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The Refragmentation

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Refragmentation

#351

Post by kobayashi »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #223
curun1r wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He's saying income inequality is a feature of technology allowing people to be paid their market value and that you can't 'fix' that. The thing that I worry about is whether this feature is destroying the conditions that allowed it to become a feature in the first place. He mentioned the example of Apple and IBM, which I see as illustrative in another way. Would personal computing devices have become popular in a h…

>He mentioned the example of Apple and IBM, And on that, as on so much else, he's more than a little wrong. Apple and Microsoft simply couldn't have happened without the mega-corps - not least HP, but also IBM, and Fairchild and its spin-offs - which only existed because of post-war military and civilian "socialist" state support for technology. By the mid-70s that support had been influencing economic policy for mor…

>Companies like Apple do not happen in a pure deregulated neoliberal market paradise because markets don't have the kind of strategic intelligence that can fund projects like Whirlwind, TX-0, and the original Arpanet - all of which are essential steps on the road to making an Apple or a Google.

While I can agree that private entities/markets lacked the capability to fund transformative projects during most of the 20th century, I'm hard-pressed to reasonably apply that to the modern context.

It seems that the most forward thinking, transformative ideas are indeed coming from the private sector markets (e.g. SpaceX), and with the enhanced abilities that our technological age affords to solo individuals, it seems that even small teams may be able to create the next transformative, paradigm-shifting project.

Re: The Refragmentation

#352

Post by tim333 »

dkural wrote: post #347

A counter-example, and a different framework to think about equality: Most of Scandinavia has fragmentation, freedom of expression, and genuine diversity of choice, diversity of lifestyle, of opinion, but it also has more equality. One can have a more equal society without raising taxes or massive wealth distribution. This is possible if a society ensures that its children receive adequate and equal access to healthc…

Not very in line with the Hacker News Guidelines - "Avoid gratuitous negativity. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names."

Plus I don't think your judgments on PG are true.

Re: The Refragmentation

#353

Post by dkural »

tim333 wrote: post #352
dkural wrote: post #347

A counter-example, and a different framework to think about equality: Most of Scandinavia has fragmentation, freedom of expression, and genuine diversity of choice, diversity of lifestyle, of opinion, but it also has more equality. One can have a more equal society without raising taxes or massive wealth distribution. This is possible if a society ensures that its children receive adequate and equal access to healthc…

Not very in line with the Hacker News Guidelines - "Avoid gratuitous negativity. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names." Plus I don't think your judgments on PG are true.

Agreed re: guidelines. Edited to keep it about the argument.

Re: The Refragmentation

#354

Post by hueving »

zanny wrote: post #269
hueving wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's ridiculous because it eliminates all incentives to invest time in training. Why would anyone risk harm and spend years training to be an expert welder when he/she will get the same results as some person that throws some seeds in the ground to grow food for 4 people? The fact is that some people's work is more important than others. That's why society in general is willing to pay more. The kid that rips my tic…

Markets do not care how "important" your work is when it values how much you are worth. All it cares about is supply and demand. If people want food, and nobody is growing it, but you have a surplus of welders and nobody wanting steelwork done, of course the farmer is going to make more money. Farming is more valuable than welding, regardless of training. The training itself is not a cost center. It is a barrier to e…

A market's value of work is how important it is to people at the time. It's that simple. You are over-complicating it by pretending there is something different to determine importance.

Also, your suggestion of sane progressive taxation is a massive backpedal from the statement that I replied to, which implied that everyone should receive equal compensation. We already have progressive taxation in the US, so advocating for 'sane progressive taxation' is just a nebulous cop-out that doesn't provide anything concrete enough to be discussed or analyzed.

Re: The Refragmentation

#355

Post by drewm1980 »

13thLetter wrote: post #172
lisper wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Income inequality is not the problem, it's a shorthand for the real problem, which is the mutual reinforcement of wealth inequality and political corruption. Rich people use their disposable income to buy political influence which they then use to get laws passed that allow them to collect rents. The solution is to 1) roll back the corrupt laws (like the preferential tax treatment of carried interest and high-speed t…

"2) get rid of the absurd legal doctrine established by the Citizens United decision that money=speech and hence the First Amendment applies to bribery." Unfortunately it's not that simple. The immediate question at hand in Citizens United was about a group of private citizens being prevented from releasing a movie criticizing a Presidential candidate during an election. A movie costs money to produce and requires a…

I would decide that NO corporate legal structures are making "legitimate" political speech. I am 100% comfortable with political discourse taking the form of (volunteer) blog posts, etc... rather than major motion pictures (even if "crowd" funded). Money is not speech. Speech is Speech!

Re: The Refragmentation

#356

Post by tim333 »

drewm1980 wrote: post #350

His distinction between "wealth generating" and "rent seeking" behavior isn't obvious to me. Is investing in a start-up (so that you hopefully get a cut of the wealth generated by thousands of people and machines) a form of rent seeking?

Wikipedia: "In economics and in public-choice theory, rent-seeking involves seeking to increase one's share of existing wealth without creating new wealth."

So investing in a start-up is not rent seeking.

Re: The Refragmentation

#357

Post by anon1385 »

Terr_ wrote: post #323
yummyfajitas wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

75% of poor Americans own at least 1 car, and 45% own their own home. Most poor people have copious amounts of free time; only a fraction work. http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/h150-07.pdf Of course, this is tangential to curun1r's claim, which is that somehow an inability for consumers to purchase new technologies would hinder innovation.

Are you sure "own" is the correct word? Those people are completely debt-free with no car liens or mortgages?

I looked at the linked document.

The figures are as follows (all in thousands):

14,157 units below the poverty line (12.7% of all units)

5,566 of those Owner occupied (39.3%)

3,191 of those owned "free and clear" (22%)

So his 45% claim isn't even true to start with. It falls to 22% when you consider full ownership.

Seeing yummyfajitas make factually incorrect claims is disappointing but not surprising.

Re: The Refragmentation

#358

Post by tim333 »

justinhj wrote: post #344

Consider one ycombinator company,Uber. Do they generate wealth? From the point of view of a NYC taxi driver they are directly taking both the customers and the value of the drivers medallions. In return,uber drivers work giving 1/3 of their earnings to a company because that company built the software and lobbied the governments (presumably eventually) to allow this new form of public transport. It doesn't seem any d…

Uber is not a ycombinator company. To me they add value through the app.

Re: The Refragmentation

#359

Post by woah »

kobayashi wrote: post #351
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>He mentioned the example of Apple and IBM, And on that, as on so much else, he's more than a little wrong. Apple and Microsoft simply couldn't have happened without the mega-corps - not least HP, but also IBM, and Fairchild and its spin-offs - which only existed because of post-war military and civilian "socialist" state support for technology. By the mid-70s that support had been influencing economic policy for mor…

>Companies like Apple do not happen in a pure deregulated neoliberal market paradise because markets don't have the kind of strategic intelligence that can fund projects like Whirlwind, TX-0, and the original Arpanet - all of which are essential steps on the road to making an Apple or a Google. While I can agree that private entities/markets lacked the capability to fund transformative projects during most of the 20t…

Leaving the buzzwordy hand waving in the last paragraph aside, spacex gets the majority of its revenue from the government.

Re: The Refragmentation

#360

Post by [deleted] »

kobayashi wrote: post #351
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>He mentioned the example of Apple and IBM, And on that, as on so much else, he's more than a little wrong. Apple and Microsoft simply couldn't have happened without the mega-corps - not least HP, but also IBM, and Fairchild and its spin-offs - which only existed because of post-war military and civilian "socialist" state support for technology. By the mid-70s that support had been influencing economic policy for mor…

>Companies like Apple do not happen in a pure deregulated neoliberal market paradise because markets don't have the kind of strategic intelligence that can fund projects like Whirlwind, TX-0, and the original Arpanet - all of which are essential steps on the road to making an Apple or a Google. While I can agree that private entities/markets lacked the capability to fund transformative projects during most of the 20t…

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