371–380 of 941 posts
It's a classic PG article. Many true facts in there, lots of good analysis with just a few questionable claims thrown in here and there. At the end, there's a massive claim that isn't fully stated but implied. "Of course the Gini coefficient is increasing" translated means "income inequality is not a problem". Firstly, Gini coefficient is based on income, not wealth. That isn't stated clearly. Secondly, there's absol…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Paul Graham's articles always shoot immediately up to the top of HN, but I agree with you, they're generally cursory and pithy thoughts which don't convince my skeptical mind. I don't know, can someone explain why his work is so popular? Think of all the amazing writers across our civilization whose work is linkable, and we're worshipping these decent but not amazing blog posts?
There's a cycle with blogs. The author starts a blog and they have a distinct, somewhat original voice with distinct, somewhat original views. In PG's case, the startup advice about building stuff that doesn't scale, not worrying about competitors, Lisp, etc. were quite fresh, at least to me. The author's blog becomes successful and their ideas become well understood throughout a community. But a person's ideas don't…
That's the key bit for me. I've found his writing about startups, software, hacker culture, product development, etc. to be mostly great and informative. But whenever I see anything he writes about society as a whole, I tend to find the conclusions he draws to be pretty out of line with reality, or at least (in the cases where I don't have data) counter to my experience and opinion.
It is true. Sometimes young people get really rich while they are really young. Sometimes you can toss a coin 30 times and you can get all heads. I don't see why deceptively call it "sometimes" when in reality saying almost never would be heck of a lot truer.
>You could get rich from starting your own company in 1890 and in 2020, but in 1960 it was not really a viable option. You couldn't break through the oligopolies to get at the markets.
I am guessing by PG's definition having an internet connection is "getting at the market". To create a startup at 2021 in tech sphere you need to have a ridiculously unique skill-set. I haven't heard of any recent succesful start-ups that just does writes to DB and renders something on the screen. If there was such a low-hanging fruit big companies would simply copy the best features overnight and make you obsolete.
When tons of people are getting at a market it means lots of competition which means you need to further reduce the competition space by using geography, connections or wealth.
Tl;dr: You almost never get rich from starting a company.
> There were no fund managers among the 100 richest Americans in 1982. Hedge funds and private equity firms existed in 1982, but none of their founders were rich enough yet to make it into the top 100. Two things changed: fund managers discovered new ways to generate high returns, and more investors were willing to trust them with their money. PG brushes past this to talk about tech company founders, but I thought th…
Having money doesn't automatically make you wiser or smarter than the average Joe down the race track. Many wealthy people still believe hedge funds have "the knowledge" or some sort of edge. This is re-enforced by many funds being exclusive to those investing through a financial advisor, or with a minimum amount of capital to invest. Having wealth actually does open doors that Joe with his $50K of life savings can't access.
Paying 2 and 20 is indeed less common than it used to be though.
It's a classic PG article. Many true facts in there, lots of good analysis with just a few questionable claims thrown in here and there. At the end, there's a massive claim that isn't fully stated but implied. "Of course the Gini coefficient is increasing" translated means "income inequality is not a problem". Firstly, Gini coefficient is based on income, not wealth. That isn't stated clearly. Secondly, there's absol…
Paul Graham's articles always shoot immediately up to the top of HN, but I agree with you, they're generally cursory and pithy thoughts which don't convince my skeptical mind. I don't know, can someone explain why his work is so popular? Think of all the amazing writers across our civilization whose work is linkable, and we're worshipping these decent but not amazing blog posts?
If you don't hack your mind from a philosophical perspective you wont stop this tribal hard-coded neural trigger of this automatic authority following.
This is the only thing that can save us from being that person in the 30's Germany photos raising their hands and chanting 'Sieg Heil'.
Remember that this is hardwired, but it worked somehow because we used to be packed in small communities where everyone knew each other.
Now the same "wiring" is being used the same way, but now with a virtual global tribe, where we actually don't really know the people that is being granted authority or why we are supposed to follow them, because we simply follow them giving everybody is also doing it.
Just observe yourself more often and question even the things you take for granted before doing it. You will see a lot of these things are actually unreasonable giving their actual context.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The political messaging has also changed from “people in poverty have specific material needs that we need money to fix” (war on poverty) to “actually, people having or making different amounts of money is inherently wrong” (war on inequality). The war on poverty can be waged with a modest tax on the PGs of the world. The war on inequality is different. Venture capital always seeks to create wealth that will flow to…
> actually, people having or making different amounts of money is inherently wrong” (war on inequality). This is a misrepresentation though. There isn't anything inherently wrong with people having or making different amounts of money. The complaint, as I see it usually, is that the degree of inequality is unacceptable. That is, millionares aren't inherently unethical, heck people who make millions annually aren't in…
It's a classic PG article. Many true facts in there, lots of good analysis with just a few questionable claims thrown in here and there. At the end, there's a massive claim that isn't fully stated but implied. "Of course the Gini coefficient is increasing" translated means "income inequality is not a problem". Firstly, Gini coefficient is based on income, not wealth. That isn't stated clearly. Secondly, there's absol…
He’s completely detached from the modern reality: content and options are ubiquitous relative to PG’s golden years.
It’s the same with Marc Andreesen and his call to build; hey Marc why not build a progressive tax system that enabled your generation and your parents to explore as they chose instead of suggesting we all just rally behind a billionaires blog post?
These guys are visible because they “won” an ephemeral challenge most people aren’t even aware of.
It’s stunning how smart folks seem oblivious to the extent which relativity commands reality.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, yes, if you accept some official-inflation-is-fake conspiracy theory as a premise you can reach many interesting conclusions.
It's not conspiracy, but an observation that hamburgers, cars, houses and yachts inflate at different rates. The gov inflation concerns hamburgers, but someone's making 200k really needs housing and that inflates much faster.
House prices are simply bonds tied to rent value and interest rate and affected by certain demographic trends. The all-told carrying costs of a mortgage right now are actually lower than they were 30 years ago, considering inflation (the principal might be higher and you don't get the tailwind of dropping rates to rebalance and whatnot, but it doesn't change the fact that houses are technically more affordable, not less).
Edit: Here's a graph of housing prices when adjusted for inflation & mortgage rates: https://realestatedecoded.com/the-shocking-truth-about-house... (although the down-payment is more unaffordable, yes, but you can generally buy things with as low as 3.5% down)
I don't want to derail this too much with personal anecdotes, but I suspect you are much more likely to build wealth with the more established tech companies - and that wealth is "rich enough". Maybe I am just unlucky or unskilled, but I spent roughly 20 years working at startups or innovation labs. I was "close" to some big events where I could have made big $$ but made 0. Both at my own startup and being at early s…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> actually, people having or making different amounts of money is inherently wrong” (war on inequality). This is a misrepresentation though. There isn't anything inherently wrong with people having or making different amounts of money. The complaint, as I see it usually, is that the degree of inequality is unacceptable. That is, millionares aren't inherently unethical, heck people who make millions annually aren't in…
> The key issue is that personal wealth, after a point is wasted. Creation of vast personal wealth doesn't really serve society ... How much do you really care after your second billion anyway? What do you think the billionaires' billions are doing? Sitting in a bank account? I think the majority of their wealth is invested , i.e. it is funding industry, which is a good thing. If we assume for illustration that billi…
Yes. Maybe not their own savings account, but in some organizations' bank accounts.
Money in the hands of the low to middle class is spent far more efficiently. [1]
[1] https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/news/2011/12...