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How to earn a billion dollars
151–160 of 1001 posts
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the byproduct of human-level AI and robotics?
Displaced workers. I mean, maaaaaybe a Jevon's Paradox kicks into play with human labor and replacing people with robots somehow creates even more jobs, but whenever someone says this your immediate response should be: "ok, now put your money where your mouth is and bet on it by strengthening the social safety net."
I generally do believe that workers get redeployed elsewhere after technological disruption.
(Eg agricultural revolution in the US)
I do believe in good safety nets as well and I think that shows in my voting record, so I’m not sure what else you would expect from me, if anything.
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
I will say before Uber was a thing, if I tried to call and schedule a taxi pickup in the city I lived in at the time, if they showed up at all they were at east a half hour late. Missed a flight because of it once. I don’t even like uber, but it is objectively a better service most of the time.
Yeah, anyone who uses taxi drivers as an example of destruction either don't know what they're talking about (because they never experienced it) or they're crying crocodile tears. I had cab drivers nearly drive off with me hanging off the car in San Francisco, because they were far more concerned with screening my destination than, say, not killing me . If Uber destroyed that industry, it was only a net benefit to so…
Not all places have corrupt taxi industries. I think they were always more expensive than Uber (but there's a reason for that, Uber's pricing is not sustainable) but in most places a taxi is just a taxi.
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#154She meant impossible in that one doesn't earn a billion dollars through work alone. The only way to get there is to set up a structure that extracts a billion dollars from a market (usually by building a structure that's more efficient but also generates externalities that are not borne by the person getting the billion dollars). pg's reading of it is so blunt and misrepresentative that I'm nervous about what kind of…
So what does you practical utopia look like in real terms. What's the master plan beyond I don't like people making money from what people want? What does that utopia look like in practice.
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#155She meant impossible in that one doesn't earn a billion dollars through work alone. The only way to get there is to set up a structure that extracts a billion dollars from a market (usually by building a structure that's more efficient but also generates externalities that are not borne by the person getting the billion dollars). pg's reading of it is so blunt and misrepresentative that I'm nervous about what kind of…
Why does building a successful business necessitate generating economic externalities? Many do, and that should be prevented, but many also don’t. And to say that those externalities are responsible for a majority of the business’s growth in all cases is just false.
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#156How many businesses are there that are worth at least $1 billion and employ no-one but the founders? When people say that it's not possible to earn a billion dollars, they're talking about the discrepancy between the wealth gained by those employed by the company versus the shareholders of the company. For example, when WhatsApp was sold to Meta for $19 billion, how many of WhatsApp's 55 employees walked away with hu…
Your post implies that every employee of a successful company is entitled to a share of whatever wealth that company generates.
As a career programmer, I worked for several companies. Each time I took a job, I negotiated what I thought was a fair salary for my wages. Some companies also gave me stock options and one gave me founder's stock. When a company had a good year, they often gave generous bonuses.
Only when I took great personal risk, did I expect to share the rewards that come with a successful company. I was always grateful when I got more than I agreed to work for, but I never felt entitled to it.
A janitor working for a 10x company should not feel entitled to 10x of the salary as another janitor working down the street for another company that is struggling.
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#157She meant impossible in that one doesn't earn a billion dollars through work alone. The only way to get there is to set up a structure that extracts a billion dollars from a market (usually by building a structure that's more efficient but also generates externalities that are not borne by the person getting the billion dollars). pg's reading of it is so blunt and misrepresentative that I'm nervous about what kind of…
I think this is super interesting (because the answer is not at all obvious to me): What do you mean by "through work alone"? Can it only be work if I can map a human hour cleanly onto someone paying an invoice for that hour?
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#158Technically if you look at AOC's statement he mentions
>AOC: “There’s a certain level of wealth and accumulation that is unearned. You can’t earn a billion dollars. You just can’t earn that. You can get market power, you can break rules, you can abuse labor laws, you can pay people less than what they’re worth, but you can’t earn that”
there's some truth there in that PG is talking about capital gains as the owner of a company and AOC is talking about earnings as payment for labour which are different things both in reality and in tax policy and law.
The capital gains can be unfair in that most of them go to founders and VCs and not much to other employees and stakeholders who have contributed as well.
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#159Paul Graham seems pretty self-centered...
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#160She meant impossible in that one doesn't earn a billion dollars through work alone. The only way to get there is to set up a structure that extracts a billion dollars from a market (usually by building a structure that's more efficient but also generates externalities that are not borne by the person getting the billion dollars). pg's reading of it is so blunt and misrepresentative that I'm nervous about what kind of…
pg is or was the owner of a very influential venture capital fund, that created projects such as Uber and AirBNB. He knows all about setting up structures to extract value, and he also knows which framing makes people more sympathetic instead of angry.
>pg is or was the owner of a very influential venture capital fund, that created projects such as Uber
Uber was not a YCombinator company. For some unexplained reason, many mistakenly think it was a YC startup but it's not correct.
(The gp's comment is an example of how chatbots hallucinate because they train on the text of people unintentionally hallucinating.)