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Billionaires Build

paulgraham.com

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Re: Billionaires Build

#491

Post by alisonkisk »

samatman wrote: post #374
bluntfang wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In America, at least, we have historically rejected the idea of a hereditary monarchy. Just looking at history of presidents...George Bush Jr and George Bush Sr. Do you think George Bush Jr would have been president if his father wasn't? I'm not saying that GWB isn't competent or anything like that...but is your assertion that if he didn't have the name (and inherited wealth and connections), he would have been a vi…

In a hereditary monarchy, the king rules until he dies, or abdicates in favor of his son. If this breaks down, through war, sibling rivalry, or lack of an heir... that tends to be a real problem. In the United States, the titular head of state is chosen through a weird gameshow, and any given head of state can play that game twice. On two occasions, the son of a successful game show contestant has leveraged name reco…

A head of state can win twice. They can play more than that, as Grover Cleveland showed and Donald Trump might.

Re: Billionaires Build

#492

Post by sumedh »

tartoran wrote: post #364
lotsofpulp wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what should happen to your assets when the total of their market capitalization crosses the $1B line?

> So what should happen to your assets when the total of their market capitalization crosses the $1B line? People who created enormous value in the past were rich but not filthy rich and that was not their goal in the first place. Most of them were happy enough to be paid back in respect, recognition, credit, fanfare, veneration etc..

> but not filthy rich

What is your definition of filthy rich?

Re: Billionaires Build

#493

Post by refurb »

chillwaves wrote: post #400
buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one yet has responded to me why it's such a great idea for billionaires to exist. I wonder if an argument could even be made that didn't even a personal fantasy/wish fulfillment scenario. K, here's one, whether or not you accept it. I don't think the world would have SpaceX or Tesla were it not for the existence of billionaires. Elon Musk already had a billion before founding/buying these companies. If he had "m…

It's a mistake to conflate the work of entire companies with one man, and I strongly disagree about the state of progress in America if billionaires did not exist. Someone else would have taken Musk's place. There is no inherent quality to billionaires that make them valuable outside of their wealth. > especially if you consider the potential scarcity of funding in this scenario. how is this an argument? I assume ban…

Someone else would have taken his place? You mean another billionaire? But the thought experiment is there would be no billionaires.

Re: Billionaires Build

#494

Post by dredmorbius »

UK-Al05 wrote: post #473
dredmorbius wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of any commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or command. Labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities. -- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations , Book 1,Chapter 5 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_…

Adam Smith's labour theory of value hasn't been used in modern economics. And has tons of problems with it. That and Ricardos version is probably the basis of the Marx version. They we're the popular interpretations at the time and he was probably inspired by them. The marginal revolution happened in economics and a lot of those problems disappeared. A lot the things they couldn't explain suddenly could be using marg…

My principle point is to show that labour theory of value is not inherently or originally Marxist as is often presumed or implied.

My own view is that the entire value discussion is tremendously muddled, confuses multiple issues, and is used to justify or support any number of spurious or specious arguments, generaally over policy.

The marginalists mistake price for value. Most orthodox economics does likewise.

Re: Billionaires Build

#495

Post by somethoughts »

IanCal wrote: post #248
lotsofpulp wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what should happen to your assets when the total of their market capitalization crosses the $1B line?

In good idle games they shift the goal once you hit more boring levels. Stealing partly from someone else I can't find a reference for: Ownership capped at 1 billion, you get a sticker saying "I won capitalism" and all further growth and income goes to the government for social programs. You get a new ticker that estimates lives saved and people homes/fed/educated - that becomes your new boasting figure. Not entirely…

Yes - this! Perhaps it should be "Ok yay you won, now did you win in cheat mode (by exploiting people and reasources) or real mode!"

Since Forbes is the default scoreboard perhaps when it makes its Billionaires List, instead of a basic sort ranked by on net worth, Forbes should incorporate Environmental, Social and Governance like factors similar to those starting to be used for Equity investing [1] and do a final ranking based on ESG*net worth.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_bottom_line

Re: Billionaires Build

#496

Post by 8note »

buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #371
Privacy846 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ownership capped at 1 billion, you get a sticker saying "I won capitalism" and all further growth and income goes to the government for social programs. You get a new ticker that estimates lives saved and people homes/fed/educated - that becomes your new boasting figure. But that would be a lie since most of that money/value was created by other people, most likely their employees.

First off, those employees have been paid already, so I'm not sure what the relevance is. If they agreed to work for 100k/year, and forgo the risk of starting a company, why should they get more than the agreed upon price after the company does well? It may be in the companies interest to give them a bonus to keep them around, but that's a separate issue. Second, the only way you can argue they created more value tha…

Does the employee still get that money if the company goes under? People getting pink slips says that they're taking on just as much risk as the founder. Signing that contract does not guarantee the 100k/year

Re: Billionaires Build

#497

Post by samcal »

centimeter wrote: post #480
bedhead wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right about the feedback loops that make it hard to escape poverty. The most uncomfortable one to talk about is basic social network effects. Two people meet at some prestigious college and get married - are we shocked they have children who are predisposed for success? Besides from having god-given IQ, they are likely some combination of ambitious, punctual, respectful of authority, long-term oriented, hard-…

Heritability studies suggest this is much more strongly mediated by genetic factors (such as IQ and time preference) than social factors.

I'm not sure this holds up to scrutiny. My limited understanding of epigenetics means that social factors and genetic factors are not so easily separated, we'd need significantly more generations of data to show that.

Re: Billionaires Build

#499

Post by cwkoss »

buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #338
canofbars wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone knew about this decades ago. It was even taught in schools as just basic facts and science before it became political.

Could I get your source for this? I've never heard that climate change was taught in public school decades ago.

I think "this" in this context refers to profiting off externalities.

Re: Billionaires Build

#500

Post by pazimzadeh »

dcolkitt wrote: post #233
chillwaves wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe in meritocracy? Because ownership of that amount of wealth is surely going to skew the entire system. How long before we just have a permanent ruling class, and how does that move humanity forward?

In aggregate, the 400 richest billionaires put together only constitutes 4% of the total wealth in America.[1][2] Even if you assume that power correlates perfectly with wealth, there's not really evidence that billionaires control anywhere near enough money to become a "permanent ruling class". [1] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/06/25/six-facts... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Americans_by_…

Why 400
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