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How to earn a billion dollars

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#851

Post by srpablo »

Disco Stu meme

Paul is my favorite example of "brain gout." I learned what gout was as "a disease kings used to get by eating foods that were too rich." Paul's writing when he was closer to reality, in the early 2000's, was a lot more insightful, because he was closer to reality. But if you've spent 21 years never having a material concern, and increasingly interacting with other rich people (or young people who idolize them), it takes a toll on your grasp of things. It's a king eating rich foods for decades.

Like his "wealth tax" piece, he's very proud of doing elementary maths that ignore a major part of the reality at the start (in that case, he was assuming that their money wasn't growing, just being taxed, which... my man). It's sad to see, and I hope anyone who gets financially successful takes the lesson to try as hard as possible to keep living like normal people do. Buy your own groceries. Cook your own meals. Keep close to the friends you made before you were rich.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#852

Post by merelydev »

Clearly the system has vulnerabilities. Billionairs managed to exploit these. Asking whether this is good or bad is liking asking if hacking is good or bad for society. If vulnerabilities exist someone will exploit them, thats the arbitrage.

Instead of hating the hacker, we should ask can we have a system that is not vulnerable to"exploitation", which naturally leads to the old Capitalism vs Communism debate.

Capitalism is still the most decentralized system we have, if a worker is feeling exploited they can leave and work elsewhere but most importantly they have the option of starting their own business and utilize their skills. But capitalism's main vulnerability is that of investors that can buy up whole industries and collude and bring centralization.

Communism is inherently centralized, only works on a small scale like a village, on larger scale it requires strong leadership that can resist the temptations that come from centralized power, but strong leadership doesn't last forever.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#853

Post by kdheiwns »

dismalaf wrote: post #840
hammock wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been on HN for 15+ years I have found it fascinating to witness the fawning and adulation over pg blog posts completely reverse and everyone has turned on him now. It used to be if you criticized anything in his blogs you’d get downvoted to oblivion. Now criticism is the norm. As far as I can tell it’s less a change in pg’s viewpoints (though the topics have evolved, and he has gotten more transparent perhaps)…

The people on HN have changed. It used to be founders and people doing things. Founders of some now huge companies were on HN. Interesting and well known hackers too. Now it's SWEs who work in big tech, hate their jobs and are afraid of being laid off who just parrot politically expedient current talking points. x.com is more interesting these days, even for tech.

There's been a massive shift in the industry. It's gone from "me and a couple dudes are working on this thing that'll help people live a better life", to "let's lie about what our product can do to reach unicorn status then cash out before anyone notices" and "let's make something that makes people feel dissatisfied with life and keeps them addicted and sells surveillance data to private militaries and governments to threaten our critics."

The good vibes and optimism have left the industry.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#854

Post by eudamoniac »

I have no problems with PG or with the existence of billionaires in general, but this is just a poorly thought essay. All of the arguments about growth are specious, and he frequently makes unsound leaps of logic. If I saw this in the wild, sorry PG, but I'd think this is an amateur blogger posting yet another something he edited longer than he thought about.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#855

Post by croes »

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.

The worlds is grim because billionaires have a large part of the cake and the rest has to fight over the crumbs.

Billionaires are a sign of a failing systems because nobody earns a billion dollars.

What do you think why many important jobs are badly paid while some CEO gets a billion dollars.

Didn’t you see in the pandemic where the real important jobs are and did you realize how low their payment is?

BTW it’s interesting you see you kids working in a startup but not creating one.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#856

Post by light_hue_1 »

I'm amazed that PG can't see his own arguments clearly lead to massive social harms.

Facebook once existed as "How is a company going to make money from undergrads stalking one another online?" but that company didn't make it big. It was only when it turned into an addictive harmful website that thrives by massively raising the suicide rate of kids, that's when they made it big!

AirBnb once existed as "Who's going to pay to sleep on an airbed on someone's floor?" but they didn't make a billion dollars doing that. It wasn't until it turned into a DYI hotel that displaces local resident, concentrates wealth, and makes housing unaffordable. That's when it made serious money.

So yes, nominally, each of these startups sounds good. But many of them turn into rent seeking, closed ecosystems, that prey on users.

> You must look at the world around you and see how it's actually done.

Correct. I wish PG would do that. Instead of telling this idealized fantasy.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#857

Post by noufalibrahim »

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.

There is a bubble here. Running ones own business is, on the overall, better than being employed especially given the current world. However, that doesn't automatically equal to startups. There are people who are running their own brick and mortar businesses. They're not billionaires or even millionaires but they've crossed the point where lack of a reliable source of wealth is a source of misery for them. Surely, that's a great thing.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#858

Post by preommr »

croes wrote: post #855
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.

The worlds is grim because billionaires have a large part of the cake and the rest has to fight over the crumbs. Billionaires are a sign of a failing systems because nobody earns a billion dollars. What do you think why many important jobs are badly paid while some CEO gets a billion dollars. Didn’t you see in the pandemic where the real important jobs are and did you realize how low their payment is? BTW it’s intere…

> The worlds is grim because billionaires have a large part of the cake and the rest has to fight over the crumbs.

et tu hn?

I am tired of seeing this nonsense on social media (it's particularly bad on reddit, where /r/antiwork and it's offshoots keep hitting the front page)

- Wealth is not a zero-sum game

- Yes, billionaires shouldn't exist because they're a symptom of a broken system

- And they don't exist on a long enough timescale, there's a reason why oil barons and railroad tycoon families are a shadow of their former selves, and why the richest people are all in tech/oil

- Billionaires and increasing income inequality are a symptom of a bigger problem. Musk wouldn't have as much money if his publicly traded stock wasn't as popular... among the public.

- Modern day securities are broken because they're poorly regulated because the public doesn't vote for people that would do the regulation.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#859

Post by nolroz »

noufalibrahim wrote: post #857
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.

There is a bubble here. Running ones own business is, on the overall, better than being employed especially given the current world. However, that doesn't automatically equal to startups. There are people who are running their own brick and mortar businesses. They're not billionaires or even millionaires but they've crossed the point where lack of a reliable source of wealth is a source of misery for them. Surely, th…

Healthcare is one place that gives me pause when considering going back into business for myself and my family while living in the US.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#860

Post by knuppar »

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.

> I've got kids, I want people creating start ups they can work in, the alternative is too grim.

got some bad news for ya pal

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