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Billionaires Build

paulgraham.com

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Re: Billionaires Build

#501

Post by refurb »

camgunz wrote: post #282
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…

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…

Didn’t Microsoft create hundreds of millionaires out of it’s initial employees? I mean, the people building the next generation of Microsoft products aren’t going to have trouble entering the upper income brackets of American society.

Re: Billionaires Build

#502

Post by cwkoss »

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?

Counterpoint: JK Rowling is now using her billion dollars to fund various "TERF" groups and programs that fight against trans rights and inclusion.

Re: Billionaires Build

#504

Post by sumedh »

claudeganon wrote: post #303
api wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who would allocate resources better?

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.

Australia and NZ are dont have an authoritarian govt but still managed to get the pandemic under control.

Re: Billionaires Build

#505

Post by UK-Al05 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #494
UK-Al05 wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adam Smith's labour theory of value hasn't been used in modern economics. And has tons of problems with it. That and Ricardos version is probably the basis of the Marx version. They we're the popular interpretations at the time and he was probably inspired by them. The marginal revolution happened in economics and a lot of those problems disappeared. A lot the things they couldn't explain suddenly could be using marg…

My principle point is to show that labour theory of value is not inherently or originally Marxist as is often presumed or implied. My own view is that the entire value discussion is tremendously muddled, confuses multiple issues, and is used to justify or support any number of spurious or specious arguments, generaally over policy. The marginalists mistake price for value . Most orthodox economics does likewise.

Really? Because value and market price are separate things in marginalism.

Using the rational model somebody will only purchase something when it's price is below how much the person values the object.

It's related to consumer surplus. To make it measurable we use money as an approximate judge to work out much somebody values it. But the market price and how much somebody values something are different things in marginalism at the core.

Re: Billionaires Build

#506

Post by refurb »

cambalache wrote: post #58
jariel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Back then tech was exciting and new. We were changing the world. Now we have changed the world. Mobile is king, web is emperor. We’ve won." You must be young. The difference between 1999 and 2009 was an order of magnitude greater than 2009 to 2019. This is your personal growth journey, not really an objective thing.

It's like all those articles you see in Medium :"What life has taught me" They all start like : "In my youth, the US was a very different place, blah blah" Then you scroll down and notice the author is 28 yo at most.

And after reading it you realize the author is ignoring everything that happened before them, but if they did put their own experience in historical context the profoundness of their insights would disappear.

Re: Billionaires Build

#507

Post by existencebox »

dang wrote: post #346

(I originally posted this as a reply to a different comment but detached it because I don't want to pick on anyone personally, or appear to.) I think what underlies the outrage in this and similar threads is simple: people expect everything anybody says about "billionaires" to be bad. If someone breaks the rule, it doesn't matter what they say; the response will be just this outrage. And if they're a billionaire them…

I actually don't think it's particularly weird. I would cite various research on studies investigating "fairness" [0] (Citing this one re: corvids since I need to get back to work and this was a quick google, but it chain-cites papers in primates, dogs, humans, found what appears to be a meta-study here [1] as well)

Namely, that individuals will decline to participate in exchanges where they would benefit, if another individual would benefit inequitably. I think you sell short the systemic advantages by framing it as "Feces-hurling"; namely that it may serve as an important societal and evolutionary pressure, for instance, as [1] suggests improved social cooperation.

Some of the comments on this thread even touch on this, although I'd frame it a bit differently, with comments such as "many people find the existence of a billionaire implicitly unfair." Namely, judgements of morality, economics, society aside, one has to be rather stoic to feel _no_ envy when comparing ones own lot to the life and resources being a billionaire enables, so that it would trigger a "lizard brain" instinct seems entirely natural. (and again, similar to you, trying to keep this argument-free WRT the contention around that and making a meta-observation, one may disagree as to how justified or sensitive one should be to this feeling, I'm just pointing out "I can understand it on a very pragmatic level.")

We may be agreeing loudly here, my response is primarily to addressing your stated surprise, as well as try and paint the cause and effect in a more... detached? perspective, to better contemplate its nature and incentives.

[0] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4451566/

Re: Billionaires Build

#508

Post by dgr582systems »

criddell wrote: post #410
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…

> It’s my belief that it boils down to a few things: - self learning - dedication And luck especially with respect to your health and the health of those around you. It's harder to invest in yourself when you are a primary caregiver to a relative. It's this argument that makes me wonder how anybody can be opposed to some form of universal health care. I heard somebody ask this question once and it's stuck with me: ho…

The idea (how to organise society if you won’t know your position within it) is discussed extensively by philosopher John Rawls. It is called either the “Original Position” or “veil of ignorance” thought experiment. The idea itself goes a little further back, as discussed in the linked wiki article.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position

Re: Billionaires Build

#509

Post by nostrademons »

dang wrote: post #389
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.

There's a selection bias there: people who think YC or YC's startup model is out-of-touch don't apply to YC, and certainly don't get selected.

Personally, I've watched YC grow from something that I thought was an obviously good idea but nobody else agreed with me about (I applied to the first SFP in 2005, as a college student), to something mainstream that lots of people aspired to (~2010), to being something at best ho-hum and at worst actively bad for the world (today). Getting rich is just not desirable anymore; technology is only desirable insofar as it helps solve pressing problems for the world as a whole.

In 2010 I was the one who would go to parties and young people would be like "Oh, you work for Google, that's so cool!". In 2014, it was "Oh, you're founding a startup to fix unemployment, that's so cool!". Now when my wife (who works as a professional impact investor) goes to a party with young people, it's "Oh, you're solving climate change and funding reproductive healthcare and working for racial justice, that's so cool!" Meanwhile, I say "I work in software" neutrally and omit that it's for Google.

Re: Billionaires Build

#510

Post by droptablemain »

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…

Buffet may not directly exploit anyone, but wage-labor in itself is exploitation. If he's investing in companies that hire employees with the intent of extracting surplus value from said employees, then he's indirectly participating in capitalist exploitation.
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