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Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

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Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#511
post #415
post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What prevents a founder from walking away and getting a job exactly? I did it, so I know it can be done. Founders reap rewards of their risk-taking almost immediately, and it accelerates exponentially from there. This really cuts to a major point of contention in modern politics - exaggerated pity party for the hardships of the most powerful people in society. It is a privilege to take such risks, and if you are in d…

> What prevents a founder from walking away and getting a job exactly? He/she can do that but the sacrifices are greater compared to just being an employee. > go get a soul-crushing treadmill job and watch the fruits of your labour flow elsewhere I am from India, I have seen abject poverty. I know it's a privilege to take such risks, my original point was focussed more on HN demographics not the poor people who I kno…

the sacrifices are greater compared to just being an employee.

Sunk cost fallacy.

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#512
post #124
post #84

Everytime I see these types of articles I wonder if we're still in feudalism. Should we really be celebrating that a single individual is worth more than hundreds of millions of people[1]? I dunno, it seems dystopian , like we're enslaved to the system. [1] https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2017-01-16/...

Okay, but think of it this way. Bill Gates is worth 90 Billion, sure fine. What is the entire United States worth? GDP is 18 Trillion, expenditures are 4 trillion. So if you do something (admittedly kind of dumb), like take the GDP, subtract expenditures, let's pretend the earnings are 14 trillion? Valuing the US at 10x earnings, that would put it at a valuation of 140 trillion dollars. This is horribly incorrect, bu…

>The key thing in monarchial feudalism is that a single person is the state (Imagine a person worth 'only' 14 trillion dollars, he's got his own airforce, navy, army).

This is entirely wrong. Other people have already commented on what feudalism is, but I wanted to provide a brief high-level history in case people were interested.

So let's take the historical look! How did we go from ancient Rome, an imperial monarchy, to feudalism being the law of the land?

The seeds of feudalism were sown from the Roman Emperor Diocletian's decision not to tax lords if all commerce took place within a lord's domain. Diocletian was a wonderful Emperor, one of the best, but he was around at a time when the Empire was cannibalizing itself with constant civil wars, making his main goal was peace and stability. To simplify, if I owned a city, and the city blacksmith supplied everyone else in my city, the state (i.e. the Roman Empire) would not take a cut of this. Only if goods flowed into a neighbouring lord's areas would the empire tax it.

What's the incentive structure here for the lords? Build up as much as you can within your domain and make it as self-sufficient as possible. It's legal tax avoidance, baby!

Because of all the civil wars there were labour shortages, both from bloodshed, devastated landscapes, and people fleeing. What's the solution to this? Outlaw moving, making peasants stay where they grew up and work the job of their father. This made economic planning much simpler, and Diocletian was an economic planner. In doing so, we get serfdom going hand in hand with the seeds of feudalism.

Over time, as the Roman Empire waned, this political structure stayed in effect. Power was increasingly ceded to the regional and away from the imperial. Basically, the state collapsed on itself. While we do get the Catholic Church springing up, it only sorta-kinda fills the power vacuum as it's clearly not a state in the same way Rome was.

Ambitious lords take more power, filling the vacuum of the the monolithic state. Without a single arbiter to enforce relationships between the lords, fealty and swearing allegiances become much more important. Literally the only thing holding these states together were a few lords word, some marriages, and often some hostages. If it was worth it to break those things, the 'state' would crumble, and everyone knew it.

That's basically it. From then, feudalism became the law of the land for around a thousand years (let's roughly say 300AD-1500AD). Then we're onto absolute monarchies, the renaissance, and the bourgeoisie throwing a wrench in everything.

In case all that hasn't helped, here's a (probably weak) analogy: monarchies are monoliths, feudalism is microservices.

FYI, Diocletian didn't use the word lord, he used dux. Which is where we get duke, doge, duce, etc. We also get the word dioceses here, which the Catholic Church still uses to this day.

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, losing money to edge out competition is not illegal. Loss-leaders are a normal business practice. Second, none of your three points refute the Chamberlain argument. 1. There were limited alternatives to Wilt. When Wilt was named MVP in 1959, there were 8 NBA teams. 2. Technically, there were 39 other players in the starting lineups of NBA teams that year. 3. Among those starters was Bill Russell, whose Boston…

> First, losing money to edge out competition is not illegal. Loss-leaders are a normal business practice. Well for a start, loss leading and intentionally lowering prices unsustainably to cut out competitors are different things. Loss leaders don't exist to be anti-competitive, they exist to attract people to your shop so they will buy the other things you have , which is how you make profit. Selling some things bel…

I was going to chime in, but you nailed it here.

Absorbing losses until your competition goes out of business is called price gouging. It's considered unethical and in many current cases is actively punished worldwide. Advantageous access to funding is usually (but not always) the enabler.

In the early 20th century US Industry invaded Brazil with much lower interest rates and absolutely decimated Brazil's budding manufacturing sector, to which it has never recovered. Then there's Wal-mart in the US -- Amazon's strategy is not unlike Wal-mart's was (ream the competition in a price war with lower prices and ginormous investments in logistics technology, which bring competitive cost-savings). It's impossible to beat that triad (low prices, being flush with outside capital, huge investments in cost-savings). Other businesses without all that money can't keep prices low and invest heavily at the same time. Another advantage:You hardly need to advertise. You make a name for yourself with the good deals you give everyone.

I don't think it's fair. I don't shop at a wal-mart, I don't use amazon, and I don't use uber(never have). That's about the only solution I can see: don't patronize scumbags.

Maybe one day the banking system will be less democratic. For now, the bankers pick favorites and those favorites become ever more favorable, because the goal of these schmucks is the centralization of wealth-- so why not get to centralizing it?

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#514
post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, losing money to edge out competition is not illegal. Loss-leaders are a normal business practice. Well for a start, loss leading and intentionally lowering prices unsustainably to cut out competitors are different things. Loss leaders don't exist to be anti-competitive, they exist to attract people to your shop so they will buy the other things you have , which is how you make profit. Selling some things bel…

I was going to chime in, but you nailed it here. Absorbing losses until your competition goes out of business is called price gouging. It's considered unethical and in many current cases is actively punished worldwide. Advantageous access to funding is usually (but not always) the enabler. In the early 20th century US Industry invaded Brazil with much lower interest rates and absolutely decimated Brazil's budding man…

ERRATA: *maybe the banking systems will be MORE democratic

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#515
post #332
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of Nozick's Wilt Chamberlain example, which I will quote here: > Nozick's famous Wilt Chamberlain argument is an attempt to show that patterned principles of just distribution are incompatible with liberty. He asks us to assume that the original distribution in society, D1, is ordered by our choice of patterned principle, for instance Rawls's Difference Principle. Wilt Chamberlain is an extremely popu…

This is an argument I haven't seen before, and I've been trying to follow the tree of wikipedia links, but I'm not understanding terminology like "patterned principle." Is it a fixed distribution of wealth, or opportunity, or some other thing? Would Wilt spending all his excess income bring things back into balance, or do extra possessions also violate the principle? What if he spent the money on experiences? Or bett…

Yes, if wilt spends the money he made on things that don't further concentrate his money-making ability then it will cascade and circulate, helping create the imbalances necessary for activity (economy).

The effects of spending your money can have three types of impact: 1) you spend money in ways that don't directly offer you further capacity to concentrate wealth (food, drugs, entertainment, (clothes, cars, and houses are arguably marks of status which in many societies is a tool for further wealth concentration). 2) you spend money in a way that reduces other's capacity to concentrate wealth (you spend money to abolish the school board in the liberal capital of a rural state in the bible belt, like the Waltons and Stephens just teamed up to accomplish in Little Rock, Arkansas. (thanks guys!)) 3) you spend money in ways that can directly benefit your competitive advantage in making money. In the business world we call this Capex, or capital expenditure. Spending money on things that help you make more money.

I think it's important to say:

What is money? Money is a store of value, which is used to peacefully coerce others to do what you want them to to. It can be used to convince others to do your bidding, or in the case of a well established (specified) civilizatiobn, people have already done the work they expect you to want, and are ready to make the exchange. Changes to the product or process happen over time, with the consumer communicating to the providers what and how he or she wants a specific thing, and will guide businesses with the placement of his or her own dollars. This is why these guys spend more on 2 and 3 of this list: money is a form of power, where you can dictate not only what but the way products and services are rendered. And as a member of the elite class of producers and financiers, it is further advantageous to impede any one unit or subgroup of consumers from having enough money to coerce the elite into business practices that favor consumers

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#516
post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism, when it works right is a meritocracy that rewards business acumen - the more merit, the more money you get. The problem is that the reward - money - is itself a substitute for merit. Having success is much, much easier, if you already have money (hence the saying 'the first million dollars is always the hardest'). This is also what Capital in the Twenty-First Century highlighted: Owning wealth is rewarded…

The problem with such line of reasoning is an underlying assumption that we have to create a social order that "optimizes" the distribution of wealth in order to achieve some "just" result. I find this assumption incorrect, and desired result unachievable. Every person has a different picture of what a "just" distribution of wealth is, and what "optimal" society is. Some think that humanity should concentrate on art…

Are you sure you meant to reply to my comment and not some other one? Because the argument that you're arguing against (that there is some 'just' distribution of wealth) was not the one I was making (though I'd be happy to make that one too if you'd like).

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slavery still very much exists in places like Middle East, South Asia, and US prisons, so your argument is moot.

Ask yourself why the USSR was unable to compete with the US economically, and could not even feed itself (Kansas in the 1970s was known as "the breadbasket of the Soviet Union". Why the Chinese could not compete with the US until they switched to free labor. Why N. Korea is starving and regular shipments of food from the west keeps things from getting much worse. The Middle East is not known for exporting factory goo…

Claiming that labor in the USSR was slave labor is disingenuous and quite a stretch. By the same standard, I can claim that Western wage labor was also slave labor.

I'm also dubious of your Kansas claims (Google search comes up with nothing). Again, by the same standard, I can claim that the US "cannot even clothe itself" today. I'm sure reality is a lot more nuanced than that.

I can expand further on history of the USSR and long-term effects of WW2 on that country's population, which had massive waves of effect well into 1990s, but I'll stop here.

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#518
post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, losing money to edge out competition is not illegal. Loss-leaders are a normal business practice. Well for a start, loss leading and intentionally lowering prices unsustainably to cut out competitors are different things. Loss leaders don't exist to be anti-competitive, they exist to attract people to your shop so they will buy the other things you have , which is how you make profit. Selling some things bel…

I was going to chime in, but you nailed it here. Absorbing losses until your competition goes out of business is called price gouging. It's considered unethical and in many current cases is actively punished worldwide. Advantageous access to funding is usually (but not always) the enabler. In the early 20th century US Industry invaded Brazil with much lower interest rates and absolutely decimated Brazil's budding man…

> Absorbing losses until your competition goes out of business is called price gouging.

No, it's called dumping. Price gouging is a different unethical pricing maneuver.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask yourself why the USSR was unable to compete with the US economically, and could not even feed itself (Kansas in the 1970s was known as "the breadbasket of the Soviet Union". Why the Chinese could not compete with the US until they switched to free labor. Why N. Korea is starving and regular shipments of food from the west keeps things from getting much worse. The Middle East is not known for exporting factory goo…

Claiming that labor in the USSR was slave labor is disingenuous and quite a stretch. By the same standard, I can claim that Western wage labor was also slave labor. I'm also dubious of your Kansas claims (Google search comes up with nothing). Again, by the same standard, I can claim that the US "cannot even clothe itself" today. I'm sure reality is a lot more nuanced than that. I can expand further on history of the…

[deleted]

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People that are very good at hiding money for the ludicrously and criminally rich are also, not surprisingly, very good at making money disappear. If your biggest client just got killed in a coup do you really think you'd go through a lot of trouble to track down his various relatives as they're being systematically captured and/or executed by the uprising? No, you'd quietly wrap up all those trusts and funnel the mo…

You're just a hypocritical person... You denigrate my comments yet you just state a reinforcement of my speculation "criminally rich are also, not surprisingly, very good at making money disappear. this was the premise of my post! Money went someplace, and we dont know where it went - did HRC profit off it or not....

You can't just speculate. Maybe it was the Pope! Trump! Elvis! Fucking aliens!

Come back with a shred of proof, okay?

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