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One could argue that an investor’s job is distributing capital. Capital that provides the resources to employ tens, hundreds, or even thousands of people. All

by Swizec 9y ago

One could argue that an investor’s job is distributing capital. Capital that provides the resources to employ tens, hundreds, or even thousands of people. All a janitor does is keep a few offices clean. A task generally done by janitors because the people working in those offices implicitly consider cleaning to not be worth their time. So ... yeah? I for one would not have a day job and most of my sidehustle market without investors.

SubiculumCode 9y ago
But those that inherited the wealth from their daddy, who have their investor spread that wealth around, what do they do? They don't even clean for themselves.
- Swizec 9y ago
  They spread said wealth. Do you not want it? They don’t have to, you know.
  - BadCookie 9y ago
    Ha! It's not like they do it out of altruism. If the wealthy are trying to spread their wealth around, they are failing miserably.
    - Swizec 9y ago
      > If the wealthy are trying to spread their wealth around, they are failing miserably. Are they? Most of the tech industry would stop existing without wealthy people investing in VC funds which in turn invest in the services we use all day. I wouldn't be surprised if most of every industry would up and vanish without investors. The wealthy used to hoard their wealth and not spread it around. You know what that was called? Feudalism and/or mercantilism, depending on which part of the system you look at. It has largely been agreed that this was a bad system because people generally do not enjoy being peasants.
      - SubiculumCode 9y ago
        Investors don't actually have to own the wealth to invest the wealth. Hence investment firms. So if Jack built a company from the ground up, and Jill inherits money from Jack, who then has Sam invest that money in the markets, Jill is suddenly being a productive member of society? Except for the ownership bit, it was Jack and Sam actually doing the value adding. Jill is just a rentier
        Swizec 9y ago
        And yet without Jill, Sam would have nothing to play with and all of Jack's wealth would be wasted as far as society is concerned. Yes, some of it would have been used to fuel Jill's lifestyle and that is useful for everyone who profits from that. But the more of Jack's wealth that Jill uses, the more society benefits from Jack's wealth. My point is, money hiding under the mattress benefits no-one. As much as you and I both resent Jill for having access to the kind of wealth that we do not, her most biggest possible contribution to society is in fact to decide to spread that wealth. Heaven forbid she decide to get a real job and keep the wealth stashed away. Then she's contributing no more than the rest of us even though she could.
        SubiculumCode 9y ago
        The subthread started by the statement "those that inherited the wealth from their daddy, who have their investor spread that wealth around, what do they do? They don't even clean for themselves." It is being argued that she is doing something. She is spreading here wealth around. My counter argument is that she is not infact spreading it around, her investment firm is. She adds no value. Her money does. Nowhere in the thread does it appear the idea that money should not be circulated.
        andrepd 9y ago
        > And yet without Jill, Sam would have nothing to play with And yet in the current system, without Jill's collaboration, Sam would have nothing to play with. Ftfy. This indicates a flaw in the system, if someone who isn't a productive member of society in any sense holds the nuts and reaps the lion's share of the profits.
    - Tyrannosaur 9y ago
      You seem to be under the impression that for one person to receive wealth, another has to lose it. That's not actually how any of this works and is an incredibly dangerous way of thinking.
      - cannonedhamster 9y ago
        This isn't a sarcastic reply, please define "wealth" as you mean it and prove that it isn't finite on a planet with finite resources, time, and manpower. How is wealth created and not then transferred from one person to another? If the wealthy get wealthier through either extracting resources from their workers or rent seeking behavior, where does the extra wealth come from? In fiat currencies, while dollars may increase, that doesn't mean wealth increases and in fact, inflationary pressures can mean someone is continually losing wealth if they aren't moving their money. So I understand the argument of wealth expanding, but I don't understand how it gets around the laws of physics.
      - BadCookie 9y ago
        Nothing about my comment assumes that the "size of the pie" can't grow. It can, and it does. But if the wealthy take all of the increase in the pie for themselves (plus more!), then the poor and middle class still get screwed over, and that is exactly what is happening in the U.S. For particularly shameful evidence that wealth in the U.S. is not being adequately spread around, see this article: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/05/hookworm-lowndes-county-alabama-water-waste-treatment-poverty?CMP=share_btn_tw https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/05/hookworm-low...
vbuwivbiu 9y ago
I think cleaners are extremely valuable to society. It's always puzzled me that we don't pay toilet-cleaners and binmen in proportion to how disgusting their job is. Nobody wants to do that kind of work, yet we all greatly value the cleanliness they provide us. By contrast, and investor's job could be done by an algorithm.
- Houshalter 9y ago
  Sanitary workers do get paid decently for unskilled workers. People don't and shouldn't get paid based on some nebulous "how valuable their job is to society". That ignores supply and demand. The fact is we have more people that WANT to work as janitors than their are actual janitorial jobs, and so the wage gets driven. Whereas there are tons of people that need investors and can't find them (as anyone who gets even a modest windfall will quickly find out.) Or in other words, remove a random janitor from the world and the job will quickly be filled and life will go on. Remove a random investor and entire businesses will disappear/not be founded and the world will be noticeably worse off.
  - vbuwivbiu 9y ago
    If sanitary work stopped today, society would quickly disintegrate, whereas if investors stopped working today the world would be improved. Isn't supply-and-demand nebulous ? It's humans who place values on goods and services, not some law of nature, and they do so according to the weather of their emotions.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - Houshalter 9y ago
      >If sanitary work stopped today, society would quickly disintegrate, whereas if investors stopped working today the world would be improved. Society wouldn't disintegrate without sanitary workers. It would get grosser, with people forced to do their own plumbing and dump their own trash. And even if all sanitary workers united and went on permanent strike, they could be quickly replaced within a few months. As I said, there's no shortage of people able and willing to do that job. If investors all quit we'd be fucked. Maybe not overnight, but eventually. No new investments. No new businesses. No new jobs. The economy stops growing. People can't buy cars or homes because there is no one to lend them money. Businesses can't get loans to invest in new more efficient processes, or new factories, or whatever. And no one can just come in and replace them, because it requires a lot of money and risk tolerance among other things. >Isn't supply-and-demand nebulous ? It's humans who place values on goods and services, not some law of nature Not some law of nature, but economics. The prices of things are not arbitrary, they are set based on how strongly people value that thing divided by the supply. If you have a huge supply of people who can do a job, then the wage isn't going to be very high. And this is a good thing. It creates incentives for people to take the jobs that are most demanded. There is a big demand for programmers and a short supply. If a sanitary worker can switch to programming, the economy would be a bit more efficient. At the moment we need slightly more programmers and slightly fewer sanitary workers. If everyone did this it would eventually equalize and they would pay the same.

by Swizec 9y ago

SubiculumCode 9y ago

But those that inherited the wealth from their daddy, who have their investor spread that wealth around, what do they do? They don't even clean for themselves.

Swizec 9y ago
They spread said wealth. Do you not want it? They don’t have to, you know.
- BadCookie 9y ago
  Ha! It's not like they do it out of altruism. If the wealthy are trying to spread their wealth around, they are failing miserably.
  - Swizec 9y ago
    > If the wealthy are trying to spread their wealth around, they are failing miserably. Are they? Most of the tech industry would stop existing without wealthy people investing in VC funds which in turn invest in the services we use all day. I wouldn't be surprised if most of every industry would up and vanish without investors. The wealthy used to hoard their wealth and not spread it around. You know what that was called? Feudalism and/or mercantilism, depending on which part of the system you look at. It has largely been agreed that this was a bad system because people generally do not enjoy being peasants.
    - SubiculumCode 9y ago
      Investors don't actually have to own the wealth to invest the wealth. Hence investment firms. So if Jack built a company from the ground up, and Jill inherits money from Jack, who then has Sam invest that money in the markets, Jill is suddenly being a productive member of society? Except for the ownership bit, it was Jack and Sam actually doing the value adding. Jill is just a rentier
      - Swizec 9y ago
        And yet without Jill, Sam would have nothing to play with and all of Jack's wealth would be wasted as far as society is concerned. Yes, some of it would have been used to fuel Jill's lifestyle and that is useful for everyone who profits from that. But the more of Jack's wealth that Jill uses, the more society benefits from Jack's wealth. My point is, money hiding under the mattress benefits no-one. As much as you and I both resent Jill for having access to the kind of wealth that we do not, her most biggest possible contribution to society is in fact to decide to spread that wealth. Heaven forbid she decide to get a real job and keep the wealth stashed away. Then she's contributing no more than the rest of us even though she could.
        SubiculumCode 9y ago
        The subthread started by the statement "those that inherited the wealth from their daddy, who have their investor spread that wealth around, what do they do? They don't even clean for themselves." It is being argued that she is doing something. She is spreading here wealth around. My counter argument is that she is not infact spreading it around, her investment firm is. She adds no value. Her money does. Nowhere in the thread does it appear the idea that money should not be circulated.
        andrepd 9y ago
        > And yet without Jill, Sam would have nothing to play with And yet in the current system, without Jill's collaboration, Sam would have nothing to play with. Ftfy. This indicates a flaw in the system, if someone who isn't a productive member of society in any sense holds the nuts and reaps the lion's share of the profits.
  - Tyrannosaur 9y ago
    You seem to be under the impression that for one person to receive wealth, another has to lose it. That's not actually how any of this works and is an incredibly dangerous way of thinking.
    - cannonedhamster 9y ago
      This isn't a sarcastic reply, please define "wealth" as you mean it and prove that it isn't finite on a planet with finite resources, time, and manpower. How is wealth created and not then transferred from one person to another? If the wealthy get wealthier through either extracting resources from their workers or rent seeking behavior, where does the extra wealth come from? In fiat currencies, while dollars may increase, that doesn't mean wealth increases and in fact, inflationary pressures can mean someone is continually losing wealth if they aren't moving their money. So I understand the argument of wealth expanding, but I don't understand how it gets around the laws of physics.
    - BadCookie 9y ago
      Nothing about my comment assumes that the "size of the pie" can't grow. It can, and it does. But if the wealthy take all of the increase in the pie for themselves (plus more!), then the poor and middle class still get screwed over, and that is exactly what is happening in the U.S. For particularly shameful evidence that wealth in the U.S. is not being adequately spread around, see this article: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/05/hookworm-lowndes-county-alabama-water-waste-treatment-poverty?CMP=share_btn_tw https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/05/hookworm-low...

vbuwivbiu 9y ago

I think cleaners are extremely valuable to society. It's always puzzled me that we don't pay toilet-cleaners and binmen in proportion to how disgusting their job is. Nobody wants to do that kind of work, yet we all greatly value the cleanliness they provide us. By contrast, and investor's job could be done by an algorithm.

Houshalter 9y ago
Sanitary workers do get paid decently for unskilled workers. People don't and shouldn't get paid based on some nebulous "how valuable their job is to society". That ignores supply and demand. The fact is we have more people that WANT to work as janitors than their are actual janitorial jobs, and so the wage gets driven. Whereas there are tons of people that need investors and can't find them (as anyone who gets even a modest windfall will quickly find out.) Or in other words, remove a random janitor from the world and the job will quickly be filled and life will go on. Remove a random investor and entire businesses will disappear/not be founded and the world will be noticeably worse off.
- vbuwivbiu 9y ago
  If sanitary work stopped today, society would quickly disintegrate, whereas if investors stopped working today the world would be improved. Isn't supply-and-demand nebulous ? It's humans who place values on goods and services, not some law of nature, and they do so according to the weather of their emotions.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - Houshalter 9y ago
    >If sanitary work stopped today, society would quickly disintegrate, whereas if investors stopped working today the world would be improved. Society wouldn't disintegrate without sanitary workers. It would get grosser, with people forced to do their own plumbing and dump their own trash. And even if all sanitary workers united and went on permanent strike, they could be quickly replaced within a few months. As I said, there's no shortage of people able and willing to do that job. If investors all quit we'd be fucked. Maybe not overnight, but eventually. No new investments. No new businesses. No new jobs. The economy stops growing. People can't buy cars or homes because there is no one to lend them money. Businesses can't get loans to invest in new more efficient processes, or new factories, or whatever. And no one can just come in and replace them, because it requires a lot of money and risk tolerance among other things. >Isn't supply-and-demand nebulous ? It's humans who place values on goods and services, not some law of nature Not some law of nature, but economics. The prices of things are not arbitrary, they are set based on how strongly people value that thing divided by the supply. If you have a huge supply of people who can do a job, then the wage isn't going to be very high. And this is a good thing. It creates incentives for people to take the jobs that are most demanded. There is a big demand for programmers and a short supply. If a sanitary worker can switch to programming, the economy would be a bit more efficient. At the moment we need slightly more programmers and slightly fewer sanitary workers. If everyone did this it would eventually equalize and they would pay the same.