Billionaires Build • Hacker News Board

Re: Billionaires Build

#911

Post by chillwaves » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 3:13 PM UTC

riggernetard wrote: post #900

jskajakzkjx wrote: post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if many billions in capital are needed, and there’s risk too? It’s just not worth getting involved unless you can earn billions.

i still fail to understand what the issue with having billions of money is. the best part is these people ignore that money is just a stand-in for power, which they absolutely fucking hate, and that if you ban billionares people will still have more power than a billionare via other mechanisms :)

I hope you get banned in a substantial way.

Re: Billionaires Build

#912

Post by camgunz » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

riggernetard wrote: post #897

camgunz wrote: post #850

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is kind of the "great man" theory of business, but study after study shows that broadly this is just luck (or crime)--with privilege thrown in. As a result, we shouldn't reward people for this by making them billionaires because: - At best there's no behavior to encourage, person A just got lucky. At worst, person A cheated and by making cheaters super rich, we give them outsized influence on our society - creat…

> study after study shows that broadly this is just luck quite confused at this one, what studies? as an example, surely the fact that page and brin created PageRank for web searches led to google being so successful https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/4/20994361/google-alphabet-... > best there's no behavior to encourage, person A just got lucky the behavior of ... understanding and creating a useful service like pager…

> quite confused at [broadly this is just luck], what studies?

I would recommend reading Success and Luck [1]; it's well-researched.

>> relying on this dynamic entrenches privilege

> this is quite ridiculous, this is only believable if you consider...

There are pretty good [2] papers [3] about it, which convinced me and might convince you.

> so? heard of 'lisa su'?

Your post uses a lot of anecdotal evidence, which is a fallacy [4]. I encourage you to build up a habit of diving deeper. Oftentimes our intuitions are wrong because they're influenced by our local experiences, which are very rarely representative. It's why we do things like run studies and experiments, because we've learned we can't trust our experiences and intuitions. This pattern is, unfortunately, widespread and leads to a lot of problems.

This is actually a great little microcosm of one such problem: income inequality is a huge problem in the US; societies with dramatic income inequality are historically corrupt and unstable. However, it's counter to a lot of people's intuitions and experiences. So whenever someone tries to rally people to address it, people like you toss out lots of unrepresentative anecdotes (and employ other common fallacies) to try and convince people either it's not a problem, or that it's a feature and not a bug. And it works, because these fallacies are common bugs in the way people think about things.

It's up to us to recognize these patterns in ourselves and others and work against them.

[1]: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691167404/su...

[2]: https://www.nber.org/papers/w23733

[3]: http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/assets/documents/race...

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence

Re: Billionaires Build

#913

Post by telltruth » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

One thing that troubles me while reading this essay is so much focus on being billionaire as the goal to carry out the building activities. A huge problem with this is too many hackers now building in order to exploit human weakness of getting continuous dopamine hits. There are good examples of building utilities like AirBnB and Dropbox but then there is TikTok, Kik and other monsters.

Re: Billionaires Build

#914

Post by fastball » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

camgunz wrote: post #282

breck wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's an important point here. Bill Gates wouldn't be a billionaire if he didn't build amazing things, but he also exploited at scale the unjust IP ("ImaginaryProperty") system, which was a critical part of achieving the scale Microsoft achieved. Startups like Airbnb and Lyft likewise have built amazing things, and would easily make their founders 100' millionaires, but there is a point where to reach a cer…

It's less "your product is exploitative" and "you underpay (exploit) your workers for their labor." Bill Gates didn't write Windows 95. Steve Ballmer didn't write Microsoft Office. But they owned stock in a company that employed people that did (and all the various other labor that goes into building software products). Why did they make so much more money from it than the people who were more directly involved? This…

> If every B/C/D wanted to be As, there would be no B/C/Ds to build things. And it's not always possible to choose to be an A.

1. Person A can be the person that actually builds the product (and often is).

2. It is always possible to be person A.

Re: Billionaires Build

#915

Post by fastball » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

camgunz wrote: post #875

MinorTom wrote: post #861

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it did, nurses [...] would be millionaires (there's a shortage of both and they provide high value to society) I know the situation in Germany will be quite different to that in the US, but the reason we have a shortage of nurses is that the pay is not decided on supply and demand in order to have enough of them, but rather as a political decision. > The law of supply and demand also doesn't explain or account f…

> I know the situation in Germany will be quite different to that in the US, but the reason we have a shortage of nurses is that the pay is not decided on supply and demand in order to have enough of them, but rather as a political decision. Totally and this is the danger of state-controlled markets. Capitalists have a point here. I tend to argue that at least in democratic societies people have some control over it,…

Interested to see how quickly you can completely destroy productivity and an economy with your policies. It just sounds like communism with extra steps.

Re: Billionaires Build

#916

Post by fastball » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

camgunz wrote: post #844

refurb wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn’t Microsoft create hundreds of millionaires out of it’s initial employees? I mean, the people building the next generation of Microsoft products aren’t going to have trouble entering the upper income brackets of American society.

I would say a couple things here: - Your argument could be rephrased as "profit-sharing isn't necessary as long as you pay people enough." This may work at mega-successful businesses like Microsoft, but doesn't work so well at something like a restaurant chain (or Amazon), where income inequality is far more pronounced. And those cases are far more common. - Concentrations of wealth and capital have a destabilizing e…

What is the point of being person A if you don't get any benefit over person B/C/D? Why would anyone take on the extra work and risk of being the person that starts the business when you can just be the person that joins and effectively get the exact same things with 1. less work 2. less risk?

Re: Billionaires Build

#917

Post by cayblood » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 5:39 PM UTC

"That, not exploiting people, is the defining quality of people who become billionaires from starting companies."

This is one of the sentences in the essay that most reveals Graham's reductionism. A person can become a billionaire without any desire to exploit someone and still the conditions resulting from the success of their organization can, and often do, result in exploitation. Even a brief study of organizational behavior reveals that all organizations do damage, some more than others. We don't need to keep defending organizations. They can handle their own defense. Individuals, on the other hand, are far more vulnerable.

Re: Billionaires Build

#918

Post by camgunz » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 5:43 PM UTC

fastball wrote: post #915

camgunz wrote: post #875

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know the situation in Germany will be quite different to that in the US, but the reason we have a shortage of nurses is that the pay is not decided on supply and demand in order to have enough of them, but rather as a political decision. Totally and this is the danger of state-controlled markets. Capitalists have a point here. I tend to argue that at least in democratic societies people have some control over it,…

Interested to see how quickly you can completely destroy productivity and an economy with your policies. It just sounds like communism with extra steps.

Eh, it's really just Germany+, and they're a pretty productive country. For example, profit sharing is "stock compensation" rephrased and not terribly uncommon [1]. Some of the most productive companies like Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon pay with stock.

[1]: http://www.oecd.org/employment/emp/2409883.pdf

Re: Billionaires Build

#919

Post by camgunz » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

fastball wrote: post #916

camgunz wrote: post #844

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say a couple things here: - Your argument could be rephrased as "profit-sharing isn't necessary as long as you pay people enough." This may work at mega-successful businesses like Microsoft, but doesn't work so well at something like a restaurant chain (or Amazon), where income inequality is far more pronounced. And those cases are far more common. - Concentrations of wealth and capital have a destabilizing e…

What is the point of being person A if you don't get any benefit over person B/C/D? Why would anyone take on the extra work and risk of being the person that starts the business when you can just be the person that joins and effectively get the exact same things with 1. less work 2. less risk?

Yeah that's a great point. I think we should make it a lot less risky to start businesses. You shouldn't have to risk give up earning years or career building years, to say nothing of the financial burden of raising money (or competing with people who are able to raise money while you have to bootstrap instead). I think we should do this both generally, but also specifically for women, people of color, and other groups who are underrepresented in the universe of small business owners.

Overall I think it would actually be really cool if we could get to where we think we are, where I can essentially pick from a menu of career options based on a risk/reward profile (OK not literally a menu but, yeah). But we're pretty far away from that right now; very few people are making these decisions based on that kind of calculus.

Re: Billionaires Build

#920

Post by derangedHorse » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 6:22 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #797

bedhead wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right about the feedback loops that make it hard to escape poverty. The most uncomfortable one to talk about is basic social network effects. Two people meet at some prestigious college and get married - are we shocked they have children who are predisposed for success? Besides from having god-given IQ, they are likely some combination of ambitious, punctual, respectful of authority, long-term oriented, hard-…

If they have those admirable middle class traits were they born that way? Or is cultural and social inheritance as influential as genetic inheritance? I used to live in an upper middle class area, and a worrying number of the people were very polished thieves. They spent an unholy amount of time fighting over inheritances with other family members and over property boundaries with neighbours. When they worked - inevi…

Is this a critique of the concept of investing in general?