Just Be Rich (2021)
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Just Be Rich (2021)
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Re: Just Be Rich (2021)
#2Not using a throwaway, and agreeing in principle: Paul Graham appears here oddly non-scientific.
Re: Just Be Rich (2021)
#3Multiple replies merged into one because of HN's post rate limit.
I pulled myself up by my bootstraps once and now I'm the richest person alive.
Paul Graham is forced to appear non-scientific because there is no science, that justifies our current economic conditions. There's the whole field of economics, sure, but that only studies what does happen in our current economy, not how we should run an economy. The only things available to justify our current economic conditions are pseudoscience and appeal to power.
A world where people get rich by starting tech companies that make a mark on the world that appeals to current rich people isn't much better than a world where people get rich by being the children of current rich people. In both cases you get rich by helping the rich class perpetuate itself, not by actually making the world better.
Noahpinion's article misses a point: it talks about how there isn't that much actual wealth and most "wealth" is fake zero-sum financial instruments and since there isn't much actual wealth there isn't much point taxing it. But it ignores that taxing zero-sum financial instrument wealth still alters the world, in a way that many find desirable: simultaneously deleting a positive-value financial instrument from a rich person and its counterpart negative-value financial instrument from a poor person may not change the total net wealth, but it reduces inequality.
Re: Just Be Rich (2021)
#4Noahopinion has a very recent interesting article on wealth and taxation. It makes me mad because it contradicts a lot of cherished ideas I have about the rich and taxation, but probably makes sense in this conversation:
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/theres-not-that-much-wealth-in...
Re: Just Be Rich (2021)
#5Noahopinion has a very recent interesting article on wealth and taxation. It makes me mad because it contradicts a lot of cherished ideas I have about the rich and taxation, but probably makes sense in this conversation: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/theres-not-that-much-wealth-in...
Wealth is unelected power, a bug. It’s reasonable to say there should be limits on wealth, considering most wealthy people were lucky (either by birth or “right place right time”) but attempt to post rationalize it as anything else.
Would you want someone who won a lottery ticket to have power over your life at scale? Because that’s what excess wealth is, a power dynamic powered by a suboptimal system masquerading as shades of a meritocracy that does not exist.
Re: Just Be Rich (2021)
#6Not using a throwaway, and agreeing in principle: Paul Graham appears here oddly non-scientific.
Oddly? His essays are regularly thinly-veiled excuses to peddle libertarian horse shit
I thought Hackers and Painters was decent and even in those essays Paul couldn’t help him self
Re: Just Be Rich (2021)
#7Not only are the poor poorer but now they feel like crap from the tech social media dystopia they inhabit.
Re: Just Be Rich (2021)
#8[dead]
Re: Just Be Rich (2021)
#9[dead]
> If some people are poorer than you, you are not the bad guy
This is completely missing all the reasons people say rich people are the "bad guys".
Re: Just Be Rich (2021)
#10Not using a throwaway, and agreeing in principle: Paul Graham appears here oddly non-scientific.
TFA put it clearly and succinctly:
>> You would think, after having been on the side of labor in its fight with capital for almost two centuries, that the far left would be happy that labor has finally prevailed. But none of them seem to be. You can almost hear them saying "No, no, not that way."
> And there we have it. The slight injection of PG's true ideology relegated to the notes section and vague enough that some might ignore. But keep in mind this is the same guy who argued against a wealth tax. His seemingly impartial and logical writing attempts to hide his true intentions.