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Wow. I was not impressed by PGs essay. He had some points, but seemed to be looking at the issue from a very narrow point of view. I gave it a 'C.' I would love

Wow. I was not impressed by PGs essay. He had some points, but seemed to be looking at the issue from a very narrow point of view. I gave it a 'C.' I would love to see a high quality criticism. But this? I don't know if this has any points; I couldn't get more than a few paragraphs in. As another comment put it, "barely literate invective."

notahacker 11y ago
I think a comment at the bottom of the linked article puts it perfectly: "this sounds like two straw men having a fight"
- flinty 11y ago
  straw-person /s
kelvin0 11y ago
My thought also. I've read many of his essays which I enjoyed very much, mostly the more technical-centric ones. But reading this essay gave me the same creeping feeling I had when I read Atlas Shrugged ... (cover to cover!). There is a certain lacking of substance and nuance which paints the world in a very coarse categories and leaves no place for anything in between. Bottom line, not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. In fact entrepeneurs NEED non-entrepreneurs (called employees). Some employees are hard working, creative, innovative people who crave something else than 'winning' at the 'free-market' game ...
j-reynolds 11y ago
I definitely don't think it added to the dialogue. If she disagrees, she seems to miss the overall point of PG's essay altogether.
petra 11y ago
I suspect that some of the insults inside this article are because the author didn't have such big reach like PG , and those might be a way to achieve that. But a few of the main points are correct - for example, the way that silicon value measures value doesn't have a lot to do with social value.
- tmercer 11y ago
  Well that's not true though, really...Candy Crush is worth $7 billion because that's roughly the amount of money the market is willing to send Candy Crush. That's more or the less the definition of societal value - what society values something at. In this case, it values it at $7 billion. But that's a distraction. The broader point is that these views aren't mutually incompatible. In the essay PG says it's fine to combat poverty at the expense of wealth - aka higher taxation and de facto wealth redistribution - but attacking income inequality is impossible in a society that allows people to create solutions to problems that lots of people have, because that transfer of value, again by definition, will create income inequality.

notahacker 11y ago

I think a comment at the bottom of the linked article puts it perfectly: "this sounds like two straw men having a fight"

flinty 11y ago
straw-person /s

kelvin0 11y ago

My thought also. I've read many of his essays which I enjoyed very much, mostly the more technical-centric ones. But reading this essay gave me the same creeping feeling I had when I read Atlas Shrugged ... (cover to cover!). There is a certain lacking of substance and nuance which paints the world in a very coarse categories and leaves no place for anything in between. Bottom line, not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. In fact entrepeneurs NEED non-entrepreneurs (called employees). Some employees are hard working, creative, innovative people who crave something else than 'winning' at the 'free-market' game ...

j-reynolds 11y ago

I definitely don't think it added to the dialogue. If she disagrees, she seems to miss the overall point of PG's essay altogether.

petra 11y ago

I suspect that some of the insults inside this article are because the author didn't have such big reach like PG , and those might be a way to achieve that. But a few of the main points are correct - for example, the way that silicon value measures value doesn't have a lot to do with social value.

tmercer 11y ago
Well that's not true though, really...Candy Crush is worth $7 billion because that's roughly the amount of money the market is willing to send Candy Crush. That's more or the less the definition of societal value - what society values something at. In this case, it values it at $7 billion. But that's a distraction. The broader point is that these views aren't mutually incompatible. In the essay PG says it's fine to combat poverty at the expense of wealth - aka higher taxation and de facto wealth redistribution - but attacking income inequality is impossible in a society that allows people to create solutions to problems that lots of people have, because that transfer of value, again by definition, will create income inequality.