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How to earn a billion dollars

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#801

Post by bandofthehawk »

pdonis wrote: post #731
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...

> I think we can clearly say that capital gains are not earned. No, we can't say that at all, because most businesses are small businesses, owned by the people who run them, and capital gains are the owners' income from running the business. The money startup founders make, from building something as PG describes, is also capital gains. So again, no, we can't say at all that capital gains are unearned.

> no, we can't say at all that capital gains are unearned.

Yes, we can say this. The IRS classifies capital gains as unearned income.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#802

Post by brigandish »

didibus wrote: post #660
Telemakhos wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say she has ten employees. They all voluntarily agree to work for her: slavery is illegal, so people work for others on a consensual basis. Both the employer and employee negotiated and consented to a salary or wage schedule for that employee. The employer pays the agreed-upon compensation, and the employee receives it. If the company makes an unexpectedly large profit, the employer is not obligated to redistri…

> If the company makes an unexpectedly large profit, the employer is not obligated to redistribute that to her employees in addition to the already agreed-upon and paid compensation. What if they were ? That's the whole point of the conversation lol. It's like you're side stepping the entire discourse. Maybe the company should be obligated to redistribute it to her employees, or to the public, etc.

> That's the whole point of the conversation lol

> It's like you're side stepping the entire discourse.

No, they addressed that with:

> The only thing that would be non-consensual would be obligating the employer to redistribute her profit over and above what had already been negotiated.

Which would be truly immoral.

"lol"

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#803

Post by bandofthehawk »

hluska wrote: post #754
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...

No, we can’t clearly say that. If we could, they wouldn’t be taxable.

Yes, we can clearly say that capital gains is unearned. Unearned income can also be taxable.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#805

Post by bandofthehawk »

yowlingcat wrote: post #747
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...

What happens to the person who earns their income laying bricks when an automatic bricklaying machine is built? Is it unethical for them to earn that income because they are operating the machine? What about the person who finds them people who need bricks laid because the person who lays bricks finds it hard to get good clients who aren't a pain? I really wish people weren't so easily seduced by the labor theory of…

I think you are arguing against a strawman. I've never heard someone suggest that the machine operator shouldn't be paid. Same for the other example who would clearly be doing labor.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#806

Post by TacticalCoder »

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.

> 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.

Which is why life in North Korea is so wonderful: there are no billionaires there.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#807

Post by paulhebert »

pdonis wrote: post #740
ProjectArcturis wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have liked the essay more if PG had actually engaged with AOC's claims. He just does some math and shows that exponential growth is fast. What did the founder have to do to keep growing at 93%? Good solid business fundamentals and identifying a new solution can get you some growth. But eventually you've done all that and the only way to continue growing is extraction -- buy out your competition and raise marg…

> I would have liked the essay more if PG had actually engaged with AOC's claims. I don't see why he should have engaged with them any more than he did, because AOC's claims are BS. He gave them more attention than they deserve. What he should have engaged with is, what happens when a startup stops being a startup ? All three of his poster children for startups, Apple, Google, and Facebook, are now notorious for trea…

Did people become billionaires at those companies before or after they started being enshittified?

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#808

Post by LiquidSky »

InterviewFrog wrote: post #771
oatmeal1 wrote: post #716

PG makes little effort to identify what it means to earn something. Some people consider effort the measure of whether something is earned. Some believe luck should be subtracted from result to get what is earned. Some say you cannot earn the benefits you receive from your genetics. No idea of what it means to earn something is given except for making users happy while "not cheating" (who decides what counts as cheat…

You saved $500k to buy a beautiful home. You don't know how to build a home. I do. I take the $500k from you and then pay $450k to a bunch of employees who put in 40 hours a week. I take home $50k. I earn $50k. Now, you like the home so much you tell all your friends about it. I hire more employees and I take $50k profit per house but I build 20k houses and make $1B. I earn $1B. Market forces decide how much you "ear…

>You don't know how to build a home. >I do.

Do you? Sound like the people you hired built the home. Do you know how to do what they did? Did you do it? What did you do to earn that $50k?

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#809

Post by tudorconstantin »

galenptacek wrote: post #602

Someone told me it was impossible to become an avogadrillionaire (to have a net worth of one mole, or approximately 6.02 x 10^23 dollars.) Now there's this founder I know whose startup grew 93% last month. Let's be conservative and say she has 2 million dollars. Let's calculate how many months of 93% growth it takes for something to grow 301,100,000,000,000,000x. The log base 1.93 of 301,100,000,000,000,000 is 61.209…

It’s actually easy and straight forward to become an avogadrillionaire, on paper that is, but still an avogadrillionaire: issue a token with a supply of 6.02*10^23, sell one token for $1, bam, avogadrillionaire

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#810

Post by TacticalCoder »

The really just question to ask though is: how rich can a politician get? And I'm not talking --even though that's despicable-- about a billionaire-now-president that enriches himself and his family.

I'm talking about the estimated wealth of the like of of Ilhan Omar (the somali woman politician).

Just like jesuit priests do take a vow of chastity, I think politicians should have a vow of poverty.

The only way to have a functional society is not to prevent the billionaires from getting to a billion: it's to prevent politicians from enriching themselves.

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