Billionaires Build • Hacker News Board

Re: Billionaires Build

#811

Post by timeeater » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 1:41 PM UTC

cosmodisk wrote: post #807

timeeater wrote: post #804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a weird concept of "thievery". If someone's prices are too high, don't hire them. If somebody doesn't pay enough, don't work for them. If you think they are skimming money, then there has to be a way to offer the same services cheaper (without the skimming). So instead of complaining, do it. What's your excuse?

It's not about prices. He's referring to "crooks with suits and big smiles". We all met at least a few. They aren't your local drug dealers or some shady pawn shop owners. They are usually in pretty good jobs. Lawyers that only care about getting more money from the client rather then really helping them, dentists who do rush jobs so they could make more money, realtors,who flock properties and "forget" to mention im…

So what percentage of rich people do you figure are such "crooks with suits and big smiles"?

Of course crooks exist. Most people are not crooks, though. And especially the professionals you mention may have problems to persist. Like the shoddy dentist will be busy with lawsuits presumably.

I still prefer those "private crooks" to people feeding on government money (not meaning people on social security, but people in useless jobs paid for with taxpayer money).

Re: Billionaires Build

#812

Post by sokoloff » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 1:45 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #810

hezag wrote: post #786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Of course he didn’t do it alone. But the people who got in early with Gates or Musk made out like bandits. And the bigger question is - would Microsoft or Tesla happened at all with Gates or Musk? I mean, at least in Musk’s case everybody thought he was guaranteed to fail. I don’t begrudge his $1B of wealth in the least - he put his money where his mouth was when everyone else said it was dumb - but he was right . It…

Microsoft has created over 10K millionaires and at least 2 additional (not named Gates) billionaires from stock alone.

Re: Billionaires Build

#813

Post by adverbly » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 1:48 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #797

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-…

If they have those admirable middle class traits were they born that way? Or is cultural and social inheritance as influential as genetic inheritance? I used to live in an upper middle class area, and a worrying number of the people were very polished thieves. They spent an unholy amount of time fighting over inheritances with other family members and over property boundaries with neighbours. When they worked - inevi…

Focusing on the individuals is WRONG. Stop doing it! People are people, and - as far as capitalist societies go - money is success, and "skimming" is unfortunately the dominant and easiest strategy to get it. Blaming the individuals here gets us nowhere. You could swap low and high society at an individual level and likely be even worse off because there is at least some chance that those who are currently rich did so by producing large social value. But it is not the fault of skimmers that they skim. These people born in a society with different incentives would produce social value instead of taking it from others.

Attacking "Billionaires" is easy to do, but its the wrong target. A "wealth tax" will probably make a pretty good bandaid, but for a real solution here, we need to think harder about fixing the root cause - that skimming strategies are dominant in the first place. In other worse, say we pass a high tax. Great. Except it doesn't change the best action for people(rich or poor): make money by skimming. So now instead of having an unequal society of skimmers, we end up with a more equal society of skimmers.

Way too much capital right now is devoted to skimming: marketing/advertising, legal/accounting, real estate, and finance have ballooned. The largest tech companies in the world are ad companies. Lawyers and accountants spent significant time on tax avoidance. Real estate is run on speculation and bubbles. Finance is now more about about the short term rather than long term value investing. It didn't used to be the case, but in the modern world, the margins on these departments make them better ways to spend our time and resources to get money. I wish I had a mental model of things good enough to suggest what the right fix would be, but as a random guess, I'd rather see taxes on the industries above than a tax on billionaires.

Edit: in retrospect this rant went overboard. Wealth tax/higher taxes on extreme wealth are probably still needed as part of the plan. Easy to get carried away with rants lol!

Re: Billionaires Build

#814

Post by varjag » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 2:02 PM UTC

Privacy846 wrote: post #809

varjag wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it becomes farcical to claim that a person can become a billionaire without exploiting people. It is farcical to a Marxist maybe, with infinite patience for labor theory of value despite century worth of contradictory evidence.

Here’s a recent quote from the Marxist rag The Economist: > One reason for the measure’s current strength is that the balance of power seems to have moved in favour of capital, and against labour, in recent decades. The decline of trade unions, and the addition of China to the global market, have weakened workers’ bargaining power; in the past 15 years, corporate profits have been regularly equivalent to more than 10…

This has nothing to do with labor theory of value.

Re: Billionaires Build

#815

Post by simonh » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 2:18 PM UTC

petra wrote: post #805

simonh wrote: post #801

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s phrase that feedback loop a bit more clearly. When a person finds a way to deploy resources more efficiently, to meet other people’s needs better and with improved efficiency, society has feedback looks that divert more resources to that persons control so they can do so at increased scale. Isn’t that what we want? Just a week ago or so on Reddit someone posted imagining how much good Elon could do with his Bil…

Musk is the exception, not the rule. It's usually much easier to make money in unnecessary bullshit, and via rent-like activities, than in socially valuable activities. So that's what most rich people choose to do.

He really isn't, as Paul Graham sys he's got unparalelled experience of working with many people doing exactly this - creating value and accumulating the resources to leverage that value to benefit society.

Yes of course there are inefficiencies in the system, rent seeking behaviour does happen and it's an important aspect of policy to try and minimise and disincentivise it. Nevertheless, our economic system does work. All those companies employing people, paying taxes and generating goods and services are the economy. That's where the wealth is being generated. The vast majority of wealthy people are incredibly hard working, dedicated people running companies, employing people and creating wealth. If they weren't the system just wouldn't work.

Re: Billionaires Build

#816

Post by CraigJPerry » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 2:19 PM UTC

ericd wrote: post #773

bccdee wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It does? A $5/mo droplet can serve a good amount of traffic. And there are lots of free ways to get some initial users, they just take time. I know because I’ve done exactly that. This kind of can’t-do attitude really saddens me. I see it all the time in these discussions about wealth inequality.

I think you may have a few competitive advantages that a 16 year old may lack, like a quiet place to work, an internet connection, a network of people, etc. etc. You’ve got such an advantage that it’s utterly pointless to draw comparisons.

The idea that someone somewhere can probably maybe might be able to make this work does not make the case that people have opportunity.

Re: Billionaires Build

#817

Post by jameshart » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #758

jameshart wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 than the average person. The average person has $60k-ish a year. There is nobody out there with 60 trillion. Regardless, the billionaire has to actually spend the money to get goods and services from the market. While his/her needs will dwarf an individual, they are still just a drop in the bucket compared to the middle class. This is why all…

The average American might make 60k; the average person makes more like 2. The billionaire also doesn’t have an income of a billion a year, he has an accumulated net worth of a billion. Median wealth is measured in thousands of dollars. And the numbers on the left half of that distribution are very low indeed.

But anyway, whether it’s a billion times more or merely a million times more, the difference is still staggeringly huge.

If you have a dollar, how many more do you need to make a billion? About a billion.

If you have a million dollars, how many more do you need to make a billion? About a billion.

Re: Billionaires Build

#818

Post by jameshart » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 2:58 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #738

jameshart wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your vote helps dictate how some of the rules of society change and how some chunk of society’s wealth gets spent. But your money is how you vote on how everybody else in society spends the most precious resource they have: their time.

Re: Billionaires Build

#819

Post by istjohn » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 3:05 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #604

istjohn wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

This is a really interesting observation. I also had to look up whether school teachers were considered blue or white collar, because my first-hand experience (which I suspect generalizes) is that they also tend towards training compliance and deference to authority, despite being on the white-collar side of that line.

My conjecture is that school systems tend to mirror the population they serve, with blue collar schools tending to be more authoritarian (it's cheaper to operate with the regularity and order of an assembly line, after all), and wealthier schools placing more value on independence (as the parents would demand and be willing and able to pay for). Teachers in schools that operate like factories (or prisons) will be managed like blue collar assembly line workers. Teachers in white collar schools will be given the autonomy needed to adapt the school's policies and curricula to the unique needs of each student; they will be managed like white collar professionals.

Re: Billionaires Build

#820

Post by fistfucker3000 » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 3:06 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #738

jameshart wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, the point is that democracy can exist in more places. For example in the workplace or even within certain supply chains (such as food production).