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How I hate people like this. "Building assets and letting them work for you". For this you can read: "be the footsoldier for the banks who have a monopoly on mo

How I hate people like this. "Building assets and letting them work for you". For this you can read: "be the footsoldier for the banks who have a monopoly on money creation. Ask the bank to create money for you then use this to join the land monopolists. Then let those stupid little people who are actually creating wealth rent it back from you. This way you get a stream of their labour." For assets read "property". People should be aiming to keep most of the wealth they create. What makes the world shit, and what we cannot all do, is live off the backs of others. If he knows people who are billionaires they go there by not passing on the wealth created by others. Nobody adds a billion of wealth creation, not even Gates.

tim333 11y ago
>Nobody adds a billion of wealth creation How about JK Rowling. Must be close.
- barrkel 11y ago
  Copyright is a temporary monopoly; monopolies tend to drive up prices.
  - tome 11y ago
    Yes, but not beyond the value to the eventual purchasers ...
    - barrkel 11y ago
      That isn't particularly relevant. Value to purchasers is not constant. With a higher price, you generally get fewer purchasers, and with a lower price, more. I could argue that the maximum net societal value for any already-written book is generated by having a price of zero. The question of price then becomes one of incentive: what price generates sufficient profit to motivate the creation of cultural products? A price that generates billions for the author is probably too high.
miseg 11y ago
I agree with not agreeing with his debt-based asset-building approach. But you can still follow the same path in a tech way, such as selling your own product online. As you work on it, if it's producing income, that can begin to be an asset for you.
- branchless 11y ago
  Sure, that I have no problem with. Go forth and create wealth. Do not take land monopoly in a flawed system and force others to give you their labour.
  - tome 11y ago
    And if that land was purchased with wealth that was created, what's the problem?
    - branchless 11y ago
      Most is purchased with debt - this is what sets the price. Also they are not making new land. Why should people have the right to charge people to live on a part of the earth in perpetuity? The state builds infra around it then the land owner charges a fortune for people to have the right to exist. Land is a special case and should be treated as such. Land value tax would address this by capturing most of the added value from land for the common wealth rather than land monopolists.
      - AjithAntony 11y ago
        >Land value tax. Property taxes already exist. The people renting the property already pay it. If that tax goes up, then so do the rents.
  - miseg 11y ago
    Agreed.
  - AjithAntony 11y ago
    What if the value I create is a house that other people can live in? Am I allowed to collect payments from them, or was I supposed to gift it to them?
charlesdm 11y ago
Debt is a lever, in itself it's neither good nor bad. If I have a $10m net worth, I might want to lend someone $1m for a year on which they will pay me 5% interest per year. If that person can turn that million into one and a half million, what's the problem?
- branchless 11y ago
  The problem is when people are seeing all their labour disappear as rent / mortgage to people who are adding no value. This is happening way too much.
- Kinnard 11y ago
  Not when it's only issued by a monopoly.
  - tome 11y ago
    Who says only banks can make loans?
    - branchless 11y ago
      Only banks can create money. Bank of England official blog: http://bankunderground.co.uk/2015/06/30/banks-are-not-intermediaries-of-loanable-funds-and-why-this-matters/ http://bankunderground.co.uk/2015/06/30/banks-are-not-interm... Debt is not a lever it's a stick to beat the landless with in order to extract labour as tribute to the elite.
    - Kinnard 11y ago
      That's the thing, they don't loan the money, they create it, banks haven't functioned the way they're popularly imagined to function for centuries. And it's so sad that this false image is the moral basis for banks going after borrowers assets. The bank doesn't lend you someone else's money, it creates the money(no effort) and you have to work and put up real collateral to pay it back. By G-d we should all be working to expose and undo this madness.
mywittyname 11y ago
> Nobody adds a billion of wealth creation, not even Gates. A billion dollars is not very much. There are ~150M Americans working in the US, if something helps every one of them make $7, then over a billion dollars has been created. Microsoft has enabled practically every person in a developed nation to do their job more efficiently. This is worth far, far more than a billion dollars.
- branchless 11y ago
  MS is worth a lot and yes they have helped productivity. Did Gates do that or did he do it with the help of many people before him inventing all sorts and many workers adding software. Were the workers compensated sufficiently for the value they added? Did MS use a pseudo monopoly using the legal system to capture more value than they actually added? Gates did a lot but he stood on the shoulders of giants, seemed to have some "sharp" business practices enabled by our monopoly loving nation states and a lot of employees did the heavy lifting. I'm not criticising Gates, I don't mean to pick on him. If we had cheaper land I think the balance would shift to workers being less over a barrel and more able to negotiate higher wages to capture a greater share of their added value.
  - tome 11y ago
    Then I think what you're saying is lots of people create millions or billions of dollars worth of value, but few of them capture it. That's fair. I think one of the lessons of this book (at least subtextually) would be to aim to caputure the value you create.
  - mywittyname 11y ago
    Managing people is a critical component to a successful business. While he did get his hands dirty a lot during the early years, you can't take away from him credit just because he commanded others to do the labor. I understand and appreciate you sentiment. You're right, it wasn't entirely due to him, it was a collaboration between hundreds of people. But, if he left during the very early years, it's an almost certainty that MS would not have achieved its success and influence.

tim333 11y ago

>Nobody adds a billion of wealth creation How about JK Rowling. Must be close.

barrkel 11y ago
Copyright is a temporary monopoly; monopolies tend to drive up prices.
- tome 11y ago
  Yes, but not beyond the value to the eventual purchasers ...
  - barrkel 11y ago
    That isn't particularly relevant. Value to purchasers is not constant. With a higher price, you generally get fewer purchasers, and with a lower price, more. I could argue that the maximum net societal value for any already-written book is generated by having a price of zero. The question of price then becomes one of incentive: what price generates sufficient profit to motivate the creation of cultural products? A price that generates billions for the author is probably too high.

miseg 11y ago

I agree with not agreeing with his debt-based asset-building approach. But you can still follow the same path in a tech way, such as selling your own product online. As you work on it, if it's producing income, that can begin to be an asset for you.

branchless 11y ago
Sure, that I have no problem with. Go forth and create wealth. Do not take land monopoly in a flawed system and force others to give you their labour.
- tome 11y ago
  And if that land was purchased with wealth that was created, what's the problem?
  - branchless 11y ago
    Most is purchased with debt - this is what sets the price. Also they are not making new land. Why should people have the right to charge people to live on a part of the earth in perpetuity? The state builds infra around it then the land owner charges a fortune for people to have the right to exist. Land is a special case and should be treated as such. Land value tax would address this by capturing most of the added value from land for the common wealth rather than land monopolists.
    - AjithAntony 11y ago
      >Land value tax. Property taxes already exist. The people renting the property already pay it. If that tax goes up, then so do the rents.
- miseg 11y ago
  Agreed.
- AjithAntony 11y ago
  What if the value I create is a house that other people can live in? Am I allowed to collect payments from them, or was I supposed to gift it to them?

charlesdm 11y ago

Debt is a lever, in itself it's neither good nor bad. If I have a $10m net worth, I might want to lend someone $1m for a year on which they will pay me 5% interest per year. If that person can turn that million into one and a half million, what's the problem?

branchless 11y ago
The problem is when people are seeing all their labour disappear as rent / mortgage to people who are adding no value. This is happening way too much.
Kinnard 11y ago
Not when it's only issued by a monopoly.
- tome 11y ago
  Who says only banks can make loans?
  - branchless 11y ago
    Only banks can create money. Bank of England official blog: http://bankunderground.co.uk/2015/06/30/banks-are-not-intermediaries-of-loanable-funds-and-why-this-matters/ http://bankunderground.co.uk/2015/06/30/banks-are-not-interm... Debt is not a lever it's a stick to beat the landless with in order to extract labour as tribute to the elite.
  - Kinnard 11y ago
    That's the thing, they don't loan the money, they create it, banks haven't functioned the way they're popularly imagined to function for centuries. And it's so sad that this false image is the moral basis for banks going after borrowers assets. The bank doesn't lend you someone else's money, it creates the money(no effort) and you have to work and put up real collateral to pay it back. By G-d we should all be working to expose and undo this madness.

mywittyname 11y ago

> Nobody adds a billion of wealth creation, not even Gates. A billion dollars is not very much. There are ~150M Americans working in the US, if something helps every one of them make $7, then over a billion dollars has been created. Microsoft has enabled practically every person in a developed nation to do their job more efficiently. This is worth far, far more than a billion dollars.

branchless 11y ago
MS is worth a lot and yes they have helped productivity. Did Gates do that or did he do it with the help of many people before him inventing all sorts and many workers adding software. Were the workers compensated sufficiently for the value they added? Did MS use a pseudo monopoly using the legal system to capture more value than they actually added? Gates did a lot but he stood on the shoulders of giants, seemed to have some "sharp" business practices enabled by our monopoly loving nation states and a lot of employees did the heavy lifting. I'm not criticising Gates, I don't mean to pick on him. If we had cheaper land I think the balance would shift to workers being less over a barrel and more able to negotiate higher wages to capture a greater share of their added value.
- tome 11y ago
  Then I think what you're saying is lots of people create millions or billions of dollars worth of value, but few of them capture it. That's fair. I think one of the lessons of this book (at least subtextually) would be to aim to caputure the value you create.
- mywittyname 11y ago
  Managing people is a critical component to a successful business. While he did get his hands dirty a lot during the early years, you can't take away from him credit just because he commanded others to do the labor. I understand and appreciate you sentiment. You're right, it wasn't entirely due to him, it was a collaboration between hundreds of people. But, if he left during the very early years, it's an almost certainty that MS would not have achieved its success and influence.