What I find really striking.
(1) The outcome being measured as success is building wealth quickly. I think we should measure success instead of building business of lasting quality and value. I think if I lived in a country where everyone was trying to get on the forbes 100 list life would be deeply depressing and nothing innovative would really be done. Maybe its more that people who build valuable businesses and products are making money much quickly (building a product a good reason to start business, trying to get onto top 100 terrible reason to chase business).
(2) The costs of business have dropped, but also the ability to enter and capture market share quickly has also made it easier for companies to grow fast (in pure tech as opposed to something like a cleantech/climate tech space).
How People Get Rich Now
761–770 of 941 posts
Re: How People Get Rich Now
#762Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because you aren’t surrounded by peers. Some of us have lived in other areas and don’t want to go back for good reasons. People in other areas have jobs. People in SV have careers. Many more reasons to list. Average education among my peers is obscenely high (a bachelors is seen as being undereducated - masters is average with PhD being very common). The area isn’t that bad except for COL. Once you’re rich, it isn’t…
There are some companies on the east coast that want mostly PhDs. I have a Masters, but that's really nothing. I feel like degrees don't really mean much. They just show you put in your time (and money) and have at least half a brain. I've also seen highly educated people who aren't very good at independent thought. "People in other areas have jobs. People in SV have careers." This seems a little over generalized and…
It's a general sentiment.
People here keep nitpicking about the generality of statements I'm making. They're not getting the general vibe and the general vibe is the point. Just because you can cherrypick some data that says there are people with careers or people with PhDs in some other area does not mean that it is like SV. Surely you understand that?
Who the fuck would move here when homes are $2-3m? People who are dedicated. That's the difference. People talk about leaving the bay area to slow down or give up careers. They don't talk about leaving the bay area to start the next big thing. (Regardless of all the BS you see about X cheap-ass company moving to Y city)
Re: How People Get Rich Now
#763Earlier quoted context omitted.
For reference, the people mentioned are #1 Jeff Bezos, #7 Larry Ellison, #9 Sergey Brin, #13 Mukesh Ambani, and #18 Zhong Shanshan. And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhong_Shanshan "He dropped out of elementary school during the Cultural Revolution and found work in construction." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xu_Jiayin "Xu Jiayin was born to a rural family in Jutaigang Village, ... His father is a retired soldier wh…
Mukesh Ambani's dad was NOT lower quintile by any standard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhirubhai_Ambani
The comment that started this thread discussed people who
> started life in the bottom quintile
At the time of Mukesh Ambani's birth, his father was in Aden colony (present-day Yemen). A year later, he supposedly left:
> The rise of Ambani began in 1958 when he gave up his clerical job in Aden and moved back to Mumbai with fifty thousand rupees in his pocket. https://knappily.com/onthisday/dhirubhai-ambani-death-legacy...
If the claim is to be believed, then 50000 rupees of wealth is probably the lowest quintile in the United States (at the time).
Of course, Dhirubhai Ambani is probably a better example himself, but he is dead.
Re: How People Get Rich Now
#764Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, $200k isn't enough. You won't get the house. I know because I've applied. No landlord is renting out homes to single income in the peninsula at $200k/yr. $400k at FAANG - yes (they're all afraid of people losing their jobs at startups and lots of FAANG out there to rent them homes up). But, again, we're talking about "very comfortable" - not comfortable. Not okay. Not "I managed". Very comfortable - something…
> Sorry, $200k isn't enough. You won't get the house. I know because I've applied. No landlord is renting out homes to single income in the peninsula at $200k/yr. Yes they are. I know people who've gotten them. You can find a 3br/2bath single family home with a garage, for less than 5K/mo in SF, Redwood City, Palo Alto, and tons in Sunnyvale and Mountain View. > I can literally go out tomorrow and buy a 911 but CANNO…
In Palo Alto? Bullshit. Unless it's a 1000sqft POS, there is no way you're finding a home in PA for $5000/month that is 3bed/2bath with a garage. Prove it.
Show me the listings! https://sfbay.craigslist.org/d/apartments-housing-for-rent/s...
You're all ignoring the general sentiment anyway. Not like it matters. Cherrypick all you want. Beating a dead horse. People are so dumb here about COL - acting as if $200k is truly enough to "very comfortably" live here. Ask any engineer in SV if they want to just stay at $200k/yr household income (and they don't own a home and they don't have wealth) for the rest of their life and they'll say no.
Re: How People Get Rich Now
#765Earlier quoted context omitted.
This argument is fucking ludicrous. Money is money. If the business used to have it and now the CEO has it then the business gave it to him. There's no class of equity that wasn't originally created and owned by the business so that's where the money comes from. And lest there be any confusion, all the companies we're talking about do massive stock buy backs so it's not even hypothetical, they spend billions of dolla…
It is not "fucking ludicrous". Both stock comp and cash comp are the same from the shareholders view. They are not the same from the employees view. A higher cash comp for CEOs may well result in lower employee pay, a higher stock comp will not.
> A higher cash comp for CEOs may well result in lower employee pay, a higher stock comp will not.
Why? The whole point of publicly traded stock is that it's, like traded, in public. That means it's freely exchanged for cash in a matter of seconds.
If the company can use it to compensate one person it can use it to compensate another person.
What's your theory here, is it that the company has a resource that can generate compensation without any consequence to the company's finances, but it's only possible to give that compensation to certain people?
Re: How People Get Rich Now
#766Earlier quoted context omitted.
A sharper metric: it tends to do with whoever is responsible for the success of the company at the least cost to shareholders. Imagine a company starting out. If they need you to join or they fail, and they can get you for 1% of the company, that founder is rewarded incredibly for securing you with very minor cost to the company, making them rich and you not, even if you are responsible for the success of the company…
The problem with this position is its naivety. Are you going to say with a straight face that all potential founders are equally likely to be funded by investors purely on their probability of success, and not via false signals and stereotyping if not straight up bigotry? That there aren't credentials that can be effectively bought to gain access to that? Markets are just markets, not oracles of unbiased merit. Makin…
I was making the opposite point actually: markets ARENT moral, and what they support isn’t moral. It isn’t necessarily immoral either. They’re just systems of consensual transactions where everyone collectively decides value. The parent comment was making the point that markets should be moral, but are currently immoral. My stance is that they have nothing to do with morality.
They certainly shouldn’t be a religion, but they aren’t just “useful tools”. Not infringing on people’s freedom to make consensual decisions should be the default, not some “tool” we “allow” because it’s “useful”.
This isn’t about worshipping capitalism or markets, this about the fact that preserving individual freedom necessarily results in free markets. The core ideal is individual freedom - which is moral - free markets are just the byproduct.
Re: How People Get Rich Now
#767Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apologies for some hastily chosen examples. I think the point still stands if you consider the following companies: WeWork, Lyft, Snapchat, Pinterest, Dropbox, Slack, Casper, Lime, Peloton, Beyond Meat, Wayfair, Zillow. More generally speaking, take a look at Goldman Sachs' Non-Profitable Technology Index: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EsRVCiMXIAE7xlA.png
Are the fake-meat companies tech companies? I thought they are more like contract manufacturers, brewers, or other industrial foodstuffs. No doubts on the access to cheap debt, though.
There's a ton of tech behind Beyond Meat. Their core science is based on research from an RNA professor at Stanford. That proteomics research is the reason their burger tastes so much better than previous generation veggie burgers.
Re: How People Get Rich Now
#768Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not just dishonest -- it's gross. Paul needs to spend less time on yachts. Being a mouthpiece to try to find a morality in increasing income inequality, when so many are suffering, more each year, is simply vile.
> You would think, after having been on the side of labor in its fight with capital for almost two centuries, that the far left would be happy that labor has finally prevailed. But none of them seem to be. You can almost hear them saying "No, no, not that way." This line is particularly disgusting. Labor has not prevailed. Labor in fact has been crushed by deregulation, union busting, automation, and most importantly…
PG is probably not delusional. To make such a claim without proper evidence is probably suggesting you may be having an emotion response to what he wrote. Understood. Not Cool to call people 'delusional' with paltry evidence.
I know PG only a little, but I think his intention was to stir the pot on this old debate.
But yes, for the lower 70% that have as much wealth as the top 10% (and it takes about $ 95K net worth to be in that top 10%) it would be difficult to make a case that 'labor has prevailed over capital'. I would enjoy hearing more about PG's argument to support this claim.
What I see is the surplus is now going mostly to the very top -- which appears to be the point PG is making!
Re: How People Get Rich Now
#769Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but you can generally buy things with as low as 3.5% down no way. It is so competitive here that buyers are inundated with all cash offers.
https://accept.inc/ converts your mortgage approval into an all-cash offer. (Edit: looks like that's only for Colorado) The craziness going on right now is due to several factors: (1) all time low supply due to pandemic restrictions/fears; (2) Work from home transforming housing values (single family homes a lot more appealing if you only work from the office occasionally); (3) Millennials aging into the housing mark…
uh ok. I guess i'll be renting forever :D. But hey govt says inflation is low, so all good.
Re: How People Get Rich Now
#770Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sorry, $200k isn't enough. You won't get the house. I know because I've applied. No landlord is renting out homes to single income in the peninsula at $200k/yr. Yes they are. I know people who've gotten them. You can find a 3br/2bath single family home with a garage, for less than 5K/mo in SF, Redwood City, Palo Alto, and tons in Sunnyvale and Mountain View. > I can literally go out tomorrow and buy a 911 but CANNO…
In Palo Alto? Bullshit. Unless it's a 1000sqft POS, there is no way you're finding a home in PA for $5000/month that is 3bed/2bath with a garage. Prove it. Show me the listings! https://sfbay.craigslist.org/d/apartments-housing-for-rent/s... You're all ignoring the general sentiment anyway. Not like it matters. Cherrypick all you want. Beating a dead horse. People are so dumb here about COL - acting as if $200k is tr…
> Ask any engineer in SV if they want to just stay at $200k/yr household income (and they don't own a home and they don't have wealth) for the rest of their life and they'll say no.
Yes, because people want to be more than simply comfortable.