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> Attacking economic inequality would be doubly mistaken. It would harm the good as well as the bad causes. But even worse, it would be an ineffective way to at

by eridius 11y ago

> Attacking economic inequality would be doubly mistaken. It would harm the good as well as the bad causes. But even worse, it would be an ineffective way to attack the bad causes. You can't say something like this without providing evidence. Why is it ineffective? And why is it bad that it harms the "good" ways too? After all, startups are not good because they cause income inequality. Startups are good for a variety of reasons, and they also happen to cause income inequality, and it's reasonable to argue that this particular generation of income inequality is not intrinsically bad. But the value of a startup is not in the income inequality that it generates, and therefore taking steps to reduce income inequality that happen to reduce the income inequality resulting from startups does not actually mean that it's "harm[ing] the good".

ThomPete 11y ago
And its a strawman. People arent attacking economic inequality, they are critiquing extreme inequality which is something rather different.
neilk 11y ago
Well, I don't agree with pg at all on this issue, but this is the simplified version. It's not fair to ask for citations here.
- eridius 11y ago
  It is when this seems to be the crux of his argument. His entire argument depends on the assumptions stated in that paragraph.
  - edanm 11y ago
    And he wrote an entire, long essay to prove his points. Maybe you disagree that he did so, but argue about the full article, not the "here's my main points 'abstract'".
salmonet 11y ago
> And why is it bad that it harms the "good" ways too? After all, startups are not good because they cause income inequality. Because without the potential for outsized returns significantly fewer would be founders would take the risk.
- eridius 11y ago
  Reduced income inequality is still income inequality. Outsized returns that are reduced by some percentage are still outsized returns.
  - Kalium 11y ago
    If you reduce "outsized returns" by 99.999999%, are they still "outsized"? What defines an outsized return? What's the proper amount of income inequality and what's a proper rate of return? In a context like this, definitions are everything.
    - eridius 11y ago
      That's an extremely absurdist position to take. Why would you assume that any attempt to reduce income inequality would try to do so by 99.999999%?
      - Kalium 11y ago
        You claimed "Outsized returns that are reduced by some percentage are still outsized returns". I'm asking you to define what an "outsized return" is, and provided an arbitrary "some perfectage" for context. How much does it need to be reduced before it's not outsized? The question sounds absurd as I asked it, but only because it's in response to an equally absurd position. So. What's a non-outsized return?
        eridius 11y ago
        You're being unnecessarily pedantic, and it's not beneficial to the conversation at all. This appears to be a silencing tactic, trying to force me to put specific numbers down when they're completely irrelevant, and refusing to address the overall point until it's done so. I do not appreciate your use of this tactic.
SeoxyS 11y ago
I think the original essay has all the evidence you might want. The point of this version was to not elaborate to make sure his point was crystal-clear.
Natsu 11y ago
Economic inequality means that some people have more money than others. If we attack all forms of it, we attack the people who worked really hard to create new things that have improved our lives (medicine, electricity, computers, etc.), which hurts everyone because the people who did do great things aren't rewarded and why try hard if people are going to hate you for being successful? If instead we attack things like usurious debt traps, we actually help people who are being used and abused for having no money. But this is a political thing now so anyone who doesn't follow the party line will probably provoke a xenophobic tribal reaction rather than responses.
- eridius 11y ago
  You seem to be making the same extremist assumption that pg is, the same thing that people were complaining about with his original essay. There's a big difference between reducing income inequality and eliminating it, but you don't seem to see the difference. Trying to reduce income inequality across the board does not mean people who create value are no longer being rewarded. And don't forget as well that the people who get rich off of things like medicine, electricity, computers etc. are often not actually the people who worked hard to create them.
  - Natsu 11y ago
    I'd like to see the positions actually being advanced, then, because they've not been made very clear by anyone. And I can find people who are advancing that sort of extremist position, though I can't say that I understand them very well. See, e.g. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10831261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10831261
    - eridius 11y ago
      Are you talking about the Medium post or about commenters on that story? I'm assuming it's the Medium post. And if so... that Medium post is not advancing an extremist position at all. It's just disagreeing, loudly, with pg. My hunch is that any time someone declares there to be a problem with "income inequality", people like you and pg read that as declaring the problem to exist with any amount of income inequality, when in fact people typically mean extreme income inequality, given some ill-defined measure of extreme (people will always disagree over what "extreme" qualifies as, but I think most people in America agree that we've gone well past "extreme" by anyone's definition). Edit: When I say it's not advancing an extremist position, I'm talking specifically about income inequality. The post is also arguing against the claim that startups create value, or really that the people who are getting rich in silicon valley are creating value, which is certainly a whole different discussion to be had (though it appears that the author isn't actually saying they aren't creating value, it's just saying that any value they're creating is subjective and not everybody agrees that it is, in fact, valuable). But the bits about income inequality are certainly not extremist at all.
avz 11y ago
> Startups are good for a variety of reasons, and they also happen to cause income inequality, (emphasis mine) One of the points of the original essay is that startups don't just happen to cause inequality. On the contrary pg claims that getting rich is precisely what fuels and motivates people to build startups. > therefore taking steps to reduce income inequality that happen to reduce the income inequality resulting from startups does not actually mean that it's "harm[ing] the good". The essay explicitly claims otherwise: "You can't end economic inequality without preventing people from getting rich, and you can't do that without preventing them from starting startups." I think I side with pg. Never met a person who chose the effort, uncertainty and sleepless nights that come with building a startup without the promise of a financial reward at the end. Every time such a reward is won, we inch a tiny bit towards greater inequality.
carc 11y ago
Startups aren't good because they create income inequality. Income inequality being possible is good because it provides the incentives for people to take risks and create startups. That isn't to say the current level of income inequality we see today is good - it isn't. But to get rid of income inequality completely would drastically reduce the number of startups because - what would be the point? Would you really rather have everyone make the same amount of income regardless of what they do?
- eridius 11y ago
  Startups are not good because they create income inequality. That's a ridiculous claim. That would only be true if income inequality was intrinsically good, and I hope nobody is trying to argue for that. Startups are good because they create value (although that particular value is highly subjective depending on what the startup is actually doing; a startup that finds a cure for cancer is creating objective value, but a startup that brings the sharing economy to lawn maintenance is much more subjective, as any value it creates for the sharing economy comes at the cost of value destroyed in traditional lawn care services). Startups also create income inequality. This is not an intrinsically good thing. It is just accepted as the normal way to reward people for taking a risk on a startup. Given that, the only reason to argue against reducing income inequality generated by startups is if this reduction actually decreases the overall objective value created by startups (if fewer startups are created, but more of them create either more value or value that is more objectively valuable, is that a bad thing?) Don't forget as well that there are plenty of ways to create value, and to create companies, that don't involve startups. Most businesses in this country aren't startups. > Would you really rather have everyone make the same amount of income regardless of what they do? Literally nobody is arguing for that. That's a humongous straw man, it's the same straw man pg used in his original article, and it's complete nonsense. "Reduce income inequality" does not mean eliminate all income inequality.
  - carc 11y ago
    > Literally nobody is arguing for that. That's a humongous straw man, it's the same straw man pg used in his original article, and it's complete nonsense. "Reduce income inequality" does not mean eliminate all income inequality. So you seem to agree that income inequality can be a good thing. If you didn't, you'd want everyone to have the same income. Maybe I misunderstood PG's essay, but the main takeaway I got was that income inequality CAN be a good thing for a society, and that the income inequality caused by successful startups are not an important enough problem (if it is even a problem) to society for us to try to focus on it.

by eridius 11y ago

ThomPete 11y ago

And its a strawman. People arent attacking economic inequality, they are critiquing extreme inequality which is something rather different.

neilk 11y ago

Well, I don't agree with pg at all on this issue, but this is the simplified version. It's not fair to ask for citations here.

eridius 11y ago
It is when this seems to be the crux of his argument. His entire argument depends on the assumptions stated in that paragraph.
- edanm 11y ago
  And he wrote an entire, long essay to prove his points. Maybe you disagree that he did so, but argue about the full article, not the "here's my main points 'abstract'".

salmonet 11y ago

> And why is it bad that it harms the "good" ways too? After all, startups are not good because they cause income inequality. Because without the potential for outsized returns significantly fewer would be founders would take the risk.

eridius 11y ago
Reduced income inequality is still income inequality. Outsized returns that are reduced by some percentage are still outsized returns.
- Kalium 11y ago
  If you reduce "outsized returns" by 99.999999%, are they still "outsized"? What defines an outsized return? What's the proper amount of income inequality and what's a proper rate of return? In a context like this, definitions are everything.
  - eridius 11y ago
    That's an extremely absurdist position to take. Why would you assume that any attempt to reduce income inequality would try to do so by 99.999999%?
    - Kalium 11y ago
      You claimed "Outsized returns that are reduced by some percentage are still outsized returns". I'm asking you to define what an "outsized return" is, and provided an arbitrary "some perfectage" for context. How much does it need to be reduced before it's not outsized? The question sounds absurd as I asked it, but only because it's in response to an equally absurd position. So. What's a non-outsized return?
      - eridius 11y ago
        You're being unnecessarily pedantic, and it's not beneficial to the conversation at all. This appears to be a silencing tactic, trying to force me to put specific numbers down when they're completely irrelevant, and refusing to address the overall point until it's done so. I do not appreciate your use of this tactic.

SeoxyS 11y ago

I think the original essay has all the evidence you might want. The point of this version was to not elaborate to make sure his point was crystal-clear.

Natsu 11y ago

Economic inequality means that some people have more money than others. If we attack all forms of it, we attack the people who worked really hard to create new things that have improved our lives (medicine, electricity, computers, etc.), which hurts everyone because the people who did do great things aren't rewarded and why try hard if people are going to hate you for being successful? If instead we attack things like usurious debt traps, we actually help people who are being used and abused for having no money. But this is a political thing now so anyone who doesn't follow the party line will probably provoke a xenophobic tribal reaction rather than responses.

eridius 11y ago
You seem to be making the same extremist assumption that pg is, the same thing that people were complaining about with his original essay. There's a big difference between reducing income inequality and eliminating it, but you don't seem to see the difference. Trying to reduce income inequality across the board does not mean people who create value are no longer being rewarded. And don't forget as well that the people who get rich off of things like medicine, electricity, computers etc. are often not actually the people who worked hard to create them.
- Natsu 11y ago
  I'd like to see the positions actually being advanced, then, because they've not been made very clear by anyone. And I can find people who are advancing that sort of extremist position, though I can't say that I understand them very well. See, e.g. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10831261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10831261
  - eridius 11y ago
    Are you talking about the Medium post or about commenters on that story? I'm assuming it's the Medium post. And if so... that Medium post is not advancing an extremist position at all. It's just disagreeing, loudly, with pg. My hunch is that any time someone declares there to be a problem with "income inequality", people like you and pg read that as declaring the problem to exist with any amount of income inequality, when in fact people typically mean extreme income inequality, given some ill-defined measure of extreme (people will always disagree over what "extreme" qualifies as, but I think most people in America agree that we've gone well past "extreme" by anyone's definition). Edit: When I say it's not advancing an extremist position, I'm talking specifically about income inequality. The post is also arguing against the claim that startups create value, or really that the people who are getting rich in silicon valley are creating value, which is certainly a whole different discussion to be had (though it appears that the author isn't actually saying they aren't creating value, it's just saying that any value they're creating is subjective and not everybody agrees that it is, in fact, valuable). But the bits about income inequality are certainly not extremist at all.

avz 11y ago

> Startups are good for a variety of reasons, and they also happen to cause income inequality, (emphasis mine) One of the points of the original essay is that startups don't just happen to cause inequality. On the contrary pg claims that getting rich is precisely what fuels and motivates people to build startups. > therefore taking steps to reduce income inequality that happen to reduce the income inequality resulting from startups does not actually mean that it's "harm[ing] the good". The essay explicitly claims otherwise: "You can't end economic inequality without preventing people from getting rich, and you can't do that without preventing them from starting startups." I think I side with pg. Never met a person who chose the effort, uncertainty and sleepless nights that come with building a startup without the promise of a financial reward at the end. Every time such a reward is won, we inch a tiny bit towards greater inequality.

carc 11y ago

Startups aren't good because they create income inequality. Income inequality being possible is good because it provides the incentives for people to take risks and create startups. That isn't to say the current level of income inequality we see today is good - it isn't. But to get rid of income inequality completely would drastically reduce the number of startups because - what would be the point? Would you really rather have everyone make the same amount of income regardless of what they do?

eridius 11y ago
Startups are not good because they create income inequality. That's a ridiculous claim. That would only be true if income inequality was intrinsically good, and I hope nobody is trying to argue for that. Startups are good because they create value (although that particular value is highly subjective depending on what the startup is actually doing; a startup that finds a cure for cancer is creating objective value, but a startup that brings the sharing economy to lawn maintenance is much more subjective, as any value it creates for the sharing economy comes at the cost of value destroyed in traditional lawn care services). Startups also create income inequality. This is not an intrinsically good thing. It is just accepted as the normal way to reward people for taking a risk on a startup. Given that, the only reason to argue against reducing income inequality generated by startups is if this reduction actually decreases the overall objective value created by startups (if fewer startups are created, but more of them create either more value or value that is more objectively valuable, is that a bad thing?) Don't forget as well that there are plenty of ways to create value, and to create companies, that don't involve startups. Most businesses in this country aren't startups. > Would you really rather have everyone make the same amount of income regardless of what they do? Literally nobody is arguing for that. That's a humongous straw man, it's the same straw man pg used in his original article, and it's complete nonsense. "Reduce income inequality" does not mean eliminate all income inequality.
- carc 11y ago
  > Literally nobody is arguing for that. That's a humongous straw man, it's the same straw man pg used in his original article, and it's complete nonsense. "Reduce income inequality" does not mean eliminate all income inequality. So you seem to agree that income inequality can be a good thing. If you didn't, you'd want everyone to have the same income. Maybe I misunderstood PG's essay, but the main takeaway I got was that income inequality CAN be a good thing for a society, and that the income inequality caused by successful startups are not an important enough problem (if it is even a problem) to society for us to try to focus on it.