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He provided more economic/productive value to the world than 100,000,000s of people. Idk about "working hard" or "merit" because who cares if someone has to wo

by pfisch 10y ago

He provided more economic/productive value to the world than 100,000,000s of people. Idk about "working hard" or "merit" because who cares if someone has to work super hard for 2 days to produce the same results another person can produce in 10 minutes.

psyc 10y ago
That's a fantasy. An analogy taken too literally. People lionize John Galts and imagine that they are their organizations. They aren't. Just because he started it and called the shots doesn't mean he literally is Amazon. That's a fanciful way of thinking and it's disastrous for us mortals to take it literally. Amazon is all the people working there, who, while well-paid compared to all the other serfs, actually get a paltry share of the fortune they generate collectively.
- pfisch 10y ago
  I never said he "was amazon". I am talking about his contribution to amazon. All those "serfs" are not really risking their own personal wealth. They take home their pay win or lose for amazon. They are not serfs. They are getting paid for their work.
- ploxiln 10y ago
  Very complicated systems, like computer hardware and software systems, particularly services and distributed systems, do have this un-intuitive property of amplifying competence differences. healthcare.gov is one visible and notable example where thousands of "trained and certified professionals" made a huge mess, and like 10 volunteers from silicon valley cleaned it up. You could hire 100000 or 200000 such contracted professionals and the value produced would be even lower. Sure, most of the blame is with the management structure, which the ~10 volunteers bypassed and overrode. But the results stand. A few people in the right place can produce more value than orders of magnitude more people doing the wrong thing for whatever reason. EDIT to better address your point: very few people could have done as well as Bezos in his position. Take any of the CEOs HP has had in the last decade, put them at the head of Amazon, and it would have done a lot worse. Put them all there, it would have done worse. Bezos gets a huge value multiplier for practical reasons.
cousin_it 10y ago
Imagine I find a way to create bread from thin air and don't tell anyone else how to do it. Assume the value of a loaf of bread to a consumer is 1 dollar. I sell 100 loaves for 99 cents each, because that's what the market will bear. How much money have I made? 99 dollars. How much value have I created for everyone else? 1 dollar. Now imagine instead I give away 100 loaves for free. How much value have I created for everyone else? 100 dollars. How much money have I made? Zero. Do you now see the problem with estimating a person's usefulness to society by looking at their net worth?
- obstinate 10y ago
  That's not really how consumer surplus works. Just because "the market will bear" a certain price, does not mean the value to a given buyer is that price. In reality, there are probably some who really do only value the loaf at $1, but others would be willing to pay $1.10, $1.20, or even more before the transaction was no longer break-even. You might make an attempt to capture this surplus as well (this is called price discrimination), but it's notoriously difficult to do with commodities. Also, there is no actor in the world economy who is having an effect like your metaphorical bread-give-away-er. So while it might hypothetically have been better if someone had built Amazon out of the goodness of their heart and operated at cost to all users, that is not one of the alternatives we have to decide between. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that such altruists are out there waiting in the wings. If anything, they'd have a competitive advantage, if they did exist, because they'd be able to offer lower prices.
  - cousin_it 10y ago
    Amazon uses lots of open source software created in large part by altruists for free.
andrepd 10y ago
Nope, Bezos didn't create more value than 100,000,000s of people. How could he? He started it, sure, he owns it and he directs it, but Amazon employs 341,000 people. Those are the people who generate the bulk of the value produced by the Amazon company, yet they share in very little of the value they produced. Would you say a CEO is responsible for all the value the company makes? Would you say it's fair for a feudal lord that "owns" a land to keep for himself 90% of the value his land produces while 100 people toil for 12h a day and barely have enough to eat? It's absurd. You can't defend this.
- sumedh 10y ago
  > yet they share in very little of the value they produced. Those employees are free to start their own companies. If you take the risk of starting a business then you should get the rewards if it succeeds.
  - Retra 10y ago
    It was far less risky for Bezos to start his business than most of his current employees. He was wealthy before he started.
    - sumedh 10y ago
      If you believe in your idea get a loan from family, friends or banks or get a high paying job save money and then start your business. Starting and running a successful business is not easy which is why the rewards should go to the risk taker.
      - pas 10y ago
        Someone working in a fulfillment center making ~40-50K each year won't be able to put together 100K capital to risk, even with family and friends. A large portion of HN readers are entrepreneurs, a lot of stories here tell the tale of failure, the burden and how to bear it. Yes it's not easy. And then there are people for the "not easy" is virtually impossible. Because they can't even start a business with any chance to succeed. I'm not saying, that because of this Bezos should give more to the employees, but it'd be good if these inherent inequalities were better managed by society.

by pfisch 10y ago

psyc 10y ago

That's a fantasy. An analogy taken too literally. People lionize John Galts and imagine that they are their organizations. They aren't. Just because he started it and called the shots doesn't mean he literally is Amazon. That's a fanciful way of thinking and it's disastrous for us mortals to take it literally. Amazon is all the people working there, who, while well-paid compared to all the other serfs, actually get a paltry share of the fortune they generate collectively.

pfisch 10y ago
I never said he "was amazon". I am talking about his contribution to amazon. All those "serfs" are not really risking their own personal wealth. They take home their pay win or lose for amazon. They are not serfs. They are getting paid for their work.
ploxiln 10y ago
Very complicated systems, like computer hardware and software systems, particularly services and distributed systems, do have this un-intuitive property of amplifying competence differences. healthcare.gov is one visible and notable example where thousands of "trained and certified professionals" made a huge mess, and like 10 volunteers from silicon valley cleaned it up. You could hire 100000 or 200000 such contracted professionals and the value produced would be even lower. Sure, most of the blame is with the management structure, which the ~10 volunteers bypassed and overrode. But the results stand. A few people in the right place can produce more value than orders of magnitude more people doing the wrong thing for whatever reason. EDIT to better address your point: very few people could have done as well as Bezos in his position. Take any of the CEOs HP has had in the last decade, put them at the head of Amazon, and it would have done a lot worse. Put them all there, it would have done worse. Bezos gets a huge value multiplier for practical reasons.

cousin_it 10y ago

Imagine I find a way to create bread from thin air and don't tell anyone else how to do it. Assume the value of a loaf of bread to a consumer is 1 dollar. I sell 100 loaves for 99 cents each, because that's what the market will bear. How much money have I made? 99 dollars. How much value have I created for everyone else? 1 dollar. Now imagine instead I give away 100 loaves for free. How much value have I created for everyone else? 100 dollars. How much money have I made? Zero. Do you now see the problem with estimating a person's usefulness to society by looking at their net worth?

obstinate 10y ago
That's not really how consumer surplus works. Just because "the market will bear" a certain price, does not mean the value to a given buyer is that price. In reality, there are probably some who really do only value the loaf at $1, but others would be willing to pay $1.10, $1.20, or even more before the transaction was no longer break-even. You might make an attempt to capture this surplus as well (this is called price discrimination), but it's notoriously difficult to do with commodities. Also, there is no actor in the world economy who is having an effect like your metaphorical bread-give-away-er. So while it might hypothetically have been better if someone had built Amazon out of the goodness of their heart and operated at cost to all users, that is not one of the alternatives we have to decide between. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that such altruists are out there waiting in the wings. If anything, they'd have a competitive advantage, if they did exist, because they'd be able to offer lower prices.
- cousin_it 10y ago
  Amazon uses lots of open source software created in large part by altruists for free.

andrepd 10y ago

Nope, Bezos didn't create more value than 100,000,000s of people. How could he? He started it, sure, he owns it and he directs it, but Amazon employs 341,000 people. Those are the people who generate the bulk of the value produced by the Amazon company, yet they share in very little of the value they produced. Would you say a CEO is responsible for all the value the company makes? Would you say it's fair for a feudal lord that "owns" a land to keep for himself 90% of the value his land produces while 100 people toil for 12h a day and barely have enough to eat? It's absurd. You can't defend this.

sumedh 10y ago
> yet they share in very little of the value they produced. Those employees are free to start their own companies. If you take the risk of starting a business then you should get the rewards if it succeeds.
- Retra 10y ago
  It was far less risky for Bezos to start his business than most of his current employees. He was wealthy before he started.
  - sumedh 10y ago
    If you believe in your idea get a loan from family, friends or banks or get a high paying job save money and then start your business. Starting and running a successful business is not easy which is why the rewards should go to the risk taker.
    - pas 10y ago
      Someone working in a fulfillment center making ~40-50K each year won't be able to put together 100K capital to risk, even with family and friends. A large portion of HN readers are entrepreneurs, a lot of stories here tell the tale of failure, the burden and how to bear it. Yes it's not easy. And then there are people for the "not easy" is virtually impossible. Because they can't even start a business with any chance to succeed. I'm not saying, that because of this Bezos should give more to the employees, but it'd be good if these inherent inequalities were better managed by society.