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Billionaires Build

paulgraham.com

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Re: Billionaires Build

#251

Post by chillwaves »

eej71 wrote: post #220
chillwaves wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe in meritocracy? Because ownership of that amount of wealth is surely going to skew the entire system. How long before we just have a permanent ruling class, and how does that move humanity forward?

There is always more wealth to create.

r > g, where r is the rate of return and g is the overall economic growth of the economy.

It means the rich capture a growing portion of productivity, and in modern days it is on the strength of the financialization of productivity, not necessarily people actually doing work.

How is this an optimal system? How is it even a functioning system? What we are doing as a species, today, right now, is not working and our ability to live on this planet is increasingly in danger.

Re: Billionaires Build

#252

Post by nthj »

breck wrote: post #221
dustingetz wrote: post #29

Billionaire can also be framed as succeeding at creating a power differential at scale. The trick is that you can't achieve scale without using power differentials, and iphones are the fruit of scale. Idea: what you kind of want is for the power difference to decay at scale, so that way you don't have amazon workers pissing in water bottles. Remember: "Sufficiently Powerful Optimization Of Any Known Target Destroys A…

I think there's an important point here. Bill Gates wouldn't be a billionaire if he didn't build amazing things, but he also exploited at scale the unjust IP ("ImaginaryProperty") system, which was a critical part of achieving the scale Microsoft achieved. Startups like Airbnb and Lyft likewise have built amazing things, and would easily make their founders 100' millionaires, but there is a point where to reach a cer…

You offered up 3 examples of billionaires. Other examples might be:

* Tesla

* Twilio

* Stripe

Would you help me see how those 3 leveraged unjust laws? As a software developer, I feel Stripe and Twilio have added a lot of value to me, to small businesses, and the world.

Re: Billionaires Build

#253

Post by chillwaves »

hnracer wrote: post #224
chillwaves wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe in meritocracy? Because ownership of that amount of wealth is surely going to skew the entire system. How long before we just have a permanent ruling class, and how does that move humanity forward?

Familial wealth disperses and collapses pretty quickly, eventually being split up between 2 to the n heirs thereabouts. Irrespective, the wealth is the property of an individual who earned that wealth through voluntary exchange. If they want to give it all to their kids, to a charitable cause, or just destroy it, that should be their right as owners of that property, it is not just for the state to steal that propert…

> Irrespective, the wealth is the property of an individual who earned that wealth through voluntary exchange.

Hard disagree. We won't see eye to eye on this point, and it really invalidates the rest of w hat you are saying.

Re: Billionaires Build

#254

Post by simonebrunozzi »

> It's not growing yet, but maybe they can figure out how to make it grow during YC." Which they did, about three weeks into the batch.

I wouldn't be too kind to the less-than-ethical techniques that AirBnB did use to capture the initial users. [0].

... AirBnB also used a (admittedly suspect) email campaign to inform posters of vacation rentals on Craigslist how easy it was to post on AirBnB too.

[0]: http://fullstack.it/blog/growth/airbnb-craigslist-growth-hac...

Re: Billionaires Build

#256

Post by oblio »

api wrote: post #231
chillwaves wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither category should exist. The fact billionaires exist is an indictment against our system and how we allocate resources.

Who would allocate resources better?

Better than not trying to reallocate them at all? Anything, really :-)

Even a crappy government, which is widely known to be one of the least efficient ways to manage anything.

What's the percentage of multi millionaires or billionaires that are involved in effective, life changing philanthropy for large swaths of people?

Re: Billionaires Build

#257

Post by chillwaves »

austinpena wrote: post #227
chillwaves wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe in meritocracy? Because ownership of that amount of wealth is surely going to skew the entire system. How long before we just have a permanent ruling class, and how does that move humanity forward?

Is your stance that wealth in the hands of billionaires tends to do less good to raise the “common good” than if it were to be distributed in some way? If so, what kind of distribution do you think makes sense?

You guys acting like democratic government has not yet been invented.

It's not like alternatives to billionaires owning the planet doesn't exist. Just America seems to be fairly resistant to the idea of public good.

And the other consideration is how the money of billionaires is actively used to make everyone else's lives worse, either through manipulating markets and commodities, raising our rent, or literally polluting and destroying the planet.

Or buying media and brain washing the population with their crazy ideologies. These are all highly negative events that come from a small group of people having control of too many resources.

No one yet has responded to me why it's such a great idea for billionaires to exist. I wonder if an argument could even be made that didn't even a personal fantasy/wish fulfillment scenario.

Re: Billionaires Build

#258

Post by jacques_chester »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #241

It seems there's not even an glimmer of an understanding of even basic Marxist analysis here. If you sell stuff or services to people, you have to pay for that stuff or services, unless you create them yourself out of thin air. If you pay some people for stuff or services and then resell them to other people, you could: * sell them for less than you paid * sell them for whatever you paid * sell them for more than you…

In fairness, being a lisp programmer who got lucky during one of the frothiest acquisition markets of all time doesn't necessarily make one an economist, whether Marxist or otherwise.

Re: Billionaires Build

#259

Post by throwaway09223 »

drewrv wrote: post #235

This essay uses a weak straw-man: the only way to become a billionaire is by exploiting people I think the "principle of charity" or "steel-man" criticism of billionaires isn't that every single billionaire is directly exploiting people. It would be closer to something like this: The problem is that our society has feedback loops that make it hard to escape poverty, and feedback loops that let the wealthy amass more…

This isn't a straw man, it is an extremely common belief and it deserves to be addressed and debunked. My social media is stuffed to the brim with people posting exactly this sentiment.

It is true that there are other, more reasonable beliefs.

Re: Billionaires Build

#260

Post by SMAAART »

drewrv wrote: post #235

This essay uses a weak straw-man: the only way to become a billionaire is by exploiting people I think the "principle of charity" or "steel-man" criticism of billionaires isn't that every single billionaire is directly exploiting people. It would be closer to something like this: The problem is that our society has feedback loops that make it hard to escape poverty, and feedback loops that let the wealthy amass more…

Your entire comment, minus your opening statement, contradicts your opening statement; and supports the theory that people mistakenly claim that the only way to become billionaire (or millionaires for that matter) is by exploring people.
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