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Stop The JerkTech

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Re: Stop The JerkTech

#191

Post by smsm42 »

wpietri wrote: post #190
smsm42 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The third is not a majority. The first link says 57% were not born wealthy. >>> And when I look around at the rich people I'm familiar with Anecdote is not data. I don't know where you live, but depending on it and your social circle, the minuscule number (compared to the whole nation) of people you can observe personally would be very different. >>> Often it was a right-place, right-time thing. It was. So what? Nobo…

>> It was. So what? So maybe you should read all the way to the the last line of my post, which explains my exact point: someone currently being a billionaire doesn't mean that they will make the world much better if they spend an hour on one thing versus another. Ergo, kourt's point stands: somebody being wealthy is not any sort of proof that they can create more value per hour. Which is the (wrong) notion that Nhan…

>>> somebody being wealthy is not any sort of proof

It's not a proof, but it's higher probability, by the virtue that in majority of cases being reach means producing value (at least in the past, as your own links prove) - and if the person produced a lot of value in the past, there's a big chance he'll continue doing that. As for the question if it makes the world better - it's a very subjective matter, everybody has their own "better". I think it'd be better if Uber would disrupt taxi cartels, but taxi cartels and medallion investors think it'd be worse.

>>> It's frustrating to have to connect the dots for you.

That may be because the dots are connected by non-sequiturs. E.g., the question if somebody was lucky or not bears no relation to the question if he produces or ever produced value. A quote of how one could rapidly become rich three hundred years ago has little connection to how the majority of rich people slowly become rich now. Etc, etc.

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#192

Post by marcus_holmes »

wpietri wrote: post #172
marcus_holmes wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it doesn't matter how they became rich. A rich person creates value by investing their wealth in economic activity, which generates interest as a payment back to them "earned" by their investment. If our example rich person does absolutely nothing except put their money in a bank, and yet earns more per hour in interest payments than our poor person, that rich person is still creating more value in the same…

For the purposes of the question, which is about the economic effects of saving rich people time, I believe that's incorrect. Rich people leaving money in the bank are creating more wealth (for them), but they are not applying their time in a way that creates value. Thus there's no economic benefit in saving the time of the idle rich.

This is true, agreed.

I just wanted to highlight the theory that a sufficiently rich person sitting on their arse picking their nose is (in economic theory) generating more economic value than (for instance) a medical professional saving people's lives all day.

I first bumped into the absurdity of this when working on a coding contract in 1998. The project was doomed and would never complete let alone achieve its goals, we all knew it, but we'd all turn up, write our middle-layer business functions according to the project plan, and got paid a fortune for it because Y2K had pushed prices up. I met a nurse who had spent her day elbow-deep in other people's misfortune and was earning about 1/10th of what I was. The stark comparison made me rethink a lot of economics 101.

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#193

Post by wpietri »

lmm wrote: post #152
neumann wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not understand this logic. What original ticket purchaser? Scalpers aren't like eBay. They have bought up the tickets from the venue at certain amount, depriving others of a limited resource at that same value, and now offering it a higher value to people who didn't have the means to buy it as fast as the scalper. The disruption the scalper is introducing into an existing system benefits nobody but themselves.

Yesterday I bought a ticket at >2x face value for a concert on Monday. That's value for me - I'd like to be able to go to things without having to plan my life months in advance, and I'm willing to pay for the privilege. Supply isn't set in stone. If scalpers buy up tickets early on then they take on the risk that a show won't sell out, and that allows the promoters to move to a bigger venue (as happened in this case…

You're missing the negative externality: the person who couldn't get in because you're paying some scalping dick. And let's not forget the performers, who are interested in performing for their best fans, and who try to set ticket prices accordingly.

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#194

Post by wpietri »

smsm42 wrote: post #191
wpietri wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It was. So what? So maybe you should read all the way to the the last line of my post, which explains my exact point: someone currently being a billionaire doesn't mean that they will make the world much better if they spend an hour on one thing versus another. Ergo, kourt's point stands: somebody being wealthy is not any sort of proof that they can create more value per hour. Which is the (wrong) notion that Nhan…

>>> somebody being wealthy is not any sort of proof It's not a proof, but it's higher probability, by the virtue that in majority of cases being reach means producing value (at least in the past, as your own links prove) - and if the person produced a lot of value in the past, there's a big chance he'll continue doing that. As for the question if it makes the world better - it's a very subjective matter, everybody ha…

You have demonstrated no such probability. You're just assuming your conclusion.

> That may be because the dots are connected by non-sequiturs.

That you don't understand something doesn't mean it doesn't make sense.

You seem to be going out of your way here to be an argumentative dick, so unless you've got some actual contribution to make, I think you've passed my tolerance for JGGIFT discussion.

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#195

Post by wpietri »

walshemj wrote: post #154
venomsnake wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A rich person usually inherits more money. Abolish inheritance and almost all of the capitalistic problems disappear.

along with vast swathes of the middle class

Unlikely. Most people are solidly in adulthood before their parents die; at that point, their economic destiny is generally fixed. A high inheritance tax won't harm the kids' middle-class status.

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#196

Post by grey-area »

wpietri wrote: post #176
grey-area wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Startups like this don't create value. This is a very old hypothesis, and you are shadowing Marx in decrying parasitic middlemen. Value is such a indeterminate notion that anyone could be said to be creating it, but so many activities we take for granted (and which render us service) are parasitic in some sense - taking rent, opening a store of any kind, transporting goods, paying interest, manufacturing goods are al…

I don't think all middlemen are parasitic. The guy at my corner store, for example, creates value by stocking a carefully chosen set of products very near to my house and having them available at all hours. He's basically an L1 cache. And in being that, he's not making the problem of goods-getting worse for other people. I think you're wrong about Google. They create enormous value through the services they provide.…

Thanks for the clarification. Perhaps the operative distinction here is between parasitic and symbiotic corporations. Ideally they are symbiotic with other players in the eocsystem, rather than parasitic, but I think all corporations have a temptation and a tendency to end up as parasitic monopolies.

Re Google, I wasn't saying they don't create value, far from it, I was saying they don't create value for readers with advertising. I concede this is a debatable point though for the reasons you mentioned, and it is really a subjective. Personally I don't find their advertising useful, and if anything think it targets me mostly with sites I've already engaged with and wastes the money of advertisers. There is a tension in their services because they depend on advertising, and the temptation (which thy have increasingly given in to on their search service recently) is to favour advertisers (the real customers) over end users - a classic problem in a two-sided market.

To be clear though, I was not saying google are evil, but that just shifting the value around is what businesses do and what Google does - creating value is a very slippery and subjective concept and I'd argue their services which create value (mail etc) are funded by those that don't (advertising). So I would not use that particular behaviour as a criticism of the companies mentioned in the article - they might be objectionable, immoral or even illegal (I'd say probably all three) but they are not easy to distinguish from normal businesses in terms of how they shift value around.

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#197

Post by wpietri »

grey-area wrote: post #196
wpietri wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think all middlemen are parasitic. The guy at my corner store, for example, creates value by stocking a carefully chosen set of products very near to my house and having them available at all hours. He's basically an L1 cache. And in being that, he's not making the problem of goods-getting worse for other people. I think you're wrong about Google. They create enormous value through the services they provide.…

Thanks for the clarification. Perhaps the operative distinction here is between parasitic and symbiotic corporations. Ideally they are symbiotic with other players in the eocsystem, rather than parasitic, but I think all corporations have a temptation and a tendency to end up as parasitic monopolies. Re Google, I wasn't saying they don't create value, far from it, I was saying they don't create value for readers with…

Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

I believe that value is subjective, in that it's value to humans, but it's not particularly slippery. I also believe that for almost all businesses value creation is separate from cash extraction. My ISP's internet connection, for example, delivers a lot of value to me, but getting a bill from them doesn't. Google Search delivers a lot of value to me, but having ads on the page often doesn't. However, Google Search ads do deliver value to advertisers, and sometimes they deliver value to users when they discover novel products that are helpful to them.

I think the value analysis for Sweetch and Monkey Parking is pretty clear. People want to park quickly and easily near wherever they're going. Monkey Parking makes that easier for some people, which appears to create value on the per-customer level. But it only does that by making parking harder for other people, so the app delivers no net gain in value. Indeed, by in effect paying people hang out in parking spaces until somebody pays them to leave, they are probably making the parking problem worse, resulting in a net destruction of value.

I think the analysis for the restaurant reservation thing is similar. For each person they get in, they are excluding somebody else who would have had a table. Net value gain: zero. Or possibly negative given that squatting on reservations means that some will go unfilled.

So in both cases, they seem to be parasites on the actual creators of value. This can be easier to see if you contrast them with the parking startups that do make parking easier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7986950

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#198

Post by walshemj »

wpietri wrote: post #195
walshemj wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

along with vast swathes of the middle class

Unlikely. Most people are solidly in adulthood before their parents die; at that point, their economic destiny is generally fixed. A high inheritance tax won't harm the kids' middle-class status.

really are you sure a few years ago my parents worked out that in the UK my sister and I would have to immediately find over $130,000 in cash to pay for death duty.

We could just do it but we have far more savings than the majority of the uk population.

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#199

Post by Mandatum »

Tominator0 wrote: post #169
Mandatum wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're just clipping the ticket for bribery. This same thing exists in the underworld, however tech has made this sort of thing a "legitimate" business. I don't see much of a difference between this, and say, high frequency trading. Different areas, but same concept.

You seem to accept the media's sensationalist take on HFT which was provided to them solely by Michael Lewis. While HFT isn't exactly kosher, it's not as bad as you may like to think. Here's a video explaining some advantages of HFT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9aYZYSwCLo

Oops, didn't mean to compare it to crime. Just relative in concept.

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#200

Post by wpietri »

walshemj wrote: post #198
wpietri wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlikely. Most people are solidly in adulthood before their parents die; at that point, their economic destiny is generally fixed. A high inheritance tax won't harm the kids' middle-class status.

really are you sure a few years ago my parents worked out that in the UK my sister and I would have to immediately find over $130,000 in cash to pay for death duty. We could just do it but we have far more savings than the majority of the uk population.

I don't know how death duty works there, but if it's like here, I presume that means you would be inheriting something asset worth a lot more than $130,000 but didn't want to sell it. Thus you would end up richer than before, just with an illiquid asset. In which case it would not harm your middle-class status.
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