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How to earn a billion dollars
131–140 of 1001 posts
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#132I don't think this article properly engaged with the criticism from the politician. That's fine, I wasn't expecting it to, but this isn't valuable commentary on the politician's point. I suppose it does serve to demonstrate that Graham and people in Graham's orbit are unable to see a distinction between "have a billion dollars" and "earn a billion dollars". It's a very sf-bubble type article.
It's depressing really - lost alot of respect for pg over time. Based on his writings it honestly appears that he isn't engaged with any critical writing in any of the social or political (or economic) domains.
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#133There is nothing more evil in this world than the pursuit of power and wealth.
This is what weak people say to comfort themselves in a world with hierarchy and power differential.
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#134She 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…
pg is or was the owner of a very influential venture capital fund, that created projects such as Uber and AirBNB. He knows all about setting up structures to extract value, and he also knows which framing makes people more sympathetic instead of angry.
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#135You do not EARN 1B$. You mass exploit labor at scale to exfiltrate 1B$. You commit wage theft to obtain 1B$ (the largest theft category). You union bust and fire workers who try to fight for better working conditions and wages. You engage in monopoly practices to obtain 1B$. You engage in corruption via 'campaign donations' to lay down laws that benefit you and harm others. Doctors earn. Engineers earn. Scientists ea…
Hi, this is called “Labour Theory Of Value”. And this is imo a popular theory of value creation a lot of people believe in and it has populist memetic value.
But Labour Theory Of Value has been debunked and is mostly not used anymore.
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#136"So you can imagine how astonished I was last month when an American politician said that it was impossible to earn a billion dollars..."
Paul, playing dumb doesn't suit you.
The first definition of "earn" on merriam-webster.com is "to receive as return for effort and especially for work done or services rendered".
Your chose a straw man, "doing something bad", to argue against because it's so easy to beat.
Much harder to justify that anyone's doing $1B of effort. Being a billionaire doesn't mean you're bad. In fact, it doesn't even matter if they are all bad -- there are always going to be bad people. It means a system that allows, encourages, and protects billionaires might be a problem that needs to be fixed.
Scary idea, I know. But we all only get to go around this world once. Might as well spend our time trying to make it better rather than rationalizing why it's OK to spend all your time trying to make it worse.
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#137But the accounting difference is real. It is virtually impossible to earn a billion dollars. What is possible but still difficult is to create something worth a billion dollars which you can then sell if you choose so. And to the people criticizing, this is cheating. To them, a billion dollars enterprise is not possible without the exploitation of employees, customers, or at least the environment. Also, the most impo…
Having to pay a fat wedge of tax every year on what you "earn" sucks a lot of the life out of the compounding effect.
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#138She 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…
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.
Can he provide evidence of one that has?
Re: How to earn a billion dollars
#139Please don't bury the lede here of how the author completely and epically misses the point of the statement. It's not about the math of the thing, it's about the arguably necessary exploitation that must occur to hit those kinds of numbers. And in fact, IMHO, you don't even need to get to "exploitation" to criticize this mentality. Any normal human would (and if not would, SHOULD) want to stop "earning" well before t…
There’s no exploitation involved because it is not a zero sum situation.