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- Hacker News
- I think it’s astounding that the author can’t see that individual goodness or badness doesn’t necessarily mean you will not cause societal harm. He lists AirBnB and Facebook as successful billion dollar companies, in which likely the CEO did not have malicious intentions, but these companies are harming society at humongous scale unlike we have ever seen before (addiction and housing crisis). Given that this post reads like a really bad contradictory hyperbole that neglects real world consequences pretty much entirely.
- Agree with most of this except come on. Facebook was born out of a misogynist precursor. The idea that its CEO had no malicious intentions is ridiculous.by atq2119
- > She was getting richer at a stupendously rapid rate. And yet she hadn't been doing anything bad. The reason her startup was growing so fast was simply that users loved what she'd built. So she could feel from her own experience how wrong that politician was. She wasn't exploiting anyone.
I presume it's a company that just has co-founders then? Or everyone is getting an equal % of the share? In which case SHE's not getting 93% richer just cause her start up is.
by owaiswiz - No it’s a magical startup where it’s just going to be her in a basement doing 100% of the work required for 10 months straight while demand doubles every month.
- Let’s not be silly. If there are 10 people each with 10% and the company grows by 93%, then everybody’s shares, including the founder’s, grows by 93%.by migueloller
- Yeah math is wrong. She has to wait one more month to be a billionaire since she has a co-founder. So 10 months.
The good news is she can be a trillionaire in another 10 months.
by ozgung - Not giving everyone equal % is exploitation?
Interesting, by that logic every participant in the economy should also be required to bail out any startup that fails otherwise we’re exploiting the founders! They’re taking all the risk and we’re getting all the benefit of the services and goods they create!
- 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 redistribute that to her employees in addition to the already agreed-upon and paid compensation. If the employees think that what they agreed to work for is no longer sufficient, they are welcome to renegotiate their compensation or, if they feel they have been wronged and are being paid less than they are worth, to take their talent to a different employer. After all, everything so far has been consensual. 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.
by Telemakhos - Playing devils advocate here:
Maybe the politicians position is that the whole system is based on cheating and everyone who partakes is acting immorally?
Is it fair that the founder got education and some money to start his company while other people are living on the street or have to care for relatives? If they come from a relatively privileged position and manage to build a company that ends up being successful, did they earn that money?
I don’t think the cheating people criticize is necessarily criminal fraud.
Edit: and the second thing people seem to criticize is that just keeping your company growing often seems to involve some unethical things. Basically every company that’s manufacturing hardware is doing that in Asia under inhumane conditions, so they probably can’t really claim they earned their money and it’s just maths.
by echoangle - If the only viable alternative is that nobody gets to start their business rather than some idealized best case of everyone getting a chance of it, then yes, it's probably fair.by zozbot234
- I mean there's also just sheer luck. Getting billions is probably more about luck than hard work OR corruption, even if those two things can increase your chances.
But luck is also not "earning" in most senses of the word.
by causal - Technically if you look at AOC's statement he mentions
>AOC: “There’s a certain level of wealth and accumulation that is unearned. You can’t earn a billion dollars. You just can’t earn that. You can get market power, you can break rules, you can abuse labor laws, you can pay people less than what they’re worth, but you can’t earn that”
there's some truth there in that PG is talking about capital gains as the owner of a company and AOC is talking about earnings as payment for labour which are different things both in reality and in tax policy and law.
The capital gains can be unfair in that most of them go to founders and VCs and not much to other employees and stakeholders who have contributed as well.
by tim333 - they keep moving goal posts. Show me an entrepreneur making 10M AOC says fairly earned it.by bwhiting2356
- Putting the scale of dollars and the startup world aside, AOC’s comments read that way would suggest a farmer who gets a series of loans from the bank to help him expand his family farm from a $200K sole proprietorship to a $10M sole proprietorship didn’t “earn” it either.
I don’t think a definition of “earn” that excludes cases like that captures the generally understood meaning.
by twoodfin - How can someone so successful be so naïve? The statement, "impossible to earn a billion dollars," is not meant to be taken literally.
It is used to underscore the fact that founders (and early investors) are paid ridiculously disproportionately to their employees. There is no labor that a single person can do (without the help of their employees, family, friends, network) that justifies earning $1B.
by aabajian - Billionaire founders make some millionaire employees. Why are they (or rather us?) entitled to more? They are working market jobs for market pay.by jojobas
- I like that you said that it’s not meant to be taken literally and then explained how it is literally trueby jrflowers
- It's crazy to me that someone as distinguished as PG, as well as so many of the comments here on HN, completely missed this point.by MitziMoto
- He is just being willfully obtuse to make a point. This has to be one of his weaker essays. He is trying to "gotcha" AOC by talking math instead of debating the larger point. The kind of thing he has himself argued against in the past.by spprashant
- It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his net worth demands he not understand it.by sgentle
- 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.
- incredible to see this opinion on hacker news.by peab
- Nobody is forcing people to be employees of startups. They choose to do it of their own free will. If they think they can generate immense value from their own ideas they are free to go try to do that. Hiring people to do a job for a wage they agree to isn’t swindling.by a13n
- If all you need is the idea, then the minions could easily start their own company and reach a similar order of magnitude outcome.by sberens
- > 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.
For those who are sympathetic to this idea, look no further than China. They have a very good system (superior to US-style taxes) for ensuring that no one gets “too rich” and that excess returns are captured and redistributed “fairly”
by hammock - False, you just make something very valuable.
To get people to help you make it you offer to pay them and they willingly exchange their time for that money (or equity if they also think it will be very valuable someday or you have a record of making valuable things in the past)
Who is the person swindled here? Who agreed to something and was deceived? Who was stolen from?
This process is net wealth creation. The wealth is generated, not taken from somebody else.
by pclowes - The pursuit of everlasting growth that pg describes inevitably results in cheating. At a certain point the market reaches a saturation point and if you're capitalising on every possible opportunity to retain your high growth rate, that will include hoarding resources and circumventing consumer protections.
- As they say, every 10x growth requires doing things differently. Eventually those things become immoral.by anon84873628
- The hoarding resources and circumventing consumer protections is just the start of it.
Eventually it becomes rational to start buying politicians, and subsequently laws. The next obvious avenue is to then control entire government agencies like the FAA or the FCC and just write favorable laws and regulations they don't even have to circumvent.
But even that isn't the end because they're growing too fast, they actually outgrow the law, so breaking it becomes a rational, profit-driven choice. Huge fines? Regulators breathing down your neck? No worries! Just spend more money then has ever been spent in an election to their favored presidential candidate, and then they get to just shut down investigations into themselves!
But even that isn't enough -- soon it becomes a rational business-forward goal to take over the entire government; or even better become the government. First a city, then a state, then a nation. Guess what folks EVEN THAT won't be enough. Not even everything on this entire planet Earth is enough for them; they also want the Moon and Mars and the entire solar system. They will have to become God at some point for this growth to keep up, and that will still be too little for their egos to bear. Something has to give.
by ModernMech