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How to earn a billion dollars

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#641

Post by pclowes »

PowerElectronix wrote: post #637

It's clear to me that in order to get a billion, you have to swidle a lot of people out of their fair share of the billion. As soon as the person that has "The Idea" keeps their 60% stake of the company while the army of minions are working their assess off to get that idea to a billion dollar valuations are given crumbs or no stake at all, you know who is swindling who.

False, you just make something very valuable.

To get people to help you make it you offer to pay them and they willingly exchange their time for that money (or equity if they also think it will be very valuable someday or you have a record of making valuable things in the past)

Who is the person swindled here? Who agreed to something and was deceived? Who was stolen from?

This process is net wealth creation. The wealth is generated, not taken from somebody else.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#642

Post by vibe_that_works »

It would be so much better if PG was not forced to write this essay. Everyone and that includes AOC has a right to free speech, but I believe that mandatory platform context would really help the internet. For example, here:

"Earning your fruits of labor morally as opposed to the mere market value of labor and capital is a concept derived from Karl Marx' Theory of Alienation. More than 15 million people have died under socialist rule from starvation alone."

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#643

Post by mjamesaustin »

laser wrote: post #594

At scale the only utility of wealth is the power it gives to allocate the means of production. The vast majority of ultra high net worth individuals spend a tiny fraction of their wealth on personal consumptive activities, the only true "cost" born by society. But in exchange for this small cost aside from the benefits accrued to society existing in a natural state of free trade and commerce, society also gets to hav…

Yes, and they've optimized our economy in a wonderful place where the average worker today makes less than 50 years ago.

But don't worry – it's not important that poverty, hunger, sickness, and many other social ills still exist even though we have far more wealth than required to solve those problems.

Obviously the answer is that ending poverty is just an inefficient solution the Great Minds have concluded, and our money is better spent elsewhere. Sorry Timmy, but you should be proud as you're dying of cancer because a billionaire's next yacht will surely solve more problems (or at least generate more money) than your life is worth.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#644

Post by idiotsecant »

nfw2 wrote: post #625
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if -- bear with me here -- it's possible for bright, motivated founders to create startups that your kids can work in, but those founders could be content with merely making a hundred million dollars? Because, and I don't know if you know this so you may have to take it on faith, that is still so much money that said founder and their family and very likely their descendants can live in extreme luxury for the re…

How exactly do you propose keeping a founder from becoming wealthier once their company scales past the point where they are worth a hundred million?

It's mind boggling that you view the solution to this as so counter to the interests of the capital class that you can't even speak it aloud

You tax them. Wealth inequality of this magnitude is toxic to democracy. It's simply too much power. These men aren't gods, they are just flesh and blood and usually really terrible people. We are not staff at their resort. Let them live in luxury for the rest of their life, great. But they don't get to have more political power than half a million people put together.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#645

Post by fn-mote »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #525
pipes wrote: post #509

The amount of negativity to this is depressing. No one seems to be contradicting anything he's saying here, instead it's just vacuous ideology "extraction" etc etc. Purposely narrow reading. I've got kids, I want people creating start ups they can work in, the alternative is too grim.

What if -- bear with me here -- it's possible for bright, motivated founders to create startups that your kids can work in, but those founders could be content with merely making a hundred million dollars? Because, and I don't know if you know this so you may have to take it on faith, that is still so much money that said founder and their family and very likely their descendants can live in extreme luxury for the re…

Surely this would just create an industry of ways to dodge the “$100m tax”.

Just waiting for my company’s top 10 shareholders to be anonymous entities owned by other companies based in the Cayman Islands.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#646

Post by WalterBright »

jarjoura wrote: post #536
ElijahLynn wrote: post #483

Weird to see Graham take AOC's quote out of context: Graham: So you can imagine how astonished I was last month when an American politician said that it was impossible to earn a billion dollars. I felt like a skating coach hearing someone say that it's impossible to do a triple axel. Of course it's possible. It's hard, but it's possible. Per his link in the article: AOC: there is a certain level of wealth and accumul…

That billion dollars had to come from somewhere, and it definitely didn't happen from a single individual's hard work. A lot of people were involved in that over a long period of time. It's also weird to attach an emotional term like "earned" to that. You can say someone passively earned income, or an investor earned a return on their investment. That's clearly not the same meaning AOC implies when she uses it. So, y…

> That billion dollars had to come from somewhere

When you create a valuable thing, you can use it as collateral for a loan. The bank literally creates the money to loan out out of nothing. When the loan is repaid, the money is destroyed.

Think of a dollar bill as an "IOU $1" (which it pedantically is), and it'll make sense.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#647

Post by c-hendricks »

pipes wrote: post #509

The amount of negativity to this is depressing. No one seems to be contradicting anything he's saying here, instead it's just vacuous ideology "extraction" etc etc. Purposely narrow reading. I've got kids, I want people creating start ups they can work in, the alternative is too grim.

Never thought I'd see "think of the children" as an excuse to requiring billionaires but HN will always find a way to surprise you.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#649

Post by OtherShrezzing »

old-gregg wrote: post #604
wat10000 wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The post is patronizing as hell, it’s no wonder people respond to it negatively. Patting people on the head and saying “you moron, it’s just two numbers” isn’t a good way to make an argument.

Sam Harris often makes an argument that I both hate and kind of agree with. He says that exchanging arguments and having a debate only works when the two arguing parties share a foundation. The debate’s purpose is to reconcile a measurable difference of opinion. In this case, I feel there’s no shared foundation. Half of the commenters here don’t seem to understand what money is or how it works. There's no soil in whi…

A debates purpose is surely to reveal if there’s a measurable difference to be reconciled in the first instance. Any actual reconciliation is a nice bonus on top.

So even if the debate reveals that no, there wasn’t a viable reconciliation, the debate was still worthwhile.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#650

Post by maxnevermind »

"Now you see why, when I meet a founder, the first thing I ask about is their growth rate."

This obsession with growth instead of progress or value rubs me the wrong way, given the trend for enshittification of services sooner or later, also remind me of a video I watched yesterday when a founder gives examples of private equity people trying to force growth no matter what: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4vNIsVY-0Y&t=412s

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