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

My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

blog.rongarret.info

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 211 posts

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#71

Post by cmdkeen »

xbejdjched wrote: post #25
skeolawn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe he would, but all the experiments so far have failed for pretty much the same reasons and at enormous human cost. Meanwhile capitalism in whatever form it's tried has proven itself to be an incredible engine of poverty reduction and human/social progress. There's always been tension between capitalism and democracy and we may be at a point where some of the cracks are showing.

It's worth keeping in mind that we do live in the propaganda bubble of the Soviet Union's arch nemesis. For their KGB, we had our J. Edgar Hoover. For their political purges, we had our House Committee on Unamerican Activities. For their later economic struggles, we had our great depression.

We never had several deliberately inflicted famines killing millions of people. In every single example you listed Communist countries were demonstrably worse. Humanity is capable of some pretty awful things under any system of government - Communism, or perhaps the way it comes about, has consistently demonstrated that itself better at enabling our worst impulses compared to democratic capitalism.

That people, included in the UK elected representatives, make a case for the Soviet Union and Communist China having done more good than bad is a a terrible failure of history.

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#72

Post by vixen99 »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #17
astazangasta wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This wealth is based on social cohesion, which can fall apart in a generation or two. Genghis conquered half of Asia and built an empire of great wealth and high culture, but lack of cohesion tore it apart not long after.

>Genghis conquered half of Asia Are we really comparing this to a country that's nearly 240 years old and is a global superpower that has weathered everything from civil war, a major depression, defeating communism, a moon landing, inventing the internet and all the technologies you're using right now, the largest economy by GDP, the most powerful military in history, etc? This is like saying the The Who or The Stone…

- and heavily in debt to the rest of the world.

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#73

Post by tomp »

zepto wrote: post #65
tomp wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because then you'll simply concentrate all the wealth in corporate structures that transcend the death of their owners. That's OK, as long as the ownership of these structures is dispersed (as seems to be the case now for many public companies, which are owned by pension funds and/or sovereign wealth funds). That would also prevent nepotism.

Please explain how ownership would be dispersed and nepotism be prevented?

Tax inheritance => rich people inherit stock => they must sell stock to pay taxes => ownership dilutes.

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#74

Post by bko »

tomp wrote: post #10

PG's simplified essay seems like attack on a strawman; he's mainly arguing that inequality is good, but then mostly everybody agrees with that. The issue people see (and PG conveniently ignores) is increasing inequality - not locally increasing (i.e. an enterpreneur becoming rich because of a successful business idea), but globally increasing inequality, which happens because of rent-seeking, tax avoidance, buying po…

I say this over and over again in all my comments on the subject, but wealth passed on through inheritance has fallen a lot.

I don't know why its always assumed to be true that all this wealth that's driving inequality is inherited. It's not true.

> Over the past 30 years, the origin of the wealth of the richest people in the United States has shifted away from old, inherited money. Our new metric, the self-made scores developed for the Forbes 400, shows that increasingly we find self-made billionaires among the ranks of the richest people in the country. This has accompanied the incredible increase in wealth of the members of the Forbes 400, which has jumped 1,832% times since 1984, when the total net worth of our list was $125 billion, compared with $2.29 trillion today.[0]

> There’s no doubt that entrepreneurship is thriving globally. Fully 1,191 members of the list are self-made billionaires, while just 230 inherited their wealth. Another 405 inherited at least a portion but are still working to increase their fortunes. [1]

[0]http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2014/10/03/there-a...

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2015/03/02/inside-th...

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#75

Post by eugenejen »

The only thing I don't like people to repeat about 1% owns 50% wealth is because that's just a mathematical truth from Pareto principle.

If 20% populations owns 80% resources. Just recursively applying Pareto principle. You see 0.8% populations owns 51.2% resources.

So we are in fact now efficiently using resources around the world to support 7 billions populations.

Of course this ignores our biological tendency of protecting our offspring. So we try to pass down what we have to our children by non productivity related measures (such as lenient estate tax, immigration restrictions). That's the real reasons for the 99% population feels 'unfair'.

If we are really fair, we should open first world border to all poor people around the world, right? But we don't. Same as people of wealth want to pass down their wealth to their children as much as possible. Or even try to starting a dynasty.

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#76

Post by flannelcatering »

retube wrote: post #54
flannelcatering wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a meaningless statistic It's only meaningless if you cherry-pick your examples and draw your opinions from those examples. For 99 percent of the population, wealth is a fair reflection of the actual comparative wealth of individuals.

It's hardly cherry picking. I don't know exactly the percentage, but let's say 50% of the US population is net in debt. So all these people are poorer than the millions in developing nations without a penny to their name? As above, I would argue no, they are not. Hence this statistic doesn't mean much.

Your example of a recent MBA graduate is absolutely a cherry picked example. Even if it wasnt cherry picked example, it's still a bad example for your argument because a cohort of MBA graduates will quickly pay off their debt because of their high earning potential.

Your entire argument is based upon two faulty assumptions, that people in poorer / developing nations (1) have a lower standard of living than all Americans and (2) have no debts themselves.

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#77

Post by chimeracoder »

PaulHoule wrote: post #43
tomp wrote: post #10

PG's simplified essay seems like attack on a strawman; he's mainly arguing that inequality is good, but then mostly everybody agrees with that. The issue people see (and PG conveniently ignores) is increasing inequality - not locally increasing (i.e. an enterpreneur becoming rich because of a successful business idea), but globally increasing inequality, which happens because of rent-seeking, tax avoidance, buying po…

We are all makers and takers. In elementary macroeconomics you learn it is impossible to make a profit because in a competitive market because it is rational for me to lower my price by one cent to get the deal and then it is rational for the competitors to do that until the point that profit is zero. Business, however, is all about making a profit, because even if discount personal gain, nothing can be sustainable u…

> In elementary macroeconomics you learn it is impossible to make a profit Business, however, is all about making a profit, because even if discount personal gain, nothing can be sustainable unless it can get paid for and you need compensation for the investment you make and the risks you take.

You're confusing two different definitions of profit.

Economic profit includes opportunity cost (which includes the "compensation for the investment you make and the risks you take" that you're talking about). If the economic profit is zero, then everyone was compensated appropriately for all investments, risks, etc. Put another way, if the economic profit is zero, there is no better way you could have spent your money or your time (by definition, not by assumption).

Accounting profit is what businesses deal with on a day-to-day basis. If the economic profit is zero, the accounting profit is positive.

> yet, for business to exist competition must be imperfect.

It is true in practice that competition is usually imperfect, but it's not true that this necessarily must be the case in order for businesses to exist.

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#80

Post by tomp »

bko wrote: post #74
tomp wrote: post #10

PG's simplified essay seems like attack on a strawman; he's mainly arguing that inequality is good, but then mostly everybody agrees with that. The issue people see (and PG conveniently ignores) is increasing inequality - not locally increasing (i.e. an enterpreneur becoming rich because of a successful business idea), but globally increasing inequality, which happens because of rent-seeking, tax avoidance, buying po…

I say this over and over again in all my comments on the subject, but wealth passed on through inheritance has fallen a lot. I don't know why its always assumed to be true that all this wealth that's driving inequality is inherited. It's not true. > Over the past 30 years, the origin of the wealth of the richest people in the United States has shifted away from old, inherited money. Our new metric, the self-made scor…

There's inheritance and there's inheritance.

I suspect most rich people don't actually inherit money/wealth (in the legal sense). Instead, they set up trust funds for the benefit of their families/children, and so protect the assets and avoid taxes at the same time.

Also, with the sheer number of tax havens and offshore secret bank accounts available nowadays, I'm very sceptical that the official statistics are able to reflect the true concentration of wealth.

Which is exactly the problem - there are so many loopholes and workarounds that we can't even imagine the true extent of wealth concentration!

Post reply on HN