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Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen
41–50 of 141 posts
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen
#42> Collison: when we sort of talk about the phenomenon of “progress,” you know, I think GDP or GDP per capita is a pretty good first approximation measure of it and it correlates strongly —— I got confused when Collison said that there was scientific evidence that business productivity increases with improved management practices. That’s the thesis of business schools and management consultants. What’s the new idea he…
2) Is a monopoly or a perfectly competitive business better for societal progress? In theory, a monopoloy would be because you can make more profit and constantly reinvest more than any competitor into making better products and holding your monopoly. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen in practice, because monopolies tend to buy competitors in order to stifle competition rather than reinvesting and building a better…
The flip side is that if companies are making less profit, there might be more consumer surplus, leading to more savings (which can also be reinvested in the economy) or a higher standard of living.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
2) Is a monopoly or a perfectly competitive business better for societal progress? In theory, a monopoloy would be because you can make more profit and constantly reinvest more than any competitor into making better products and holding your monopoly. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen in practice, because monopolies tend to buy competitors in order to stifle competition rather than reinvesting and building a better…
The flip side is that if companies are making less profit, there might be more consumer surplus, leading to more savings (which can also be reinvested in the economy) or a higher standard of living.
Yes, but the average person with savings isn't going to create wealth in any way that a business can with that money. Most especially if that money is "saved" in stocks or bonds. This might be better for people in the short term, but we are talking about sociatal progress not short term benefits.
But there's the obviously counterexamples of companies hoarding billions and not paying dividends because they don't know what to do with it.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tyler Cowen has a book with basically that premise - that in the long run, economic growth is the only thing that matters. It's called Stubborn Attachments. It's not an intuitive position for most people, but it's a pretty convincing argument - it's certainly been the most important thing in the last 100 years, in my mind (think the incredible increase in health, standards of living, etc, which, even if they aren't s…
Yeah, most of that was before we discovered (or just didn't care enough) we have been destroying natural resources in a completely unsustainable way, from the extraction processes (mining) to disposal (ocean filled with trash)
His book argues a more nuanced form of economic growth. It’s basically growth is the most important thing, but there must also be human rights constraints along with some others that prevent destroying the world.
It’s worth reading (and it’s short). The only thing that bothered me about it was what I suspect was a poorly disguised justification of religion via “faith” that I found unnecessary and out of place.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen
#45Patrick should take some oratory lessons. As a CEO it is important to be able to speak slowly, be brief and on the point.
Only on HN will you find randos confidently telling a founder-CEO who grew his company from $0 to $35B what's "important" about being a CEO.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe a growing pie is not perfect, but it is greatly preferable to a shrinking one. For a simple example, take a company that looses some contracts and stops growing; you get new conflicts or old ones become critical, ppl start leaving, etc. As long as the pie is growing, it can hide or solve by default many existing problems which would be very difficult or costly to fix otherwise.
> As long as the pie is growing, it can hide or solve by default many existing problems I think one issue with this analogy, is that companies have central points of authority but Western economies don't so much. For example GDP growth doesn't magically fix rising homelessness, and in the absence of central authority it becomes very difficult to address. People often don't like the idea that their "taxpayers money" i…
>For example GDP growth doesn't magically fix rising homelessness
Nothing magically fixes homelessness, but GDP correlates well with a host of public benefits, including "poverty reduction and per capita income growth performances are correlated" [1]. All these correlations can be more accurately detailed by searching google scholar.
In the US, it seems homelessness has decreased greatly since it was first investigated in the 1860s as people moved to cities. During the GD in 1930, there were about 2M homeless against a total population of 120M people, and now it's around 500k against a population of 320M.
I'd suspect that GDP rise over those periods helped reduce homelessness quite a bit by providing more resources per capita to address it.
[1] https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2011/02/gdp_correlations.html
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why wouldn't it be? Humans have infinite wants and needs. These change overtime in terms of taste/perception as well. So the counter point should be made as to how this isn't the case and that a "growing pie" is actually against human nature.
It's the compound interest problem. If you keep compounding growth, like growing GDP at 1-2% a year, within some few thousand years you've grown bigger than all the resources within a sphere the same number of light years in radius. So clearly, growth is not sustainable and must eventually slow down until it approaches zero. To be clear, we're far away from that today. But the parent is mathematically correct, the be…
>like growing GDP at 1-2% a year, within some few thousand years you've grown bigger than all the resources
Increased GDP does not require consuming more resources. Using them more efficiently adds significantly to GDP, so this argument doesn't provide a rationale to claim infinite GDP growth is impossible.
A good example is many advanced economies have increased per capita GDP significantly while lowering per capita energy consumption at the same time (and lowering many other per capita material consumption areas).
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's not just incentives, bureaucracies and inefficiencies that caused cost increases. This might be true if there weren't stark counterexamples, e.g. Singapore at 1/4 the cost, with better outcomes. Notably there, government dollars flow through to consumers who choose among competitors by price and quality.
There is also a lower focus on end of life care in Singapore, which makes up the vast majority of spending in the American system. These issues are cultural, not just political or economic. I am looking forward to seeing what PC and TC can come up with for a common framework. This seems to be a tough problem.
The healthcare sector constitutes 18% of our GDP, a truly insane amount. That is 7-8% (~1.5 trillion) more than it should be. Excessive end-of-life care explains almost none of that. The two biggest issues in American healthcare are:
- Zero price transparency
- Payment through intermediaries like insurance companies and your employer, who often pays half of your insurance premiums and other healthcare expenditures
With no price transparency, prices are just made up with little connection to actual value delivered. Because of the middlemen, most patients don’t feel the full cost of healthcare. Patients in aggregate still pay for the full negotiated cost, just indirectly in the form of higher premiums and forgone wages (marginal premiums paid by the employer).
At this point, Medicare for All is our best hope. A true market-based healthcare economy, as great as it may be, is a pipe dream. With Medicare for All, the government would set reimbursement rates in stone. Most doctors who want a substantial amount of patients would have to accept those rates. Unlike insurance companies, the government would not be able to aggressively increase its “premiums,” or taxes, every year and it won’t get kickbacks from hospitals for high cost care. The government would also set empirically backed standards of care that lower their cost burden with no impact on average lifespan.
We could potentially allow for parallel “luxury care” purchased by the patient if they want to be able to expedite their non-emergency knee replacement from 6 months to 2 weeks. The government would be incentivized to launch health initiatives and laws that help lower the rates of obesity and diabetes in the population. Lastly, the government would also be incentivized to increase the supply of doctors. There are multiple instances in the past when medical organizations lobbied or misled Congress into over-limiting the supply of medical residencies. They also had a hand in restricting the number and size of medical schools. So yes, overpaid, scarce medical professionals are a big part of the cost burden, and their representative institutions are making sure they stay overpaid. Only recently have medical organizations lobbied to increase the number of residencies again. That’s just damage control.
The American people should not accept compromise on healthcare any longer. That’s what the ACA was, and it did not do enough. Medicare for All will bring us in line with the rest of the developed world which has better health outcomes at a much lower cost. We can save >$1 trillion and put that money towards things like a national high speed rail network, anti-poverty efforts, government-subsidized corporate internships, and an accredited national online education and retraining platform with the best professors on every subject imaginable.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen
#49Patrick should take some oratory lessons. As a CEO it is important to be able to speak slowly, be brief and on the point.
Only on HN will you find randos confidently telling a founder-CEO who grew his company from $0 to $35B what's "important" about being a CEO.
I'm pretty sure I've seen this phenomena on Reddit, Twitter, and Medium, too.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen
#50The most interesting part of the talk is what is avoided.
Like the positive effect of government policy. The US Anti-trust policy was very effective at times.
Temporary National Economic Committee (TNEC) 1938-1941 forced licensing of tens of thousands of patents.
When AT&T Bell Labs invented transistor it was forced to allow anyone to use it's knowledge. People went to Bell Labs and they were taught how to manufacture transistors. Massive industry spurted overnight. If transistor was invented today, the inventor would have a monopoly for transistor 25 years and generate huge profits.