Billionaires Build • Hacker News Board

Re: Billionaires Build

#371

Post by buzzerbetrayed » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:19 PM UTC

Privacy846 wrote: post #313

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…

> 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. But that would be a lie since most of that money/value was created by other people, most likely their employees.

First off, those employees have been paid already, so I'm not sure what the relevance is. If they agreed to work for 100k/year, and forgo the risk of starting a company, why should they get more than the agreed upon price after the company does well? It may be in the companies interest to give them a bonus to keep them around, but that's a separate issue.

Second, the only way you can argue they created more value than the founder of the company is in aggregate. But they also likely made more money than the founder in aggregate. A company tries to pay employees based on the value they bring. If a CEO makes 10,000,000/year, it's probably because the company thinks that CEO is worth it (adds more value than that). So it's silly to point out that the 1000 engineers below him add more value in aggregate. Why, yes.. they also get paid way more than 10,000,000/year in aggregate.

And if the CEO/founder flat out owns the company then all this talk is irrelevant. It's theirs. They can do what they want. If they hired people to build the company for them and the people agreed, good for them. Sounds like a beneficial negotiation for both parties.

Edit: I'm not necessarily arguing for or against the existence of billionaires. That's a tough problem that I don't think I know the answer to. I'm just saying that pointing out that "employees add the real value to the company" is a dumb argument.

Re: Billionaires Build

#372

Post by Aunche » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:19 PM UTC

chillwaves wrote: post #211

RestlessMind wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an amazing nugget which should be the context for any controversial discussion about "Billionaires". I have utmost respect for the former category, but I also believe that the later category should not exist (as in those people should exist but they should not have any unearned billions and all the unearned power and privileges that come with it).

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

I think most people agree that a book author deserves a couple dollars every time someone purchases their media. JK Rowling's stories have been read and watched billions of times? Who deserves to control that capital more than JK Rowling herself?

Re: Billionaires Build

#373

Post by UK-Al05 » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:19 PM UTC

postingpals wrote: post #359

UK-Al05 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is basically the labour theory of value and ignores the value of capital and organisation. Some guy delivering stuff in a garage is not going to be nowhere near as productive as an Amazon worker. The crucial bit that people miss is that it is capital, goodwill and organisation allows employees to generate so much money in the first place. Basically the sum is greater than its parts. If you want to know where pro…

99% of people who invoke the labour theory of value misunderstand it. Welcome to the 99%.

Oh I understand it(well sort of because even Communists can't agree), I've read all theory about Labour theory of value.

Marx never defined the terms about value rigorously, so it can be whatever people want it to be.

I know all about socially necessary value, etc and all hacks people have applied to it over the years. There are tons of interpretations about it.

It still has zero predictive ability in the real world.

Subjective preferences explains where profit comes from with much greater predictive ability. And models real world phenomenon we see.

Re: Billionaires Build

#374

Post by samatman » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:19 PM UTC

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…

In a hereditary monarchy, the king rules until he dies, or abdicates in favor of his son. If this breaks down, through war, sibling rivalry, or lack of an heir... that tends to be a real problem.

In the United States, the titular head of state is chosen through a weird gameshow, and any given head of state can play that game twice. On two occasions, the son of a successful game show contestant has leveraged name recognition to also win a round in the hot seat.

Re: Billionaires Build

#375

Post by ablekh » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:20 PM UTC

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…

Be careful with labels / generalizations like "stupid legal system" and "inequitable laws". What you, some people and some companies might see as such, a whole bunch of other people and other companies might see as exactly the opposite. The world is not black and white. And it's all about perspectives ...

Re: Billionaires Build

#376

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:20 PM UTC

yetanothermonk wrote: post #272

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually do agree with that interpretation. My beliefs ultimately imply that there's nothing wrong with being a billionaire, but that's not a conclusion I find palatable so it's not something I'm particularly interested in defending on its own merits. I'd say it's like writing an argument to decrease penalties for shoplifting and titling it "Don't Punish Thieves". It's not wrong, but it's certainly not a productive…

That's interesting and I think I can understand being in that same frame of mind. I wonder, if the implication doesn't match up with what you want the implication to be, how do you break that stalemate? Here, I guess I'm of the belief that there's nothing wrong with billionaires; the wrong thing is how little there is for a billion people in the world.

It's just a matter of focusing on the motivating principles. I've had lots of good, productive discussions about why "you can get very rich if you make something lots of people want" is a win-win deal for society, or why a system where only the government can finance large projects wouldn't be good. If someone wants to talk about billionaires, I just say that the precise dollar amounts aren't the point.

Re: Billionaires Build

#377

Post by tossmeout » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:22 PM UTC

postingpals wrote: post #359

UK-Al05 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is basically the labour theory of value and ignores the value of capital and organisation. Some guy delivering stuff in a garage is not going to be nowhere near as productive as an Amazon worker. The crucial bit that people miss is that it is capital, goodwill and organisation allows employees to generate so much money in the first place. Basically the sum is greater than its parts. If you want to know where pro…

99% of people who invoke the labour theory of value misunderstand it. Welcome to the 99%.

Comments like this are useless, bc you're declaring someone is wrong without any explanation of (a) why they're wrong, and (b) what's actually correct.

The result is that I have no reason to believe you, or to even understand your point. Because you've essentially made no point.

Re: Billionaires Build

#378

Post by bedhead » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:22 PM UTC

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…

You are right about the feedback loops that make it hard to escape poverty. The most uncomfortable one to talk about is basic social network effects. Two people meet at some prestigious college and get married - are we shocked they have children who are predisposed for success? Besides from having god-given IQ, they are likely some combination of ambitious, punctual, respectful of authority, long-term oriented, hard-working, etc. But would one of those parents have ever been interested in marrying and having kids with some high school dropout, someone from a vastly different social place and lacking those values? It's pretty rare. Society organizes itself around this stuff and it's extremely powerful. The two high school dropouts end up hooking up and having kids and it's often times (though obviously not always) the opposite cycle. And yeah there are plenty of societal biases that are real, but I really don't think anything will ever be as powerful as this self-organizing dynamic of how people marry and have kids. It's cold and depressing and uncomfortable but it's reality.

Re: Billionaires Build

#379

Post by eschaton » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:22 PM UTC

RIMR wrote: post #363

throwaway09223 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, it's absolutely a strawman. The exploitation billionaires create isn't direct. The problem is that Billionaires amass this wealth while people beneath them struggle. Jeff Bezos shouldn't be making 12-figure gains while his warehouse workers are on welfare. Those warehouse workers shouldn't be paying a higher tax rate than he does on their income. That IS an unquestionably exploitive relationship between a CEO and…

And if, say, Jeff Bezos hired his warehouse workers as employees, paid them an inflation-adjusted minimum wage (eg about $25/hr), and offered real benefits, he and his company would still be making massive profits. That’s what makes it unethical and exploitative: They don’t actually need to be paid so little or treated so harshly for the company’s economics to work!

Re: Billionaires Build

#380

Post by gonehome » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:24 PM UTC

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…

I generally agree with this, but I think there's also a real issue of what to do about people that just can't do this.

This requires some threshold level of intelligence.

It requires knowing that it's possible and not making stupid decisions along the way that inhibit it. You're less likely to be exposed to knowledge of how or where to start when no one inside your network is successful.

There are some issues with learned behavior (children from poverty that eat one marshmallow in the test because they've learned adults are unreliable and one now is better than the promise of two later). People from poverty tend to spend money quickly when they get it because having it is scarce/rare and there's learned behavior to use it right away.

I think a lot of the arguments from the left that "it can't be done", "social mobility doesn't exist", etc. are both wrong and really harmful because it confuses people into thinking they can't improve their situation when they can. It takes away agency.

I think the truth is messier though and not everyone has the capacity to do this and our society is definitely skewed for intelligence, but arguably so is any society with living things that need to adapt to their environment.

The solution is probably some sort of complex policy and iterating on it to try and make things better and protect the lower bound of society, but that's boring pragmatic neoliberalism and doesn't really rally the troops. People prefer to argue the extremes.

I think the key is you can protect the lower bound of society without taking from the rich or disincentivizing wealth creation and growth, but I also think wealth inequality in a society when it comes from wealth creation and growth is not that big of a deal and we want to reward this kind of thing (less true when it comes from other places like inheritance). Basically protect the lower bound, don't worry about capping the upper bound. Worry about inheritance and leveraging wealth into political power.

Tyler Cowen's book makes a pretty good case for growth in this kind of way being the best way to help the most people the fastest: https://press.stripe.com/#stubborn-attachments

I think that gets less attention though because it's easier to 'hate the rich' than it is to focus on policy issues that affect the lower bound.