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Billionaires Build

paulgraham.com

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Re: Billionaires Build

#651

Post by bumby »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #489
cactus2093 wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your explanation I see the feedback loop that makes it easier for you and your children to stay out of poverty if you're already successful. I don't see a feedback loop that makes it hard to escape poverty. Why did the high school dropouts drop out in the first place, and why does that make their kid more likely to drop out? Ideally their kid should still have access to public school education, with all the tools…

> I don't see a feedback loop that makes it hard to escape poverty Really? You’re 16 years old, you’ve a high IQ and a passion for programming. Your parents are alcoholics. You don’t have nice clothes. You don’t have perfect manners because it’s just not the world you live in. How do you get to the university admissions interview in the next town? How will you compete against the mannerly, well turned out student wit…

Bill Gates has openly admitted how much his environment helped. Being genetically gifted as he is is only part of the equation. He also grew up in an affluent enough area to have early to computers as well as the time and supportive environment to pursue it. I wonder if people who claim environment doesnt matter have spent any appreciable time in poor neighborhoods.

The absolute best will usually find their way out. I think a society should optimize for beyond those who are just in the vanishing tail of the curve

Re: Billionaires Build

#652

Post by mightybyte »

pradn wrote: post #414
mightybyte wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only way to become a billionaire is by exploiting people Here's a slightly different take on this idea: The only way to become a billionaire is to use leverage. I think this is a much more defensible argument. You can't become a billionaire by yourself. You have to have some mechanism of leverage to magnify your impact. Hiring employees is a form of leverage. Using a computer is a form of leverage. Putting your…

You are turning a moral judgement ("exploiting") to a more mechanical expression ("using leverage"). For critics of billionaires, the moral judgement is the whole point. Whether the "billionaire problem" belongs in the moral realm or in the dispassionate realm of math or economics is an ideological choice.

Another interesting perspective...

The term "using leverage" is often used in a creditor / debtor relationship. But it's funny how the term works because in that setting "using leverage" is usually associated with the debtor being the exploited one in the relationship.

More generally, in a given exploitive relationship it's not always obvious who is exploiting who.

Re: Billionaires Build

#653

Post by buzzerbetrayed »

8note wrote: post #496
buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You get paid as long as you keep working, which is what the contract is. If you had to keep working whether or not the company can pay you, that would obviously be a lot riskier. But that isn’t how things work. If the company goes under you go get a new job, and sign another contract.

Re: Billionaires Build

#654

Post by namelosw »

drewrv wrote: post #235

This essay uses a weak straw-man: the only way to become a billionaire is by exploiting people I think the "principle of charity" or "steel-man" criticism of billionaires isn't that every single billionaire is directly exploiting people. It would be closer to something like this: The problem is that our society has feedback loops that make it hard to escape poverty, and feedback loops that let the wealthy amass more…

> the only way to become a billionaire is by exploiting people

I don't if it is the only way to become a billionaire. But the bigger problem is every billionaire is exploiting people.

Imagine you are one of the wealthiest guys in the world. You can either:

- Hire the best financial guys to take care of your equities (although they are the best they look cheap to you).

- Hold a share of the equity of every business you can find in the world.

Either way, if the world is growing, you earn money by lying on the bed all day long. And then you can use the money exchange a large amount of people's labor for your own pleasure, instead of building costly infrastructures for your country for very small returns.

Even if the world is going through a recession, other people would more desperate than you - you would lose part of your money, but people's life would crash, small companies would go broke, most of the entities have to do sub-optimal choices, and you don't have to. Then you can do the purchase and hold even more equities of the world.

In a word, holding extreme large number of equities is exploiting people because they can barely do nothing and enjoy people's labor without any risks.

Re: Billionaires Build

#655

Post by arrosenberg »

imgabe wrote: post #629
arrosenberg wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The general structure is that all businesses rely on the government to maintain the courts and enforce contracts, and they are all built upon public commons. Taxation is not theft, pay your share. Entrepreneurialism is at an all-time low in this low-tax, finance-happy environment, so I don't see how you can conclude that low taxes are good for creativity. It seems like it's been pretty good for concentration - low ta…

I never said taxation was theft or that taxes shouldn't exist. I said that private ownership of property was good for creativity, this is independent of taxation. You can pay taxes and still own things. Indeed, we do. You seem to be proposing that taxation is an unalloyed good and that more taxation is always better - that all problems are the result of insufficient taxation. Do you have any actual plan for how to sp…

That seems like a straw man of my position. Suggesting that we tax the wealth of the richest person in the country is not a radical idea, nor is it equivalent to "taxation is an unalloyed good". Likewise, nothing I said conflicts with the idea that private ownership of property is good, generally. Just that inequality is bad, and taxation is a primary way to address it. If you don't think taxation is theft, then it's just negotiating the number, and I don't understand what point you are trying to make other than "government bad".

> Do you have any actual plan for how to spend all this money you propose to collect in taxes, or do you just want to throw more money at the people who are currently doing a bad job with the money they already have?

Sure, but I'm not running for office, because "small government conservatives" and their presumptions make it absolutely miserable for anyone who would do a good job of it. You can burn the money in a furnace for all I care, as long as the ratio between the richest and poorest goes down substantially.

Re: Billionaires Build

#656

Post by kevas »

amself wrote: post #428
jacksnipe wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure you've only explained why an upper-middle class upbringing makes you much more suited to success than a lower class one. If you have that upbringing, then you're right, nothing is stopping you from doing all of this. But if you don't, well, what are you supposed to do? Your relationship to work is what it is because you can't afford to lose your job, and you were raised in an environment where others…

Thank you for saying this. As a high-schooler from a lower middle-class family in Greece, I feel this pain every single day. It's therapeutic to see it is not as personal as it feels. I know my generation has free access to almost all of human knowledge online, I know hard work and study can pull me out of this hell. I start every day hoping to do just that, but my accomplishments remain depressingly few regardless.…

Dude... don’t worry about the past as it’s the past. Use the past to learn what you did right and what you did wrong.

I’m glad that you know you have limitless resources (libgen is your friend).

If i may make a suggestion, change the way you talk. Instead of saying, “i hope” say “I am” be more definitive about your statements and after awhile, you’ll notice a change in your thoughts.

Here’s my favorite saying, “you’re not going to change until the pain of change is less than the pain of staying the same.”

I did a 6 year stent at community college and then failed out at uni. I had a menial until 27 or 28 years old. I was a failure at life at this point. I decided to read the entire Learning Python book (>1200 pages) because I’m not a smart man, but I thought that by reading that stupid thing, I’d learn something at least (should have picked a few other books looking back). While reading that book and having the menial job, I started having these ideas... hmm... I could automate this for this department or I could do this... i could do that... blah blah... that led me to another role at that company. I kept learning that programming thing and then somehow got a job at a better company, making decent money. Kept studying and two years later, I finally a software engineer that’s leading initiatives at the company I’m at.

My full advice:

- Don’t be scared to ask questions

- Ask more questions

- Learn whatever interests you. You’ll wonder, but at some point down the road, something will click. Could be a few months from now or a few years, but just keep learning whatever tickles your fancy.

- Don’t be scared to admit you don’t know something, but just make sure that you know it the next time you see the person.

- Be curious

- Workout. This is one of the most important things. How can one feel good about oneself if they don’t take care of their body. I’m not saying gotta have the best body or diet, but just get some workout in—sports, gym, classes, yoga, hiking, something.

I got my best break of my life, which lead to everything good I have accomplished today at the gym. I overheard a conversation someone was having with a person I knew at the gym and I found it interesting. I asked for an introduction and that was that.

Don’t be scared to reach out. Go to events and meet new people. Talk to random people who you think would be interesting; talk to people who are working on interesting stuff at coffee shops, etc...

You’ll be fine if you have passion.

Re: Billionaires Build

#657

Post by jdbernard »

BurningFrog wrote: post #580
mightybyte wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using a generalization of the mechanics definition of "leverage" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lever ). A mechanism by which a small input can result in a larger output.

OK. By that definition leverage is a wonderful thing everyone should use!

No, the lever is amoral, the way it is wielded is the result of moral choice. Using debt as leverage enables people to own their own homes. Using technology as leverage enables goods and evils: widespread communication, widespread surveillance, wealth inequality (being discussed here).

Re: Billionaires Build

#658

Post by jskajakzkjx »

wyre wrote: post #637
jskajakzkjx wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who’s going to invest the capital and do the work to run a company that develops technology (eg. hiring the tens of thousands of people required to fabricate 5 nm chips and build cell phones) if there is no way to become a billionaire off of it? I figure the people who are capable of that kind of stuff would put all their efforts toward overthrowing the system instead if that’s what the rules were.

I thought the reason for the advancement for science and technology was for the betterment of humankind and not dreams of becoming a billionaire.

I buy it for basic research that a few people in a lab can do, but it seems hard to coordinate the efforts of tens of thousands of people that way. You need ruthless prioritization of different initiatives and performance incentives for management and other stuff that public servants and academics aren’t that big on.

Re: Billionaires Build

#659

Post by centimeter »

samcal wrote: post #497
centimeter wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Non-heritable effects (including epigenetic) are estimated to contribute to less than 30% of population intelligence variance.

Re: Billionaires Build

#660

Post by mactrey »

winston_smith wrote: post #554
mactrey wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This ignores any effects of market power. Amazon is not bargaining with its workers in the way that you are bargaining with Alice for her apple - a lot of these workers have very few other options to sell their labor. And sitting at home and not working is a false choice in today's America. That inequality in pricing power helps maintain the gap between wages and marginal revenue production of labor - and as OP says,…

OP's argument was that capturing value itself is bad. But I suspect you don't check to see if your apple sellers have plenty of other potential buyers before buying apples. If nobody else is buying, then the seller lowers the price until the market clears, and you get a bargain. Lucky you.

That's true, I generally don't care about the welfare of apple sellers, and I'll take a deal when I see one.

But, and I hate to stretch this analogy to its breaking point, it's more like the overwhelming majority of Americans are apple sellers (read: wage laborers) and they have no way to achieve basic human rights like food, shelter, and baseline medical care without selling their apples. And they can only sell to one buyer at a time as part of an apple contract (employment contract) and if that buyer decides to stop buying from them ("restructuring"), which the buyer may do at any time (right-to-work laws), our apple seller has to go looking for another buyer (job search) which can take months all while their savings dwindle...

So you can see why some people might think this is not the optimal way to structure a society. Or to just put the analogy in its coffin, they might see this situation as more complicated than just a few apple-buyers getting a bargain.

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