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Billionaires Build

paulgraham.com

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Re: Billionaires Build

#281

Post by bluntfang »

pwinnski wrote: post #229
austinpena wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t believe that if someone makes billions they should be able to pass it on to their children?

In America, at least, we have historically rejected the idea of a hereditary monarchy. Literally nobody is suggesting that the children of the wealthy should be penniless.

>In America, at least, we have historically rejected the idea of a hereditary monarchy.

Just looking at history of presidents...George Bush Jr and George Bush Sr. Do you think George Bush Jr would have been president if his father wasn't? I'm not saying that GWB isn't competent or anything like that...but is your assertion that if he didn't have the name (and inherited wealth and connections), he would have been a viable candidate?

Same could be said about the Clinton's, so I don't think this is partisan.

Re: Billionaires Build

#282

Post by camgunz »

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…

It's less "your product is exploitative" and "you underpay (exploit) your workers for their labor."

Bill Gates didn't write Windows 95. Steve Ballmer didn't write Microsoft Office. But they owned stock in a company that employed people that did (and all the various other labor that goes into building software products). Why did they make so much more money from it than the people who were more directly involved?

This dynamic is reducible. If Person A starts a software company, Person B, C and D build the product, and then Person A gets $10,000 while Person B, C and D each get $1, something is off there.

The capitalist defense of this is more or less, "B/C/D agreed to those terms", but this ignores the context. If every B/C/D wanted to be As, there would be no B/C/Ds to build things. And it's not always possible to choose to be an A--it usually requires a fair amount of privilege to start a business. But nonetheless, their work is equally important, and even if it isn't, it's certainly not the case that A's work is 100,000x more important.

We need to recognize this kind of bonkers concentration of wealth is a huge problem, and fix it with profit sharing and taxation.

Re: Billionaires Build

#283

Post by tartoran »

eloff wrote: post #216
daralthus wrote: post #174

Not sure what to make of this. Billionaire companies != seed funded startups. The exploitation really kicks into gear after you have 5000 employees and there are many inflection points of power differentials until then. Each not as a big deal, but slowly eroding some rights the farther and lower you go.

I think the point is that entrepreneurial endeavors are not a zero sum game. Politicians and people sometimes act like billionaires are hoarding a big slice of pie selfishly for themselves, but the reality is they made the pie bigger by adding value to the world. By the definition of how markets work they had to have added more value then they got compensated. This is how it works with idealized new products. With hi…

How about the value destroyed? Im thinking of online retailers and the killing of the brick and mortar stores with lots of local economy and jobs murdered. Who decries those? The destitute become voiceless while the voice of the ones who got to the top becomes a strong unison and myths to riches are created so more people could be exploited.

Re: Billionaires Build

#284

Post by naikrovek »

generalizations wrote: post #271
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…

> It doesn't have to be this way, it's a product of our laws and can be changed I don't think any of your three statements are true, based on my (limited) knowledge of history. Far as I know, the only way to break the feedback loop is to restart it - a revolution or the like - and build something in its place that maximizes the time until the loop has to be broken again. If anything, I'd guess that it's human nature…

Society and laws are constructs, and we constructed them to be this way. We do not need to restart from zero to fix things.

People do those things because the pressure to avoid doing those things is far too weak, and the pressure to be a good person is one of the things that society should provide.

Re: Billionaires Build

#285

Post by breck »

nthj wrote: post #252
breck wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sorry, I think my writing was a bit muddled (common occurrence). I love those businesses I mentioned. And the 3 you mentioned too. I 100% agree they have added a lot of value to me and the world. What I was trying to say is that to make billions, you need to 1) create a lot of value and 2) have some broken legal system that you are operating in. Maybe for the latter "exploiting" is the wrong word. But the government needs to have created a situation where you can somehow reap a disproportionate reward. Linus created Linux and Git, which have created unimaginable value, but he didn't do #2 which was to use the unjust IP system to make billions of dollars.

In other words. Lyft is a product of hard work and innovation multiplied by corruption and bad government in the taxi industry. The value created by Lyft comes from the former, but the value captured by Lyft is just as dependent on the latter as well. Nothing wrong with that—it's still a big net win for society, but maybe we could do a better job at refactoring our laws so we can get the value without the unnatural inequities. After all, I know a lot of these people and while they are almost all smarter than me, none of them is 10x smarter than me (well maybe pg).

In response to your 3 examples:

* Tesla

Carbons were subsidized and solar/electric better tech. Automotive industry is highly regulated and innovation was sloooow. Elon and company are the best of the best (a shareholder), but still I'm not going to pretend that the business opportunity would be so great if the governments around the world hadn't been creating corruption after corruption (look at the car dealership stuff with the states as a tiny but egregious example).

* Twilio

Oh man the telecom infra went from magic to just rotten in the past few decades. I don't know enough about government here to comment, but I suspect something bad here.

* Stripe

The amount of protection the finance and banking industry has (and their symbiotic relationship with the government) made me sick so many times. Finally someone had the stamina and determination to solve that. But Stripe isn't hitting $100B if US Government wasn't letting the finance industry sit on its ass for 3 decades with protective legislation.

Re: Billionaires Build

#286

Post by tartoran »

eloff wrote: post #279
IanCal wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those can both be true. If I provide enough value to buy a thousand lifetimes worth of food and sit in my castle with it while people outside my moat starve - am I not selfishly hoarding that food?

Yes. A lot of billionaires do choose to share, currently that's up to them. I think we can should make laws to put higher taxes on the rich, but in practice it's tough to do that well. Often they just move themselves or their money to get around that. One has to balance harvesting eggs com the golden goose with not killing it or driving it away. Taxing just billionaires specifically wouldn't do much as there aren't m…

Taxing billionares I think means more like taxing the multimilionares. If you look at what democrats proposed was a raise in taxes for income of over 1M+ or something of the sorts.

Billionares could be taxed more as a penalty of parking their money in a safe fiscal heaven and it is very doable if a concerted effort is made.

Re: Billionaires Build

#287

Post by canofbars »

ohashi wrote: post #278
tekdude wrote: post #207

I think one issue with this viewpoint is that while a successful company may be doing wonderful things for its users... not everyone is a user. Even the users themselves are not users 100% of the time. So, even if a company is not actively exploiting its workforce, customers, or suppliers, it might be exploiting its non-users without ever giving them much opportunity to object. Again, Airbnb is probably the best exam…

Wonder if we will look at this like climate change that the oil companies knew about decades ago.

Everyone knew about this decades ago. It was even taught in schools as just basic facts and science before it became political.

Re: Billionaires Build

#288

Post by generalizations »

naikrovek wrote: post #284
generalizations wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't have to be this way, it's a product of our laws and can be changed I don't think any of your three statements are true, based on my (limited) knowledge of history. Far as I know, the only way to break the feedback loop is to restart it - a revolution or the like - and build something in its place that maximizes the time until the loop has to be broken again. If anything, I'd guess that it's human nature…

Society and laws are constructs, and we constructed them to be this way. We do not need to restart from zero to fix things. People do those things because the pressure to avoid doing those things is far too weak, and the pressure to be a good person is one of the things that society should provide.

Ok, but that pressure is brought to bear from somewhere. If there's people who are given the power to apply that pressure, then that power is now something people can amass.

I don't know how you're imagining that society can provide that pressure without also giving ambitous people a way to collect power.

Re: Billionaires Build

#289

Post by bch »

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…

> Warren Buffet doesn't directly exploit anyone.

There might be something to discuss there: https://publicintegrity.org/inequality-poverty-opportunity/w...

Re: Billionaires Build

#290

Post by canofbars »

IanCal wrote: post #248
lotsofpulp wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what should happen to your assets when the total of their market capitalization crosses the $1B line?

In good idle games they shift the goal once you hit more boring levels. Stealing partly from someone else I can't find a reference for: Ownership capped at 1 billion, you get a sticker saying "I won capitalism" and all further growth and income goes to the government for social programs. You get a new ticker that estimates lives saved and people homes/fed/educated - that becomes your new boasting figure. Not entirely…

Do you think billionaires would just stop and let the system collect their money? My first thought is they would just donate all ownership over the cap to family members. They could probably continue this forever before every family member gains $1B
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