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Is it the Wealth Gap that's bad or the Empathy Gap that comes with it?

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Re: Is it the Wealth Gap that's bad or the Empathy Gap that comes with it?

#91

Post by StephenCanis »

sharemywin wrote: post #90
StephenCanis wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wanted to point out that Peter Thiel is discussing his ideas in the context of creating a very successful company. He is not talking about what system is best for society in general - rather what is best for an individual business owner. Generally in economic theory companies in perfectly competitive industries have zero "economic profit" which means they earn enough profit to compensate the owners for capital…

if you think of most of the unicorns they are held up by copyright. google, facebook, even say uber etc. if I can scrape their sites I could make a derivative possibly even better.

Copyright and other protections allow a temporary (maybe not so temporary anymore) monopoly on your exact idea. That's a good way to spur innovation since you reward the people creating those innovations. You could still compete with any of those products and people still do.

I think temporary monopolies are good - permanent monopolies maybe not so much. It's an interesting way to think about capitalism that's for sure.

Re: Is it the Wealth Gap that's bad or the Empathy Gap that comes with it?

#92

Post by white-flame »

oldmanjay wrote: post #16
white-flame wrote: post #11

If the poor end of the wealth gap are still better off than 90% of the rest of the world, why does the wealth gap matter? That was my thinking for quite a while. However, the one thing that happens here in the US is that the wealthy have more representation and power in the legal system. Be it federal or local, the systems tend to get slanted against the not-wealthy because the wealthy take over the communications ch…

There is nothing new in the way the powerful wield more power than the powerless. It's a story older than history.

Except that the US seems to have far greater financial inequality than most other first world countries.

Re: Is it the Wealth Gap that's bad or the Empathy Gap that comes with it?

#93

Post by WalterBright »

tomp wrote: post #87
WalterBright wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> caused a lot of long-term damage Examples? > evil My small business has competed against Microsoft since the 80s. While they are tough competitors, I don't see anything they've done as evil. Check out the book "In Search of Stupidity" by Chapman.

> Examples? Internet Explorer. .doc format. Viruses. > evil They abused their monopoly to sell crap software and destroy competitors. At least, that's what the courts say.

> Internet Explorer.

Nobody made you or anyone else use a free browser.

> .doc format.

Geez, it's a file format.

> Viruses.

Microsoft did not unleash any viruses on the world.

> They abused their monopoly to sell crap software and destroy competitors. At least, that's what the courts say.

Yeah, I'm familiar with what the Jackson court said. If you read "In Search of Stupidity", Microsoft's competitors did a fine job of destroying themselves. And Linux and Apple computers were always available for anyone to buy.

Re: Is it the Wealth Gap that's bad or the Empathy Gap that comes with it?

#94

Post by oldmanjay »

white-flame wrote: post #92
oldmanjay wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing new in the way the powerful wield more power than the powerless. It's a story older than history.

Except that the US seems to have far greater financial inequality than most other first world countries.

That isn't a response to what I said.

Re: Is it the Wealth Gap that's bad or the Empathy Gap that comes with it?

#95

Post by mattzito »

erbo wrote: post #70
mattzito wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not 100% sure this is what the GP was referring to, but a common (and totally legal!) technique to prop up a flat or trending downward company is to start a share buyback program. You take cash that you have no idea what to do with anyway, and rather than return it to investors through a dividend, you start buying back shares. That props up your EPS, since there are fewer shares on the market, and you continue to…

The downside of that strategy, of course, is that if you incur losses after the buyback, those losses, on a per-share basis, are magnified to the same degree as your earnings were. The sword cuts both ways.

Yes, but since you are the insiders and have a long-term vision of subsequent quarters, you often know (or suspect) what will happen and adjust accordingly.

Re: Is it the Wealth Gap that's bad or the Empathy Gap that comes with it?

#96

Post by mattzito »

WalterBright wrote: post #84
mattzito wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not 100% sure this is what the GP was referring to, but a common (and totally legal!) technique to prop up a flat or trending downward company is to start a share buyback program. You take cash that you have no idea what to do with anyway, and rather than return it to investors through a dividend, you start buying back shares. That props up your EPS, since there are fewer shares on the market, and you continue to…

I hear again the notion that investors are too stupid to know what is going on. The institutional investors, the ones who manage funds, are the ones that move markets, and they know damm well what is going on, and the shares get priced accordingly.

So - I do advisory work sometimes for institutional investors. They ask me to consult on technology companies and talk about their market prospects and what X means in a company's earnings report. Those folks, while definitely savvier than the retail investor I described, are often so far off from the realities of the business we are discussing that it's shocking. There are exceptions of course, but by and large the market makers are equally victim to the representation of the company management

Re: Is it the Wealth Gap that's bad or the Empathy Gap that comes with it?

#97

Post by WalterBright »

mattzito wrote: post #96
WalterBright wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear again the notion that investors are too stupid to know what is going on. The institutional investors, the ones who manage funds, are the ones that move markets, and they know damm well what is going on, and the shares get priced accordingly.

So - I do advisory work sometimes for institutional investors. They ask me to consult on technology companies and talk about their market prospects and what X means in a company's earnings report. Those folks, while definitely savvier than the retail investor I described, are often so far off from the realities of the business we are discussing that it's shocking. There are exceptions of course, but by and large the…

A CEO once told me how he (legally) manipulated the books to "get the numbers Wall Street was looking for". The stock tanked. Evidently he was only fooling himself.

A CEO might be able to hide poor results for a quarter or two, but the investors always catch on.

Re: Is it the Wealth Gap that's bad or the Empathy Gap that comes with it?

#98

Post by RickHull »

jgroszko wrote: post #22
spikels wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some examples of the "Really Bad Things" you are thinking of?

Not even as sinister as sibling comment here talking about genocides, these billionaires are wielding disproportionate political power to encourage policies that effect lower classes negatively to the benefit of their own bottom line. On a foreign scale, defense contractors have a vested interest in keeping the Middle East unstable and have the political power to push congress towards putting more US forces there. Do…

> so many state governors doing things like ... enabling the Flint water crisis.

Beware of simplistic narratives. It now looks like Flint took on the very tough job of water treatment as a jobs / stimulus program[1] -- something they turned out to be completely incompetent at -- and also as a way to resolve a pricing spat with Detroit over water supply.

As well the Michigan DEQ shoulders a lot of the blame for covering up the issues.

1. http://reason.com/blog/2016/01/25/the-flint-water-crisis-is-...

Re: Is it the Wealth Gap that's bad or the Empathy Gap that comes with it?

#99

Post by jgroszko »

RickHull wrote: post #98
jgroszko wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even as sinister as sibling comment here talking about genocides, these billionaires are wielding disproportionate political power to encourage policies that effect lower classes negatively to the benefit of their own bottom line. On a foreign scale, defense contractors have a vested interest in keeping the Middle East unstable and have the political power to push congress towards putting more US forces there. Do…

> so many state governors doing things like ... enabling the Flint water crisis. Beware of simplistic narratives. It now looks like Flint took on the very tough job of water treatment as a jobs / stimulus program [1] -- something they turned out to be completely incompetent at -- and also as a way to resolve a pricing spat with Detroit over water supply. As well the Michigan DEQ shoulders a lot of the blame for cover…

Ahhh good point, I haven't actually been following that story very closely.

Re: Is it the Wealth Gap that's bad or the Empathy Gap that comes with it?

#100

Post by crimsonalucard »

RodericDay wrote: post #13
white-flame wrote: post #11

If the poor end of the wealth gap are still better off than 90% of the rest of the world, why does the wealth gap matter? That was my thinking for quite a while. However, the one thing that happens here in the US is that the wealthy have more representation and power in the legal system. Be it federal or local, the systems tend to get slanted against the not-wealthy because the wealthy take over the communications ch…

Exactly. Wealth isn't a zero-sum game, but power/influence is.

Wealth IS a zero sum.

Take a very abstract product... something we assume to be unlimited in nature and examine it.... let's say a poem. A poet produces poems and sells a book of poems. We assume that the poet has created wealth out of thin air and that wealth is therefore not a zero sum game.

But in order to produce the poem, the poet needs energy. Energy for sustenance, comes to all humans in the form of food. Food is either meat or vegetables. Meat comes from animals that usually eat vegetables. Vegetables gain their energy from the sun. The wealth (poems included) that humans produce is limited by the energy we extract from the sun and material we can extract from the earth. All abstraction comes from physical primitives which are limited by physical laws, thus all abstract products such as poems, literature and art are all limited and thus part of a zero sum game.

Actually if you follow the energy chain of everything to the root, all things end at the sun (nuclear power is an exception). You could say that the sun is basically an unlimited source of energy... but commerce is directly affected by the rate in which we can extract energy from the sun. Since it is physically impossible to extract energy from the sun at an unlimited rate, the rate must therefore be limited and all commerce, products and abstract ideas that arise from usage of this energy must also be, in turn, limited.

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