10 ms·

"Wealth comes in many forms, including both money and time. Consider that most of the world spends the majority of their time trying to acquire money, viewing i

"Wealth comes in many forms, including both money and time. Consider that most of the world spends the majority of their time trying to acquire money, viewing it as the key to doing what they want to do. In reality, all they’re doing is spending wealth (in the form of time) only to earn it back in the form of money, so they can then use it to buy back time." The author assumes that people spend the majority of their time trying to acquire money without any other motive than acquiring money to further other goals. This argument fails when you do what you do not only because it brings you money but also because you like doing it per se. You may want to do the activity and at the same time get an objective measurement of how much wealth you create for other people by getting paid money for it, in some way or another.

_delirium 17y ago
It's certainly not true that the amount of money you get paid is "an objective measurement of how much wealth you create for other people". It's quite possible to make money in lots of ways, some of which also create wealth for other people, some of which are relatively neutral for other people, and some of which take it away from other people. I'm not aware of any general formula for determining which is which, except perhaps in the extremes (obviously, various kinds of scam artists fall into the 3rd category).
- dsplittgerber 17y ago
  I think it's actually the most objective measurement there is. How else do you get paid other than by people voluntarily assigning your services or product a certain monetary value they would like to pay you?
  - raganwald 17y ago
    We had this long debate when some people claimed that the only objective measurement of the value of your work how much you get paid. It's true that's highly objective, but that doesn't mean it's right. Compare this to objective metrics for programmers. Lines of Code? Hours at the desk? Bugs assigned to them? Whatever metric you use, somebody will find a way to game it, proving that the metric may be useful in some cases but it is not strongly correlated with anything other than the desire to score highly. I have a theory that metrics are best when secret. If somehow we had money but nobody thought it was important, you might get very valuable information by seeing how has the most of it. But the moment people start valuing a high score, then they start gaming it and the next thing you know you've given Bernie Madoff a high score. To respond directly to your point, people do voluntarily assign a high value to your services or product when they pay you. The trouble is, they do so with highly incomplete information in an environment where the people playing the game manipulate the information to obtain the highest valuations. In the end, money often ends up being highly correlated with an ability to manipulate who receives what information rather than any underlying service or product.
    - wallflower 17y ago
      The theory I'm believing more and more (and it accounts for the million-dollar athlete salaries) is personal impact. If you are a high school teacher, even if you are very good, you can probably have a direct impact on only about fifty students a year. If you are a coder for a company, you should get paid based on your impact on products that your company sells. This might be why startups can be more lucrative - less employees, more ownership, more revenue per employee. Wheras, if you are a Major League baseball player, you have a indirect impact on your team's box office revenue (direct if you are top tier like A-Rod), thousands of impressionable kids, thousands of aspiring ball players who are no longer kids, etc. The standard rule for endorsement contracts is 3x - as in the company expects to bring in 3x whatever they are paying their endorser. Makes me wonder if a true monetizable distance learning solution would allow for teachers to be paid more based on their audience and impact. But teaching via distance technology is still an imperfect medium.
      - Psyonic 17y ago
        There are teachers who broadcast their lessons online who are currently doing this and making much more money than normal. This is becoming especially big right now in South Korea: http://english.ntdtv.com/ntdtv_en/ns_life/2009-07-15/476586938003.html http://english.ntdtv.com/ntdtv_en/ns_life/2009-07-15/4765869... As a counter-point to your wealth = personal impact point: Gandhi, Jesus, Buddha, Mother Teresa, Dali Lama. Whether or not these people and their actions were completely real or did all the things people say they did, they've certainly had an impact on history. None of them were/are particularly rich. Was it a failure to capture that value? Can all value be captured in dollars? Should it?
        wallflower 17y ago
        I did not say that personal impact is equivalent to wealth. It was meant to respond to the parent comment ("some people claimed that the only objective measurement of the value of your work how much you get paid") and to imply that wealth is a result of personal impact, magnified through network effects (having people work for you, television/cable). Gandhi et al. have had an impact that defies quantification (e.g. world changing) I personally believe personal impact is answered by this koan: What is the meaning of life? It's up to you to define it.
  - nfnaaron 17y ago
    How much did the inventors of vaccines get paid? Probably a reasonable amount for their expertise and labor, but much less than the wealth they created in saved and enriched lives.
wushupork 17y ago
I would argue that the MAJORITY of the people in this world spend the majority of their time acquiring money either to survive or to provide and thought about whether or not they enjoy or love what they do is secondary. I think the demographic of HN is skewed towards people who enjoy what they do (ie hacking and coding) but most people are not hackers, they are your construction workers, waiters, factory workers, laborers, etc.

_delirium 17y ago

It's certainly not true that the amount of money you get paid is "an objective measurement of how much wealth you create for other people". It's quite possible to make money in lots of ways, some of which also create wealth for other people, some of which are relatively neutral for other people, and some of which take it away from other people. I'm not aware of any general formula for determining which is which, except perhaps in the extremes (obviously, various kinds of scam artists fall into the 3rd category).

dsplittgerber 17y ago
I think it's actually the most objective measurement there is. How else do you get paid other than by people voluntarily assigning your services or product a certain monetary value they would like to pay you?
- raganwald 17y ago
  We had this long debate when some people claimed that the only objective measurement of the value of your work how much you get paid. It's true that's highly objective, but that doesn't mean it's right. Compare this to objective metrics for programmers. Lines of Code? Hours at the desk? Bugs assigned to them? Whatever metric you use, somebody will find a way to game it, proving that the metric may be useful in some cases but it is not strongly correlated with anything other than the desire to score highly. I have a theory that metrics are best when secret. If somehow we had money but nobody thought it was important, you might get very valuable information by seeing how has the most of it. But the moment people start valuing a high score, then they start gaming it and the next thing you know you've given Bernie Madoff a high score. To respond directly to your point, people do voluntarily assign a high value to your services or product when they pay you. The trouble is, they do so with highly incomplete information in an environment where the people playing the game manipulate the information to obtain the highest valuations. In the end, money often ends up being highly correlated with an ability to manipulate who receives what information rather than any underlying service or product.
  - wallflower 17y ago
    The theory I'm believing more and more (and it accounts for the million-dollar athlete salaries) is personal impact. If you are a high school teacher, even if you are very good, you can probably have a direct impact on only about fifty students a year. If you are a coder for a company, you should get paid based on your impact on products that your company sells. This might be why startups can be more lucrative - less employees, more ownership, more revenue per employee. Wheras, if you are a Major League baseball player, you have a indirect impact on your team's box office revenue (direct if you are top tier like A-Rod), thousands of impressionable kids, thousands of aspiring ball players who are no longer kids, etc. The standard rule for endorsement contracts is 3x - as in the company expects to bring in 3x whatever they are paying their endorser. Makes me wonder if a true monetizable distance learning solution would allow for teachers to be paid more based on their audience and impact. But teaching via distance technology is still an imperfect medium.
    - Psyonic 17y ago
      There are teachers who broadcast their lessons online who are currently doing this and making much more money than normal. This is becoming especially big right now in South Korea: http://english.ntdtv.com/ntdtv_en/ns_life/2009-07-15/476586938003.html http://english.ntdtv.com/ntdtv_en/ns_life/2009-07-15/4765869... As a counter-point to your wealth = personal impact point: Gandhi, Jesus, Buddha, Mother Teresa, Dali Lama. Whether or not these people and their actions were completely real or did all the things people say they did, they've certainly had an impact on history. None of them were/are particularly rich. Was it a failure to capture that value? Can all value be captured in dollars? Should it?
      - wallflower 17y ago
        I did not say that personal impact is equivalent to wealth. It was meant to respond to the parent comment ("some people claimed that the only objective measurement of the value of your work how much you get paid") and to imply that wealth is a result of personal impact, magnified through network effects (having people work for you, television/cable). Gandhi et al. have had an impact that defies quantification (e.g. world changing) I personally believe personal impact is answered by this koan: What is the meaning of life? It's up to you to define it.
- nfnaaron 17y ago
  How much did the inventors of vaccines get paid? Probably a reasonable amount for their expertise and labor, but much less than the wealth they created in saved and enriched lives.

wushupork 17y ago

I would argue that the MAJORITY of the people in this world spend the majority of their time acquiring money either to survive or to provide and thought about whether or not they enjoy or love what they do is secondary. I think the demographic of HN is skewed towards people who enjoy what they do (ie hacking and coding) but most people are not hackers, they are your construction workers, waiters, factory workers, laborers, etc.