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Billionaires Build

paulgraham.com

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Re: Billionaires Build

#321

Post by imgabe »

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's not a strawman insofar as there are people who literally say exactly that, and those are the people he's addressing. I agree there are more reasonable discussions to be had about how to distribute wealth for the greatest benefit to society but there are people who believe that if we just tax Jeff Bezos more then the Water Authority in Flint, MI will somehow become more competent.

Re: Billionaires Build

#322

Post by kgog »

strogonoff wrote: post #215
kgog wrote: post #153

love to see pg get more out of touch with every single passing day.

A piece of writing everyone finds level-headed and making total sense is likely not worth reading as it's merely restating what’s on everyone’s mind. Your comment shows this article at least isn’t that (thus being the cue for me personally). You can’t write something really good without pissing at least some people off.

"haters gonna hate" is what egomaniacs who have no respect for others say when they know they are in the wrong but are too stubborn to accept their own shortcomings.

Re: Billionaires Build

#323

Post by varjag »

Privacy846 wrote: post #308
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…

I don’t know who Graham is talking about—“politicians”?—but this is a very famous claim, or corollary, from Marx: capitalists exploit workers. Why? Because of the labor theory of value. (1) All value is created from labor. (2) Capitalists employ workers in order to extract surplus value from them (what’s the point of employing them if you don’t get more out of your “investment” than you pay it?). (3) Ergo capitalists…

> But it becomes farcical to claim that a person can become a billionaire without exploiting people.

It is farcical to a Marxist maybe, with infinite patience for labor theory of value despite century worth of contradictory evidence.

Re: Billionaires Build

#324

Post by [deleted] »

JangoSteve wrote: post #295

It seems weird to view it as an either/or. "Billionaires exploit people." -- "No, they build things people want." I think that you may be able to become a billionaire without exploiting people, but it's like playing on the high-difficulty mode. In other words, it's easier to be "successful" (from a monetary point of view) when you don't care about others. It's also easier to be successful coming from a privileged bac…

[deleted]

Re: Billionaires Build

#325

Post by claudeganon »

api wrote: post #314
claudeganon wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese government is a horrible, authoritarian nightmare, but still somehow does better at managing the country's resources than the American ruling class. The pandemic, now over in China, while our nurses tape garbage bags to themselves as thousands die daily, has proven that definitively.

The pandemic happened to hit while we had a particularly idiotic populist demagogue in the White House, but even if we'd had someone more competent I still agree that China would have done better. Assuming you believe their numbers, China seems to be doing better than most of the world. I chalk up China's governmental competence to the number of scientists and engineers involved in their government. It may be authori…

Right, I was just responding to the question, whose posing is often used to suggest that the US is the best of all possible resource allocation worlds. I don't want to live under a regime like the CCP, but we did just run this experiment and the U.S. system of resource allocation failed miserably.

Re: Billionaires Build

#326

Post by pwinnski »

bluntfang wrote: post #281
pwinnski wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 vi…

Right, and we also have billionaires. That doesn't seem to negate the fact that historically, this country explicitly rejected the idea of a hereditary monarchy.

Re: Billionaires Build

#327

Post by analognoise »

kevas wrote: post #312

About to write some possibly controversial stuff... My early life, I grew up and had middle to upper middle class all around me. In my late teens and early twenties, there were times I had to scrounge my cushions and rummage through my car to find enough change to eat a meal. We live in a society where everyone has access to a computer—personal or local library. We have all the information we need to bring (the major…

You're essentially saying "pull yourself up by your bootstraps". This is very easy to do if you've experienced a middle or upper middle class upbringing.

This is almost impossible to do if you were raised in a household of abuse or food scarcity, or where your network doesn't contain any well educated individuals. Basically it works for...middle class people.

In short: trickle down economics is being pissed on and calling it rain, and "just work harder" blames people for their station and expects them to be extraordinary just to have a reasonable life. It's essentially blaming the poor, the easiest way out possible, with nice gloss on top, and it's total and utter bullshit that papers over the systemic forces acting against all workers - let alone those just scraping by.

Re: Billionaires Build

#328

Post by Barrin92 »

Two things that are very obviously wrong with the take, both I think having the same reason: Not all billionaires are self-made, and a majority of them aren't tech entrepreneurs of the sort PG talks about in this piece. Seems like a very obvious fact but somehow doesn't really come up.

Secondly, in the same vein, the kind of (aspiring) billionaires YC meets are, by definition, builders, because they're self-sorted fledging entrepreneurs. Paul somehow uses this as an argument when he should notice that this means he has a bias.

Nobody called Zuckerberg or Bezos exploitative when they were coding in dorm rooms and folding boxes on Ikea tables, and that's the kind of people Paul thinks off when he thinks of billionaires in his job. But that's a different story from the conglomerates they run 20 year later when the majority of their employees are warehouse workers and content moderators with mental issues

Reason for not recognizing this is obviously that PG mistakes Silicon valley startup culture for the entire world, which I wouldn't have blamed him for 20 years ago, but what is odd is that it seems to have gotten worse even though he moved away from it.

Re: Billionaires Build

#329

Post by mcintyre1994 »

canofbars wrote: post #290
IanCal wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Couldn’t you just cap non-charitable gifts to something like $1 million lifetime per recipient in that case? I doubt that’d be particularly controversial with anyone who isn’t a multi-millionaire, unless I’m missing something.

Re: Billionaires Build

#330

Post by curun1r »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #259
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.

I think Paul is fundamentally not understanding the argument behind “billionaires exploit workers.” It isn’t that billionaires are fundamentally bad people or that they’ve accumulated their wealth through misdeeds.

But what it is is that it’s basically impossible to accumulate that amount of wealth through work. Instead, you have to be able to capture the difference between the value of someone else’s work and what you pay them to do it. And you have to do that at scale. So Jeff Bezos has figured out how to pay people $X and make $X $Y off their labor, pocket a significant portion of that $Y and do it for the hundreds of thousands of people that work for Amazon. Nowhere in this argument is anyone saying that this practice should not be allowed or that he’s done something wrong. But what people are saying is that the narrative that billionaires built their wealth themselves is false and that they should be taxed heavily in recognition of the fact that they built their wealth off of the work of others.

The billionaires Paul identifies and helps create are no different, other than the possible exception that they rely on market’s expectation of future exploitation of workers’ value rather than having actually done it already. Paul would never fund a founder who wanted to divide all profits among employees. Therefore, based on that single fact alone, he is identifying future billionaires based on their willingness to exploit their workers...to pay them less than the value of their work.

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