Billionaires Build • Hacker News Board

Re: Billionaires Build

#731

Post by quest88 » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 5:29 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.

Wow you knew that then? You must be rich off the stock you bought knowing how big they would get!

Re: Billionaires Build

#732

Post by confidantlake » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 5:30 AM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #437

I think the point that billionaires build is a reasonable one. There are basically two ways to make money: Create something of value and somehow keep some portion of that value or extract value. Extracting value sort of works to some degree in some situations, such as mining (at least until you have ruined the environment and your unsustainable practices are coming back to bite you). But whether you are a "self made…

>If you want "evidence" that billionaires fundamentally must provide some degree of real value...

Counterexample, the children of billionaires provide no degree of real value.

Re: Billionaires Build

#733

Post by foxrob92 » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 5:32 AM UTC

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?

While Rowling provided the creative input to her stories, they were:

- Edited by other people - Printed by other people - (Films were) directed by other people - Characters in the films were played by other people - Distributed by other people

If there was no J.K. Rowling, we (admittedly) wouldn't have the stories. But the same is true of all of the other moving parts in the media business.

No-one is self-made.

Re: Billionaires Build

#734

Post by chii » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 5:34 AM UTC

svachalek wrote: post #544

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ideally their kid should still have access to public school education, with all the tools needed to go on to become successful themselves. > just that even taking what you've said about fundamental human preferences at face value it is not inevitable that it stay this way You're not wrong, but funding education is _expensive_, and education is only part of the puzzle, access is another large part of it, and so are…

Yep. And good luck figuring out how to impress girls that spent every summer of their childhood in Paris and Switzerland.

The incorrect assumption is that you need to impress those girls at all.

Re: Billionaires Build

#735

Post by confidantlake » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 5:35 AM UTC

stopachka wrote: post #514

8note wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investing well is a worse strategy that investing long. Doing a real low percent gain for 500 years is going to be more predictable than investing well over 5 years

My meaning "investing well", was similar to your meaning of "investing long". I don't meant investing well in the short term. Even a low percent gain over the long term is very, very difficult. You can tell this by noting how much endowment managers get paid.

You can't tell that investing is hard by how much endowment managers are paid. Convincing people you have the secret investing sauce is the most important skill of an endowment manager. All claim they can beat investing in index funds but there is no evidence they can.

Re: Billionaires Build

#736

Post by nostrademons » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 5:39 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #628

nostrademons wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's a point about the general population, not founders, who form a pretty different (and pretty small) subset. The other thing I'd be cautious about here is that the curve you describe basically always happens. Shit was always cooler when it was newer and we were there before everyone else, etc.; people say this about everything. I'm not sure how to correct for this, but it's a strong skew.

Both your points are true. But for a startup to be successful, it needs to have customers, or at least users. The available market for a company is the dollar-weighted set of people who think that it's cool (or at least necessary). Young people caring a whole lot about climate change or racial justice speaks directly to what potential users are looking for, just like kids throwing sheep at each other and hitting the Like button spoke volumes about what startups would be hot in 2005.

Re: Billionaires Build

#737

Post by violiner » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 5:41 AM UTC

danans wrote: post #356

imgabe wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a strawman insofar as there are people who literally say exactly that, and those are the people he's addressing. I agree there are more reasonable discussions to be had about how to distribute wealth for the greatest benefit to society but there are people who believe that if we just tax Jeff Bezos more then the Water Authority in Flint, MI will somehow become more competent.

> It's not a strawman insofar as there are people who literally say exactly that People oppose billionaires paying low taxes, and the related lack of public investment in bedrock services and infrastructure they need. When a rural area has no hospital, or a city has crumbling roads and transit, yes, people resent enormously wealthy people for whom those are not concerns. People do not, however, oppose their success a…

Serious question: You say that engaging with the least sophisticated form of the argument is beneath him, but if that's the form of the argument he chooses to engage in, is it?

Re: Billionaires Build

#738

Post by chii » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 5:48 AM UTC

jameshart wrote: post #668

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…

Okay, so pg posits that the people he finds and helps to become billionaires get there because they have some special insight into a solution to something people need. He's definitely right that it is valuable to society that people who have such insights are given the opportunity to build their solutions. We all win from being in a society where more of our needs are met. What's perhaps slightly more dubious is the…

> deserves to own a billion times more of a vote in how our society is run

But not for all aspects of society. Pre-democracy, kings and royalties get to make these choices. But in western democracies, you at least have an unalienable vote which is independent of your economic output. This vote means that no matter how many billions get spent, this vote is up to your own decision.

Re: Billionaires Build

#739

Post by arrosenberg » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 5:48 AM UTC

robswc wrote: post #719

arrosenberg wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 for…

Jeff Bezos' net worth was ~$33,600,000,000 at the beginning of 2017. I would argue things are considerably worse for the average American since then. It's not the wealth, it's the level of inequality that the wealth is indicative of. If every American had healthcare and access to quality education, housing, and food, it would not matter to me how wealthy Jeff Bezos gets. It's about the floor, not the ceiling, but the floor comes first.

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

Snore. If you really want to reduce things to personal jabs, that's cool I guess. I was using myself as a stand-in for an average person - feel free to substitute any name that makes your heart warm.

> 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?

Sever the links between money and political power. Limit private ownership of news organizations. Take away the tools that are being abused.

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

Social Security taxes and Medicare Taxes; and most New Deal programs were financed by the Revenue Act of 1932 [1] passed in the year FDR was campaigning on the New Deal. Again, I didn't realize you were going to be a pendant, otherwise I would have linked more specifically. My b.

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

Slavery was propagated by the concentrated wealth of the southern aristocracy. They rebelled when they felt that their wealth was threatened. Similarly, in Europe, World War 1 was a war of prestige and conquest fought between a bunch of wealthy (largely related) families who had built huge empires.

> 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 mocked me a bit and told me I should have the answers, but I didn't see any clear examples. You are wrong about the first point - you can nitpick implementations and individual policies all day. I'm not claiming that 100% of policies that tax the wealthy are good, or will succeed. The big picture is important because it abstracts those smaller points away - the bigger picture is that inequality is driving our societal issues, and taxing the wealthy is an obvious, primary way to help remedy that. Talking about a Swedish wealth tax from 1990 is a joke.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1932

Re: Billionaires Build

#740

Post by frakkingcylons » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 5:50 AM UTC

throwaway7281 wrote: post #596

Just sampling: The last billionaire I looked up was a north american mining guy. He owns mines, in Africa. Can you guess which country? Yes exactly, the one that prospers much more than the others. Basically, the "work" has to come from somewhere. The reason FB is rich is because 2+B people choose to work for free. The reason Google is rich is because they do not have to create the content (in fact, "content creators…

> Some hedge funds are rich, because they buy the order-flow data of poor people playing with their money

Hedge funds do not pay retail brokerages for order flow. The vast majority of trading activity from retail investors is motivated by public information, so it offers basically no insight worth paying for.

This is the exact reason why market makers do pay for order flow. They can safely execute a huge number of these trades with very little risk and collectively make a hefty profit from the small spread.