Billionaires Build • Hacker News Board

Re: Billionaires Build

#761

Post by kortilla » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 6:59 AM UTC

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…

> If someone uses their power to divert money into their own pockets away from people who need it more than they do, they're exploiting others

So when the dinner bill comes and you are given the power to choose how much to tip a waiter/waitress, do you exploit them by not giving them all of the money you can afford?

When shopping for a car, do you look for the dealer with the highest markup knowing how tough care salesman have it and pay asking price?

Re: Billionaires Build

#762

Post by known » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 7:04 AM UTC

Bitter truth by PG :)

Indian IT industry is an exemplar;

TCS/Infosys/Wipro/HCL make money by selling software engineers, not software to clients in US/EU;

https://archive.vn/ecCtN Rishi Sunak's wife is richer than the Queen

They're running https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_scheme with tacit support from Law makers :(

Re: Billionaires Build

#763

Post by ajmurmann » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 7:05 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…

I believe that it's healthy to have two philosophies. One that I apply to society and public policy and another one for myself.

I want society to take care of the weakest. I don't want anyone to ever end up without a basic roof over their head and food on their plate, regardless how bag their decisions are. I want children to have the opportunity to advice greatness, even if they come from poverty, or worse, their parents suck.

At the same time, fort myself, I don't want to ever have to use any services offered to people in need. I want to give know to society than I give.

I think it's necessary for us to have this split view for a healthy society.

Further, personal push for success relies on grit and smarts. Also luck, but it only makes sense to think about that to the extent you can influence it.

Public policy on three other hand is about statistics and we cannot ask for better people.

Re: Billionaires Build

#764

Post by pvorb » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 7:08 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #736

dang wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a point about the general population, not founders, who form a pretty different (and pretty small) subset. The other thing I'd be cautious about here is that the curve you describe basically always happens. Shit was always cooler when it was newer and we were there before everyone else, etc.; people say this about everything. I'm not sure how to correct for this, but it's a strong skew.

Both your points are true. But for a startup to be successful, it needs to have customers, or at least users. The available market for a company is the dollar-weighted set of people who think that it's cool (or at least necessary). Young people caring a whole lot about climate change or racial justice speaks directly to what potential users are looking for, just like kids throwing sheep at each other and hitting the…

That only points out how Google is no longer a startup and wouldn't be successful if it started today.

Re: Billionaires Build

#765

Post by kortilla » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 7:10 AM UTC

PhineasRex wrote: post #685

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…

Or that business with a million employees could just return a greater share of the wealth to the employees instead of the owners, thereby avoiding triggering the marginal tax

“Return”? The employees never had it in the first place. Amazon runs on razor thin margins on the retail side so I pay $50 for a keyboard that cost them $45 wholesale + $1 to store + $3 ship + $0.20 labor for the 10 seconds employees interact with it. That 80 cents of profit goes into the business and is used to expand.

Jeff Bezos is rich because his ownership stake (stock shares) are worth a lot of money on the stock market. He did not get paid out profits (amazon doesn’t pay dividends). There is nothing here than even makes sense to ‘return’ to the employees.

Re: Billionaires Build

#766

Post by pm90 » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 7:13 AM UTC

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!

Slavery was leveraging the forced labor of other humans. Leverage is not always "wonderful".

Re: Billionaires Build

#767

Post by slumpt_ » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 7:15 AM UTC

tossmeout wrote: post #667

slumpt_ wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes snarky dismissals are appropriate. Trying to hold everything to some academic standard of discourse is implausible when we have deliberate bad actors pushing disingenuous arguments that - by this standard - must be repetitively exhaustively deconstructed time and time again. Expecting that is how you convince a large subset of folks to never bother with said deconstruction, and ultimately let bad ideas roam…

What's disingenuous is assuming people who disagree with you (and who present supporting arguments) are knowingly bad actors. Actually, they're much more likely to be normal people with sincere beliefs. And we all know that nobody is going to "go do their own research" because you snarkily disagreed with them. People do research when you make it easy for them to do, not when you drive-by insult them with an unreasona…

Never suggested everyone who posts shitty arguments is doing so disingenuously. Just suggesting there are many who do.

Re: Billionaires Build

#768

Post by kortilla » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 7:17 AM UTC

mactrey wrote: post #411

winston_smith wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you have to be able to capture the difference between the value of someone else’s work and what you pay them to do it This is the textbook definition for how wealth is created, and it's exactly what's supposed to happen in every transaction in the marketplace. You buy an apple for $1 and it brings you $1.10 in value. You have captured the difference between its value to you and its value to the seller, and the ten…

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,…

> and as OP says, that gap at scale is what makes a billionaire.

But that’s a dumb generalization. Microsoft wasn’t paying low wages and software people easily found jobs elsewhere but it still made Gates a billionaire.

Warren Buffet gave cash to companies he thought were undervalued and on hard times in exchange for ownership stakes. This worked out more frequently than not and made him wealthy without exploiting any labor (many of these companies paid/pay solid middle class wages).

The Google founders are billionaires and their company has nothing to do with paying for cheap labor and up selling it.

Exploiting labor prices isn’t a business model that pays well enough by itself. In other words, companies that produce billionaires have to be providing more than just labor at a higher price than they paid for it.

Re: Billionaires Build

#769

Post by strogonoff » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 7:18 AM UTC

kgog wrote: post #322

strogonoff wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A piece of writing everyone finds level-headed and making total sense is likely not worth reading as it's merely restating what’s on everyone’s mind. Your comment shows this article at least isn’t that (thus being the cue for me personally). You can’t write something really good without pissing at least some people off.

"haters gonna hate" is what egomaniacs who have no respect for others say when they know they are in the wrong but are too stubborn to accept their own shortcomings.

As does anyone contributing any new idea ever (apart from purely technical/scientific advancements).

Re: Billionaires Build

#770

Post by slumpt_ » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 7:18 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #633

slumpt_ wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes snarky dismissals are appropriate. Trying to hold everything to some academic standard of discourse is implausible when we have deliberate bad actors pushing disingenuous arguments that - by this standard - must be repetitively exhaustively deconstructed time and time again. Expecting that is how you convince a large subset of folks to never bother with said deconstruction, and ultimately let bad ideas roam…

Actually snark works quite a bit better in academic discourse, where the communities are smaller and more cohesive. It doesn't work well in large, open internet forums like this one, where it basically just triggers an avalanche of tedious and ever-worse behavior. I'm not making a moral point—rather an empirical one about this particular type of internet environment. Here's a related explanation from a few weeks ago…

It is unfortunate flagging censors the posts. Was interested to get more context in the thread and instead it’s hidden entirely.

Regarding the rest, I’m happy to simply disagree with you having observed this in practice in other communities. It’s not black and white.