The venture capitalist's dilemma • Hacker News Board

Re: The venture capitalist's dilemma

#91

Post by foverzar » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 1:46 AM UTC

louwrentius wrote: post #86

foverzar wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> of people like Bill Gates and his contemporaries like Elon Musk only show why people should never be allowed to own billions Does it really? Honestly, it's hard to take such sentiments seriously when you start mentioning these particular "hype" billionaires. For one, it seems like most spite comes of expecting them to act like some godly idols, instead of like some dudes. But largely, it's just that there are so mu…

> You just can't help but wonder if the person actually grasps the scale, or if the whole thing boils down to distaste of someone's character and behavior. It's not about them as personalities, but what they represent. And their flaws only prove why billionaires should not exist and why they should not have that kind of power.

> It's not about them as personalities, but what they represent.

So... Still personalities since they don't really represent anything but themselves.

> And their flaws only prove why billionaires should not exist and why they should not have that kind of power.

Their flaws are no worse than yours. And people you've named don't have THAT kind of power. Musk barely scratched a shred of power with twitter but was viciously attacked by people with actual power and quickly shown his place.

In any case, your rage should be directed towards someone from the military industrial complex for example - these people actually murdered people and engineered wars in order to get money.

Gates, Musk and so on are harmless children in comparison. This basically looks like another variation of rant about holywood/rap-singers/bloggers and their endless flaws that are oh so harmful to otherwise totally functional society. Really treating a serious issue as some kind of joke or a tabloid material.

Re: The venture capitalist's dilemma

#92

Post by re-thc » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 2:26 AM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #89

re-thc wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then nothing will get done because everyone has a different opinion? It won't work. We already have enough politics and corporate games at work. Are you advocating for more of that?

Yes because at work only a few people take part in the games (those with allocation control over a budget at least 50 times their own salary say). Everyone else is like slaves fighting over who gets to be head slave.

Maybe you're not aware of it or it's an issue outside of the US but everyone does it to some extent even if it's an act of self defense. And the fight to head slave that you mention is part of the games itself. Do you really get there without politics of some sort?

Re: The venture capitalist's dilemma

#93

Post by DannyBee » Wed, Mar 29, 2023, 1:27 PM UTC

JoeJonathan wrote: post #55

DannyBee wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, what we need is more hecklers vetos over more spending. Democratic control makes no sense. That's the entire reason the US has a representative government - direct large scale democratic control doesn't get anything done for starters. Heck, even the representative form has scaled to the point it doesn't get anything done. If the control that already existed produced anything other than total dysfunction, things.…

Well, I guess I give you credit for being openly anti-democratic…?

I don’t believe non representative democracies scale well at all and that even representative ones have a scaling limit like all systems. I’m not a believer in non democracy as scaling better as much as believer that you’d be better off governing groups of a million with democracies than groups of 300 million.

Like all systems, it is better to have more systems than scale single systems to work well from size 0 to infinity

Re: The venture capitalist's dilemma

#94

Post by DannyBee » Wed, Mar 29, 2023, 1:43 PM UTC

kqr wrote: post #13

DannyBee wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, what we need is more hecklers vetos over more spending. Democratic control makes no sense. That's the entire reason the US has a representative government - direct large scale democratic control doesn't get anything done for starters. Heck, even the representative form has scaled to the point it doesn't get anything done. If the control that already existed produced anything other than total dysfunction, things.…

I think the problem is the other way around: the population's lack of experience with actual democracy is what hampers any attempt at it. If we had more democracy people would learn to be responsible with that power out of necessity. But of course, a functioning democracy needs some sort of shared goal among its population, to help people compromise on less important matters and agree on that which is important. This…

I don’t believe your first paragraph for a second. We would go practically extinct before we learned. We don’t get good at things at scale that fast and raising the stakes will not change some fundamental behaviors - heck they took thousands of years to change when we were going extinct

I think at best you would end up with a much much smaller population that is an easier problem anyway (ie we can already solve it now), or we kill ourselves off before we learn. I agree with your last sentence entirely, but it's funny to frame it as a wealthy few bludgeoning others. One reason we are in the current situation is because the wealthy pay for the majority of expenses but everyone keeps trying to get them to not have more say in what gets done with their money. Whether it's a good idea to do this or not, human nature doesn't work like this, and they want say commensurate with what they contribute. It's very easy for both "sides" to villify each other and they do.

That is at least one thing you have to claim would get fixed in your first paragraph and I don't buy it you could get it to happen.

Since the wealth part really triggers people imagine you are just a random small business owner, and one day people come in and are like "hey we know you put in 60% of the effort and work and money in your business but we're going to have these 50 other people who put in less than 1% each also have equal say to you in the business choices"

Humans don't really accept that, and if you want direct democracy to work out they would have to be able to.

In fact it's the opposite, most people really get off on being able to feel superior to others in various ways, whether money or status or power or whatever.

That is great to change but ain't gonna happen fast