Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Refragmentation

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 461 posts

Re: The Refragmentation

#231

Post by eldavido »

bhauer wrote: post #67
golergka wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems to be just small businesseses, not startups. Startups either go Facebook or go bust, they're not created to stay stable at small scale.

Facebook or bust. If this is the definition that we're expected to accept, I will say that as a consumer and human being, I prefer interacting with and being a part of small businesses more than startups . It would seem this definition paints a startup as a proto-bigcorp. If the prevalence of big corporations is not a cycle we want to repeat, would we not favor businesses that do not intend to become big corporations…

For employees: salary/responsibility growth, bigger impact more quickly

You might be right about the customer side, that non-"startups" are more likely to be around in 5-10 years, which makes a difference when investing in a new, mission-critical area of your business (e.g. replacing email server)

Re: The Refragmentation

#232

Post by incompatible »

Retric wrote: post #204
MBlume wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No leftie is arguing or longing for any of these policies. What we're looking for is just more equality in economic opportunities and esp capital and that distribution of capital to be more fair across all the classes and not to be a privilege only for rich and highly connected people. > That's how we envision the solution to fix this problem of "fragmentation" as he put when it exactly is more like a "segregation"…

Revert tax policy back from an effective sub 15% at the top to far more reasonable levels. To start, SS taxes apply to all income levels. Next, you can't avoid capital gains by donating appiceated assets. Further, capital gains is taxed at the same rate as all other income. And my personal favorite, there are zero corporate tax breaks of any kind.

And at the other end? The popular opinion seems to be that we just need to force companies to pay higher wages, i.e., put up the minimum wage. Now those low paying jobs are illegal and people end up unemployed instead, especially when the economy is bad. I'd be willing to try abolishing minimum wages and letting the government pay a subsidy to anyone making a genuine effort to work, so that they have a reasonable standard of living. I'm just not sure how you measure genuine effort, so that you don't end up subsidising people who pay each other $1/week to go surfing.

Re: The Refragmentation

#233

Post by yummyfajitas »

swombat wrote: post #222
13thLetter wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That just kicks the problem up one level: now you've got to figure out the distinction between political speech and non-political speech. I'm not familiar with how things work in Belgium, but in the United States Hollywood has released a large number of explicitly political movies in the past fifteen years, such as Lions for Lambs or Bowling for Columbine or Munich , and that doesn't even get into the political subte…

Political speech is jot forbidden as a whole, just political speech that appears directly related to an ongoing election. For example, right now, you should be allowed to make a movie about how Reagan sucked, but not one about how Hillary Clinton will suck if she gets elected.

So in your ideal world, Paul Krugman is banned from writing editorials? John Stewart can no longer discuss contemporary politics?

And if a citizen notices that all the politicians are lying, he needs to just shut up about it?

Re: The Refragmentation

#234

Post by stefantalpalaru »

Oh look, another millionaire under the impression that the rich accumulated resources only by being ambitious.

> creating wealth

The kind of wealth that will vanish when the next bubble bursts? It will come a time when we'll look back at these profit-free unicorns and ask ourselves how were they even possible.

Re: The Refragmentation

#235

Post by golergka »

Retric wrote: post #226
golergka wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that someone got ripped off in an interaction doesn't say this interaction was a zero sum. It only says that said interaction was unequal. Generating value out of nothing and ripping people off are not necessarily incombinable things.

Weath is never created from nothing. Nature is zero sum, economies are not valued in those terms because people prefer houses to trees etc. But, be careful: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2569

> Weath is never created from nothing.

You can make this statement being true by moving your definition of "nothing" from economics to lay-people common sense, but then we'd be outside of a territory where we can obtain any actually reasonable observations.

> Nature is zero sum

What is "nature"? Observable universe from now to heat death of the universe? Yes. Earth in near hundred years? No.

> Robbery is also an economic transaction, and it can be positive sum if for example you don't notice.

What? How does the outcome of a transaction change depending on whether it's observed or not? Does it involve quantum particles of trees falling in the middle of desolate forests?

> That does not mean it's a good thing.

My comment didn't state anything about good or bad: these are very stupid terms and using them can't bring anything but loud voices and hurt feelings into a conversation.

Re: The Refragmentation

#236

Post by ZenoArrow »

I enjoyed the article, and found it an interesting point of view for the most part. However, I don't agree with this...

> "The form of fragmentation people worry most about lately is economic inequality, and if you want to eliminate that you're up against a truly formidable headwind—one that has been in operation since the stone age: technology. Technology is a lever. It magnifies work. And the lever not only grows increasingly long, but the rate at which it grows is itself increasing."

Tackling inequality has nothing to do with technology. Let's put it like this, we have a minimum wage already, the balancing force with regards to economic inequality would be a maximum wage. There are no technological issues blocking a maximum wage, it's just a matter of political will.

Re: The Refragmentation

#237

Post by Retric »

golergka wrote: post #235
Retric wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weath is never created from nothing. Nature is zero sum, economies are not valued in those terms because people prefer houses to trees etc. But, be careful: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2569

> Weath is never created from nothing. You can make this statement being true by moving your definition of "nothing" from economics to lay-people common sense, but then we'd be outside of a territory where we can obtain any actually reasonable observations. > Nature is zero sum What is "nature"? Observable universe from now to heat death of the universe? Yes. Earth in near hundred years? No. > Robbery is also an econ…

I edited my comment for clarity. The point is measuring economic activity is subjective. And people have huge incentives to lie.

Re: The Refragmentation

#239

Post by Retric »

incompatible wrote: post #232
Retric wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Revert tax policy back from an effective sub 15% at the top to far more reasonable levels. To start, SS taxes apply to all income levels. Next, you can't avoid capital gains by donating appiceated assets. Further, capital gains is taxed at the same rate as all other income. And my personal favorite, there are zero corporate tax breaks of any kind.

And at the other end? The popular opinion seems to be that we just need to force companies to pay higher wages, i.e., put up the minimum wage. Now those low paying jobs are illegal and people end up unemployed instead, especially when the economy is bad. I'd be willing to try abolishing minimum wages and letting the government pay a subsidy to anyone making a genuine effort to work, so that they have a reasonable sta…

Guaranteed minimum income has a lot going for it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income

U.S. politics has gotten strange, people complained about welfare mothers not working when that's shat the system was designed to do. IMO, hand out a small fixed amount every month, then flat tax everything last that point and get the government out of micromanaging the economy. Upside, no tax breaks makes everyone's taxes easy, downside would never get implemented.

Re: The Refragmentation

#240

Post by landryraccoon »

gotchange wrote: post #230
hoorayimhelping wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last paragraph was the whole point: > I worry that if we don't acknowledge this, we're headed for trouble. If we think 20th century cohesion disappeared because of few policy tweaks, we'll be deluded into thinking we can get it back (minus the bad parts, somehow) with a few countertweaks. And then we'll waste our time trying to eliminate fragmentation, when we'd be better off thinking about how to mitigate its co…

> A few people making rules can't stop that kind of force Can you elaborate please on what kind of force at work? Market forces? Also, do you have any idea why he's bringing up the subject of "social cohesion" repeatedly throughout the piece? Is social cohesion a hot button issue in the US now that warrants more attention from the general public? Because I believe that as long as the country is not at war with or in…

> the availability of capital or lack thereof is the main catalyst in this equation not technology.

You mean if you can't afford a computer and an AWS account you can't get started? Sure, maybe not, but it's a far cry from the capital you needed in the 1960s to get started. I bet a lot of the readers of this forum know people personally that have made a million dollars or more with their laptop (to a first order approximation).

Post reply on HN