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Billionaires Build

paulgraham.com

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Re: Billionaires Build

#741

Post by chii »

bccdee wrote: post #714
UK-Al05 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is basically the labour theory of value and ignores the value of capital and organisation. Some guy delivering stuff in a garage is not going to be nowhere near as productive as an Amazon worker. The crucial bit that people miss is that it is capital, goodwill and organisation allows employees to generate so much money in the first place. Basically the sum is greater than its parts. If you want to know where pro…

That analysis is not inherently dependent on the labour theory of value. You can frame it that way, but value need not come into it at all. Business owners are capital owners; they have power which arises from the fact that they own a business. They can offer jobs, which everyone needs, but no individual employee is necessary to them. It's a buyer's market, and as a result, the business owner has a lot more power to…

Nothing is stopping anyone from starting a competing business, and offering a better deal to the workers.

There's no objective way to say how much "work" is worth - only subjective. This subjective measure is given by the market rate. And in a functioning free market, this should give you consensus as to what some "work" is worth.

> the one to found the country ... people are so unwilling to apply the same analysis to corporate hierarchy.

to have found the country, he could've asked to be a dictator. The problem is that the founding is based on the principle of equality (at least at the time, of men...). So if he chose to turn around and take that equality away, everyone would just reject his founding. People in the country are attracted to the idea of equality, not to the guy named Washington.

However, a business does not start on the same premise - that of equality and rights (for all employees). The business started by the business owner is based on the premise of pay for work. That's as far as the relationship goes.

Anyone (in the USA) can start a business on a different principle - no one will stop you other than natural forces like competitiveness! And i think some businesses do that - a family business for example, which shares the work, and shares all the profits between them (and don't hire employees).

Re: Billionaires Build

#742

Post by quantified »

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…

Nothing incompatible about exploiting and building in one person or coterie.

It would be great if Y Combinator filters well to emphasize non-exploiting billionaires, but that’s certainly less that all billionaires.

Re: Billionaires Build

#744

Post by pvorb »

seibelj wrote: post #730
jessaustin wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Amazon was sort of magic in a scary way twenty years ago, but as you say, lots of people had a similar impression. What's interesting are the people who don't see the threat even today .

What is the threat? No one makes me use any of their services or buy any of their products. But I have and will continue to do so because Amazon is so obviously superior to the competition. Recently I have begun ordering from Walmart. Why? They have upped their ecommerce game. Just as Sears was once dominant and even sold houses via catalog, and no one in 1930 could have imagined Sears going bust, no one in 2020 can…

So not only Bezoz is exploiting people. You are, too.

Re: Billionaires Build

#745

Post by imgabe »

arrosenberg wrote: post #728
imgabe wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's another assumption, I'm concerned about both. Not an assumption at all. From your response to my other comment: "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." I'm really trying, and I can't find any other way to interpret that than your primary, if not only concern, is just making rich people poorer. > You still haven't answ…

I was exaggerating to make a point on a different comment you made about "government bad". I forgot I was on the internet for a second and couldn't use rhetoric. Rest assured, if you want to take the money from Bezos and invest it in Medicare for All and expanding fiber internet to rural Appalachia, I am 110% onboard. > You still haven't explained exactly how you would make this happen. Forced stock sales? Government…

> Assume that Congress can edit a database of every citizens' net worth by legislative fiat. Answer the question about how lessening economic inequality is going to negatively impact the average American.

> I'm diagnosing the problem, and asking what you think would be the negative impact if we simply took away 73% of the wealth each billionaire holds, which you won't answer, because you know the answer is "nothing bad".

Ok, in a hypothetical fantasy land where the government has a magic database and they can manually edit anyone's net worth at will and it is further specifically stipulated that this causes nothing bad to happen, then yes, I agree nothing bad happens in that scenario.

Back in the real world, such a thing doesn't exist. So if you want to talk about real things that could actually impact the net worth of billionaires you have to consider what other secondary effects they might have. Here's one: stock market crashes. Billionaires lost a lot of wealth in 2008. In your opinion, was this a generally positive event for the rest of the country or not? Bezos's net worth could easily drop by 73% on Monday without any government intervention at all, do you think that would help anyone?

To the extent that governments do have the ability to manipulate people's net worth via printing money, this has a long history of disastrous consequences like the Weimar Republic, Zimbabwe, etc. In your hypothetical world where the value of anything can be changed at a whim by a bureaucrat, how would anyone even conduct any business at all? How am I supposed to sell you a bag of potatoes for $5 if tomorrow the government might decide it's "more fair" if my $5 is $0 instead?

> Disagree. I'm proposing a return to a previous status quo that was more broadly equitable.

Dude, literally one paragraph ago you're talking about a magic database that can edit anyone's net worth at will. That is not a status quo that has ever existed anywhere in human history.

Are there possible scenarios in which billionaires have less money and everyone else has more money and everyone is happier and healthier and better off? Sure. Is a wealth tax (the closest thing to a policy that you've mentioned) a path to get to any of them? I think probably not. Is a legislative fiat where the government just flat out declares that someone has less money a realistic thing that could happen that wouldn't be a tremendous overreach and huge magnet for corruption and abuse? I think definitely not.

If you want to theorize about potential policies and what their impacts might be, then cool, I'd love to brainstorm about what things might happen. If you just want to fantasize about "Like..what if rich people had like...less money...and we had like...more?" I mean, I'm not sure where to actually go with that.

Re: Billionaires Build

#746

Post by chii »

naravara wrote: post #680
cactus2093 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You left out a key part in this simplified formula - you pay $X and make $Y from the work, and you do this for N people. If you leave X and Y the same and scale N down to like 50 or 100 employees, you have a good old hard working American business that's creating solid working class jobs. When you scale N up to an almost inconceivably large number (Amazon has over a million employees) you get an owner with an inconce…

> The problem with just taxing it all away to prevent him from being a billionaire is the money is tied to control of the company, so it's equivalent to saying nobody can build a business bigger than some arbitrary limit. Limits are hardly arbitrary. If you control a large enough chunk of economic output that your decisions have distortionary effects on other markets and people it’s not an “arbitrary” standard that t…

So make laws to prevent monopoly, rather than making size/employee count based.

Re: Billionaires Build

#747

Post by pvorb »

0xy wrote: post #692
anon9001 wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody called Zuckerberg or Bezos exploitative when they were coding in dorm rooms and folding boxes on Ikea tables Actually lots of us called them exploitive. It might not change anything, but it's worth noting that a lot of us knew that facebook would grow into the great evil that it is today. It was also obvious that Amazon would eat all retail stores, and it pretty much has.

Amazon's margins: 0-5% Retail margins: 20-80% Amazon is directly helping poor people by cutting out the greedy middlemen between them and essentials.

Haven't checked those numbers, but if that 20-80% paid worker's wages, that was a good thing. Also, Amazon reduces the number of players in the market and reduces the number of jobs virtually everywhere for some hotspots. A free market cannot combat this sort of monopoly.

Re: Billionaires Build

#748

Post by jskajakzkjx »

tshaddox wrote: post #722
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.

Is there no one who would invest capital in order to earn only hundreds of millions of dollars?

What if many billions in capital are needed, and there’s risk too? It’s just not worth getting involved unless you can earn billions.

Re: Billionaires Build

#749

Post by Spooky23 »

alisonkisk wrote: post #487
Spooky23 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the equivalent of a solider claiming they were just following orders. The Doordash people don’t want to steal tips, but the law doesn’t punish them for doing so, and the people getting exploited are drinking lead water anyway.

Door dash didn't steal tips, they supplemented tips until they were pressured to stop.

Commissioned salesmen sometimes work on a draw. A guy delivering Five Guys? Please.

For a W2 worker it’s wage theft. Since these folks are 1099s it’s not protected by law. Either way is gross and unethical.

Re: Billionaires Build

#750

Post by gbh444g »

kevas wrote: post #641
NineStarPoint wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Your comment only talks about their current job and not the jobs that they’ll have in the future if one dedicates themselves to spending time after work and family to learning a new skill that will promote them to another career or position. I completely agree that in roles where you are at the bottom of the totem, you can’t talk back since one is replaceable at that level. However, it’s not about speaking up at that…

Are you sure they have any energy or time left after work?
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