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I am not commenting on the law. The law says a divorced wife gets half of whatever. I don't care. What I do care is the notion that the growth and success of A

I am not commenting on the law. The law says a divorced wife gets half of whatever. I don't care. What I do care is the notion that the growth and success of Amazon is 50% due to the wife. That I disagree with.

sytelus 8y ago
Assume you need atleast $100K to start a business but you have only $90K. Your friend comes around and puts in $10K but only if you are willing to offer 50% ownership. Given no other choices, you agree and work your ass off for next 25 years to grow business to $100B while your friend did nothing else for it. Does your friend deserve $50B? I am not asking from legal point of view because that answer would be yes. I am asking this from philosophical perspective. Clearly if your friend didn’t lend you $10K, you wouldn’t have your $100B business. But that’s the seed stage only work your friend did. Does he deserve fruits of your 25 years of labor? Does your friend deserve that stack because he took risk without knowledge of how future would turn out? This is one the deepest question that has huge consequences all the way in to the concept of money, capital, debt, rewards, collaboration and purpose itself.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  It's easy (and fun!) to go down the rabbit hole philosophically. Does Jeff deserve billions of dollars more than the hundreds of thousands of Amazon employees who have collectively built the company? Are their fruits of their labor worth so much less than his, regardless of Jeff's hard business decisions and many more hours per week worked, simply because of how equity is constructed and distributed? Jeff has clearly spent over 20 years building his company, nights, weekends, missed time with family he'll never get back, but can you point to the decisions worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Jeff alone? Value, its attribution, and its equitable distribution is hard, and executed in an imperfect fashion.
  - sytelus 8y ago
    In capitalism, rewards are proportional to how much capital you have (either your own or borrowed), your efforts are minimally material.
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      But capital alone is no indicator of ownership interest grants (see: advisors or key employees who are granted equity for their contributions [1]). Rewards in capitalism are to those who can convince others of value provided in exchange for an equity interest; capital is only a small part of that. Lots of equity is sweat equity! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Parker#Facebook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Parker#Facebook
- jodrellblank 8y ago
  "Who can say how much Randi Zuckerberg is worth?" "She believes she is worth all her money, she believes she is more than Mark's sister, she believes she has valuable opinions. Anyone who disagrees is a hater. You're just jealous. "No, she's a fool!" Then how come she's so rich? Those who are enraged by her are actually suffering from the same delusion she is [..] The standard criticism of her is that she didn't really do anything to deserve her money-- "she got rich because of her brother"-- but this is a profound disavowal of the reality: she got rich because of timing-- even though her job at Facebook was trivial, she was there from the beginning and got paid in stock options. What's interesting is that no one makes this criticism of her, because that's what her haters believe is supposed to happen to them. [..] even her haters want the money to mean retroactively they were already deserving of it, this kind of fortune has bypassed reality testing and instead creates a new reality, it uses the truth in order to lie: of course I'm not rich because of my work product, duh, you can't measure a human being's value based on his labor. I'm rich because that's what I'm worth. "Isn't that specious reasoning?" Oh, dear, sweet, earnest, Lisa, I want to buy your rock.* And so the hatred of her, like all hate, is revealed to be a defense. To her haters Randi is a buffoon, a step above relationship expert, she is too glaringly undeserving of that money; Randi is an obscene counterexample to the logic that the payout mirrors value and self worth. She is a narcissistic injury for everyone else. So she's disparaged in a specific way: she doesn't deserve all that money because she got it from her brother." - https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/03/who_can_know_how_much_randi_zu.html https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/03/who_can_know_how_muc...
amanaplanacanal 8y ago
Are you personal friends with them? I mean, how would you know?

sytelus 8y ago

Assume you need atleast $100K to start a business but you have only $90K. Your friend comes around and puts in $10K but only if you are willing to offer 50% ownership. Given no other choices, you agree and work your ass off for next 25 years to grow business to $100B while your friend did nothing else for it. Does your friend deserve $50B? I am not asking from legal point of view because that answer would be yes. I am asking this from philosophical perspective. Clearly if your friend didn’t lend you $10K, you wouldn’t have your $100B business. But that’s the seed stage only work your friend did. Does he deserve fruits of your 25 years of labor? Does your friend deserve that stack because he took risk without knowledge of how future would turn out? This is one the deepest question that has huge consequences all the way in to the concept of money, capital, debt, rewards, collaboration and purpose itself.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
It's easy (and fun!) to go down the rabbit hole philosophically. Does Jeff deserve billions of dollars more than the hundreds of thousands of Amazon employees who have collectively built the company? Are their fruits of their labor worth so much less than his, regardless of Jeff's hard business decisions and many more hours per week worked, simply because of how equity is constructed and distributed? Jeff has clearly spent over 20 years building his company, nights, weekends, missed time with family he'll never get back, but can you point to the decisions worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Jeff alone? Value, its attribution, and its equitable distribution is hard, and executed in an imperfect fashion.
- sytelus 8y ago
  In capitalism, rewards are proportional to how much capital you have (either your own or borrowed), your efforts are minimally material.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    But capital alone is no indicator of ownership interest grants (see: advisors or key employees who are granted equity for their contributions [1]). Rewards in capitalism are to those who can convince others of value provided in exchange for an equity interest; capital is only a small part of that. Lots of equity is sweat equity! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Parker#Facebook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Parker#Facebook
jodrellblank 8y ago
"Who can say how much Randi Zuckerberg is worth?" "She believes she is worth all her money, she believes she is more than Mark's sister, she believes she has valuable opinions. Anyone who disagrees is a hater. You're just jealous. "No, she's a fool!" Then how come she's so rich? Those who are enraged by her are actually suffering from the same delusion she is [..] The standard criticism of her is that she didn't really do anything to deserve her money-- "she got rich because of her brother"-- but this is a profound disavowal of the reality: she got rich because of timing-- even though her job at Facebook was trivial, she was there from the beginning and got paid in stock options. What's interesting is that no one makes this criticism of her, because that's what her haters believe is supposed to happen to them. [..] even her haters want the money to mean retroactively they were already deserving of it, this kind of fortune has bypassed reality testing and instead creates a new reality, it uses the truth in order to lie: of course I'm not rich because of my work product, duh, you can't measure a human being's value based on his labor. I'm rich because that's what I'm worth. "Isn't that specious reasoning?" Oh, dear, sweet, earnest, Lisa, I want to buy your rock.* And so the hatred of her, like all hate, is revealed to be a defense. To her haters Randi is a buffoon, a step above relationship expert, she is too glaringly undeserving of that money; Randi is an obscene counterexample to the logic that the payout mirrors value and self worth. She is a narcissistic injury for everyone else. So she's disparaged in a specific way: she doesn't deserve all that money because she got it from her brother." - https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/03/who_can_know_how_much_randi_zu.html https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/03/who_can_know_how_muc...

amanaplanacanal 8y ago

Are you personal friends with them? I mean, how would you know?