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I think this may attest to the value of (apparent) novelty/innovation in PG's sphere. Seeming unconventional and disruptive has better ROI than spending years m

I think this may attest to the value of (apparent) novelty/innovation in PG's sphere. Seeming unconventional and disruptive has better ROI than spending years mining the history of human thought. He doesn't do science, he funds and markets products. He's competing to capture pieces of a finite pie, not creating knowledge. More broadly, he promotes a zeitgeist which has made him wealthy. I wonder if this has something to do with his efforts to maintain some semblance of "thought leadership", even if it means recycling tired content.

leetcrew 6y ago
> He's competing to capture pieces of a finite pie this is an odd way to describe investing. this would more accurately describe the founders themselves, competing for a finite pool of VC dollars without necessarily having a viable product.
- walleeee 6y ago
  Good point. I meant it in the sense that anyone marketing a product is competing for a finite pool of consumer dollars.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    FWIW, I agree with the rest of your post. while I enjoy some of PG's posts, he often makes the classic mistake of presuming that expertise in one specific area makes his opinion on other topics relevant.
Hongwei 6y ago
Sorry but I strongly disagree with your assertion that building a business is a zero-sum game. At the basic level, a farmer who sows a field and harvests a crop is making the world one harvest richer, and no one poorer. Ditto for the carpenter making a table or mechanic fixing a car. PG addressed this long ago: http://paulgraham.com/gap.html http://paulgraham.com/gap.html Scientists turn money into knowledge. Entrepreneurs turn knowledge into money. It's a virtuous cycle. Scientists lament that they don't get their "fair share" but it's wrong to blame innovators, better to reevaluate their own economic strategy. What if we had private research institutes turning out cutting edge research? Or vertically integrated ones that commercialized their own discoveries, like Spacex?
- _jal 6y ago
  > Sorry but I strongly disagree with your assertion that building a business is a zero-sum game. It isn't either/or. Nearly all businesses do "create value". Nearly all businesses also compete for a limited supply of customers, because nearly all markets can produce more outputs than are needed. The ratio between the two matters a lot to the character of the company.
  - Hongwei 6y ago
    I agree with you completely. There are certainly rent-seeking businesses that do not create value (or net value?). And the majority of businesses are competing in (disrupting) existing markets. Even if they don't increase total consumer spending by offering better products and winning market share, they do increase consumer _wealth_. I'm glad I can buy a 65" 4k TV for as much as my parents paid for a 15" CRT 20 years ago, adjusted for inflation. That's the median outcome. Then you get outliers like the sewing machine that greatly increased the productivity of vast amounts of workers, making those users much richer and society wealthier because clothes got cheaper. I find it disingenuous to claim, as the OP did (perhaps unintentionally), that innovators are bad faith actors playing a zero sum game. Surely that's the exception, not the norm. Just as there are bad actors in academia and any other profession.
    - walleeee 6y ago
      > I find it disingenuous to claim, as the OP did (perhaps unintentionally), that innovators are bad faith actors playing a zero sum game. Surely that's the exception, not the norm. Just as there are bad actors in academia and any other profession. I didn't intend to claim bad faith. As you point out there are surely bad actors in any field. More common, I think, is the (most likely subconscious) Lippmann effect: "We are peculiarly inclined to suppress whatever impugns the security of that to which we have given our allegiance."[0] [0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1919/11/the-basic-problem-of-democracy/569095/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1919/11/the-bas...
    - dzolob 6y ago
      >>Even if they don't increase total consumer spending by offering better products and winning market share, they do increase consumer _wealth_. I'm glad I can buy a 65" 4k TV for as much as my parents paid for a 15" CRT 20 years ago, adjusted for inflation. I think this depends of how are you calculating the cost of things. In this day in age, misery wages and huge negative externalities have more to do with cheap clothes and appliances than the sewing machine, imho. The later mostly contributed on how many of them you can make by the second, but you still need farms of people to work them.
deleted 6y ago
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leetcrew 6y ago

> He's competing to capture pieces of a finite pie this is an odd way to describe investing. this would more accurately describe the founders themselves, competing for a finite pool of VC dollars without necessarily having a viable product.

walleeee 6y ago
Good point. I meant it in the sense that anyone marketing a product is competing for a finite pool of consumer dollars.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  FWIW, I agree with the rest of your post. while I enjoy some of PG's posts, he often makes the classic mistake of presuming that expertise in one specific area makes his opinion on other topics relevant.

Hongwei 6y ago

Sorry but I strongly disagree with your assertion that building a business is a zero-sum game. At the basic level, a farmer who sows a field and harvests a crop is making the world one harvest richer, and no one poorer. Ditto for the carpenter making a table or mechanic fixing a car. PG addressed this long ago: http://paulgraham.com/gap.html http://paulgraham.com/gap.html Scientists turn money into knowledge. Entrepreneurs turn knowledge into money. It's a virtuous cycle. Scientists lament that they don't get their "fair share" but it's wrong to blame innovators, better to reevaluate their own economic strategy. What if we had private research institutes turning out cutting edge research? Or vertically integrated ones that commercialized their own discoveries, like Spacex?

_jal 6y ago
> Sorry but I strongly disagree with your assertion that building a business is a zero-sum game. It isn't either/or. Nearly all businesses do "create value". Nearly all businesses also compete for a limited supply of customers, because nearly all markets can produce more outputs than are needed. The ratio between the two matters a lot to the character of the company.
- Hongwei 6y ago
  I agree with you completely. There are certainly rent-seeking businesses that do not create value (or net value?). And the majority of businesses are competing in (disrupting) existing markets. Even if they don't increase total consumer spending by offering better products and winning market share, they do increase consumer _wealth_. I'm glad I can buy a 65" 4k TV for as much as my parents paid for a 15" CRT 20 years ago, adjusted for inflation. That's the median outcome. Then you get outliers like the sewing machine that greatly increased the productivity of vast amounts of workers, making those users much richer and society wealthier because clothes got cheaper. I find it disingenuous to claim, as the OP did (perhaps unintentionally), that innovators are bad faith actors playing a zero sum game. Surely that's the exception, not the norm. Just as there are bad actors in academia and any other profession.
  - walleeee 6y ago
    > I find it disingenuous to claim, as the OP did (perhaps unintentionally), that innovators are bad faith actors playing a zero sum game. Surely that's the exception, not the norm. Just as there are bad actors in academia and any other profession. I didn't intend to claim bad faith. As you point out there are surely bad actors in any field. More common, I think, is the (most likely subconscious) Lippmann effect: "We are peculiarly inclined to suppress whatever impugns the security of that to which we have given our allegiance."[0] [0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1919/11/the-basic-problem-of-democracy/569095/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1919/11/the-bas...
  - dzolob 6y ago
    >>Even if they don't increase total consumer spending by offering better products and winning market share, they do increase consumer _wealth_. I'm glad I can buy a 65" 4k TV for as much as my parents paid for a 15" CRT 20 years ago, adjusted for inflation. I think this depends of how are you calculating the cost of things. In this day in age, misery wages and huge negative externalities have more to do with cheap clothes and appliances than the sewing machine, imho. The later mostly contributed on how many of them you can make by the second, but you still need farms of people to work them.

deleted 6y ago

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