Billionaires Build • Hacker News Board

Re: Billionaires Build

#531

Post by istjohn » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 12:24 AM 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…

There was a study that found that blue collar and white collar parents have distinct parenting styles. Blue collar parents are more authoritarian. They teach their children to obey authority, which as it happens is what is generally required to succeed in a blue collar job. White collar parents teach their children to think for themselves and be assertive, behaviors that are--perhaps not coincidentally--rewarded in white collar jobs.

Re: Billionaires Build

#532

Post by jessaustin » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 12:24 AM UTC

centimeter wrote: post #481

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…

There is not strong evidence that these feedback loops actually exist. Wealth is actually strongly mean-reverting along genetically heritable lines.

Do you live in Scandinavia? We're not talking about Scandinavia. USA ranks #27 here:

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-social-mobility-...

Re: Billionaires Build

#533

Post by 8note » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 12:24 AM 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…

Which billionaires have become billionaires without exploiting their labour? Who's becoming a billionaire outside of the ownership class?

Re: Billionaires Build

#534

Post by ac2u » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 12:25 AM UTC

treis wrote: post #144

ac2u wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Like saying you knew some technology that you didn't on a resume or selling some product that you hadn't built yet. Are you sure you didn't just come up with that example yourself to suit the narrative? Until you know what all selected companies chose as an answer for that, aren't we just guessing as to what quality they were looking for? To be clear, I'm not accusing you of making it up, as my memory of it is dim t…

What examples can you remember?

I think this was the thread I remember reading at the time where people came up with examples that don't have to be deceptive.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1197674

There was also a quote from someone in yc saying that the question wasn't really that important (probably why it got removed).

Re: Billionaires Build

#535

Post by tomjohnneill » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 12:26 AM UTC

buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #393

chillwaves wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You guys acting like democratic government has not yet been invented. It's not like alternatives to billionaires owning the planet doesn't exist. Just America seems to be fairly resistant to the idea of public good. And the other consideration is how the money of billionaires is actively used to make everyone else's lives worse, either through manipulating markets and commodities, raising our rent, or literally pollu…

> No one yet has responded to me why it's such a great idea for billionaires to exist. I wonder if an argument could even be made that didn't even a personal fantasy/wish fulfillment scenario. K, here's one, whether or not you accept it. I don't think the world would have SpaceX or Tesla were it not for the existence of billionaires. Elon Musk already had a billion before founding/buying these companies. If he had "m…

He wasn't a billionaire when he started SpaceX: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#:~:text=In%20October....

Re: Billionaires Build

#536

Post by dredmorbius » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 12:27 AM UTC

UK-Al05 wrote: post #505

dredmorbius wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 marg…

It may depend on who you talk to, but Isee much equivocation between concets of price and value, in both micra ('wealth creation" / 'wealth creator") and macro (GDP) domains.

But yes, costs, price, and value are three distinct, though connected, concepts.

Re: Billionaires Build

#537

Post by jessaustin » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 12:27 AM UTC

anon9001 wrote: post #360

Barrin92 wrote: post #328

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 fl…

> Nobody called Zuckerberg or Bezos exploitative when they were coding in dorm rooms and folding boxes on Ikea tables Actually lots of us called them exploitive. It might not change anything, but it's worth noting that a lot of us knew that facebook would grow into the great evil that it is today. It was also obvious that Amazon would eat all retail stores, and it pretty much has.

I thought Amazon was sort of magic in a scary way twenty years ago, but as you say, lots of people had a similar impression. What's interesting are the people who don't see the threat even today.

Re: Billionaires Build

#538

Post by davidivadavid » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 12:31 AM UTC

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.

I'm curious what you mean by that, because it seems to me the exact opposite. Orthodox Economics 101 introduces consumer surplus precisely to separate price from value.

Re: Billionaires Build

#539

Post by johnsimer » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 12:33 AM UTC

jacknews wrote: post #470

PG confuses 'bad people' with a bad system. I don't think Zuckerberg, or Bezos are necessarily bad people, but they are the beneficiaries of a bad system, which squeezes work and wealth from poorer people and sucks it to the top.

Zuck from the beginning has lied to people and made bad faith apologies. Repeatedly

Re: Billionaires Build

#540

Post by breck » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 12:34 AM UTC

ablekh wrote: post #418

breck wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would agree with you about the "be careful" part. A wise quote is "If you want to tell people the truth, you'd better make them laugh or they'll kill you”. I believe in perspective too, and agree that perspective matters. But I also believe their is a common perspective (very hard to get at, that is the journey of scientists), and so at some point when you have enough data you can say "well there really is a black…

Fair enough. I'm glad that we seem to be largely on the same page on the subject, then. As for the "common perspective", I usually refer to that as consensus and, indeed, it is very hard - in some cases, I would say, excruciatingly hard - to achieve. Unfortunately, such is life ...

Consensus is a good word. Something for me to chew on. Thanks