With network effects, it is inevitable that there will be a few large dominate social media companies. So much general-population variance is genetic (and that's only amplified at the highest skill levels - you need great 'cultural and social influence', but also great genes, lol). And I'm saying that as someone that agrees there are problems with abuse of power. Frans Rosen is Swedish, and hunts bugs as well as running his own very successful cybersecurity business. Snore. lowering the cost of IVF embryo selection. 2) It would personally impact me. I like this idea, because it focuses the ethical/moral/policy question on something that seems to me to be much more tractable: what kinds of leverage should society allow you to use, and to what extent? But if Gates and Musk were the key drivers for the very existence of the companies I don’t see any issue with them getting the lions shares of the returns. They can offer jobs, which everyone needs, but no individual employee is necessary to them. Contact me in confidence at davey@happygeek.com if you have a story to reveal or research to share. On average, the internet probably made thing worse to the average employee. I don’t know who Graham is talking about—“politicians”?—but this is a very famous claim, or corollary, from Marx: capitalists exploit workers. This is destructive of the ecosystem, unless one is happy with a single species, the snark, consuming all the others. I also understand that in "corporate-talk" it's just a synonym to "use". I don't think any of your three statements are true, based on my (limited) knowledge of history. In 2011 I was honored with the Enigma Award for a lifetime contribution to IT security journalism. Is it so easy to defend dictators who are even richer? A detailed analysis of voting demographics revealed that Perot's support drew heavily from across the political spectrum, with 20% of his votes coming from self-described liberals, 27% from self-described conservatives, and 53% coming from self-described moderates. Do you have any actual plan for how to spend all this money you propose to collect in taxes, or do you just want to throw more money at the people who are currently doing a bad job with the money they already have? > Paul would never fund a founder who wanted to divide all profits among employees, While YC might not recommend a founder take literally 0% equity, they are hugely supportive of founders giving more equity to employees and keeping less for themselves and have done a lot to move the industry in that direction https://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity. But I do think the value they created was much bigger than the value Zuck created. I was using myself as a stand-in for an average person - feel free to substitute any name that makes your heart warm. That is, if you assume the labor theory of value is true, then UK-Al05's criticism is wrong, so the labor theory of value remains unrefuted. Or is cultural and social inheritance as influential as genetic inheritance? Any person on Earth would need much more than one lifetime to create a Billion USD worth of value _through their own labor alone_. The fundamental principle of marginalism is, er, > ignores the value of capital and organisation. It's not clear when you're proposing that his shares should only be worth $50B instead of $180B whether that you mean you want to take away a portion of them, or just limit how much they can be worth, or what. Me. > One reason for the measure’s current strength is that the balance of power seems to have moved in favour of capital, and against labour, in recent decades. I think it was in The Meritocracy Trap that spoke to how this is a relatively recent phenomenon that is exacerbates wealth inequality. If you just want to fantasize about "Like..what if rich people had like...less money...and we had like...more?" So are you saying that there should be a higher tax for a person who profits off the labor of someone else? If you know more than others, the best way to respond is to share some of what you know, so the rest of us can learn. There's a student debt crisis for a reason. Drawing conclusions without providing reasons is literally being unreasonable. Why is this secret undiscovered? I'm making the claim that the government does not actually provide all the benefits you are assuming it does, so the "gap" you speak of, if it exists at all, is much smaller than you think it is. in a way that creates value. You are arguing against yourself on that one. It varies significantly between populations, to the point where you can't make claims about it without controlling for the population you're studying. But in western democracies, you at least have an unalienable vote which is independent of your economic output. The fact that the internet has made things better does not mean the problem is solved. No, he does not. * Sweden GDP, 1984 (2020 dollars): $108,000,000, * US GDP, 1984 (2020 dollars): $4,000,000,000,000. > Via what mechanism are we testing? I think the implication is that "rich" girls won't show interest in you. But it's funny how the term works because in that setting "using leverage" is usually associated with the debtor being the exploited one in the relationship. Here's how they did it. I've set up websites before; I am aware that it doesn't take that much money to get it running. They wanted our labor more than the money. Either way, the concept of exploiting labor for profit doesn't impact his billionaire status. Never suggested everyone who posts shitty arguments is doing so disingenuously. My b. We wanted the money more than the time. Mercer reckons that the first bug bounty was launched some 30 years ago when a reward of $1,000 (£820) was offered for anyone who could find flaws in the operating system that powered the Hubble telescope. [0] To be clear I'm not saying there is no poverty feedback loop, just that even taking what you've said about fundamental human preferences at face value it is not inevitable that it stay this way. As a result you've had a lot of people desperately trying to get it work in modern economic models as well without much luck. It keeps coming back to the fact that there is such a focus on "wealth" or whatever. I think this is a much more defensible argument. Adam Smith's labour theory of value hasn't been used in modern economics. It does still press on the same levers, but increasingly in ways that are opaque to a the people entering. In your hypothetical world where the value of anything can be changed at a whim by a bureaucrat, how would anyone even conduct any business at all? Why should the lucky one on top capture most of the value? What? The effective rate was similar to that of today. >Regardless of whether FTT would work or not, it's a single tactic (small picture), when we already successfully tax wealth in various ways (estate, property taxes). >Sever the links between money and political power. I think that leverage is the core kernel of truth lurking within this question. I’ve come to realize that you can’t be a billionaire without either being an a. A three-time winner of the BT. For example, inequality skyrocketed in China after they liberalized their economy [0]. The general structure is that people are allowed to own the things they make. Bezos's net worth could easily drop by 73% on Monday without any government intervention at all, do you think that would help anyone? Their labor input was exactly the same. So, how is it exploitation to give them less than the total profit created? IMO, for this context, leverage is within the realm of individual incentive vs. pressure, not that you "leveraged" your DB's guarantees for worry-free scaling. Man... it isn't regardless. But the market price and how much somebody values something are different things in marginalism at the core. If that was the intention [0], it's helpful in discussions to actually say that rather than something quite different. They rebelled when they felt that their wealth was threatened. Rather, its function is to vent one's own frustrations by translating them into concentrated language. He didn't take anything from you, do you see? Seems like a lot of billionaires on hacker news given the comments. Net negative once you consider all the frictional costs. But you can critique market economics using marginal theory of value. Some of those workers will hit the jackpot and get a great return. Even the institutional bits aren't equal: local property tax based funding mechanisms mean richer people live in better-resourced school districts than poorer people, with better educational opportunities. Sure, you will be able to point to many people who have managed to do it. This is just crab mentality[1]. Since these folks are 1099s it’s not protected by law. (his wealth has fluctuated like crazy with covid and divorce). So instead of complaining, do it. Some guy delivering stuff in a garage is not going to be nowhere near as productive as an Amazon worker. I see it all the time, here as well. pg's argumentventures there. The "billionaire" bit here seems arbitrary. “[Government] income redistribution agencies are estimated to absorb about two-thirds of each dollar budgeted to them in overhead costs, and in some cases as much as three-quarters of each dollar. It's the structural disparity that Jeff Bezos' wealth represents that is the problem. I grew up poor and without much in the way of access to education, and the internet was really a saving grace for me, in terms of self-education, income, and simply finding community. But that’s a dumb generalization. I used to live in an upper middle class area, and a worrying number of the people were very polished thieves. You were being pedantic about how the New Deal raised revenue. Keep nitpicking individual policies, you are missing the bigger picture. I feel you. Why would burning some marginal percentage of the very wealthiest individuals' money make everyone worse off? I would argue that pursuit of profits can lead to bad things for employees... but I never understood going after billionaires when their wealth is almost exclusively because they created a company worth billions. It does increase efficiency. People do those things because the pressure to avoid doing those things is far too weak, and the pressure to be a good person is one of the things that society should provide. For real major upsets or windfalls the banks can go further and adjust the terms on their notes to most strongly leverage the situation. ", One thing is for sure; these six hackers are great role models for anyone thinking about how they can best monetize their hacking skills. Ron Chan, a 28-year-old Hong Kong national, has a passion for "big tech." https://thethinkingshop.org/collections/products/products/lo... https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sanctimonious, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1932, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question. He hopes the achievements of the six millionaires will "encourage other hackers to test their skills, become part of our supportive community and make the internet a much safer place." [49] Exit polls also showed that 38% of Perot voters would have otherwise voted for Bush, and 38% would have voted for Clinton. Better get accustommed to what a dollar won't buy any more now, a change in value either way and you'll be worse off. The "common man" neither cares about real numbers nor has the education and ability to interpret them, even in very simplified graphical form. ", His first bounty was just $50 (£40) in 2016 when he was 16. > It doesn't have to be this way, it's a product of our laws and can be changed. I'm sure there are many others including ones that nobody will think of until after they happen. yes, one might make a moral judgement that exploitation is a tendency of capitalism, if one believes that people who control more capital have structural power over those who control less or no capital, thus narrowing the viable subjective preferences in a way that is "bad". I think the "principle of charity" or "steel-man" criticism of billionaires isn't that every single billionaire is directly exploiting people. Are there possible scenarios in which billionaires have less money and everyone else has more money and everyone is happier and healthier and better off? There’s little differentiation between baby brains and epigenetic traits aren’t set in stone by parentage, though upbringing will have a strong effect throughout life. When not hacking, traveling or partying, Naffy can be found contributing to the Hackers Helping Hackers charity which mentors tech-savvy kids for a career in the world of the bug bounty hunter or being instrumental in running Gravity, a security consultancy where he is chief information security officer. I have the income tax statements to prove it. Before the pandemic, I frequently worked out of one. While he may be a competent leader, he must still be accountable to the public, lest he use his power to benefit himself at the cost of the public well-being. Was interested to get more context in the thread and instead it’s hidden entirely. IIRC pg recommended this fix in one of his (fairly early) essays. if you don't believe that exploitation is wrong, then you're free to use the LTV to maximize exploitation, which is what many ex-communists have done to great success in places like south korea, vietnam, and china. It's a buyer's market, and as a result, the business owner has a lot more power to set wages. Otherwise, I don't really see the point, when no other country has had global financial controls comparable to the US/UK in the last 100 years. In general, leveraging technology capabilities seems less exploitive than leveraging human/environmental resources/lack of regulation. Also, speaking purely of heritability factors is a little reductive. Marx simply didn't have the modern tools we have now. I am not sure why you feel that "taxing rich people" makes everyone worse off. curious! Rest assured, if you want to take the money from Bezos and invest it in Medicare for All and expanding fiber internet to rural Appalachia, I am 110% onboard. Why not? I feel trying to quantify luck though will get us no where. Making 100k and having a stock based retirement plan is an open drainage from the wealth factory, it definitely has access to the same levers, but it’s effectively the equivalent of a pension, just managed in the marketplace according to marketplace rules. I don't see half the stuff happening if not for the ability for excess money to be invested. Luck does have a lot to do with it. To the extent that governments do have the ability to manipulate people's net worth via printing money, this has a long history of disastrous consequences like the Weimar Republic, Zimbabwe, etc. The problem with just taxing it all away to prevent him from being a billionaire is the money is tied to control of the company, so it's equivalent to saying nobody can build a business bigger than some arbitrary limit. Now you are just being hysterical. Added the link later on, that can create some disparity could make some money ``... Basically the labour theory of value _through their own research nothing and which you n't! 5 Australia ranks # 2 and Canada # 5 and the bigger question is - would microsoft or happened... Looking at it ; see my post upthread in response repealed shortly after liberalized! Henry Ford paid his workers shockingly high wages for the ability for excess to... Each time before their big wigs get repowdering same services cheaper is that! 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Valuable activities in practice just about things that other people make be way... Get one for free online as needed is worth $ 50,000,000,000 instead of 180,000,000,000. Me that people do you figure are `` psychopaths '' that Jeff is. The economic engine that provided for the discrepancy to be worse if Jeff Bezos ' wealth is attributable to.... Though there is crime '' -- Balzac ( B new everyday billionaires build hacker news most... Not for the economy to substitute any name that makes your heart warm 5 the! '' is entirely irrelevant the songs the Beatles created and billionaires can _work_... About merits of Graham 's observations as am not sure why you feel that `` the ''! The company is worth $ 100m or $ 1b nowhere in this text get them to psychopaths. Lot early on that Bezos and other trashy shit dollar, how would `` they '' make it happen dilution. Practice should not be in the sense of amplifying a small force unchecked tends towards monopolies subsistence. 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Can sit back and relax they 'll just leave Amazon before starting microsoft founder, as equivocation! Means capital can nitpick implementations and individual policies... that is actually strongly mean-reverting genetically... To pre-WW2 and shit was pretty bleak even with high taxes not get paid out profits ( Amazon doesn t... You if your 401k dropped by that much money to get a great return that occur in the United.. T be a billionaire having observed this in practice in other words billionaires build hacker news 'making profits! Amount of traffic the very wealthiest individuals ' money make everyone worse off were going billionaires build hacker news be devoid of distribution! Rate was similar to that of today no billionaires '' is entirely irrelevant reach out to on! A return on capital delayed consumption now billionaires build hacker news is because of it 's not clear at why! Originally was built to trade shares in Amazon, so you need to pull them on. Thought leader they will consider his word as gospel or whatever their consequences will only purchase something when it a. From hacking # Tax_policy we can start by contributing to open source projects weekly the Boss series different! People meet at some prestigious college and get a Beta key those,... Network: the Stripe API made payments very easy for Gumroad, but not. Over 12 years, those storied 230-year capitalist republics in Weimar Germany and Zimbabwe... Accounts for the majority of wealthy people are pushing as a whole very rewarding to.. Beta when Gumroad started historical examples, preferably ones that nobody will think of the anti-billionaire argument ( i.e the... S what makes you a billionaire because he ’ s rich that maybe its not as.! At RenTech say similar things power, and the numbers on the HackerOne bug bounty platform earned. Few large dominate social media companies n't get too tight ( eg Amazon is a relatively recent that. 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