Billionaires Build • Hacker News Board

Re: Billionaires Build

#591

Post by NineStarPoint » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 1:33 AM UTC

kevas wrote: post #312

About to write some possibly controversial stuff... My early life, I grew up and had middle to upper middle class all around me. In my late teens and early twenties, there were times I had to scrounge my cushions and rummage through my car to find enough change to eat a meal. We live in a society where everyone has access to a computer—personal or local library. We have all the information we need to bring (the major…

It’s also worth noting that people who are in poverty often don’t have the option to talk back in the work place. They’re scared for a reason, if they talk back and get fired they lose their apartment. They can’t feed their kids. So on. And the sort of jobs that people in poverty have to work aren’t jobs that have to care about treating their employees well, they’re jobs that have no issue finding new cogs to place in the machine. You can’t hope that the people who are barely living in our society would be able to break this feedback loop. Instead we’d have to find a way to build a society where people have less reason to fear.

Then yes, these habits about how to treat the work place get passed onto kids. And it takes a lot of mental work to relearn things deeply ingrained in you from childhood. This is the second issue, where it would take generations for the bad effects to actually disappear. There are no quick fixes to systemic issues.

Re: Billionaires Build

#592

Post by UK-Al05 » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 1:33 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #570

davidivadavid wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious what you mean by that, because it seems to me the exact opposite. Orthodox Economics 101 introduces consumer surplus precisely to separate price from value.

That would be a more correct view. In much debate and discussion I see "market value" substituted for "value". Often the implication is a vague one, as withmuch equivocation. pg's argumentventures there. Keep in mind that Smith, Ricardo, and Marx each commit this error, including in the Smith passage I quoted. So do the Marginalists, or at leaast most of them. Mariana Mazzucato may be an exception. (I've just discove…

Separating value and price is 101 of marginal economics.

There couldn't be consumer surplus without it. I don't know how you could be marginalist and believe market price = value for user.

Re: Billionaires Build

#593

Post by greenyouse » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 1:35 AM UTC

camgunz wrote: post #282

breck wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's an important point here. Bill Gates wouldn't be a billionaire if he didn't build amazing things, but he also exploited at scale the unjust IP ("ImaginaryProperty") system, which was a critical part of achieving the scale Microsoft achieved. Startups like Airbnb and Lyft likewise have built amazing things, and would easily make their founders 100' millionaires, but there is a point where to reach a cer…

It's less "your product is exploitative" and "you underpay (exploit) your workers for their labor." Bill Gates didn't write Windows 95. Steve Ballmer didn't write Microsoft Office. But they owned stock in a company that employed people that did (and all the various other labor that goes into building software products). Why did they make so much more money from it than the people who were more directly involved? This…

Persons B, C, and D are being paid a rate proportionate to the available labor market for their product building skill set. There was nothing stopping persons B, C, or D from being person A and founding a company for that idea.

If B, C, and D chose to strike for a higher wage then they could but there might be an E, F, and G which could take over for them at their previous rates.

Anybody can make a giant sized, billion dollar company. Those workers chose to work as employees under standard labor terms.

The early Microsoft employees that made lots of money from their stock options probably aren't bitter about their compensation.

Re: Billionaires Build

#594

Post by convolvatron » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 1:37 AM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #589

eyelidlessness wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this (me) critic of billionaires (the possibility of being one, not the humans who are), it’s not ideological. It’s based on an analysis of leverage (like GP’s comment), where the levers are necessarily some mix of advantage/privilege (feedback loop as discussed all over) and exploitation (not solely as a moral issue, but that issue is inescapable). It’s impossible to be/become a millionaire without access to, an…

I don't know if you intentionally switched from billionaire to millionaire, but it seems entirely possible (and even somewhat common) to become a mere millionaire by actions and careers that most would consider virtuous combined with sound saving and investing strategies. I don't know if my parents are actually millionaires or not, but if not, they're not far off and they were both public school teachers whose parent…

if someone considers making a billion dollars to be some form of social theft, then making a million dollars by giving $100,000 to a fund manager .. may also constitute social theft for that critic.

Re: Billionaires Build

#595

Post by atq2119 » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 1:37 AM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #552

IanCal wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

...you get a sticker... Consider for a moment what privileges would have to attach to this sticker, in order for the billionaires to let this through Congress. Definitely they would still want to have control of dominant cultural narratives, and they'd still want to write all the laws, and those of them who appreciate fabulous personal possessions would still appreciate those. The administration of this sticker would…

You've pretty much summed up why billionaires shouldn't exist: their existence is incompatible with democracy. (I don't know how best to fix this either.)

Re: Billionaires Build

#596

Post by throwaway7281 » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 1:39 AM UTC

Just sampling: The last billionaire I looked up was a north american mining guy. He owns mines, in Africa. Can you guess which country? Yes exactly, the one that prospers much more than the others.

Basically, the "work" has to come from somewhere. The reason FB is rich is because 2+B people choose to work for free. The reason Google is rich is because they do not have to create the content (in fact, "content creators" are pushed to the back seat). The reason Amazon is rich is because you can use cheap labor and sprinkle tech-efficiency on it. The reason all gig-companies are rich is because they can circumvent many "worker-rights". The reason Microsoft is rich is because they give a damn about compatibility and competition (the will extinguish probably even the classic "open source", given enough time).

Some hedge funds are rich, because they buy the order-flow data of poor people playing with their money - maybe they use it against them, maybe not.

I cannot see non-exploitation in any of these. Another grandiosely self-serving essay by a rich man, who thinks he has figured out how the world works.

If he really had, he would probably want to change it. For the better - which is probably much harder then just doing more of the same.

Edit: I sometimes think people who write these things are painfully aware of the kind of illusion they create and choose to create it nevertheless. Mundus vult decipi.

Re: Billionaires Build

#597

Post by atq2119 » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 1:40 AM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #228

chillwaves wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither category should exist. The fact billionaires exist is an indictment against our system and how we allocate resources.

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

Moving the assets above the line to a social wealth fund whose profits will be paid out equally to all residents of the country. Such funds already exist in several countries (and US states), no reason why we can't get creative about how to grow them.

Re: Billionaires Build

#598

Post by slumpt_ » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 1:44 AM UTC

krapp wrote: post #517

refurb wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Amazon hired warehouse workers at $25/hr would it still be making massive profits? Amazon has 1.3M employees in the US and $11B in profit globally . If you increase the wages at the bottom that pushes everyone up (why would a manager of the warehouse workers make less than the people they manage?). So if you divide up that $11B in global profit across all 1.3M US workers, you get $8,700 per worker or maybe $500 ex…

Give the warehouse workers a raise, cut the salaries of the managers and techs making six figures. Problem solved.

I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. This is entirely reasonable.

Sensitive tech workers?

Re: Billionaires Build

#599

Post by sjm » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 1:45 AM UTC

Aunche wrote: post #440

sjm wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A government that makes some "mistakes" is far better than the alternative. Just ask the town a bunch of libertarians took over. [0] 0: https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-int...

I'm saying that it's reasonable to expect a significant fraction of the wealth that you created, which is true in every developed country. I'm not advocating for libertarianism.

So do you really believe any single person is so "brilliant" (or whatever adjective you want to use) to have truly created or earned billions of dollars through their own brilliance alone? Do you think Jeff Bezos is 1,310,000x more deserving of his wealth than the average American household?

IMO it's not reasonable at all past a certain point to continue to amass this kind of wealth that is a by-product of a broken system driven by exploitation, a system in this stage clearly set up for the rich to get richer while those struggling remain stagnant at best.

Re: Billionaires Build

#600

Post by hnracer » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 1:45 AM UTC

ajmadesc wrote: post #433

hnracer wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Familial wealth disperses and collapses pretty quickly, eventually being split up between 2 to the n heirs thereabouts. Irrespective, the wealth is the property of an individual who earned that wealth through voluntary exchange. If they want to give it all to their kids, to a charitable cause, or just destroy it, that should be their right as owners of that property, it is not just for the state to steal that propert…

Good faith line of questioning. Promise. 1. Who do you think decides what rights an individual has in a society, and on what grounds do they hold that right? 2. Why grant property rights

1. As for what decides the individual's rights in a society, this is a pretty complicated question but the answer is going to be rooted in evolutionary psychology, cultural evolution and memetic evolution.

On what grounds do they hold that right? I'm not religious so I can't appeal to an ultimate moral authority. See (2).

2. If you grant and enforce property rights you stake the individual, and the overall outcome is a more prosperous world. Removing property rights is a good way to collective starvation, it's been tried before. So it's moral in the sense that enforcing property rights minimises human suffering through the above mechanism.