41–50 of 957 posts
My second thought is that it wasn't a mistake.
> that the only way to become a billionaire is by exploiting people Any statement that has the word "only" in it is guaranteed to be wrong. I wonder if PG worded it this way intentionally (straw man fallacy). Most people agree early employees should get more equity. This doesn't address whether startup founders are hoarding equity for themselves and their investors instead of fairly rewarding early employees.
Isn't that true though? A millionaire? Sure there are a lot of ways to get there. A Billionaire? There are only 2000~. Are there any notable ones who got there without exploiting people or building/aided in building a business that does?
If rich people are so great, why do founders not want to work for them?
For a clearly smart guy it's so frustrating to see PG bring in a topic like the Billionaires being exploitative, and then taking such a thoroughly blinkered view. It's a massive blind spot that PG fails to address is that it's the exact same sense of mission that he sees in start ups that creates the permission structure to exploit people. It's not that people set out to exploit people and as a result they become bil…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. Residential areas are different from commercial areas in good parts of the world for a reason. This is not a bad example. Many people took loans to buy airbnb to aggressively rent them. Criminal activity go through roof with tourists in the neighborhood. You don't know who your neighbors are because they keep changing. It doesn't feel safe to let your 10 year old son out for many. Drugs, garbage on the road, covi…
Would you say this collection of things you’re describing is, “AirBnb is exploiting someone?” Anyway, there’s basically no evidence for any of what you’re saying, especially the crime part. The one not-yet-peer reviewed paper trying to show Airbnb’s causal effect on rents found a $9/yr increase (1), which is laughably, hilariously small - it could not possibly be playing a significant role in rent pricing in the bigg…
Hotels have to have commercial liability insurance. Hotels have to maintain certain levels of fire safety, and food sanitation, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, Bezos didn't set out to bankrupt as many small businesses as he could. He started with providing a wider range of books to people over the internet. For the person who wanted a specific book and was only able to get it on Amazon this is a "good" thing. For the local bookstore who is now bankrupt that is a "bad" thing. I've come to the conclusion that to be a CEO you have to wear these blinders and have faith t…
Small businesses are dying because of small business refusal to use technology. They would rather grumble about how "millennials won't pick up the phone anymore" to order things. In the case of small bookstores, they think it is enough to toss books on the shelf and wait for people to come browsing. Well, I can now browse from bed.
This is a little glib. There's nothing most of these small business can do.
> that the only way to become a billionaire is by exploiting people Any statement that has the word "only" in it is guaranteed to be wrong. I wonder if PG worded it this way intentionally (straw man fallacy). Most people agree early employees should get more equity. This doesn't address whether startup founders are hoarding equity for themselves and their investors instead of fairly rewarding early employees.
Isn't that true though? A millionaire? Sure there are a lot of ways to get there. A Billionaire? There are only 2000~. Are there any notable ones who got there without exploiting people or building/aided in building a business that does?
For a clearly smart guy it's so frustrating to see PG bring in a topic like the Billionaires being exploitative, and then taking such a thoroughly blinkered view. It's a massive blind spot that PG fails to address is that it's the exact same sense of mission that he sees in start ups that creates the permission structure to exploit people. It's not that people set out to exploit people and as a result they become bil…
off-topic: I have been actively participating in HN since 2010, and recently I started seeing prominent tech people on twitter backlash against pg. Not sure if It was there before, or if I'm barely noticing this. i.e. many of them show screenshots of getting banned by pg on twitter. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1329094570056032264
pg has fallen out of touch. The world is very different for the young ones. I’m not old but my tech career started back around 2007. It was very different. Back then tech was exciting and new. We were changing the world. Now we have changed the world. Mobile is king, web is emperor. We’ve won. Tech is to 2020 what finance was to 1980. And VCs are seen as the big baddies. People don’t join this industry for the love o…
Now we have changed the world. Mobile is king, web is emperor. We’ve won."
You must be young.
The difference between 1999 and 2009 was an order of magnitude greater than 2009 to 2019.
This is your personal growth journey, not really an objective thing.