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How to earn a billion dollars

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#281

Post by ceejayoz »

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #206
readingnews wrote: post #44

The 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 "…

Of course people who have more access to money and parents who understand money would be better at earning it. Why are you presupposing the world is just when EVERY skill and opportunity is distributed non-linearly?

I, too, would win the marathon if you put me at the last mile marker while everyone else starts at the beginning.

Is that skill?

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#282

Post by boca_honey »

changoplatanero wrote: post #263
AdamN wrote: post #124

She 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 wonder what she would say about professional athletes. Some of the top stars have made near a billion dollars in lifetime wages, as unionized employees. Hard for me to see who the sports stars are exploiting to get their wealth.

Of course she wasn't talking about athletes (or artists, etc), she was implicitly talking about the business / tech world. I guess she should have been explicit about it so people don't come out with arguments like this.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#283

Post by tyre »

hjkl0 wrote: post #224
TheTaytay wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your phrase “extract” betrays a fundamental disagreement with what Paul is saying. (Externalities does so again) It assumes a zero-sum game where the job is to shift money from one person to another. Value, and thus money/wealth can be created. Literally. You are saying, in different words, that no one can do it “honestly”. He is saying one can.

Based on this article at least, he is not disagreeing with those claims, he is not even acknowledging they exist. The original claim, as I understand it, is basically this: you can’t be an honest actor in a dishonest system. And it’s not even necessary to claim that billionaires did something uniquely wrong to become billionaires. It’s just that their share of the exploitation is so, so, so much bigger.

From an HN comment recently:

> There are three ways to make a living:

> 1) Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich.

> 2) Tell the truth to those who want the truth, and you’ll make a living.

> 3) Tell the truth to those who want to be lied to, and you’ll go broke.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#284

Post by testing22321 »

twoodfin wrote: post #237
tim333 wrote: post #158

Technically 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…

Putting the scale of dollars and the startup world aside, AOC’s comments read that way would suggest a farmer who gets a series of loans from the bank to help him expand his family farm from a $200K sole proprietorship to a $10M sole proprietorship didn’t “earn” it either. I don’t think a definition of “earn” that excludes cases like that captures the generally understood meaning.

The farmer doesn’t own that mega farm until he pays off the loans.

How does he get the money to do that?

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#285

Post by Gimpei »

AdamN wrote: post #124

She 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…

You could also interpret this statement in a way that has nothing to do with exploitation. A lottery winner doesn’t exploit anyone, but they don’t “earn” their money either. I’ve always thought of the founder path to a billion as a bit like a lotto game where you can shift the odds through hard work and natural ability. I don’t think this process necessarily involves exploitation (although it certainly could). You’d have to believe in the labor theory of value for that. And I’m not convinced that even Marx would, were he alive today. It was supposed to have a scientific basis, after all, and that evaporated a long time ago.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#286

Post by ridgeguy »

changoplatanero wrote: post #263
AdamN wrote: post #124

She 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 wonder what she would say about professional athletes. Some of the top stars have made near a billion dollars in lifetime wages, as unionized employees. Hard for me to see who the sports stars are exploiting to get their wealth.

Maybe the taxpayers who pay for those expensive sports arenas + the tax breaks that frequently shelter their owners/operators?

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#287

Post by csallen »

hjkl0 wrote: post #224
TheTaytay wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your phrase “extract” betrays a fundamental disagreement with what Paul is saying. (Externalities does so again) It assumes a zero-sum game where the job is to shift money from one person to another. Value, and thus money/wealth can be created. Literally. You are saying, in different words, that no one can do it “honestly”. He is saying one can.

Based on this article at least, he is not disagreeing with those claims, he is not even acknowledging they exist. The original claim, as I understand it, is basically this: you can’t be an honest actor in a dishonest system. And it’s not even necessary to claim that billionaires did something uniquely wrong to become billionaires. It’s just that their share of the exploitation is so, so, so much bigger.

He explicitly and clearly disagreed with the claims, and argued against them:

> What [AOC] meant was that it's impossible to get that rich without doing something bad — without cheating in some way... The reason [my founder's] startup was growing so fast was simply that users loved what she'd built. So she could feel from her own experience how wrong [AOC] was. She wasn't exploiting anyone. Exactly the opposite in fact. The reason her startup was growing so fast was that she and her cofounder had been working their asses off to make their users happy, and as a result the users had been telling their friends. And that gets you exponential growth.

To any honest reader, it's clear he's saying the system isn't necessarily dishonest, and that it's possible (if not common) to rapidly earn money in the system by simply creating things of value and selling them to willing customers.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#288

Post by mashlol »

twoodfin wrote: post #237
tim333 wrote: post #158

Technically 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…

Putting the scale of dollars and the startup world aside, AOC’s comments read that way would suggest a farmer who gets a series of loans from the bank to help him expand his family farm from a $200K sole proprietorship to a $10M sole proprietorship didn’t “earn” it either. I don’t think a definition of “earn” that excludes cases like that captures the generally understood meaning.

Didn't AOC's comment specifically say a billion? Why would it imply someone increasing from $200k to $10m didn't earn it?

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#289

Post by sumitkumar »

AdamN wrote: post #124

She 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…

Everything is extractive. Farmer plants seeds, partially sets the environment. The work is done by the seed/sun/soil/water. And so is every profession: labour or not. Most of the business are structured in such a way that someone can exploit them to make even more money. The whole vendors and b2b system is mutual extraction.

Looking through wages and trying to find a ceiling(by time/effort) on the value creation by a human is one dimensional at best.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#290

Post by Kuyawa »

We can't romanticize making money, it's a ruthless field where mostly politicians, the military complex, and drug traffickers thrive, and a few startups that cater to the global economy, which are very very rare, so rare than only 30 out of more than 6000 have succeded in Paul's own words.

Amazon was first, then Uber went world wide, so did Airbnb, and now OpenClaw, so yes, the AI gold rush opened the gates for new opportunities but only a few will make it. We all can run the race for sure but most of us will only get tired at the end while the lucky few will take all the prizes and our corpses will be their podium, as it's supposed to be.

Still, we have to run because there is a chance, a very slim chance which is more than zero hope.

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