The pursuit of everlasting growth that pg describes inevitably results in cheating. At a certain point the market reaches a saturation point and if you're capitalising on every possible opportunity to retain your high growth rate, that will include hoarding resources and circumventing consumer protections.
How to earn a billion dollars
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Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#72The real problem is his example, "you start off with 2 million dollars and 95% growth rate". Fine, show me the average person who can come up with 2 million dollars. I sure as hell can not. I even went to banks and founders with my ideas, cash flow sheets and customer list looking for a loan. No, I am convinced, the rich already have 2 million dollars, and make themselves a billionaire. The system is rigged against "…
One in 500 of them makes themselves a billionaire, the rest have thrown two million dollars down the toilet. It's just a fair bet, there's nothing "rigged" about it.
Just because only 1 in 500 makes it to a billion, does not mean the other 499 are failures. Plenty of startup founders turn a few million into much more.
If someone has an idea that 'only' makes them 20 million, I would call that a great success; even if it takes dozens of years to get there.
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#73The answer is easy, steal the value created by thousands of your employees.
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#74This article reads like a rather flippant dismissal of the original concern that "earning" a billion dollars cannot be done without some moral compromise.
Sure, if you start off with $2 million and double it 9 times, you end up with $1 billion. Exponential growth is a powerful thing, so it comes as no surprise that maintaining a large growth rate over time very quickly grows a starting sum into a much larger pool of money.
However, his only response for how you should achieve exponential growth is this hand-wavy "make something you yourself want". His only acknowledgement of the concern that maintaining exponential growth may require cheating is a casual dismissal, and his only acknowledgement of the concern that the growth rate will drop off over time is "you'll still get there eventually".
So, while the original concern was that you cannot earn a billion dollars without some wrongdoing, PG's response can be boiled down to "nuh uh".
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#75[deleted]
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#76[deleted]
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#77I think maybe the fundamental issue is something that he said really late in the essay:
> There are other ways to get rich than by starting startups. Some of those do require you to exploit people. But startups are the most common way to become really rich, and if you want to start a successful startup, the key is not exploitation but empathy.
> How people become rich in your society is one of the most important things to understand about it. You can't let your beliefs about this be determined by ideology, or movies, or historical examples that are centuries old. You must look at the world around you and see how it's actually done.
The "it's impossible to do morally" people are looking at how it used to be done, and how it's sometimes still done. They are right to be opposed to that. But oppose the immoral aspects of it, not doing it at all.
And those who hard-core define a billion as immoral are I think signalling something else: They want the government to take that money, from every billionaire. (If we're talking immorality, we could discuss the morality of that.) But they don't understand that there will probably be second-order consequences of doing so...
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#78So you can imagine how astonished I was last month when an American politician said that it was impossible to earn a billion dollars [...] that it's impossible to get that rich without doing something bad — without cheating in some way. What counts as 'doing something bad' and 'cheating' clearly is subjective. I suspect Graham's opinion on the behavior of a Zuckerberg or a Musk would be a little more flattering than…
Conversely, I suspect the politician is defining that "all things that earn a billion dollars" are in the "bad" category. LeBron James has, between playing basketball and endorsing things, earned a billion dollars. What bad thing did he do, other than losing the finals a few times?
If she meant "impossible" as hyperbole (as one might use "nobody wants a stylus!" to mean "very few people want a stylus!") then I agree with her.
If she meant "impossible" completely literally, then she is wrong.
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#79Why would you want to earn a billion dollars? You must have the maturity to handle the money. Hopefully you’ll mature sufficiently through the process of making that money but if the money’s fast, that might not happen. I’ve seen people get 9-figure rich overnight. Didn’t change them at all, they are still the wonderful folks they were. But I’ve also seen people drink themselves to death as it turns out a few mill in the bank does not answer the question “wtf do I do when I don’t have to do anything?”
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#80This article reads like a rather flippant dismissal of the original concern that "earning" a billion dollars cannot be done without some moral compromise. Sure, if you start off with $2 million and double it 9 times, you end up with $1 billion. Exponential growth is a powerful thing, so it comes as no surprise that maintaining a large growth rate over time very quickly grows a starting sum into a much larger pool of…
I came to read well constructed rebuttals like this.