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Billionaires Build

paulgraham.com

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Re: Billionaires Build

#381

Post by dang »

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%.

Please don't post snarky dismissals to HN. If you know more than others, the best way to respond is to share some of what you know, so the rest of us can learn. If you don't want to do that or don't have time, that's fine, but in that case please don't post. Letting the internet be wrong about everything is the primary survival skill we all have to work on anyhow.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Billionaires Build

#382

Post by nostrademons »

akavi wrote: post #157
Meekro wrote: post #85

Some of the most successful YC companies are: Stripe, Airbnb, Cruise, DoorDash, Coinbase, Instacart, Dropbox, Gusto, Reddit, and Gitlab. I guess DoorDash and Instacart are accused of participating in the exploitative gig economy. Airbnb is accused of circumventing hotel laws (is that exploitation?) The other 7 on my list are pretty okay though, right?

Coinbase arguably is just a casino in another form. Reddit's incentives are aligned towards a similar addictive loop as Facebook. Stripe, Cruise, Dropbox, Gusto, and Gitlab are pretty unassaible IMO, though.

There's always ways of looking at things negatively:

Stripe = Eat the gift economy and replace it with monetized capitalism.

Cruise = Mass unemployment for truckdrivers, plus inevitable computer-controlled accidents.

DropBox = Oh noes, your files belong to a company and you don't have physical possession of them anymore.

Gusto = [...I'm having a hard time here, people still need to get paid and ADP sucks.] Maybe "encouraging people to start businesses who would be better off in stable employment".

Gitlab = Think of all the potential copyright infringement!

The question is - which negative things do you want to believe? And how do they compare to the positive things the company does? It takes a minimum amount of effort to dream up something bad about a company's core value proposition, but that's not the whole company, unless you put blinders on.

Re: Billionaires Build

#383

Post by IanCal »

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

Perhaps missed the end of the comment there.

Edit - though, they do. They already do. Not at the same level but they do let the government take their money.

And also, how else would they increase their score on the next level?

Re: Billionaires Build

#384

Post by breck »

ablekh wrote: post #375
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…

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 ...

> The world is not black and white.

But it is N and N^N

Re: Billionaires Build

#385

Post by mightybyte »

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…

> the only way to become a billionaire is by exploiting people

Here's a slightly different take on this idea:

The only way to become a billionaire is to use leverage.

I think this is a much more defensible argument. You can't become a billionaire by yourself. You have to have some mechanism of leverage to magnify your impact. Hiring employees is a form of leverage. Using a computer is a form of leverage. Putting your software on a large number of cloud computers is yet an additional form of leverage. The question of whether one is exploiting their employees is a worthwhile question to ask, but it is a completely separate (and much more polarizing) question. I think that leverage is the core kernel of truth lurking within this question.

Re: Billionaires Build

#386

Post by q-big »

zd123 wrote: post #366
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.

Lets assume it is not a strawman, what empirical evidence suggests that this is not the case? I mean, as an example, billionaires have access to top notch lawyers that lower their tax bill, look at Trump’s recent tax filings for example. Can you reasonably argue that they are not unfairly taking advantage of society, and by extension its people? What about government lobbying etc. I mean the list goes on. Personally…

> I mean, as an example, billionaires have access to top notch lawyers that lower their tax bill, look at Trump’s recent tax filings for example. Can you reasonably argue that they are not unfairly taking advantage of society, and by extension its people?

One can reasonably argue that laws were passed which give rich people this advantage.

Re: Billionaires Build

#387

Post by Frondo »

Aunche wrote: post #372
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.

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?

Let her control it til the end of the tax year, and then let her help fund the system that made her fabulously wealthy.

Re: Billionaires Build

#388

Post by q-big »

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…

> 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.

Tell this to the politicians who create the taxation laws.

Re: Billionaires Build

#389

Post by dang »

dluan wrote: post #306

It's clear to me from pg's latest essays is that he is no longer living in the future. There's a generational divide that's growing between younger founders and how they see technology with the first golden generation of tech - the Apple, Microsoft, Web 1.0/2.0 type of inventors and business people. Because there is no way you can show this essay to a younger founder and not have it feel out of touch.

What would a younger founder find out of touch about it?

The founders I see in recent YC batches don't seem so different in this respect—but perhaps I'm out of touch with out-of-touchness.

Re: Billionaires Build

#390

Post by smhost »

UK-Al05 wrote: post #355
curun1r wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

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…

> ignores the value of capital and organisation

it doesn't. that capital was built by labor.

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