How to Steal a Billion • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#61

Post by rayiner » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 5:19 PM UTC

wycy wrote: post #56

rayiner wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people out here are sweating medical bills in the low $10,000's, while the news is talking about billions being gained and lost in the span of a few weeks - so fast it makes you wonder if that amount of wealth really even existed in the first place. If people lose confidence in the system because of that it’s because they can’t multiply. Billionaires are very rich compared to middle class people, but there are…

Lost in points like this, where you’re trying to scare people by saying a large number, is that the distinction between a Medicare for All type of system and the current private system is less about how much it costs and much more about who the middleman is. * In M4A, Americans will pay ~$30T/10yr to providers through the government as a middleman. * In the current private system, Americans will pay ~$30T/10yr to pro…

My point wasn’t to take a dig at M4A. (I'm a proponent of universal healthcare, though I'd prefer extending ACA.) I mentioned it because OP talked about sweating medical bills. The point is that the cost of providing healthcare to everyone is vastly more than the wealth of even billionaires. (By the way, the expert estimate linked from Warren's own site is $52 trillion/10 years, not $30 trillion.)

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#62

Post by 1998 » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 5:19 PM UTC

christiansakai wrote: post #55

CptFribble wrote: post #13

That's the funny thing about Billions-with-a-b: normal thinking about money and value just doesn't work IMO. The Vision Fund is going to lose ~$19 billion. But Masa Son still controls over $80 billion. That's more wealth and power than almost any human being will ever have in history, ever. At that point the numbers don't even matter. Maybe Neumann took Masa Son for $50 billion. Who cares? A person can live in the US…

I am curious on how a person can live in the USA for their whole lives for $3 - 5 million. Serious question.

3,000,000 / 60 years of adulthood = 50,000 per year. Not a problem outside costal cities.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#63

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

christiansakai wrote: post #55

CptFribble wrote: post #13

That's the funny thing about Billions-with-a-b: normal thinking about money and value just doesn't work IMO. The Vision Fund is going to lose ~$19 billion. But Masa Son still controls over $80 billion. That's more wealth and power than almost any human being will ever have in history, ever. At that point the numbers don't even matter. Maybe Neumann took Masa Son for $50 billion. Who cares? A person can live in the US…

I am curious on how a person can live in the USA for their whole lives for $3 - 5 million. Serious question.

[deleted]

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#64

Post by selectodude » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

christiansakai wrote: post #55

CptFribble wrote: post #13

That's the funny thing about Billions-with-a-b: normal thinking about money and value just doesn't work IMO. The Vision Fund is going to lose ~$19 billion. But Masa Son still controls over $80 billion. That's more wealth and power than almost any human being will ever have in history, ever. At that point the numbers don't even matter. Maybe Neumann took Masa Son for $50 billion. Who cares? A person can live in the US…

I am curious on how a person can live in the USA for their whole lives for $3 - 5 million. Serious question.

5 million over 100 years is $50,000/yr. The median household income is just over $60,000.

I think you'd do fine.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#65

Post by ianleeclark » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #34

CptFribble wrote: post #13

That's the funny thing about Billions-with-a-b: normal thinking about money and value just doesn't work IMO. The Vision Fund is going to lose ~$19 billion. But Masa Son still controls over $80 billion. That's more wealth and power than almost any human being will ever have in history, ever. At that point the numbers don't even matter. Maybe Neumann took Masa Son for $50 billion. Who cares? A person can live in the US…

> Most people out here are sweating medical bills in the low $10,000's, while the news is talking about billions being gained and lost in the span of a few weeks - so fast it makes you wonder if that amount of wealth really even existed in the first place. If people lose confidence in the system because of that it’s because they can’t multiply. Billionaires are very rich compared to middle class people, but there are…

> We spend way too much time worrying about the wealth of a small group of people that, in the end, doesn’t add up to that large a fraction of total wealth or income.

People focus on billionaires due to the fact that they are the most stark representation of the deeply unequal society in which they live. Wealth inequality is very real, please refer to the following: https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2019/august/wealth-ine... It's a rhetorical device

> Middle class Americans make $8 trillion a year, compared to about $130 billion for America’s billionaires.

So the group of people who leverage capital to sustain themselves and don't have to work have lower net income than the group of people who have to work to have a roof over their head?

> $50 trillion

I love how these numbers increasingly grow. First it was 36 trillion from the well-known Cato institute. Mind you, this was actually going to save money in the long term, so we have to bump up the number. The United states spend almost 2x per capita what Canada does on healthcare, so it seems pretty odd that we'd use current pricing systems to estimate the cost when the original M4A bill expressly increases leverage to negotiate. $50 trillion is a spook.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#66

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 5:21 PM UTC

blurbleblurble wrote: post #57

shantly wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If people lose confidence in the system because of that it’s because they can’t multiply. Elizabeth Warren’s new health plan will cost $50 trillion over ten years. Middle class Americans make $8 trillion a year, compared to about $130 billion for America’s billionaires. To anyone who might take this as an indication Warren's plan will increase HC spending, if we do nothing average yearly HC spending for the 2020s i…

People obsessed with "how will we pay for it" just don't understand. The skewed distribution of wealth creates a situation where people don't have time and energy left over from their hustle to take care of themselves and to take care of each other in basic ways. People are sacrificing to the gods of capitalism. Correcting the skewed distribution of wealth would shift agency back to people to mind the business of liv…

[deleted]

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#67

Post by TheIronYuppie » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 5:21 PM UTC

neffy wrote: post #23

Invictus0 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gates, Arnault, and Bezos each have had more than 100B, although not liquid.

Not really. Adding up all the shares that they own, and saying that they have that much money, is completely incorrect. If any of them tried to liquidate even a small part of their shareholding the price would go swiftly to zero.

The price would go down, sure, but the chance of it going to zero are... very close to zero. People aren't investing because these folks have shares, they're investing (at least in part) in the underlying value and forward numbers for the company.

I guarantee that 100% of any of their shares would be swiftly picked up if they were sold at a 5%+ discount to the 52-week low stock price.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#68

Post by andreygrehov » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 5:22 PM UTC

hashberry wrote: post #14

WeWork/Uber/Airbnb... it's interesting how WeWork is classified as tech IPO next to these (e.g. Softbank used its "technology fund" to invest in WeWork). How did this happen? Isn't it an obvious real estate company? Is it because WeWork appealed to tech startups and remote workers?

I hate when people say that WeWork is not a tech company. WeWork is a real estate tech company. They make a ton of internal tools that help them to automate the business, which is exactly what technology is for - affect real life experiences. In a sense, they are a pure tech business.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#69

Post by bcrosby95 » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 5:23 PM UTC

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #49

0xffff2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Uber an obvious transportation company? Isn't AirBnB an obvious hospitality company?

It's an interesting point. If drivers are employees, I'd call them a transportation company. If they aren't, I'd call them a tech company. Analogous logic for Airbnb. But it seems like too subtle a distinction to be reasonable. More likely, "tech company" just isn't a super useful label anymore, with the grey area growing and growing.

I tend to view tech companies as companies that consider custom tech a competitive advantage and attempt to maintain in-house competency.

If you're a grocery chain and you contract out most of your technical needs then you aren't a tech company. But if you're a grocery chain and you hire and maintain a large technical team to provide you with various custom pieces of technology, you're both a grocery chain and a tech company.

This could be any piece of tech: from custom software to custom refrigeration systems.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#70

Post by ZhuanXia » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 5:23 PM UTC

ksdale wrote: post #38

CptFribble wrote: post #13

That's the funny thing about Billions-with-a-b: normal thinking about money and value just doesn't work IMO. The Vision Fund is going to lose ~$19 billion. But Masa Son still controls over $80 billion. That's more wealth and power than almost any human being will ever have in history, ever. At that point the numbers don't even matter. Maybe Neumann took Masa Son for $50 billion. Who cares? A person can live in the US…

It's especially interesting, because although a billion dollars is a staggering amount of money for one person to possess, if you distributed the wealth of the world out to every single person evenly, it would only be something like $50,000 per person (based on some quick Googling), which is a life changing amount of money, to be sure, but it's a one time deal. It's not $50,000 per year of income, it's $50,000, perio…

>distributed the wealth of the world

In the limit of a single individual wealth works in a naive fashion where such distribution is possible. But on the scale of the economy, such a thing is not possible without inventing a better distribution mechanism than capital itself. If you redistribute each peace of your car's engine to each passenger, you will be forced to walk. Even as a thought experiment, evenly distributing the wealth of the world is not possible. As the wealth is produced by the incentives inherent in gradients of inequality.

Thus the project of the modern socialist is to develop redistributive structures that maintain such incentives. There are echos of this in George and Harberger, but little in modern Jacobin-style socialism, whose proposals amount to gifting the means of production to the sorts of people that staff an HR department.