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Just Be Rich

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Re: Just Be Rich

#421

Post by hyko »

I'm not sure why people think Paul Graham's perspective on wealth inequality is in response to a recent shift in public opinion; he's taken this position since at least 2004: http://www.paulgraham.com/gap.html (the basic premise of that essay was that in the tradeoff between freedom and wealth inequality, the latter didn't matter because everyone's living standards are converging). From that essay: Materially and socially, technology seems to be decreasing the gap between the rich and the poor, not increasing it

Paul is a smart guy; to paraphrase Richard Feynman, that makes it easier for him to fool himself. There is a genuine debate to be had about how to balance wealth equality with freedom, but the amount of motivated reasoning on display is enormous.

Re: Just Be Rich

#422

Post by krageon »

allendoerfer wrote: post #402
throwaways885 wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give a viable alternative that doesn't descend into fascism. Capitalism is called the 'least worst' system for a reason, and some countries have an excellent QoL under it.

Social market economy. Socializing some things does not mean you have to put up red flags everywhere, hold big party meetings and kill all the intellectuals. You can still keep markets where they make sense and outcompete others in a global capitalist system. Extremists are always wrong.

> Extremists are always wrong.

Absolutely true, but the sad reality is that after a while with a comfortable living situation people tend to vote against their own self-interest. This then leads to dismantling of safety nets, which certainly doesn't help radicalisation.

Re: Just Be Rich

#423

Post by saint_angels »

mytherin wrote: post #304
camhart wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't a finite amount of "wealth" in the world. You can go out and make wealth every single day. The rich obtaining more of it doesn't mean there's less left over for you and I. People need to be able to cover their needs. Food, housing, healthcare, and I'd be open to arguments in favor of education. But I don't see income inequality as bad necessarily. I see massive amounts of people unable to cover those need…

> There isn't a finite amount of "wealth" in the world. You can go out and make wealth every single day. The rich obtaining more of it doesn't mean there's less left over for you and I. There is an essence of truth to that, but it certainly does not tell the whole story. Consider what happens with Amazon. When they put a family-owned store out of business, those people need to work somewhere. They then turn to the on…

> Amazon [...] simply taking all of the customers and wealth away from all of the smaller businesses

Amazon doesn't "simply" take others wealth. It wins by providing a better service

Re: Just Be Rich

#424

Post by eevilspock »

flexie wrote: post #410
mjburgess wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The commenter is referring to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic which is the cultural handmaiden of contemporary american capitalism.

No. "Silicon Valley money wants to remake people in their images, they have a Protestant zealotry associated with their money that makes any oligarch look straight up sympathetic in comparison" The comment literally suggests that Silicon Valley billionaires (which it juxtaposes with old money) have a Protestant fanaticism associated with their money.

> The comment literally suggests

There is the root of your misunderstanding.

Re: Just Be Rich

#425

Post by pracer »

distances wrote: post #384
varispeed wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are born poor it is extremely difficult to escape poverty, especially because of high taxes that you are going to experience as soon as your education and determination lands you a good job. This severely inhibits your means to save or to invest. The progressive taxation is like a back-stop to keep everyone in check and prevent people from going up the class ladder. Meanwhile the rich, that are supposed to be…

Do you have any examples of countries where progressive taxation would be a hindrance for escaping poverty? This frankly sounds like a made-up argument against taxation.

Spain. There are levels of taxation that provokes the following: your small company (1 to 10 employees) is doing really well so you try to increase the number of employees and business. And what happens is that when passing some threshold you will have to pay the next level of taxes and end up earning less after taxes than when you were smaller. So we have a lot of small companies that cannot or don't want to take that risk.

Re: Just Be Rich

#426

Post by Firadeoclus »

olalonde wrote: post #233
d_silin wrote: post #7

A lot of people who are just as smart and motived as Elon Musk or Steve Jobs will never be able to start their own companies and get rich. Because they have family obligations that take priority. Because they live outside high-income countries. Because they have no access to support network, so when they fail, they fall all the way to bottom. Because they may have made a crippling mistake in their pasts that now prev…

Of course all of that is true but it's irrelevant because you have to take a systemic view when talking about economics. The fact is that capitalism and entrepreneurship, while not fair in the cosmic sense you present it, is the best system we have for creating wealth for both the poor and the rich.

There are many knobs and levers. The extent to which it harnesses "capitalism and entrepreneurship" for wealth creation is not the only thing defining an economic system, and arguably the poor are not best served by maximising capitalism and entrepreneurship.

Re: Just Be Rich

#427

Post by WalterBright »

zimpenfish wrote: post #361
WalterBright wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's never been easier to start a company in the US. All you need is a computer. You can create a product on it and reach a worldwide audience, all for free. As for Jobs, he started Apple for a few hundred bucks. It's a pretty low bar.

> All you need is a computer. Plus free time. Plus motivation and energy which is probably in short supply when you've already done 8 hours in a supermarket / your second job / a full day of childcare / etc. > a few hundred bucks. It's a pretty low bar. For a lot of people in the US, a few hundred bucks is the difference between eating that month and going without. Or being able to pay the rent and not be evicted. Or…

> already done 8 hours

I started my first business while working for Boeing 50 hours a week (they had mandatory overtime for years).

Re: Just Be Rich

#428

Post by qazpot »

d_silin wrote: post #7

A lot of people who are just as smart and motived as Elon Musk or Steve Jobs will never be able to start their own companies and get rich. Because they have family obligations that take priority. Because they live outside high-income countries. Because they have no access to support network, so when they fail, they fall all the way to bottom. Because they may have made a crippling mistake in their pasts that now prev…

On HN I see the sentiment that you expressed a lot of times.

I live in a country which will be categorized by western countries as a developing country.

There is no social support system in my country, you are pretty much on your own. Nobody is coming to help you.

And I have made serious mistakes when I was in school which resulted in not being able to go to a good college which makes things in my country ten times more harder. Even today if I were to apply to a good company (There are Google, Amazon Dev centers in my country), my resume would not get through the first pass, because I do not have a good college name on my resume.

I make 5 times what my school mates and my college mates make, which makes me a lot more successful, atleast financially.

When I meet anyone from my school or college they tell me the same things that you are writing here. They attribute my success to -

Having no family obligations - Which is BS, My parents are middle class, I have been taking care of them since I got a job.

Having good parents, support network - I have zero support from my parents, they were downright abusive. Since, I have been a teenager, there has not been one week where my father has not told me that I will be failure in life. My mother tried to pressure me to commit suicide on numerous occastions.

Getting Lucky - I had the same education that my peers had, same economic level. Same razor thin opportunites that they had.

The only differentiator is that whatever tiny opportunity I got however small, I fought tooth and nail to capitalize on it. Worked for 15 hours every day, only 5 hour sleep. Ate one meal a day to save money and time.

I hate it when people like you, my school friends, my college friends try to attibute it to some external factor. You will attibute my success to anything in the world, except my relentless hardwork.

I have taken huge risks whose downside was total ruin. There is no social security checks, some benevolent relative waiting for me to fail. If I fail, I die, my family will perish. That's how high the stakes are.

Everything I had, I earned it with blood, sweat and tears. I have spent 12 hours coding in high fever just to make the release.

I will close off this rant with one last statement.

It all comes to down to how much you want and how much are will sacrifice and work hard for it. Rest are just excuses.

This sounds like a motivational cliche but it is true.

Re: Just Be Rich

#429

Post by EvilEy3 »

notahacker wrote: post #310
herbst wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you actually see how this really works before forming your opinion? The only thing my family needed to migrate to Switzerland was one job contract for my mum, not even a well paid job but some future potential due to relatively good education. The most complicated part was not paying way to much to get our stuff over here. Its not to different in many other countries. The thing is, if you are somewhat valueable (…

So all you need to do is rewrite the first 18 years of your history to obtain a "relatively good education".... People are not paying their life savings to get smuggled into Europe on a small, overcrowded boat because it's easy to move here.

Of course not! You should get the same results as someone who worked their ass off,no matter how many mistakes you make in life!

Re: Just Be Rich

#430

Post by krageon »

agustif wrote: post #412
Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price of those houses should be 10% of what it is, but the problem is banks own them and if they reduce the price then their numbers look red. They are artificially inflated housing prices to keep bank bonds from plummeting.

So how do you fix this shit? We're basically fucked. It's not like our government will get EU's permission to let the banks fail or something...

> So how do you fix this shit

The banks in question are essentially in agreement about prices and work together to keep them inflated. That's essentially cartel formation and needs to be prosecuted.

From a social standpoint, denying folks a roof over their head just because you want some numbers on a paper to look good should already mean that everyone ostracizes you. It's unquestionably evil.

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