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Billionaires Build

paulgraham.com

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Re: Billionaires Build

#781

Post by abvdasker »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #172
kgog wrote: post #153

love to see pg get more out of touch with every single passing day.

It's been pretty incredible to watch the transformation honestly. I can't recall what post it was earlier that made it pretty bare. I think it was his reinterpretation of "things that can't be said" to be the exact opposite of speaking truth to power, but instead was along the lines of "people in power are having to deal with consequences of their actions that their money can't save them from. And that's bad." Yeah a…

Yes, that was also the blog post which first raised alarm bells for me. The whole time I was reading it I got this sinking feeling. I couldn’t help but wonder to myself, why is PG being so coy here? What is it that he really wants to say but is afraid to? The fact that he thinks it would be too socially costly for him to say it means it might be pretty bad...

I had my guesses then, and as his posts have become increasingly conservative I’m more confident than ever that I correctly identified the subtext of his words.

Re: Billionaires Build

#782

Post by anon9001 »

quest88 wrote: post #731
anon9001 wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!

No, I didn't have money to buy stock then.

Re: Billionaires Build

#783

Post by [deleted] »

krapp wrote: post #517
refurb wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Amazon hired warehouse workers at $25/hr would it still be making massive profits? Amazon has 1.3M employees in the US and $11B in profit globally . If you increase the wages at the bottom that pushes everyone up (why would a manager of the warehouse workers make less than the people they manage?). So if you divide up that $11B in global profit across all 1.3M US workers, you get $8,700 per worker or maybe $500 ex…

Give the warehouse workers a raise, cut the salaries of the managers and techs making six figures. Problem solved.

[deleted]

Re: Billionaires Build

#784

Post by anon9001 »

pvorb wrote: post #747
0xy wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon's margins: 0-5% Retail margins: 20-80% Amazon is directly helping poor people by cutting out the greedy middlemen between them and essentials.

Haven't checked those numbers, but if that 20-80% paid worker's wages, that was a good thing. Also, Amazon reduces the number of players in the market and reduces the number of jobs virtually everywhere for some hotspots. A free market cannot combat this sort of monopoly.

> if that 20-80% paid worker's wages, that was a good thing

That's actually not a good thing. Something is seriously wrong if we don't value efficiency. Having many separate retail shops creates massive inefficiencies, especially for commodity products.

Amazon can get most products to my house at near lowest market rates in a day or two. Sometimes the same day.

The problem isn't Amazon, it's our reaction to this newfound efficiency. We're eventually going to end up in a place where having humans doing most work is objectively worse than having robots do it.

What we're doing now can't sustain, but going back to a pre-Amazon model of retail is not a viable path forward.

Also, working retail sucks. We should be glad when it dies entirely.

Re: Billionaires Build

#785

Post by ChefboyOG »

WalterBright wrote: post #672
CraigJPerry wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see a feedback loop that makes it hard to escape poverty Really? You’re 16 years old, you’ve a high IQ and a passion for programming. Your parents are alcoholics. You don’t have nice clothes. You don’t have perfect manners because it’s just not the world you live in. How do you get to the university admissions interview in the next town? How will you compete against the mannerly, well turned out student wit…

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.

I mean, sure. I grew up poor and without much in the way of access to education, and the internet was really a saving grace for me, in terms of self-education, income, and simply finding community.

At the same time, do you think the average income of a given internet business--let alone the segment that are run by solo entrepreneurs in their basement with just a computer and a $5 droplet--compares positively to the salary of the average CS graduate? Because we're talking about inequality, not asking "can poor people possibly make money online?"

The fact that the internet has made things better does not mean the problem is solved.

Re: Billionaires Build

#786

Post by hezag »

sokoloff wrote: post #612
lumost wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is Bill Gates degrading or improving the lives of people on the whole? Same question for Elon Musk.

But was the improvement on people's lives produced by the work of Gates or Musk alone? Or it required hundreds of people working to make it possible?

Re: Billionaires Build

#787

Post by [deleted] »

chii wrote: post #734
svachalek wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Billionaires Build

#788

Post by CyberRabbi »

doctor_eval wrote: post #707
CyberRabbi wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not hard to escape poverty at all, especially in America. Just requires that you’re willing to pursue a skilled career.

What do you recommend? And how do you recommend pursuing this skilled career when you don’t even have enough money for food, clothes and shelter? I mean that’s pretty much a working definition of poverty and I’m really curious how easy you think it is to do when you’re hungry, dirty and tired.

America provides food and housing assistance for people living under extreme poverty.

Once you have a stable base it’s a matter of hard work.

Re: Billionaires Build

#789

Post by CyberRabbi »

bccdee wrote: post #706
CyberRabbi wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not hard to escape poverty at all, especially in America. Just requires that you’re willing to pursue a skilled career.

You also need to already have the capital to get a skilled education and to support yourself while you do. Or you could assume large amounts of student debt before having a job, gambling on being able to complete your education and get a job before the payments start coming in. There's a student debt crisis for a reason. And you better not get too ambitious and pursue a degree that's too difficult, or you won't be ab…

The student debt crisis is suffered mainly by people who majored in non-technical fields from liberal arts colleges. There is a lack of jobs for people who have training in the humanities. That is unfortunate but that is not what I am suggesting.

If you take out a loan for professional training for a skill that is in high demand you will have little trouble paying it back. Software engineering is an example, but really any type of hard engineering training will relatively easily result in a relatively high paying job. There is such a high demand for those jobs in the US that we currently import many of those workers from China and India via H1B.

Re: Billionaires Build

#790

Post by TAForObvReasons »

CyberRabbi wrote: post #788
doctor_eval wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you recommend? And how do you recommend pursuing this skilled career when you don’t even have enough money for food, clothes and shelter? I mean that’s pretty much a working definition of poverty and I’m really curious how easy you think it is to do when you’re hungry, dirty and tired.

America provides food and housing assistance for people living under extreme poverty. Once you have a stable base it’s a matter of hard work.

Based on your comments, you probably never had a need for food and housing assistance. There's a huge chasm between "extreme poverty" and "stable base" and millions of people are stuck. At least one billionaire profits from keeping people in that limbo: https://publicintegrity.org/inequality-poverty-opportunity/w...
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