Billionaires Build • Hacker News Board

Re: Billionaires Build

#711

Post by whatshisface » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 4:35 AM UTC

somethoughts wrote: post #584

mightybyte wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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..

Absolutely any action could be framed as exploiting the lack of regulation against it, from getting milk at the grocery store to shipping electronic waste to third world countries for sketchy disposal. So that's not such an effective philosophical razor.

Re: Billionaires Build

#712

Post by imgabe » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 4:41 AM UTC

arrosenberg wrote: post #678

imgabe wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I haven't prescribed what would happen to the money, simply that the rich need to take a haircut to make things more even Ah, we've reached the crux of the problem. You are not concerned with making things good only with making them even . This is just crab mentality[1]. Someone else has more than you, so you need to pull them down. Or perhaps you've conflated the two and think that if things are even, they will ne…

> Ah, we've reached the crux of the problem. You are not concerned with making things good only with making them even. This is just crab mentality[1]. Someone else has more than you, so you need to pull them down. Or perhaps you've conflated the two and think that if things are even, they will necessarily be good, or at least better than they are when they're uneven. Let me assure you, it is entirely possible for thi…

> That's another assumption, I'm concerned about both.

Not an assumption at all. From your response to my other comment: "You can burn the money in a furnace for all I care, as long as the ratio between the richest and poorest goes down substantially." I'm really trying, and I can't find any other way to interpret that than your primary, if not only concern, is just making rich people poorer.

> You still haven't answered the question of what is going to be harmed by reducing the wealth of every billionaire by 73%.

You still haven't explained exactly how you would make this happen. Forced stock sales? Government mandated price caps on stocks? What? Is Bezos supposed to write a check for $130B? You realize it's not sitting in cash in a bank account, right?

But more importantly, you are the one proposing a radical change to the status quo. The onus is on you to prove, not only that the change is not harmful (not at all apparent from historical evidence) but that it will provide some benefit that will outweigh the cost to implement it. I mean a benefit besides "It makes me feel bad when people are richer than me, and I'll get to enjoy some schadenfreude if they get knocked down a peg".

> We tried the New Deal, fought a Europe-destroying war, followed by more Keynesian policy, and it resulted in prosperity (including the areas rebuilt under the Marshall Plan). I'm just some guy, but I'm going to go with my gut and say we should do the thing that worked, over the economic ideology that has failed the average American every time it has been trotted out.

What you are proposing is not the New Deal, nor the Marshall Plan, nor any economic policy that has been tried in the US before. The New Deal did not involve confiscating 73% of the wealth of billionaires (or the inflation-adjusted equivalent). It did not involve taxing unrealized gains on stocks. The US has never had a wealth tax before. Most countries that have had one ended up repealing it because it's expensive to enforce compared to the amount of revenue it brings in and wealthy people, unsurprisingly, are quite capable of moving to another country that doesn't have a wealth tax.

Re: Billionaires Build

#713

Post by WalterBright » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 4:41 AM UTC

bccdee wrote: post #702

WalterBright wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days, you can start a successful internet business in your basement with just a computer. Nobody has to see you, your clothes, or your bad manners. You don't need a university education, though you can get one for free online as needed.

No, starting a business takes capital. You can build a Django website from your basement for free, but to turn it into a profitable business takes cash.

Freelance programming doesn't require any more capital than owning a computer. Anyone can start by contributing to open source projects.

Re: Billionaires Build

#714

Post by bccdee » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 4:42 AM UTC

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…

That analysis is not inherently dependent on the labour theory of value. You can frame it that way, but value need not come into it at all. Business owners are capital owners; they have power which arises from the fact that they own a business. They can offer jobs, which everyone needs, but no individual employee is necessary to them. It's a buyer's market, and as a result, the business owner has a lot more power to set wages. This leads to the bulk of the money flowing up to the business owner.

What we wind up with is a system where business owners have substantially more money than workers, purely as a product of the fact that they can use their power to make this happen. If someone uses their power to divert money into their own pockets away from people who need it more than they do, they're exploiting others.

It's not the fact that the organization Amazon exists to coordinate labour that we have a problem with. It does increase efficiency. It's the fact that Jeff Bezos has total control over it & uses that power to massively benefit himself at the expense of all his other employees, who have a much greater need for the money.

If George Washington had argued that, by virtue of having been the one to found the country, he was entitled to rule it as a dictator, we would take issue with that. While he may be a competent leader, he must still be accountable to the public, lest he use his power to benefit himself at the cost of the public well-being. Hence, democracy. It's strange to me that people are so unwilling to apply the same analysis to corporate hierarchy.

Re: Billionaires Build

#715

Post by WalterBright » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 4:42 AM UTC

doctor_eval wrote: post #703

WalterBright wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days, you can start a successful internet business in your basement with just a computer. Nobody has to see you, your clothes, or your bad manners. You don't need a university education, though you can get one for free online as needed.

How the hell are you supposed to learn to code when you’re working 50 hours per week just to make rent and eat? How can you afford to deploy? And how can you market your product if you don’t know how to talk to your audience? Sure, you will be able to point to many people who have managed to do it. But many, many others have tried and failed - through no fault of their own.

> you’re working 50 hours per week just to make rent and eat

The parent I replied to says you're 16. You're not working 50 hours etc.

Re: Billionaires Build

#716

Post by originalvichy » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 4:47 AM UTC

I was expecting actual debunking but it just turned into a weird tangent. The reality is that extracting surplus value from the labor of others and keeping it can and is validly seen as exploitation. We have just normalized it. In capitalist businesses the owners of the business get to keep the surplus value guilt-free and they are not obligated to divide the money to laborers. Laborers arent always in a balanced relationship with businesses so they can’t gain any of that money back without some form of unionization.

This is something I woulda liked to read but I felt it took a weird direction.

Re: Billionaires Build

#717

Post by elefanten » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 4:50 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #509

dang wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think your timeline illustrates another point: fashions are always changing.

And fashions also come into play in these judgments. I will eat my 8G-networked collapsible VR headset if, 20 years from now, people aren't horribly cringing at the popular 2020 notions of "solving climate change" and "working for racial justice".

Not because of whatever feelings I have towards those advocacies, but because even their currently-"cool" instantiation is largely driven by fashions.

Re: Billionaires Build

#718

Post by benc666 » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 4:55 AM UTC

bedhead wrote: post #378

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-…

Thank you for this well-thought (and written) comment. Human nature - ignored at own peril.

Re: Billionaires Build

#719

Post by robswc » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 4:57 AM UTC

arrosenberg wrote: post #609

robswc wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe the government has enough money, maybe it doesn't. This is exactly the problem I have with this "taxing the wealthy will fix it" arguments. What happens if it is the latter? What happens if taxing the rich doesn't fix it and actually makes things worse? >His wealth also gives him disproportionate power to shape the incentives of the government, the economy, and the media narrative. Disproportionate to what? >T…

> What happens if taxing the rich doesn't fix it and actually makes things worse? How is it going to be worse if Jeff Bezos is worth $50,000,000,000 instead of $180,000,000,000? I don't get it - America doesn't have a Communist party, what are you picturing happening here? > Disproportionate to what? Me. If he wants a policy to change, he has lobbyists and the Washington Post. If I want to change a policy I have to s…

>How is it going to be worse if Jeff Bezos is worth $50,000,000,000 instead of $180,000,000,000?

on the inverse, how much worse has it gotten since Jeff Bezos went from $50b to $180b?

It keeps coming back to the fact that there is such a focus on "wealth" or whatever.

That's like asking "how is this tax bad if it literally makes more tax revenue?" - the answer is that it will have unforeseen consequences (or even foreseen by a lot).

>what are you picturing happening here?

You're the one even implying its possible, I figured you would have the answer lol

>Me.

Oh, so anyone with more power than you is bad? What about people that don't even have the privilege of arguing on HN?

>That's unacceptable for a democracy or a fair capitalist economy

Why? I would probably agree there's limits that should be imposed so that anyone can't just push around whatever law they want but at the same time, how else would you suggest these things work?

>Economic prosperity, a broad middle class — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal.

Since we're talking about taxes... I checked out the section called "Tax Policy"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal#Tax_policy

It literally says here: The bill imposed an income tax of 79% on incomes over $5 million. Since that was an extraordinary high income in the 1930s, the highest tax rate actually covered just one individual—John D. Rockefeller. The bill was expected to raise only about $250 million in additional funds, so revenue was not the primary goal. Morgenthau called it "more or less a campaign document". In a private conversation with Raymond Moley, Roosevelt admitted that the purpose of the bill was "stealing Huey Long's thunder" by making Long's supporters of his own. At the same time, it raised the bitterness of the rich who called Roosevelt "a traitor to his class" and the wealth tax act a "soak the rich tax".

The only other thing is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undistributed_profits_tax

Which essentially only lasted 3 years... If you're not talking about these things, then I would ask you don't just send a wikipedia link with over 100 subsections lol.

>We've also seen some really gruesome examples of what happens when concentrated wealth is allowed to run amok for too long

How do you reason all these things are "caused by concentrated wealth"?

>Keep nitpicking individual policies, you are missing the bigger picture.

The big picture is made up of individual policies... that is actually my entire point. I gave you clear example of what happens when one fails to remember the big picture. You gave me links to wikipedia pages covering topics as broad as WWI and left it at that...

Re: Billionaires Build

#720

Post by Aeolun » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 4:57 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…

> What's the point of being the wealthiest nation ever on paper, if there's terrible schools, high infant mortality, and lead in the drinking pipes?

How does this affect me as a wealthy person?