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How to earn a billion dollars

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#791

Post by joquarky »

hammock wrote: post #690
pipes wrote: post #509

The amount of negativity to this is depressing. No one seems to be contradicting anything he's saying here, instead it's just vacuous ideology "extraction" etc etc. Purposely narrow reading. I've got kids, I want people creating start ups they can work in, the alternative is too grim.

Having been on HN for 15+ years I have found it fascinating to witness the fawning and adulation over pg blog posts completely reverse and everyone has turned on him now. It used to be if you criticized anything in his blogs you’d get downvoted to oblivion. Now criticism is the norm. As far as I can tell it’s less a change in pg’s viewpoints (though the topics have evolved, and he has gotten more transparent perhaps)…

The new generation is struggling with self-determinism and individualism.

This should not come as a surprise when they are forced to live with roommates because they can't afford a house or even an apartment to themselves because every cent is being analyzed for optimal extraction from them.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#792

Post by peab »

anbende wrote: post #627
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if -- bear with me here -- it's possible for bright, motivated founders to create startups that your kids can work in, but those founders could be content with merely making a hundred million dollars? Because, and I don't know if you know this so you may have to take it on faith, that is still so much money that said founder and their family and very likely their descendants can live in extreme luxury for the re…

The primary issue with this is the way shares and equity work. Elon Musk is a trillionaire on paper. He pays himself famously little. That net worth is, under our current system, tightly linked with his interest and control in his various enterprises. He can borrow against it which gets around taxes and that should probably be addressed, but he like the hypothetical fresh billionaire startup founder don’t have that m…

>He can borrow against it which gets around taxes and that should probably be addressed, but he like the hypothetical fresh billionaire startup founder don’t have that money. And the mega rich on paper can’t access more than a small percentage of that money without reducing their control of the company they built or are building.

Yes, this is a good take. I wish more people understood this. Things like sales taxes could address this. Land value tax, with single homestead exemptions are another.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#793

Post by brigandish »

auggierose wrote: post #706

If pg doesn't understand that the way he uses the way "earn" is very different from the way that AOC uses "earn", then I guess he is just not that smart. AOC also doesn't say anything about "moral", etc. You can behave perfectly morally in US society and "earn" a billion dollars. It is just that, no matter what exactly you did, you didn't actually "earn" it. Of course pg is smart enough to understand that there are t…

> AOC also doesn't say anything about "moral", etc.

She says you can't earn it and then gives several examples in a row of immoral and/or rentier economic practices. At no point does she give any example that is what most people would call moral behaviour. She does not give the example pg gives, of simply working hard for it. The implication is that it is impossible to earn that level of wealth morally.

Earn is already defined in the dictionary in both ways perfectly well, and she is using the sense of deserved. pg clearly knows she's using it that way, and his argument is:

1. You can make a billion dollars

2. You can do it by making something people want

That deals with both senses of earn because none of AOC's examples apply and he adds that:

> The reason her startup was growing so fast was that she and her cofounder had been working their asses off to make their users happy

How is that immoral? How is that unearned? If you think it's unearned then you've failed to understand the maths he elucidates in the article, or you've taken a position that earning large amounts of money by any means is immoral (or, like AOC, wish to present the straw man that it's only possible through immoral means).

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#794

Post by peab »

PowerElectronix wrote: post #637

It's clear to me that in order to get a billion, you have to swidle a lot of people out of their fair share of the billion. As soon as the person that has "The Idea" keeps their 60% stake of the company while the army of minions are working their assess off to get that idea to a billion dollar valuations are given crumbs or no stake at all, you know who is swindling who.

incredible to see this opinion on hacker news.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#795

Post by calf »

spprashant wrote: post #779
aabajian wrote: post #749

How can someone so successful be so naïve? The statement, "impossible to earn a billion dollars," is not meant to be taken literally. It is used to underscore the fact that founders (and early investors) are paid ridiculously disproportionately to their employees. There is no labor that a single person can do (without the help of their employees, family, friends, network) that justifies earning $1B.

He is just being willfully obtuse to make a point. This has to be one of his weaker essays. He is trying to "gotcha" AOC by talking math instead of debating the larger point. The kind of thing he has himself argued against in the past.

Good luck someone trying to gotcha AOC, I look forward to hearing her reply, with great relish.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#796

Post by roenxi »

roughly wrote: post #713
hammock wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been on HN for 15+ years I have found it fascinating to witness the fawning and adulation over pg blog posts completely reverse and everyone has turned on him now. It used to be if you criticized anything in his blogs you’d get downvoted to oblivion. Now criticism is the norm. As far as I can tell it’s less a change in pg’s viewpoints (though the topics have evolved, and he has gotten more transparent perhaps)…

If you met anyone, anyone at all, who’s views on the world hadn’t changed in the last 15 years - and I don’t mean this last 15 years, I mean any 15 year period - what would you think of them?

That isn't a very interesting question. If someone thought that murdering innocents was a bad idea 15 years ago and still thinks it today, gold star. If they think murdering is OK as long as you get away with it, then the length of time they've held that view really doesn't influence how dangerous they are. The nature of the view matters, not how long it is held.

It is quite possible for someone to have thought about their views before they formed them and maintain stable opinions over 15 years because they are aligned with objective reality. That is good. Then there is the opposite where they've got ridiculous views that don't make sense and they stick with them despite all evidence out of stubbornness. That's bad. But again, the exact view and the nature of the evidence is what matters.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#797

Post by joquarky »

peab wrote: post #790
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if -- bear with me here -- it's possible for bright, motivated founders to create startups that your kids can work in, but those founders could be content with merely making a hundred million dollars? Because, and I don't know if you know this so you may have to take it on faith, that is still so much money that said founder and their family and very likely their descendants can live in extreme luxury for the re…

I don't understand why people argue for a limit on wealth - the line of reasoning, when reasoned out, concludes with a majority of people having the exact same amount of wealth. How so? Well, suppose we say, nobody should be a trillionaire - is this an arbitrary number, or is it aimed at the richest person? Clearly, the latter. Now if we carried this out, now there are billionaires remaining. Well, nobody should be a…

Is this not an exemplar of the slippery slope fallacy?

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#798

Post by jason_oster »

astonex wrote: post #692
pclowes wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False, you just make something very valuable. To get people to help you make it you offer to pay them and they willingly exchange their time for that money (or equity if they also think it will be very valuable someday or you have a record of making valuable things in the past) Who is the person swindled here? Who agreed to something and was deceived? Who was stolen from? This process is net wealth creation. The weal…

Ever experienced being the founding engineer and getting 0.5-2.5%? The amount of work done by the founding engineer for the amount of equity they usually get, there is definitely an unfair exchange here. I'd say the founding engineer is 99% of the time better off finding a non-technical co-founder and building something for 50% each.

Yes, and I've also personally been responsible for cutting about a million dollars per year in AWS expenditure, and never saw a single cent in bonus payouts or equity. It just got repurposed in the budget. Same with building launching a product that brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars a month.

Maybe it depends on who you work for, but that was my experience.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#799

Post by bandofthehawk »

protocolture wrote: post #727
johnea wrote: post #719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we can clearly say that capital gains are not earned. Someone who lays bricks, "earns" their income; someone who's wealth increases as a bricklaying company's value increases, does not. In this sense, it is indeed impossible to "earn" a billion dollars...

>Someone who lays bricks, "earns" their income; someone who's wealth increases as a bricklaying company's value increases, does not. How does this follow? Is the management effort in organising a brick laying company not count as work? Does the RND effort of a bricklaying company not count as work? I would have used housing speculation as my example tbh.

The parent post is not talking about managers, they receive a salary and are taxed at regular income rates. It's taking about shareholders. Someone who makes money by owning a stock should be taxed more aggressively that someone earning a salary, IMO.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#800

Post by alvah »

hammock wrote: post #690
pipes wrote: post #509

The amount of negativity to this is depressing. No one seems to be contradicting anything he's saying here, instead it's just vacuous ideology "extraction" etc etc. Purposely narrow reading. I've got kids, I want people creating start ups they can work in, the alternative is too grim.

Having been on HN for 15+ years I have found it fascinating to witness the fawning and adulation over pg blog posts completely reverse and everyone has turned on him now. It used to be if you criticized anything in his blogs you’d get downvoted to oblivion. Now criticism is the norm. As far as I can tell it’s less a change in pg’s viewpoints (though the topics have evolved, and he has gotten more transparent perhaps)…

The HN readership has changed massively in that timeframe, from the earlier Hackers and Painters / libertarian ideology to a much more socialist outlook. I could speculate about the reasons for this, but my theories would probably attract even more downvotes than just pointing out the obvious change in tone will.
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