Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators • Hacker News Board

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#211

Post by [deleted] » Sun, May 29, 2016, 9:06 PM UTC

aoeusnth1 wrote: post #156

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is one of gross, immoral and unjustifiable inequality. Everything else is just semantics, conjecture and informed or misinformed opinion. I hope I live to see the day when the parasites of society meet their reckoning as I believe the idea of a more equal society coming about by reason as totally naive and foolhardy.

So... let's kill all the greedy Jews that charge interest for their money lending? /s No thanks. I think a few reforms are enough to make things fair - a UBI, capital gains treated as normal income, and political funding reform. We don't need any more of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_...

[deleted]

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#212

Post by [deleted] » Sun, May 29, 2016, 9:08 PM UTC

aoeusnth1 wrote: post #134

sbuttgereit wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardly thousands That is a barefaced lie. Forgetting the rest of the evil attributable to Communist ideology, the Ukrainian Genocide alone is evidence that it was many more than "hardly thousands": http://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/center-study-genocide-conflict-r... Indeed, one need only consider the ease of which one could immigrate out of USSR, or other Communist states for that matter, to know something was seriously f…

In reply to ommonuist's claim that there is "no such thing as the Ukrainian genocide", see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor . There's clearly some doublethink going on trying to justify the mass murder of the system he wants to impose on the West.

[deleted]

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#213

Post by dang » Sun, May 29, 2016, 9:11 PM UTC

ommunist wrote: post #15

remember 1917 in Russia, and how much the SovietUnion did for the world and its nations until 1991, by just removing the rich and concentrating power with government, led by proper ideology. Stalin got the country of illiterate peasants with ploughs and left it with 100% literacy, and the nukes.

Please don't. Nothing good can come of it, only ideological flames that engulf this site.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11796698 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#214

Post by dang » Sun, May 29, 2016, 9:14 PM UTC

sjclemmy wrote: post #5

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #3

How does the title: "We need to challenge the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators" Become: "The very rich are unjust and dysfunctional" ?

HN only allows less than 80 chars for the title. The LSE blog Twitter account gave it this title.

Not a good title, though, because it's a cherry-picked quote selected for baitiness. Such things have a pronounced (and in this case dismal) effect on resulting discussion.

Much better to shorten the original a bit, which we've done above. If it's necessary not to use the original (because it's misleading, linkbait, or impossible to shorten), the next best thing is to find an accurate, neutral phrase from the article.

If you want to say what you think is important about an article, please do so in a comment rather than using the title to express that. Then your view is on a level playing field with everyone else's.

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#215

Post by dang » Sun, May 29, 2016, 9:18 PM UTC

adwhit wrote: post #35

HN tends to be extremely reactionary to posts like this. Perhaps because the tech/startup scene is all about getting rich quick, or perhaps because HN has come to partially reflect the personal views of PG. There will be a reckoning. The world is 'unsustainably unequal' at the moment. There are huge problems on the horizon - superbugs, climate change, resource depletion, environmental degradation, overpopulation. The…

> HN tends to be extremely reactionary to posts like this. Perhaps because the tech/startup scene is all about getting rich quick

Claims like this are common but seem mostly to be cognitive bias. The community is divided, and people on each side of the divide perceive it as skewing the opposite way. I think it's because statements we disagree with stand out more starkly than the ones we agree with. Painful experiences are more memorable than pleasurable ones.

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#216

Post by hueving » Sun, May 29, 2016, 9:51 PM UTC

EliRivers wrote: post #164

jonknee wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... And it would further concentrate global wealth into the hands of a few (after you're no longer getting the dividends where do you think they'll go?).

Given that there are no owners, to the employees seems reasonable. With shares eliminated like this, we can have a such a system. Perhaps through some kind of all employee profit sharing system that all the employees agree on. Alternatively, if there has to be ownership, ownership of the company can be split between all employees, and the profits shared amongst them accordingly. I should divulge that by HN standards…

>Given that there are no owners, to the employees seems reasonable

By what standard? Does a new employee get the same percentage as every other employee? If so, how is that fair when certain positions objectively have much more impact on the success of the company? If not, who decides allocations for new employees and who the allocations should come from?

Also, who is going to put up the capital in the first place to start the business if there is no return?

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#217

Post by hibikir » Sun, May 29, 2016, 10:09 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #62

moultano wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Unless subsidized or losing money, the rent is more than a mortgage payment would be. That is demonstrably false. Renting is more than a mortgage interest payment would be. Unless you feel like you have some special knowledge about the local real estate market, your capital is likely better off in the stock market.

Mortgage paymenets are almost entirely interest in the early years. So in many cases there's little difference. Rental real estate works on leverage to a greater degree than is possible with stocks. Most banks won't make loans to invest in the stock market. They will make loans for investment property. So if you have $100,000 you can buy maybe 4 or 5 $100,000 rental properties, and have your tenants pay off the loans…

While a regular bank won't give you a loan to invest in the stock market, stock brokers will: It's called margin trading, and it's exactly borrowing using the stock you have as collateral, just like you put the house as collateral in a mortgage. Since stocks are far more volatile than real state, you are allowing your broker to sell your assets if your account is about to go underwater, in what it's known as a margin call.

You can have a 5:1 margin account, like the one you describe, as an individual investor: If you have 100K to put in a brokerage account with your own money, you definitely have enough money for a brokerage to let you do it. It's just that it requires attention, because with a 5:1 ratio, a 5% loss just became a 25% loss. Ignore the market in the wrong week(say, in early October 2008), and all your margins get called, and you are in deep trouble.

Still, if you have 5 $100K rental properties, and you aren't bleeding a lot of money for a company to take care of it all for you, chances are you are still paying quite a bit of attention to your apartments anyway.

As far as whether mortgages or rentals are more expensive, it completely depends on the local market and local laws: In a pro-renter environment, rental is more expensive, because nobody wants to rent apartments out: People would rather let apartments sit empty. In a pro owner environment, at a place losing population, renting might be cheaper.

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#218

Post by douche » Sun, May 29, 2016, 10:43 PM UTC

ommunist wrote: post #121

douche wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite possibly the only popular revolution of the modern age that didn't end in massacres. Probably because it was, despite all the rhetoric, controlled by a group of generally conservative oligarchs who really weren't trying to shake things up that dramatically.

It did not ended with a massacre only because it started with that. Ask ghe First Nations. Lacotas for example.

That's kind of an idiotic comment. The thirteen colonies had almost no contact with the plains tribes, like the Lacota, precisely because the British government had attempted to block passage of settlers past the Appalachians after the Seven Years War.

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#219

Post by petra » Sun, May 29, 2016, 11:05 PM UTC

nickpsecurity wrote: post #209

petra wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not Indian, Israeli. Patent differences i'm talking about: The justified way India doesn't follow the western law on pharma patents. Historical point: Up until relatively recently,India did have a closed economy, but did a lot to open their economy to foreign trade and investment(for example in the past you couldn't open a foreign subsidiary in India, Now there's even Amazon in India). As for capitalistic tactics etc…

"Not Indian, Israeli." Cool. Always like to see you all in security or legal discussions as you have interesting perspectives. :) "Patent differences i'm talking about: The justified way India doesn't follow the western law on pharma patents." I didn't realize they did that. I love that as I want serious changes to pharma patents here. It's basically legalized murder and unacceptable given what U.S. top causes of dea…

Same, always a pleasure to to discuss stuff with you, you usually bring a lot of depth.

>> I actually don't know how many did outside smart people being hired at Google, ...

Leaving aside the entrepreneur(and the excessive hero worship around them), it's clear that startup companies highly depend on high quality employees. And the stats: Asian tech workers in Santa Clara are 50%[1].

Other stats: around 20% of US scientists and engineering are Foreign born. International students earn more than half of advanced STEM degrees in the U.S(and are probably behind half the university research). And what about second generation foreigners ?

And what about startups ? most of the successful startups in my country, which is known for startup quality, are bought before they can grow into to full form employing thousands.

And let's not forget - the effects are not linear - it's about ecosystems and power laws, things building on top of each other.

>> Germany, South Korea, Japan, and China seem to be examples of winners that ensure trade is very positive for them vs major countries. India seems to be one of the losers but has potential that's untapped.

Usually such growth path was through manufacturing, but there's some data from india hinting that china and manufacturing don't offer that path anymore, which is pretty worrying.

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#220

Post by EliRivers » Sun, May 29, 2016, 11:13 PM UTC

hueving wrote: post #216

EliRivers wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that there are no owners, to the employees seems reasonable. With shares eliminated like this, we can have a such a system. Perhaps through some kind of all employee profit sharing system that all the employees agree on. Alternatively, if there has to be ownership, ownership of the company can be split between all employees, and the profits shared amongst them accordingly. I should divulge that by HN standards…

>Given that there are no owners, to the employees seems reasonable By what standard? Does a new employee get the same percentage as every other employee? If so, how is that fair when certain positions objectively have much more impact on the success of the company? If not, who decides allocations for new employees and who the allocations should come from? Also, who is going to put up the capital in the first place to…

These are all questions that have answers. Such companies do already exist in Western liberal democracies operating roughly capitalist economies. You can find these answers yourself if you choose to. You can probably even think of some ideas yourself. We don't have to accept the economic system we are told is the one true way. We've seen where treating the economy like a religion leads.