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Billionaires Build

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Re: Billionaires Build

#581

Post by lumost »

refurb wrote: post #484
lumost wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a real argument, depending on where you stand. To become a billionaire, one must be able to amass 10 thousand times more wealth than the median household in the US. To reach the lofty heights of Bill Gates et al. one must amass ~ 1 million times more wealth than the median US household. The reason why some believe that to be a billionaire is exploitative is that they believe this 4-6 order of magnitude disparity…

How would your comment read if you replaced the word “amass wealth” versus “create value”?

The point of the comment is that in many minds there is a cutoff where "create value" looks like hoarding. One could argue that the Tzar and other monarchies created value by providing stable governance, organizing the nation, preventing the tyranny of the majority, as well as keeping out the invaders.

At some point, when the wealth gap is extreme enough and the circumstances of enough people is sufficiently degraded -these arguments stop holding weight.

Re: Billionaires Build

#582

Post by h0l0cube »

centimeter wrote: post #480
bedhead wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-…

Heritability studies suggest this is much more strongly mediated by genetic factors (such as IQ and time preference) than social factors.

Just a cursory search on Google for the 'heritability of lifetime income' leads me to this from a study in Finland:

> For example, Björklund and Jäntti (2012) estimated using Swedish data that shared environmental and genetic factors explain 40–60% of inequality in a number of productive traits, including cognitive and non-cognitive skills, schooling and long-run earnings.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333090512_Heritabil...

Assuming that this paper holds up, then at around half of lifetime earnings would be attributable to environment.

Also, speaking purely of heritability factors is a little reductive. Two parents that lack a particular phenotype that, say, is fit for wage growth in our contemporary economy, may have offspring that does. Similarly those fit to succeed in the economy today, may not be in the future if the stressors change.

Re: Billionaires Build

#583

Post by Applejinx »

eschaton wrote: post #379
RIMR wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

They're paid in victory, which costs nothing and which you can't eat. That is fundamental to operating something like Amazon, which is designed to avoid switching into the 'rake in money' stage of capitalism as long as possible, in order to compete more harshly with other organizations that DO try to rake in money as soon as they can.

Amazon understands that in the context of organizations it stands to benefit from being seen as the meanest competitor, and that it can get public investment at scale by making this case. The argument isn't that it will hand more money to investors directly, it's that it will attack other things one can invest in, and make those things lose, and therefore it's the safe bet.

In so doing, the adoption of a crazy, aggressive, Spartan attitude among all its workers and management is beneficial, because the easiest way to convince the world you're a psycho axe murderer of a capitalist is to actually be one. In other words, 'making massive profits' isn't the end goal: 'killing other companies' is. And so, the workers do need to be paid that little and treated that harshly because every worker must be first a warrior, willing and able to trade away their health and well-being for the betterment of the company, and this goes all the way to Bezos, whom I'm convinced is going to live a shorter life than a billionaire might otherwise expect, from stress related damage. It's that or go soft and see his company go soft, and I think if he could do that there wouldn't be an Amazon as we know it: people will not follow a leader who doesn't at least pretend to represent what he is leading people towards, and Bezos is leading Amazonians to be warriors and throw themselves into the wood-chipper in order to destroy all competition.

They're paid more than they would be at easier, more civilized jobs. Part of the compensation is this emotional compensation intimately tied up in the American attitude, the cost-less, intangible compensation of knowing you are on the winning team. That is inherent to what Amazon is.

Re: Billionaires Build

#584

Post by somethoughts »

mightybyte wrote: post #574
somethoughts wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - perhaps PG should have added qualifiers along the lines of "YC originated billionaires" versus attempting to cover all billionaires that have ever existed. It seems somewhat naive to say that every person with a billion in their bank account has built something and always is the best allocator of capital. Oil and Gas billionaires leverage the fact that society hasn't figured out how to factor in negative enviro…

> In general, leveraging technology capabilities seems less exploitive than leveraging human/environmental resources. I see what you're getting at here, but I don't know that I completely buy it. Case in point: privacy. I guess it depends on how one defines exploitive.

That's a good point - it should probably include exploiting "lack of regulation" which digital privacy could fall under broadly. I was generally thinking of "tech" in the semiconductor, computing aspect which while perhaps has some negative environmental impact and can develop monopolies; generally doesn't exploit other humans, etc..

Re: Billionaires Build

#585

Post by SamReidHughes »

samcal wrote: post #497
centimeter wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heritability studies suggest this is much more strongly mediated by genetic factors (such as IQ and time preference) than social factors.

I'm not sure this holds up to scrutiny. My limited understanding of epigenetics means that social factors and genetic factors are not so easily separated, we'd need significantly more generations of data to show that.

We know it holds up to scrutiny, because the epigenetics excuse, constructed without the information supply needed to support it, doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Re: Billionaires Build

#586

Post by slifin »

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 annoys me that these conversations are always focused on people from the Forbes list

Which explicitly excludes dictators and royal families

It's super easy to defend the actions of "industrious" businessmen if you're even a little bit to the right

Is it so easy to defend dictators who are even richer?

Re: Billionaires Build

#587

Post by ablekh »

breck wrote: post #540
ablekh wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's my pleasure.

Re: Billionaires Build

#588

Post by jelliclesfarm »

[..] What YC looks for, above all, is founders who understand some group of users and can make what they want. This is so important that it's YC's motto: "Make something people want."[..]

And what people want is ways and means to satisfy one of the ‘seven sins’ : “Pride. Greed. Lust. Envy. Gluttony. Wrath. Sloth.”

Facebook satisfies all the seven urges to sin.

Re: Billionaires Build

#589

Post by sokoloff »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #482
pradn wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are turning a moral judgement ("exploiting") to a more mechanical expression ("using leverage"). For critics of billionaires, the moral judgement is the whole point. Whether the "billionaire problem" belongs in the moral realm or in the dispassionate realm of math or economics is an ideological choice.

For this (me) critic of billionaires (the possibility of being one, not the humans who are), it’s not ideological. It’s based on an analysis of leverage (like GP’s comment), where the levers are necessarily some mix of advantage/privilege (feedback loop as discussed all over) and exploitation (not solely as a moral issue, but that issue is inescapable). It’s impossible to be/become a millionaire without access to, an…

I don't know if you intentionally switched from billionaire to millionaire, but it seems entirely possible (and even somewhat common) to become a mere millionaire by actions and careers that most would consider virtuous combined with sound saving and investing strategies. I don't know if my parents are actually millionaires or not, but if not, they're not far off and they were both public school teachers whose parents were blue collar steel mill, coal miner, and in nursing. Those are not careers marked by the excessive use of exploitive leverage by the employees.
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