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How to Steal a Billion

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Re: How to Steal a Billion

#141

Post by buboard »

bilbo0s wrote: post #54
buboard wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand the hate. He didn't steal it from an old lady behind her back. If that was the case, i can understand the feelings of empathy that it would evoke to people. But capitalizing on some uber-rich person's mistakes? Cry me a river, do you think Mr Softbank cares? Yeah he might drink one cocktail more, but who cares. What if Adam now becomes a great angel investor? Life is like that , all twists a…

Not sure I would trust Adam as an angel, that could easily be the first step to an HN post about how your small startup exited at 93 million and you got nothing.

Well, at least his fundraising ability is unparalleled

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#142

Post by dano »

cryptica wrote: post #39

>> He saw an excess of capital in Silicon Valley and a raw, unsatisfied ambition in SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son and his $100 billion Vision Fund It doesn't take a genius to see this opportunity but it does take an incredibly lucky person to be in a position to exploit it. If Adam Neumann doesn't end up in jail after all this, then I will concede that he is not an idiot.

Adam was/is a promoter extraordinaire. He promoted a utopian future ideal state to his investors and created an investment frenzy though build outs of cool, edgy office space. He created a show and the investors came in droves. He negotiated the investment rounds well and benefited from demand for his product that caused the investors to let their guard down so as to not miss out. The Fear of Missing out (FOMO) is a terribly strong force in the VC community. Adam has set himself and his family up for generations and its all likely legal.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#143

Post by tptacek »

rayiner wrote: post #133
enraged_camel wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Warren's tax plan starts at the $50 million threshold. Not sure why you are counting only billionaires, or only the top 400. Her math adds up. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/05/warrens-p... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/01/opinion/did-warren-pass-t...

Warren’s wealth tax doubles to 6% at the billionaire level. (France’s and Sweden's highest wealth tax was 1.5% until they got rid of it.) Warren’s calculations just prove why the whole fixation on billionaires and income inequality is a distraction. You're talking about a wealth tax that is unconstitutional, at levels that are completely unprecedented. You're talking about risking capital flight, and setting politica…

Why is the Warren head tax (the "employer-side payments", which will be taken out of the hides of employees the same way health insurance costs already are) "clever"? Aren't head taxes generally problematic?

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#144

Post by rayiner »

tptacek wrote: post #143
rayiner wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Warren’s wealth tax doubles to 6% at the billionaire level. (France’s and Sweden's highest wealth tax was 1.5% until they got rid of it.) Warren’s calculations just prove why the whole fixation on billionaires and income inequality is a distraction. You're talking about a wealth tax that is unconstitutional, at levels that are completely unprecedented. You're talking about risking capital flight, and setting politica…

Why is the Warren head tax (the "employer-side payments", which will be taken out of the hides of employees the same way health insurance costs already are) "clever"? Aren't head taxes generally problematic?

I like the idea of keeping things similar to what people are already paying as a starting point. Although I hadn’t realized that it would end up being a head tax rather than a payroll tax.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#145

Post by andreygrehov »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #96
andreygrehov wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

By that definition you won’t find many non tech companies. What company that’s not super small doesn’t build internal tools and doesn’t try to automate things ? By your definition all car companies are tech companies, so are insurances, banks and pretty much everybody else.

> By that definition you won’t find many non tech companies.

You will. It's easy. There are thousands of non-tech companies around you. Your local grocery store, laundries, car services, barbershops, etc. They do not hire software engineers, they do not build internal tools. Some of them do rely on third party software, but it's different.

Pretty much every bank is a tech company nowadays. Insurances? Same thing. If Oscar or Chase fires all of its engineers, the business is dead. By my definition, a tech company is a company whose business won't sustain long without its engineering team.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#146

Post by cryptica »

dano wrote: post #142
cryptica wrote: post #39

>> He saw an excess of capital in Silicon Valley and a raw, unsatisfied ambition in SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son and his $100 billion Vision Fund It doesn't take a genius to see this opportunity but it does take an incredibly lucky person to be in a position to exploit it. If Adam Neumann doesn't end up in jail after all this, then I will concede that he is not an idiot.

Adam was/is a promoter extraordinaire. He promoted a utopian future ideal state to his investors and created an investment frenzy though build outs of cool, edgy office space. He created a show and the investors came in droves. He negotiated the investment rounds well and benefited from demand for his product that caused the investors to let their guard down so as to not miss out. The Fear of Missing out (FOMO) is a…

It says more about investor stupidity than it says about Adam Neumann. IMO, most investors are pretty stupid. Like herd animals.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#147

Post by oblio »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #140
oblio wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon won't pay dividends for a while. A country lasts centuries. Secondly, that's why I was also thinking of a variant where employees get shares, too.

What is the difference between Amazon giving me, an imaginary Amazon employee, $100 in cash vs $100 in stock? Amazon is a publicly traded company, so any employee can choose to buy stock. Is the idea to force the employees to hold the stock without being allowed to sell it? If they can't sell it, what value do they get from it? As an investment strategy, I never hold stock in a company I'm working for. That puts too…

Dividends, influence (the employee shares would have voting rights).

I'm not saying it's the best option or something I studied deeply, but we need something better.

Otherwise, with automation, we're back to feudalism.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#148

Post by neffy »

TheIronYuppie wrote: post #67
neffy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would equally guarantee that they won´t be, simply because there isn´t actually enough actual money to buy them all.

Markets are a real time pricing mechanism - they operate on instantaneous availability of both money and shares. Put enough shares out on the supply side, is the equivalent of flooding the demand side with money a. la. hyperinflation. In both cases, the good in question becomes effectively valueless.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#149

Post by dls2016 »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #132
dls2016 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you believe that I will take better care of myself or be a better father in the long run if I get a one-time bonus of $917? Your POV fails to take into account the utility and time-value of the redistributed dollars. It's the difference between some unelected doofus having tons of power because of their stationary dollars, or building a universal pre-k and/or healthcare system. I know I'd personally work less if…

It's still not clear to me how we are going to get the outcome you're looking for. If the wealth is redistributed to the people (the mechanism isn't important) then that amounts to a few thousand dollars per person. This isn't the kind of money that would allow wide-spread reduction in work hours. My expectation is that most people will liquify that wealth and spend it over a long weekend. Do you have a different exp…

Regarding reduction of work hours, I’m a subscriber to the prevalence of “bullshit jobs” theory. Remove the power from corporate overlords via redistribution and put those resources under more democratic control. As a bonus people will take ownership over their schedule.

Sure, with less people working we may not have forty choices of toilet paper or same day delivery of counterfeit trinkets... but I’m more than ok with that. It will be necessary to reduce carbon emissions, anyway.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#150

Post by dls2016 »

ksdale wrote: post #134
dls2016 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure... but there are two simple facts: a) billionaires are unelected and b) they dictate the usage of vast quantities of resources. Personally, I believe this is immoral.

I think you made great points in your comment above, but I would point out that the thought experiment indicates that the resources they control are actually not that vast, compared to the wealth that would actually be required to raise everyone in the world to, say, the current average American standard of living more than temporarily. It may be moral to take that money and put it to better use, but it would run out…

Perhaps, but I believe this leads into the issue of the waste inherent in the current American standard of living. The waste (big house, meat every day, giant cars, plastic everywhere, etc.) is, as you know, due to the low cost of extracting fossil fuels. I am optimistic that a lot of this waste can be eliminated without changing our quality of life significantly. The structure of our lives may change, but that's the exact thing I'm arguing for, anyway.

Bring on the fully automated luxury communism!

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