes get acquired. But I don't think many of them planned to become the next General Electric.

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