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I read some "rebuttals" to the previous essay, and while there were definitely some valid points brought up, a lot of them seemed to me to have misinterpreted a

• drhayes9 11y ago
  From PG's essay "Economic Inequality": "Most people who get rich tend to be fairly driven. Whatever their other flaws, laziness is usually not one of them... Variation in productivity is far from the only source of economic inequality, but it is the irreducible core of it, in the sense that you'll have that left when you eliminate all other sources." This feels like the heart of that particular essay and displays a rather breathtaking misunderstanding of poverty, its causes and its inhabitants. This blames poor people for being poor. How am I misreading this? I don't feel like I'm cherry-picking, I feel like I'm finding the theme of the text. If that's not it, then what is its theme? Its central idea? From later in the same essay: "Louis Brandeis said 'We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.' That sounds plausible. But if I have to choose between ignoring him and ignoring an exponential curve that has been operating for thousands of years, I'll bet on the curve." Again: this sounds like PG saying "In the choice between fostering political power in people at large and concentrating money in the hands of those who already have it, I'll choose the latter." What's there to misinterpret? I thought this essay, without context, was very sweet. Life is too short. But read as a non-response to critics of the "Income Inequality" essay it takes on a callous tone.
  • natrius 11y ago
    > This blames poor people for being poor. No it doesn't. A claim that most rich people are driven doesn't imply that most poor people are lazy. The portion you quoted makes this distinction clear: "Variation in productivity is far from the only source of economic inequality, but it is the irreducible core of it, in the sense that you'll have that left when you eliminate all other sources." If we found a way to give everyone the same opportunities, there'd still be economic inequality. Is inequality what we should attack? It's probably better to attack the undesirable causes directly. The essay made this point clearly.
    • totalrobe 11y ago
      It does imply that, actually. This is a life or death topic for millions worldwide and he decided to trample all over by making an argument in a vacuum. There is a great deal of circumstance, nepotism, and luck that goes into success, and the essay read as very juvenile coming from someone as wealthy as he is.
    • giaour 11y ago
      > A claim that most rich people are driven doesn't imply that most poor people are lazy. If it doesn't imply that poor people are lazy, then what does it imply? That the rich and poor are equally driven, and that something other than effort (luck, inherited wealth, etc) makes the rich rich and the poor poor?
      • sirsar 11y ago
        I read it as claiming that there are lucky driven people, unlucky driven people, lucky undriven people, and unlucky undriven people. And then that most rich people fall into the first category. This is totally compatible with all poor people being in the second category, and no poor people being lazy (3rd and 4th categories). (I disagree with his essay, but for different reasons than this.)
        • giaour 11y ago
          I see what you mean, but wouldn't that make PG's point a tautology? If the difference is "productivity," and "productivity" is defined as the intersection of luck and drive that make people rich, then all PG is saying is that "the irreducible core of [economic inequality]" is having come into possession of wealth. It really seems like one can either read PG's essay as a Randian screed or as poorly argued cant. I saw it as the former, but I can understand reading it as the latter.
          • sirsar 11y ago
            > then all PG is saying is that "the irreducible core of [economic inequality]" is having come into possession of wealth. Not quite. He's saying (in my reading) that even if you legislate away all the other sources of inequality (even to the point of wiping out all assets and giving each citizen an equal amount of cash to start anew), inequality would still arise due to differences in personal productivity / drive. Seems true to me, although entirely irrelevant to the topic of real world inequality.
  • xiaoma 11y ago
    How is the idea that variation in productivity leads to a variation in income a "breathtaking misunderstanding of poverty"? It's absolutely true that variation in productivity leads to a variation in income and it's also true technology acts as a lever and is increasing the variation in productivity between people. At no point did PG say anything like what you claim it "sounds like" he is saying. The essay was an argument to attack rent-seeking, and other bad behaviors, but not the variation in productivity. It also argued that even if all rent-seeking were eliminated, there would still be variations in income because some people are far more productive than the average.
    • giaour 11y ago
      Keeping in mind that PG is a venture capitalist -- as in, a financier -- how should we apply your interpretation of his essay to PG himself? His current job is incubating companies and then collecting returns, so are you saying that PG was arguing that he is the problem? Edit: s/rents/returns/
      • xiaoma 11y ago
        Rent collecting or rent-seeking behavior has a special meaning in economics. It's different from investing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking A an example of rent collecting would be if he used his wealth to lobby for a law requiring all start-ups to have a license which an organization he controlled granted (and charged for).
        • giaour 11y ago
          Thanks; I edited my comment. The point remains, though, that PG is not "creating wealth" under the terms laid out in his essay.
          • xiaoma 11y ago
            He's providing incredible value/wealth to the startups he advises and invests in. I'd also argue that his essays are a great deal of wealth given to the world.
  • rukuu001 11y ago
    Re: "Economic Inequality". I tend to read with a charitable eye, so I don't take the same meaning as yourself. But, he's chosen an expression that allows a lot of interpretation. The way I read it, I assume we're talking about a cohort, and the point is, on average, the least lazy of the cohort will probably do better.
    • ZeroGravitas 11y ago
      The least lazy lottery players win more? The least lazy people participating in a ponzi scheme get more money? Obviously not, so what you're assuming and/or implying is that life is fair, that the rich deserve their success and the poor are lazy, which is exactly the point people are arguing, so you're begging the question.
  • ScottBurson 11y ago
    >> Variation in productivity is far from the only source of economic inequality, but it is the irreducible core of it, in the sense that you'll have that left when you eliminate all other sources. > This blames poor people for being poor. How am I misreading this? FWIW, I read it differently. I think Paul is saying that even if we had a world where everyone had a truly equal opportunity, in the sense of having similar (or at least adequate) childhood nutrition, intellectual stimulation, education, etc., there would still be variations in productivity between individuals that would result in different economic outcomes. The second quote I read simply as saying that Paul doesn't think the tendency for wealth to concentrate can be stopped. If you want to complain that Paul could have expressed himself better, I won't argue; I agree that was by far his worst written essay. And I suspect he is genuinely pained by the reaction it received. To whatever extent this new piece is specifically a response to that reaction, I think it's more hurt than callous.
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    • Joeri 11y ago
      > if we had a world where everyone had a truly equal opportunity, in the sense of having similar (or at least adequate) childhood nutrition, intellectual stimulation, education, etc., there would still be variations in productivity between individuals that would result in different economic outcomes. That argument is still missing the point. Variations you will always have, but no guarantee that the same people would come out on top, unless you believe that the hardest workers happen to mostly come from well-financed backgrounds and caucasian gene pools. There are many people who work hard all their life and never make it out of the slums. Working hard is not a differentiator, it's what gets you a seat at the table. On the way up everyone works hard. Slackers don't even compete. The difference between those who make it to the top and those who don't is mostly not effort, it is opportunity, and good instincts to leverage that opportunity. In a truly fair world the people who came out on top would be an almost completely different set of people than those who are at the top today. I feel like the criticism of the essay was not because of its content but its theme. It felt like a defense of the current system, whether taken narrowly as SV or broadly as global capitalism. This struck a nerve because most people in their gut know that the current system is fundamentally unfair and needs to be replaced by something better. It cannot be a good system that made it so that the set of people who own as much wealth as the poorest 3 billion all fit on a yacht, and not even a very big one. People got angry because they thought he was defending the way things are, even if his actual position was more nuanced.
  • orbitur 11y ago
    > This blames poor people for being poor. Huh? He said all the people at the top are not lazy. "All people at the bottom are lazy" doesn't follow from his statement.
    • ubernostrum 11y ago
      Generally as a matter of rhetoric one does not pick out a single attribute to predicate of a class of people, unless one wishes to imply that other classes do not possess the attribute, or that the attribute is a sufficient condition for membership in the class. What makes it a dirty rhetorical trick is, of course, that one can then reply to one's critics "ah, but I didn't explicitly say what you read into that".
      • prostoalex 11y ago
        Draw a 2x2 matrix of people who "got rich" (i.e. experienced significant rise in wealth) and are "fairly driven". This will give you four groups: 1) Got rich and weren't driven. 2) Got rich and were driven. 3) Stayed poor and weren't driven. 4) Stayed poor but were driven. pg statement says he's been exposed with group 2, which he highlighted. You seem to accuse him of implicitly highlighting group 3, and would prefer he implicitly (explicitly?) highlights group 4. Is that the gist of the argument? The statements "Most people who get rich tend to be fairly driven." and "Most people who are fairly driven tend to get rich." are not logically equivalent.
      • giantqqq 11y ago
        Yep. Pg is a good enough writer that he knew what he was doing; and he would've explicitly stated if he wasn't making the social darwinism argument. Social darwinism has always been popular with the top 0.01% (and those who strive to join thes. Whether they earned their money collecting taxes, collecting rents, as entrepreneurs, or as the product of crime, the wealthiest have always written in the manner pg did. Part of me is outraged by this, because I used to respect pg. Part of me is realizes that perhaps I'm the fool for thinking that pg was different in any meaningful way than any other plutocrat.
      • bittercynic 11y ago
  • prostoalex 11y ago
    I read it differently. He suggests that social mobility is highly correlated with non-laziness (whether expressed through hard work, not hard but smart work, natural curiosity, drive to tinker with stuff, or ability to deliver on a project started without letting the inertia set in). That does not mean that poverty is correlated with laziness. The only logical conclusion that follows is that laziness is not highly correlated with social mobility, e.g. people who are poor and lazy have not statistically been exposed to much social mobility.
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  • peterashford 11y ago
    Indeed, there's a clear inference that the poor are lazy which is demonstrably untrue as a rule.
  • fsloth 11y ago
    "How am I misreading this? I don't feel like I'm cherry-picking, I feel like I'm finding the theme of the text. If that's not it, then what is its theme? Its central idea?" I don't see how he advocated a position that poor people deserve to be poor. He advocated a position where being rich is ok. These are two different things. It also focuses discussion on economics - eliminating mega-wealth should not be made priority, but the focus should be placed on poverty minimization.
  • ageek123 11y ago
    You're using the colloquial definition of productivity while PG was using the economic definition. The economic definition has nothing to do with how hard you work--it has to do with your economic output. Bill Gates working at McDonalds would be tremendously unproductive (by the economic definition). A farmer who works the land manually is much less productive than one who uses a tractor, even though the manual laborer is probably working "harder" than the technology-enabled one.
• cryoshon 11y ago
  I quoted PG paragraph by paragraph in my response... seems hard to misinterpret things that way. I think PG probably had more thoughts on the issue of income inequality which perhaps he thought were clear in his essay, but in fact were not clear to readers primed by awkward wording at the start. It's pretty hard to misinterpret a lot of the things he wrote, though.
• erikpukinskis 11y ago
  You can choose to spend your debate time defending the sanctity of the original point, or you can choose to follow the ideas that are brought to you. You can look for the kernel of intent, or you can try to swat people away for making logical fallacies. Debate isn't always about winning. Sometimes it can just be a back and forth exploration of an interesting subject area. But you have to treat it that way.
• pythia__ 11y ago
  I think this is true but hardly surprising. The average participant in an argument on the Internet is interested not in the truth but in winning. Who wins an Internet argument is thought by that participant to be decided by the audience, which is less clever than the debaters and wants quick, emotionally satisfying resolutions. It is therefore a winning strategy for him or her to ignore nuance and instead attack straw men and try to humiliate the opponent. Paul Graham's hierarchy of disagreement is inverted on Twitter. Thinking about this long enough makes large-scale democracy very scary because it operates in the same terms on the same media.