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Billionaires Build

paulgraham.com

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Re: Billionaires Build

#101

Post by jariel »

MattGaiser wrote: post #89
jariel wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" dying because of small business refusal to use technology" This is a little glib. There's nothing most of these small business can do.

They haven't tried anything. Every business being beaten by Amazon seems to have just decided to lie down and die. Even big businesses facing Amazon have done very little to compete.

""They haven't tried anything. Every business being beaten by Amazon""

This again, is glib.

To suggest that you somehow know all these vendors have 'not tried anything'.

How about lobbying government to subsidize their business like the US Government subsidizes delivery? Or the VAT tax breaks that Amazon gets? Or the fact that Amazon is dumping merchandise on the US by selling for negative margins, paid for by profits out of AWS?

A local bookstore has 6 staff. They have no power.

Re: Billionaires Build

#102

Post by Emphere »

dustingetz wrote: post #29

Billionaire can also be framed as succeeding at creating a power differential at scale. The trick is that you can't achieve scale without using power differentials, and iphones are the fruit of scale. Idea: what you kind of want is for the power difference to decay at scale, so that way you don't have amazon workers pissing in water bottles. Remember: "Sufficiently Powerful Optimization Of Any Known Target Destroys A…

Very good, something I have been thinking about as well. Inequality is bad because of the massive power differentials. How do you propose we "solve" that while still being able to reap the benefits of scale?

Any pointers or books to read about this topic? Admittedly I haven't looked too hard.

Re: Billionaires Build

#103

Post by taytus »

>Keep reading, and you'll learn both simultaneously.

That's quite the healthy ego.

No. You will try to explain it, it doesn't mean you will succeed.

I'm ready for the downvotes.

Re: Billionaires Build

#104

Post by majormajor »

troughway wrote: post #70
throwaway2245 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really think this is a new theme for pg's essays [edit: I mean, I don't think pg's style or content has changed that much], although I've also noticed this change [in responses here]. Usually, HN is the space where his essays are most heavily defended.

This is certainly a newer-ish theme. I am not sure where the bitterness comes, and to be honest, I would like to know. We are reading the same essays. More and more I am starting to think that people who are decrying pg's writing should come clean and say whether or not they've started a business, and if so, what was the outcome. The outcome isn't as relevant, but I bet there are very few people out there who have re…

"He's talking about billionaires but he's REALLY talking about something else that people in the right audience will get, and just filter out the noise" sounds fairly out of touch, if he can't see that the framing he's using is needlessly complicating the issue. Or if he wants to connect to a larger political discussion about global economic systems but only has substance to discuss related to a narrower "building a business" question.

Would be easier to just talk about what he's actually talking about, then.

Re: Billionaires Build

#105

Post by renewiltord »

Wasn't interested in the billionaire part (not because I disagree but because I don't care either way on it). But the other bits are good.

If the other comments put you off, read it anyway and skip the billionaire bits.

Re: Billionaires Build

#106

Post by ghufran_syed »

season2episode3 wrote: post #87
Meekro wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California legislators made this kind of argument earlier this year as they tried to force Uber to reclassify their drivers as employees. California voters rejected that. Uber drivers themselves overwhelmingly wanted to keep their contractor status. Maybe they don't consider themselves exploited?

Or maybe Uber et al outspending their opponents on political advertising by hundreds of millions of dollars had something to do with it? Not to mention constant advertising for free in their apps. They had the “no on prop 22” people hopelessly outgunned. Even the idea that Uber drivers themselves wanted to keep their contractor status is questionable given that they collected those statistics via polls in the driver…

Your assumption seems to be that the side that spends more money wins - the prop 16 vote, with the YES side spending 20 million and the NO side spending just 1.5 million would seem to refute that idea.

https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_16,_Repeal_Pr...

Is it possible that maybe the voters actually have their own opinions regarding these ballot propositions? So maybe Californian voters think that drivers should have the right to decide for themselves whether to work with Uber or not?

Re: Billionaires Build

#108

Post by aspaceman »

Traster wrote: post #28

For a clearly smart guy it's so frustrating to see PG bring in a topic like the Billionaires being exploitative, and then taking such a thoroughly blinkered view. It's a massive blind spot that PG fails to address is that it's the exact same sense of mission that he sees in start ups that creates the permission structure to exploit people. It's not that people set out to exploit people and as a result they become bil…

I like this comment. People don’t do good or evil because they choose to. They have incentives or goals that push and pull against others goals. Determining right and wrong often isn’t as simple as weighing those scales or determining which is correct. As both are “correct“ but in inherent conflict. We are forced to play zero sum games regardless of our own desire.

In this case, being a good CEO means making decisions that are worse for your workers over time. The world is set up in such a way to bias you towards that conclusion unless you work against it.

Does that mean you’re evil if you don’t? Or if you minimize your responsibility? Perhaps. But it’s still complicated. Thinking of the world as a massive weighted graph of wants, needs, and goals can be a helpful model.

Re: Billionaires Build

#109

Post by ghufran_syed »

detaro wrote: post #99
ghufran_syed wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you also argue that these small bookstores “delight their users”? If so, why aren’t they making money? If not, do you think that maybe that might be the problem?

No, I don't think that's the problem, at least not for all. From the limited insight into the publishing industry I have it seems fairly obvious that the fact that Amazon can demand massively lower prices from the publishing houses, while at the same time being able to have more optimized logistics, access to better shipping conditions, ... thanks to scale, plays a large role.

Was that also the case when Amazon started? How did they get to scale? And are we arguing that Barnes and Noble didn’t have scale when Amazon started competing with them. If “scale = success”, how is it that the former incumbents failed and the initially small startup succeeded?

Re: Billionaires Build

#110

Post by detaro »

ghufran_syed wrote: post #109
detaro wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't think that's the problem, at least not for all. From the limited insight into the publishing industry I have it seems fairly obvious that the fact that Amazon can demand massively lower prices from the publishing houses, while at the same time being able to have more optimized logistics, access to better shipping conditions, ... thanks to scale, plays a large role.

Was that also the case when Amazon started? How did they get to scale? And are we arguing that Barnes and Noble didn’t have scale when Amazon started competing with them. If “scale = success”, how is it that the former incumbents failed and the initially small startup succeeded?

How is "Barnes and Noble" relevant to "small bookstores" and "small businesses"?
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