He's right that exploitation isn't what distinguishes billionaires from other capitalists. There are many unsuccessful/less successful capitalists who nonetheless still exploit people. But it's impossible to become a billionaire without exploiting people at a grand scale. And by exploitation, I mean something very simple: paying workers less than the value of their labour. Without exploitation there is no incentive for capitalists (within a capitalist system) to hire people. Since capitalists (billionaires and non-billionaires) still hire people, it's clear that exploitation is endemic to the capitalist system, and is required to become a billionaire.
Billionaires Build
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#892Re: Billionaires Build
#893Earlier 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.
> Is Bill Gates degrading or improving the lives of people on the whole? Same question for Elon Musk.
Only part of Bill Gates' wealth is attributable to the value he created. At least some of that wealth was due to establishing and protecting monopolies on desktop operating systems and office suites.
Yes, quite a bit of harm was done as a side effect of protecting those monopolies, not to mention from extending them into other markets. The simplest and most direct harm was an extra $50 tacked onto the price of every desktop PC purchased even if you didn't want (or already had) a copy of Windows.
As for Musk, it's early days yet, and his companies are still in "Blue Ocean Strategy" mode. We'll have to wait and see what happens once SpaceX and Tesla are defending an entrenched position.
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#894Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Citation needed. When Governments had lots of revenue, they assist the population with public services, which tend to benefit the lowest stratum of society the most. But the cumulative effect is to raise the quality of life of society as a whole. Citation needed.
> > Citation needed. When Governments had lots of revenue, they assist the population with public services, which tend to benefit the lowest stratum of society the most. But the cumulative effect is to raise the quality of life of society as a whole. > Citation needed. That's actually fairly uncontroversial. Small government fetishists insist that left unfettered the flourishing market and voluntary charity would mor…
> Small government fetishists insist that left unfettered the flourishing market and voluntary charity would more than make up the resulting gap
I'm not making this claim. I'm making the claim that the government does not actually provide all the benefits you are assuming it does, so the "gap" you speak of, if it exists at all, is much smaller than you think it is.
I think most people simply aren't aware of how much inefficiency there is in government services or how much of their tax money does not actually go to benefit the people they think the government is helping.
If all we expected the government to do was to provide basic national defense (not aggressive foreign wars, just keep the US itself from being attacked), enforce basic common sense regulations (laws against obvious crimes like murder and regulations against obvious bad things like dumping toxic waste in rivers), and maintain basic public infrastructure (roads, bridges, public buildings, basic utilities, national parks), we would not have nearly as much inefficiency. The problem is that we expect the government to do much, much, much more than that, and the government does all those other things so inefficiently that, on net, it would be better if we left them to private entities.
Re: Billionaires Build
#895Paul Graham must not be aware of how AirBnb causes greater homelessness https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/05/airbnb-ho...
Re: Billionaires Build
#896Earlier quoted context omitted.
> > Citation needed. When Governments had lots of revenue, they assist the population with public services, which tend to benefit the lowest stratum of society the most. But the cumulative effect is to raise the quality of life of society as a whole. > Citation needed. That's actually fairly uncontroversial. Small government fetishists insist that left unfettered the flourishing market and voluntary charity would mor…
> Small government fetishists insist that left unfettered the flourishing market and voluntary charity would more than make up the resulting gap I'm not making this claim. I'm making the claim that the government does not actually provide all the benefits you are assuming it does , so the "gap" you speak of, if it exists at all, is much smaller than you think it is. I think most people simply aren't aware of how much…
I'd like to point out that regulations against dumping toxic waste into rivers (or enforcement thereof) is exactly the sort of government service that is most often targeted by the folks who are pushing for deregulation.
Anyway, feel free to advocate for greater efficiency in government, by whatever means, including public-private partnerships or full-on privatization. More discussion of what services are needed by society and how best to provide them is generally a good thing.
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#897Earlier quoted context omitted.
But what about the value of having A tell you what to build? If A = Jeff Bezos, B/C/D, who would just be making a $150K salary at some other company, are now multi millionaires. The difference in value didn't come from their work, which is much the same as it would be for some other company, but by being told what to build by the right CEO.
This is kind of the "great man" theory of business, but study after study shows that broadly this is just luck (or crime)--with privilege thrown in. As a result, we shouldn't reward people for this by making them billionaires because: - At best there's no behavior to encourage, person A just got lucky. At worst, person A cheated and by making cheaters super rich, we give them outsized influence on our society - creat…
> study after study shows that broadly this is just luck
quite confused at this one, what studies? as an example, surely the fact that page and brin created PageRank for web searches led to google being so successful https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/4/20994361/google-alphabet-...
> best there's no behavior to encourage, person A just got lucky
the behavior of ... understanding and creating a useful service like pagerank? or amazon?
> relying on this dynamic entrenches privilege
this is quite ridiculous, this is only believable if you consider having 3-4/5 quintile parents as 'privileged' as having ten billion net worth. equally so when you look at where their parents came from (quite often, poor farmers who immigrated) or their history (jews who had to leave poland or germany due to the nazis js)
> because it's much harder for women and people of color to become the next Steve Jobs
so? heard of 'lisa su'?
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#898Earlier quoted context omitted.
You offered up 3 examples of billionaires. Other examples might be: * Tesla * Twilio * Stripe Would you help me see how those 3 leveraged unjust laws? As a software developer, I feel Stripe and Twilio have added a lot of value to me, to small businesses, and the world.
Sorry, I think my writing was a bit muddled (common occurrence). I love those businesses I mentioned. And the 3 you mentioned too. I 100% agree they have added a lot of value to me and the world. What I was trying to say is that to make billions, you need to 1) create a lot of value and 2) have some broken legal system that you are operating in. Maybe for the latter "exploiting" is the wrong word. But the government…
did you forget you were arguing that billionares are inherently bad? all you argue here is that ... if laws were good, we'd hve had 100m tsla/twilio/stripe 30 years ago
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#899Billionaire can also be framed as succeeding at creating a power differential at scale. The trick is that you can't achieve scale without using power differentials, and iphones are the fruit of scale. Idea: what you kind of want is for the power difference to decay at scale, so that way you don't have amazon workers pissing in water bottles. Remember: "Sufficiently Powerful Optimization Of Any Known Target Destroys A…
Very good, something I have been thinking about as well. Inequality is bad because of the massive power differentials. How do you propose we "solve" that while still being able to reap the benefits of scale? Any pointers or books to read about this topic? Admittedly I haven't looked too hard.
massive power differentials are a physical property of a complex system. not everyone knows how to run the internet, and anyone who does has power over ... most of it. any 'scale' will lead to a larger power differential than being monkeys in caves, which already was not 'nice'
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#900Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there no one who would invest capital in order to earn only hundreds of millions of dollars?
What if many billions in capital are needed, and there’s risk too? It’s just not worth getting involved unless you can earn billions.
i still fail to understand what the issue with having billions of money is. the best part is these people ignore that money is just a stand-in for power, which they absolutely fucking hate, and that if you ban billionares people will still have more power than a billionare via other mechanisms :)