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Zuckerberg net worth: ~$78b. Mean US neurosurgeon annual income: ~$600k So Zuckerberg is worth 130K neurosurgeon-years. Neurosurgeons are the highest compens

Zuckerberg net worth: ~$78b. Mean US neurosurgeon annual income: ~$600k So Zuckerberg is worth 130K neurosurgeon-years. Neurosurgeons are the highest compensated surgery specialty [1]. In the US there are a total of 50k surgeons of any type [2]. Does anyone think that Zuckerberg created, with his own hands, >=3x the annual economic output of all US surgeons? [1] https://medium.com/nomad-health/complete-list-of-average-doctor-salaries-by-specialty-e2bbbc0a6186 https://medium.com/nomad-health/complete-list-of-average-doc... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/209424/us-number-of-active-physicians-by-specialty-area/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/209424/us-number-of-acti...

imgabe 6y ago
Neurosurgeons can only work on one patient at a time. Facebook serves over a billion people, so yes that is entirely possible.
- ihm 6y ago
  Did Mark Zuckerberg make Facebook all by himself?
  - imgabe 6y ago
    Nobody ever claimed he did. His net worth is, at the moment, ~11.6% of the total market cap of Facebook. Do you think the other people who helped create Facebook worked for free? Do you think a neurosurgeon does a surgery all by himself?
    - aspenmayer 6y ago
      A better question is, did the other people who helped create Facebook receive total compensation anywhere close to proportional to the value they created for Facebook? Not a rhetorical question. I’m curious what the estimated value to Facebook a high level employee is, relative to the compensation they receive. Then compare that ratio to Zuckerberg’s ratio.
      - fastball 6y ago
        > A better question is, did the other people who helped create Facebook receive total compensation anywhere close to proportional to the value they created for Facebook I don't think that is possible to measure, and even if it was I don't think it is reasonable to say that is then deserved. People that work at FB feel they are fairly compensated, otherwise they can go work somewhere else. It doesn't matter how much value you add to a thing if the thing you are adding value to is owned by someone else. If you hire a contractor to fix up your house, and pay him $30k, and these improvements end up increasing the value of your home by $60k, are you going to call up the contractor and say "hey, the value of my home increased more by your work than I thought it would, here is an extra $30k"? I doubt it. And that is in a hypothetical situation where you know precisely how much value was added by that one individual. But as I said above, that is pretty much impossible to do anyway.
        aspenmayer 6y ago
        It’s possible to measure. Perhaps not to an extremely high confidence value, but it’s absurd to say an upper and lower bound of these ratios could not be determined. Just call Lloyd’s of London if you don’t believe me. If it can be insured, it can be analyzed sufficiently so these numbers exist and have some errors bars on them. So now we know just now underpaid/overpaid Zuckerberg and our high level employee are. For a thought exercise, what do you think the employees would do with this information? HR departments? Boards of Directors? CEOs? Angel investors? Wealth management advisors? Loan risk quants? Four star generals? Party and national leaders? Some of these may not care if they knew, or would be too busy to care. I think others already have an understanding of these kinds of numbers and relations due to specific domain knowledge or demographic knowledge; aptitudes which make one suited for a given job may also make one especially clever or capable. In any case, the effect of this knowledge varies. I didn’t say that ratio had anything to do with fairness or equality. I think that was something you assumed or imputed into my statement. Insurance companies in many jurisdictions are regulated to prevent excess profits. That’s why car insurance companies are sending refund checks; they’re legally obligated to pass on the savings if it costs them less to provide insurance to you. Why is it absurd then to ask for pay commensurate with profits? They call them points in Hollywood movie contracts[1]; they may have other names in other fields. Perhaps companies over a certain value should be required by law or charter to give employees a choice to receive their regular pay as: 1) x% of value generation relative to other employees in the company as assessed by the people in the company and outside data; 2) y% of value generation relative to any other measure, such as company stock or inflation; 3) z, their inflation adjusted prior pay period payment; or 4) the same payment as they received last pay period; whichever is greater, or whichever the employee chooses. Would that be fair to the company? Why or why not? Would that be fair to workers? Seems hard to say how it would be unfair, unless you are a low value, replaceable worker. Is it ideal? Is it even workable? Would employees like having choice and knowledge better than the alternative? Would they like it better than the current status quo? In the interest of market transparency and maximal agency of market actors, which side is the hand of the market on? Some of these questions can be analyzed by looking at worker-owned co-ops and companies. [1] http://www.hollywoodlexicon.com/points.html http://www.hollywoodlexicon.com/points.html
weareconvo 6y ago
Every single question of that form is impossible to answer with mere words. Luckily, people CAN answer it through aggregate choice, so we don't have to worry about it. ...but since I feel like taking the bait, something like 9 trillion people use Facebook for at least 36 hours a day, while at MOST 4 people ever even need to consult a neurosurgeon per YEAR. So he's clearly the winner there.
- stanfordkid 6y ago
  I think there is a different way of looking at it: how replaceable is he and what he has built? The truth is -- most of Facebook's value comes from network effects, not the actual technology itself. If Mark Zuckerberg never existed, it is highly likely some other platform would have been created -- the knowledge and skillset he has is not that rare. many other platforms existed before Facebook to let you post pictures and chat with friends.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ironchief 6y ago
Yes.
fastball 6y ago
Why are you comparing income with net worth?
- rmrfstar 6y ago
  I am expressing a dollar value in real economic units that people may have an intuition about. I try to do as Feynman recommended and "approach the world from a new point of view." One way of doing that is transforming units. A problem that is intractable in Cartesian coordinates may be trivial in spherical coordinates.
nv-vn 6y ago
When thinking about net worth in equity you have to consider how stocks are valued. He hasn't created the value of that many neurosurgeons, but the market believes that Facebook will create that value in all future earnings adjusted for risk/inflation.
- trickldwn8nxjf 6y ago
  When talking about the market we must also accept that the people involved in those decisions are ideologues not gods, manipulate their messaging for personal gain, and refuse to be held accountable Kind of a trend in society No stock traders opinions should mean all that much to a numerate and emotionally well adjusted person They’re not in charge of anything but evangelism Adam Smith only mentions markets in the context of a labor market. The whole idea is so far removed from what he defined initially, any concept of markets cannot be traced to him and is then just arbitrary rambling from a gut sense it will help one survive Economics as an academic construct is internalized the same as a chase for piousness. It’s so abstracted away from real productivity so as to self sustain it’s mathematical correctness. It’s meaningless in that way to day to day folks
afarviral 6y ago
No
zitterbewegung 6y ago
I worked at a Computational Population biology lab where we studied social networks. I had the idea once of how to value the amount of money a social network is worth. I also quit Facebook this month and I don't intend anything below to support any of their actions and also below is some quick calculations. The easy answer would be to say that the social network is worth whatever its net revenue is. A lot of ways people can value social networks in general would be to first to value the network effect Facebook has. "Metcalfe's law states the effect of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n2). "[1] The next issue would be to attempt to price the individual user. Applying Metcalf's law could give you some kind of metric. One way to do that would be to look at Facebook's S-1 and see how much revenue they get per user. Their net income from the first quarter of 2020 is $4.9 Billion dollars. Also they had 2.6 monthly active users. So doing the math is (2.6 billion) ^2 people / $4.9 billion dollars which is $1.38 per user[2] . Assuming everyone is connected to each other (which is unrealistic) we have an upper bound of $3.5 billion dollars. I think someone did more analysis on how to actually apply this here. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3356098 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3356098 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law [2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%241.38+*+2.6+billion+ https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%241.38+*+2.6+billion+ [3] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%241.38+*+2.6+billion+ https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%241.38+*+2.6+billion+ [4] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3356098 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3356098
austenallred 6y ago
In terms of value created for your life, did he? It’s pretty likely the answer is “yes.”

imgabe 6y ago

Neurosurgeons can only work on one patient at a time. Facebook serves over a billion people, so yes that is entirely possible.

ihm 6y ago
Did Mark Zuckerberg make Facebook all by himself?
- imgabe 6y ago
  Nobody ever claimed he did. His net worth is, at the moment, ~11.6% of the total market cap of Facebook. Do you think the other people who helped create Facebook worked for free? Do you think a neurosurgeon does a surgery all by himself?
  - aspenmayer 6y ago
    A better question is, did the other people who helped create Facebook receive total compensation anywhere close to proportional to the value they created for Facebook? Not a rhetorical question. I’m curious what the estimated value to Facebook a high level employee is, relative to the compensation they receive. Then compare that ratio to Zuckerberg’s ratio.
    - fastball 6y ago
      > A better question is, did the other people who helped create Facebook receive total compensation anywhere close to proportional to the value they created for Facebook I don't think that is possible to measure, and even if it was I don't think it is reasonable to say that is then deserved. People that work at FB feel they are fairly compensated, otherwise they can go work somewhere else. It doesn't matter how much value you add to a thing if the thing you are adding value to is owned by someone else. If you hire a contractor to fix up your house, and pay him $30k, and these improvements end up increasing the value of your home by $60k, are you going to call up the contractor and say "hey, the value of my home increased more by your work than I thought it would, here is an extra $30k"? I doubt it. And that is in a hypothetical situation where you know precisely how much value was added by that one individual. But as I said above, that is pretty much impossible to do anyway.
      - aspenmayer 6y ago
        It’s possible to measure. Perhaps not to an extremely high confidence value, but it’s absurd to say an upper and lower bound of these ratios could not be determined. Just call Lloyd’s of London if you don’t believe me. If it can be insured, it can be analyzed sufficiently so these numbers exist and have some errors bars on them. So now we know just now underpaid/overpaid Zuckerberg and our high level employee are. For a thought exercise, what do you think the employees would do with this information? HR departments? Boards of Directors? CEOs? Angel investors? Wealth management advisors? Loan risk quants? Four star generals? Party and national leaders? Some of these may not care if they knew, or would be too busy to care. I think others already have an understanding of these kinds of numbers and relations due to specific domain knowledge or demographic knowledge; aptitudes which make one suited for a given job may also make one especially clever or capable. In any case, the effect of this knowledge varies. I didn’t say that ratio had anything to do with fairness or equality. I think that was something you assumed or imputed into my statement. Insurance companies in many jurisdictions are regulated to prevent excess profits. That’s why car insurance companies are sending refund checks; they’re legally obligated to pass on the savings if it costs them less to provide insurance to you. Why is it absurd then to ask for pay commensurate with profits? They call them points in Hollywood movie contracts[1]; they may have other names in other fields. Perhaps companies over a certain value should be required by law or charter to give employees a choice to receive their regular pay as: 1) x% of value generation relative to other employees in the company as assessed by the people in the company and outside data; 2) y% of value generation relative to any other measure, such as company stock or inflation; 3) z, their inflation adjusted prior pay period payment; or 4) the same payment as they received last pay period; whichever is greater, or whichever the employee chooses. Would that be fair to the company? Why or why not? Would that be fair to workers? Seems hard to say how it would be unfair, unless you are a low value, replaceable worker. Is it ideal? Is it even workable? Would employees like having choice and knowledge better than the alternative? Would they like it better than the current status quo? In the interest of market transparency and maximal agency of market actors, which side is the hand of the market on? Some of these questions can be analyzed by looking at worker-owned co-ops and companies. [1] http://www.hollywoodlexicon.com/points.html http://www.hollywoodlexicon.com/points.html

weareconvo 6y ago

Every single question of that form is impossible to answer with mere words. Luckily, people CAN answer it through aggregate choice, so we don't have to worry about it. ...but since I feel like taking the bait, something like 9 trillion people use Facebook for at least 36 hours a day, while at MOST 4 people ever even need to consult a neurosurgeon per YEAR. So he's clearly the winner there.

stanfordkid 6y ago
I think there is a different way of looking at it: how replaceable is he and what he has built? The truth is -- most of Facebook's value comes from network effects, not the actual technology itself. If Mark Zuckerberg never existed, it is highly likely some other platform would have been created -- the knowledge and skillset he has is not that rare. many other platforms existed before Facebook to let you post pictures and chat with friends.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

ironchief 6y ago

Yes.

fastball 6y ago

Why are you comparing income with net worth?

rmrfstar 6y ago
I am expressing a dollar value in real economic units that people may have an intuition about. I try to do as Feynman recommended and "approach the world from a new point of view." One way of doing that is transforming units. A problem that is intractable in Cartesian coordinates may be trivial in spherical coordinates.

nv-vn 6y ago

When thinking about net worth in equity you have to consider how stocks are valued. He hasn't created the value of that many neurosurgeons, but the market believes that Facebook will create that value in all future earnings adjusted for risk/inflation.

trickldwn8nxjf 6y ago
When talking about the market we must also accept that the people involved in those decisions are ideologues not gods, manipulate their messaging for personal gain, and refuse to be held accountable Kind of a trend in society No stock traders opinions should mean all that much to a numerate and emotionally well adjusted person They’re not in charge of anything but evangelism Adam Smith only mentions markets in the context of a labor market. The whole idea is so far removed from what he defined initially, any concept of markets cannot be traced to him and is then just arbitrary rambling from a gut sense it will help one survive Economics as an academic construct is internalized the same as a chase for piousness. It’s so abstracted away from real productivity so as to self sustain it’s mathematical correctness. It’s meaningless in that way to day to day folks

afarviral 6y ago

zitterbewegung 6y ago

I worked at a Computational Population biology lab where we studied social networks. I had the idea once of how to value the amount of money a social network is worth. I also quit Facebook this month and I don't intend anything below to support any of their actions and also below is some quick calculations. The easy answer would be to say that the social network is worth whatever its net revenue is. A lot of ways people can value social networks in general would be to first to value the network effect Facebook has. "Metcalfe's law states the effect of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n2). "[1] The next issue would be to attempt to price the individual user. Applying Metcalf's law could give you some kind of metric. One way to do that would be to look at Facebook's S-1 and see how much revenue they get per user. Their net income from the first quarter of 2020 is $4.9 Billion dollars. Also they had 2.6 monthly active users. So doing the math is (2.6 billion) ^2 people / $4.9 billion dollars which is $1.38 per user[2] . Assuming everyone is connected to each other (which is unrealistic) we have an upper bound of $3.5 billion dollars. I think someone did more analysis on how to actually apply this here. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3356098 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3356098 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law [2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%241.38+*+2.6+billion+ https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%241.38+*+2.6+billion+ [3] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%241.38+*+2.6+billion+ https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%241.38+*+2.6+billion+ [4] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3356098 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3356098

austenallred 6y ago

In terms of value created for your life, did he? It’s pretty likely the answer is “yes.”