5 ms·

The fallacy of youth is that one of extremes. Things are never as bad as they seem. Likewise they're never really as good as they seem. The latter I think expla

by jmyeet 4y ago

The fallacy of youth is that one of extremes. Things are never as bad as they seem. Likewise they're never really as good as they seem. The latter I think explains a lot of nostalgia and holding onto the first "past" we lived through. At the very least it's easy to view that as our baseline. What's "normal", if you will. I say this because as hard as can be to imagine how something like Google will cease to be dominant in several areas (most notably search) but I guarantee you somehow this era will come to an end. We've had tech dominance in the past. IBM is a good example. Microsoft is another. Even Oracle could count within its space. Dominance is a divergent state. It's also why I'm not particularly worried about wealth concentration in dynasties. In 100 years the descendants of Bezos won't be the ruling class in the same way the Vanderbilts, Astors, Rockefellers, Carnegies and Morgans aren't. Relax. These things have a way of working themselves out.

cudgy 4y ago
So, don’t worry, it all work out? Vast wealth being sucked up by a few people while huge swaths of society have little to no ability to handle a $1000 financial hit? Passing the big ball of wealth between a few select people and families over history is acceptable? The fallacy is in thinking that society will always be benevolent and never needs to be corrected or reconsidered.
- badRNG 4y ago
  What the peasants didn't understand was that having a Monarch is fine. In fact, I bet in a few generations it will be a totally different royal family running the show.
- andi999 4y ago
  Na, just introduce a social safety net, like most of europe had for some time.
  - cudgy 4y ago
    So, put “those people” in the Matrix, so they won’t be a problem instead of addressing the real problem of a lopsided economic system is the answer?
    - andi999 4y ago
      Lopsided economic system is not a problem, it is a feature.
    - maigret 4y ago
      No, the European system allows you to use that for studying for little money, learning a new job etc as well. It’s not perfect but (western) Europe hasn’t seen this huge inequality growth in the last decades AFAIK
- jmyeet 4y ago
  Wealth inequality is a separate issue to the dominance of Google. I agree there should be universal health care and a social safety net. I think shelter in the form of housing should be considered a human right. A budget shortfall is built into your existence. This is to keep you a compliant worker. But Americans aren't ready to have that conversation so my perspective is you're wasting your breath by having it. Half the country will die on the hill of stopping Jeff Bezos paying slightly more in taxes. The only solution to this is labor organization. The government won't help you. Republicans are psychotic. Democrats are just the less terrible, feckless alternative who aren't actually interested in doing anything. Remember when Obama had a Senate supermajority and could've codified Roe v. Wade? But I'm just not holding my breath that anything will materially change anytime soon and it's our fault.
- oceanplexian 4y ago
  Wealth isn’t sucked out of anything. If I build a product and sell if for $20, but it creates $100 in value (Let’s say some software that saves a person 4 hours a day of manual labor) I created $80 worth of value, for <$20 worth of profit, minus my costs. When people who have benefitted from those productivity benefits then turn around and whine about how they aren’t getting “their share” of the <$20, or complain how it is somehow wrong that the wealthy can spend or transfer wealth however they like, I can’t help but cringe. The real societal problem is the modern education system is failing to educate people in basic economics.
- claytongulick 4y ago
  This way of looking at things assumes that wealth is a finite resource, and that by some people having a lot it is depriving others. Wealth doesn't work like that, though. It's not a zero sum game. Wealth is infinite, and can be created from nothing by providing a good or service that people need. I had a friend who was a multimillionaire, got there by building stone walls. Another friend who's an immigrant, worth over ten million, got there by making custom iron and steel windows and doors. I have a friend who's worth over a million, got there by working hard and saving his whole life. Another friend who's worth over thirty million, got there by making web sites for auto dealerships. Another one who's worth a bit over a million, got there by risking his life savings on opening up a winery. A former neighbor had a multi-million dollar home. Also an immigrant. Got there by cleaning restaurant grease traps. I could go on. Wealth can be created from nothing. From something as simple as an idea. The only qualifying factor is that you have to make something that other people want. It can be anything, a wall, a song, a good bottle of wine, an iron door, a NFT (ugh), ...anything. There's no limit to wealth. Our poorest today live like kings compared to those in poverty 100 years ago. Because we've created massive, overwhelming wealth in this country. And there's no end in sight. All we need is the willingness to do it. To spend our time building up rather than tearing down. Looking at someone's wealth and saying "that's not fair, we should destroy that and give it to others" is a juvenile solution that destroys societies. I understand the temptation though. It's harder to create than to destroy. It takes more intellectual rigor. It takes a leap into self ownership and responsibility. That's hard to do when we've been taught from a young age that our situation is someone else's fault. Class warfare is a tool that's used by conmen to gain short term power. It ends up destroying everything.
  - cudgy 4y ago
    > I had a friend who was a multimillionaire, got there by building stone walls. Your friend did not make that much money building stone walls. Your friend made that money acting as a middleman hiring teams of low paid workers (likely undocumented migrants) to build the stone walls while he received a handsome cut for little effort. > Another friend who's an immigrant, worth over ten million, got there by making custom iron and steel windows and doors. Not sure why you mention them being an immigrant. Are immigrants less capable than non-immigrants? Anyway, same rule applies. Your friend did not do this work; they hired people (most likely undocumented immigrants) and paid them under the table. They simply act as a middleman too, extracting the vast majority of the wealth while paying peanuts to the workers. I bet both of your friends got government loans to go to college and took advantage of the free government CARE loans and possibly even received huge tax breaks for his/her business; virtually all of this government money is unavailable to his workers.
kvirani 4y ago
... just maybe not in your lifespan, and that's okay too.
croes 4y ago
The problem isn't one specific wealthy family, it's that wealth is always concentrated on few people. Just because a king dies and gets replaced by another king doesn't help the peasants.
- cardosof 4y ago
  Wealth will always be very unequal, see the Mathew principle - just like a few songs have the most listeners and a few books the most readers. And it's hard to stay at the top too, so the elites are always changing. The real issue comes when the really powerful can inflate their and their friends assets at will.
  - oceanplexian 4y ago
    The fact that the wealthy can invest into assets at will doesn’t seem problematic to me. Who would be better at “investing” assets into a new venture: Someone who is wealthy and has a track record of operating successful businesses? Or a government bureaucrat representing the “will of the people” who ultimately makes his salary off the backs of taxpayers?
  - achenet 4y ago
    Inequality fluctuates. Furthermore, I recall reading once that wealth inequality was positively correlated with mental illness, even in the rich of a society. As such, even if there is always some inequality, I think it is worthwhile to try to reduce it, although by boosting the lower part of scale. In other words, if you live in a world where only the rich have cars, you reduce inequality by making cars for the poor like Henry Ford, not by taking rich people's cars. In the modern US, I think this would entail making housing and education and healthcare more affordable/accessible.
    - Dracophoenix 4y ago
      > In other words, if you live in a world where only the rich have cars, you reduce inequality by making cars for the poor like Henry Ford, not by taking rich people's cars. Then Henry Ford displaces John Jacob Astor. You still have wealth inequality, in fact it might have even increased. But the poor now have on-demand mobility to any part of the country in a matter of days. I don't understand the focus on relative wealth. Why should someone not have, to borrow a phrase, more money than God, if it's not being stolen from others. Why should ability and capital be envied instead left to its own devices?
slowmovintarget 4y ago
The damage to democracy can last for generations, though. In 30 years Germany went from 19th century democracy, to socialism, to nazism. What they had was a filter-bubble where the people were constantly told that the cause of their problems was some particular scapegoat and the solution was more state control. Social media produces these filter-bubbles in a far more powerful fashion. Worse, it's setting up conditions for a civil war where one big bubble is told that the problem is "The System" and the other big bubble is told the problem is "those lefties" and both sides are told the solution is to stamp out the other side. The Morgans, the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, the Astors, and the Carnegies never built anything like that. They built infrastructure, and leveraged economies. Oil, railroad, finance... not the same thing as social connection engines.
- sofixa 4y ago
  > In 30 years Germany went from 19th century democracy, to socialism, to nazism You have a few misconceptions there. 19th century Germany wasn't a democracy, it was a constitutional monarchy with a very strong monarch. It was never socialist, it was social democrat (SPD). The actual socialist and communist uprisings were defeated, by the SPD collaborating with everyone, including the far-right Freikorps.
HWR_14 4y ago
What on earth makes you think the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers and Astors aren't part of the ruling class?
- JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
  > Upon her death, Vanderbilt left her son, Anderson Cooper, almost her entire estate, which was valued at less than $1.5 million. Gloria Vanderbilt wasn’t ultra wealthy by any means. Lots of retirees from modest backgrounds have $1.5 million upon death. My uncle is a cnc machinist and had a retirement of about a million dollars.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    You think the ruling class is only predicated on inherited wealth (at death, ignoring what could be given over a lifetime or via trusts)? Your example is that someone over a million people regularly listen to for an hour each work-night is not part of the ruling class? And that one branch of the family tree that was embroiled in litigation from when she was a minor over her trust and had 4 failed marriages may have only left seven-figures is evidence of total decline? Meanwhile, the median estate is under $300k and the median bequest is under $100k. The top one percent have seven figure bequests. Also, she left her fancy NYC condo to someone else, which was probably worth more than the amount she left Anderson. Which actually does put her in line with most Americans, in that their wealth is primarily in a home. > My uncle is a cnc machinist and had a retirement of about a million dollars. Retirement or bequest when he died at age 95?
stephc_int13 4y ago
This is true to some extent, but also not a given. A stable society/economy works like a Monopoly game, after a few rounds the distribution of wealth becomes rigid. Perturbations are needed to trigger wealth redistribution. This is why we need revolutions, pandemics, wars and technological innovations to reset the game. Big money hates innovation because it is always associated with risk, and usually, for mega corps, innovating means killing the golden goose. The problem, in my opinion, is that there is an end-game to everything, including technology, we're not there yet, hopefully.
goldenkey 4y ago
You are a fool if you think time will balance scales of inequality. [1] Sure, Musk and Bezos are the richest men in the world, according to publicly available data. That doesn't mean these other families are all poor. Some have squandered their wealth. Others have magnified it. And all that still have it have become better at hiding it from the public, something that the "new" rich don't have much experience or capability in. The poor still, well, are poor. New kings for old kings doesn't change shit. But alas we should wait out the neo-feudal age, that's your plan? [1] https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-1427-are-still-the-richest-families-in-florence/ https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-14...
ericmcer 4y ago
They do work themselves out, but sometimes the timeline for that can be 50+ years. Which is basically your entire youth and productive lifetime. It is pretty cold comfort to know that income inequality that makes home ownership an impossibility right now will work itself out in a few decades.
- Cupertino95014 4y ago
  > home ownership an impossibility LOL. Maybe you need to move somewhere unfashionable. You know, be around all those yucky people who go to church & stuff.
  - elromulous 4y ago
    This comment is needlessly derisive / combative (and frankly has no place on HN). There are many reasons why one would choose to live in a more populated area.
- jmyeet 4y ago
  > They do work themselves out, but sometimes the timeline for that can be 50+ years. So if Google ends up being dominant for 50+ years does it really matter? I mean, does that somehow materially impact your life? > It is pretty cold comfort to know that income inequality that makes home ownership an impossibility right now will work itself out in a few decades. That's a completely separate issue and one I agree with you on. But the US in particularly has too many brain-broken temporarily embarrassed millionaires who will die on the hill to avoid Jeff Bezos paying slightly more in tax to pay for th esociety that made his wealth possible and continues to make it possible. This is late-stage capitalism. Some argue it's the beginning of neo-feudalism. I'm not quite that pessimistic whiele agreeing the situation sucks. What people in power need to realize is the ultimate valve for extreme wealth inequality is violence. War or revolution is the ultimate form of wealth redistribution. But the political landscape in the US is one where just arguing that trans people shouldn't be murdered gets you labelled as "far left". America is not ready to have the conversation that a capitalist organization of the economy is screwing them over. Personally if I was 22 and just graduating college with huge debt, no prospect of owning a house and income that means living paycheck to paycheck I would just... leave [1]. [1]: https://www.studentloanplanner.com/flee-country-student-loans/ https://www.studentloanplanner.com/flee-country-student-loan...
spicyusername 4y ago
> These things have a way of working themselves out. Yes, but how they work themselves out and where they work themselves out to matter quite a lot. Also, both of those things, the how and the where, are not random. They are influenced dramatically by the blood, sweat, and tears of people with ideals and the willingness put in the work. Those people putting in the work, are they people who share your vision of what the world should be like? If you don't participate in the process, you can't complain about the result.
m-i-l 4y ago
> "In 100 years the descendants of Bezos won't be the ruling class in the same way the Vanderbilts, Astors, Rockefellers, Carnegies and Morgans aren't." Andrew Carnegie believed in 100% inheritance tax, on the condition that the money raised was used to provide a level playing field for absolutely everyone to have the same opportunities. I can't imagine many/any of today's billionaires believing this, given that pretty much all of them have depended on the backing of generational wealth and the unequal opportunities that gave them to make their fortunes.
- achenet 4y ago
  > I can't imagine many/any of today's billionaires believing this, Haven't they all signed the Giving Pledge? > given that pretty much all of them have depended on the backing of generational wealth and the unequal opportunities that gave them to make their fortunes. While it is true that most of them come from upper-middle class backgrounds, AFAIK the vast majority of the fortunes of Page, Brin, Zuck, Bezos et al. is "self-made" and comes from their companies. Unless you mean generational wealth as in "they were rich enough to pay for a university that costs $80,000/year", at which point, yeah I could see that.
  - m-i-l 4y ago
    > "Haven't they all signed the Giving Pledge?" While choosing to give most of your money to various charities, generally of your choosing and while you are still alive to see the benefits, is all well and good, it is very different from favouring having all your money being taken on death by a government you trust enough to use that money provide equal opportunities to all. > "AFAIK the vast majority of the fortunes of Page, Brin, Zuck, Bezos et al. is "self-made" and comes from their companies." For most of today's billionaires it isn't just an expensive education, it is family conenctions, e.g. Gates being set up with IBM via his mum, or family investments, e.g. Bezos, Zuckerberg, Page etc. having parents who gave or loaned them the money to start their companies (not to mention the safety net they'd have had should they have failed) - this isn't "self-made" in the traditional sense.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
Honestly, I think the fallacy is to just believe that Google's dominance will magically end. I have a different take, which is that tech leadership rarely changes in a particular technology, it's just that new technologies arrive that displace the old. Microsoft is still absolutely dominant in desktop operating systems. IBM has 90%+ marketshare in mainframes. Oracle is still the top enterprise database. So we seem to see these posts periodically now on HN, about "who is going to displace Google in search?" Sorry, that ain't happening. First, despite HN missives, Google still tends to work better than all the competition. Second, the startup costs to have a viable generic Internet search engine are now astronomical, to the point that hardly any VC would invest in a startup whose approach would be "just be a better Google" WRT search. So the question really is, "what new technology could displace Internet search?" And it's very, very difficult for me to come up with an answer to that looking out 50-75 years or so. In addition, companies now are much more aware of "disruption" theories and will actively try to acquire their disrupters (e.g. Google's acquisition of Android and Facebook's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp were key to keep them from getting displaced in mobile). I would easily make the bet that Google (or potentially their government-induced offspring) will continue to totally dominate search 50 years from now.
- visarga 4y ago
  Now language models are on the rise. They allow access to information (including verified information from trusted sources) in a more accessible and adaptive format. I think Google isn't happy for losing the ad space but the interface we use to search will improve a lot thanks to big language models. I think they are too expensive to deploy now but will be everywhere soon. LM's will be the new "operating system".
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mrkramer 4y ago
  >So we seem to see these posts periodically now on HN, about "who is going to displace Google in search?" Sorry, that ain't happening. Google is no longer focused on its core business >Search. They have 99 other projects they are focused on. For example there is no dedicated search for Audio content on Google Search like there is for Images and Videos. There is no way to search comments on YouTube and there is no way to search your own YouTube playlist! This are just few shameful examples on how Google no longer thinks and behaves like a Search company. I really like Larry and Sergey but unfortunately for them and Google the current Google's approach is not good for the future of Web. Maybe the culprit is ad business model, maybe it is their de facto Internet Search monopoly or maybe both but if Google is how the future of Web is going to look like then we are all in a big trouble.
frozencell 4y ago
> In 100 years the descendants of Bezos won't be the ruling class in the same way the Vanderbilts, Astors, Rockefellers, Carnegies and Morgans aren't. Who told you they are not funding and ruling U.S. institutions anymore?

by jmyeet 4y ago

cudgy 4y ago

So, don’t worry, it all work out? Vast wealth being sucked up by a few people while huge swaths of society have little to no ability to handle a $1000 financial hit? Passing the big ball of wealth between a few select people and families over history is acceptable? The fallacy is in thinking that society will always be benevolent and never needs to be corrected or reconsidered.

badRNG 4y ago
What the peasants didn't understand was that having a Monarch is fine. In fact, I bet in a few generations it will be a totally different royal family running the show.
andi999 4y ago
Na, just introduce a social safety net, like most of europe had for some time.
- cudgy 4y ago
  So, put “those people” in the Matrix, so they won’t be a problem instead of addressing the real problem of a lopsided economic system is the answer?
  - andi999 4y ago
    Lopsided economic system is not a problem, it is a feature.
  - maigret 4y ago
    No, the European system allows you to use that for studying for little money, learning a new job etc as well. It’s not perfect but (western) Europe hasn’t seen this huge inequality growth in the last decades AFAIK
jmyeet 4y ago
Wealth inequality is a separate issue to the dominance of Google. I agree there should be universal health care and a social safety net. I think shelter in the form of housing should be considered a human right. A budget shortfall is built into your existence. This is to keep you a compliant worker. But Americans aren't ready to have that conversation so my perspective is you're wasting your breath by having it. Half the country will die on the hill of stopping Jeff Bezos paying slightly more in taxes. The only solution to this is labor organization. The government won't help you. Republicans are psychotic. Democrats are just the less terrible, feckless alternative who aren't actually interested in doing anything. Remember when Obama had a Senate supermajority and could've codified Roe v. Wade? But I'm just not holding my breath that anything will materially change anytime soon and it's our fault.
oceanplexian 4y ago
Wealth isn’t sucked out of anything. If I build a product and sell if for $20, but it creates $100 in value (Let’s say some software that saves a person 4 hours a day of manual labor) I created $80 worth of value, for <$20 worth of profit, minus my costs. When people who have benefitted from those productivity benefits then turn around and whine about how they aren’t getting “their share” of the <$20, or complain how it is somehow wrong that the wealthy can spend or transfer wealth however they like, I can’t help but cringe. The real societal problem is the modern education system is failing to educate people in basic economics.
claytongulick 4y ago
This way of looking at things assumes that wealth is a finite resource, and that by some people having a lot it is depriving others. Wealth doesn't work like that, though. It's not a zero sum game. Wealth is infinite, and can be created from nothing by providing a good or service that people need. I had a friend who was a multimillionaire, got there by building stone walls. Another friend who's an immigrant, worth over ten million, got there by making custom iron and steel windows and doors. I have a friend who's worth over a million, got there by working hard and saving his whole life. Another friend who's worth over thirty million, got there by making web sites for auto dealerships. Another one who's worth a bit over a million, got there by risking his life savings on opening up a winery. A former neighbor had a multi-million dollar home. Also an immigrant. Got there by cleaning restaurant grease traps. I could go on. Wealth can be created from nothing. From something as simple as an idea. The only qualifying factor is that you have to make something that other people want. It can be anything, a wall, a song, a good bottle of wine, an iron door, a NFT (ugh), ...anything. There's no limit to wealth. Our poorest today live like kings compared to those in poverty 100 years ago. Because we've created massive, overwhelming wealth in this country. And there's no end in sight. All we need is the willingness to do it. To spend our time building up rather than tearing down. Looking at someone's wealth and saying "that's not fair, we should destroy that and give it to others" is a juvenile solution that destroys societies. I understand the temptation though. It's harder to create than to destroy. It takes more intellectual rigor. It takes a leap into self ownership and responsibility. That's hard to do when we've been taught from a young age that our situation is someone else's fault. Class warfare is a tool that's used by conmen to gain short term power. It ends up destroying everything.
- cudgy 4y ago
  > I had a friend who was a multimillionaire, got there by building stone walls. Your friend did not make that much money building stone walls. Your friend made that money acting as a middleman hiring teams of low paid workers (likely undocumented migrants) to build the stone walls while he received a handsome cut for little effort. > Another friend who's an immigrant, worth over ten million, got there by making custom iron and steel windows and doors. Not sure why you mention them being an immigrant. Are immigrants less capable than non-immigrants? Anyway, same rule applies. Your friend did not do this work; they hired people (most likely undocumented immigrants) and paid them under the table. They simply act as a middleman too, extracting the vast majority of the wealth while paying peanuts to the workers. I bet both of your friends got government loans to go to college and took advantage of the free government CARE loans and possibly even received huge tax breaks for his/her business; virtually all of this government money is unavailable to his workers.

kvirani 4y ago

... just maybe not in your lifespan, and that's okay too.

croes 4y ago

The problem isn't one specific wealthy family, it's that wealth is always concentrated on few people. Just because a king dies and gets replaced by another king doesn't help the peasants.

cardosof 4y ago
Wealth will always be very unequal, see the Mathew principle - just like a few songs have the most listeners and a few books the most readers. And it's hard to stay at the top too, so the elites are always changing. The real issue comes when the really powerful can inflate their and their friends assets at will.
- oceanplexian 4y ago
  The fact that the wealthy can invest into assets at will doesn’t seem problematic to me. Who would be better at “investing” assets into a new venture: Someone who is wealthy and has a track record of operating successful businesses? Or a government bureaucrat representing the “will of the people” who ultimately makes his salary off the backs of taxpayers?
- achenet 4y ago
  Inequality fluctuates. Furthermore, I recall reading once that wealth inequality was positively correlated with mental illness, even in the rich of a society. As such, even if there is always some inequality, I think it is worthwhile to try to reduce it, although by boosting the lower part of scale. In other words, if you live in a world where only the rich have cars, you reduce inequality by making cars for the poor like Henry Ford, not by taking rich people's cars. In the modern US, I think this would entail making housing and education and healthcare more affordable/accessible.
  - Dracophoenix 4y ago
    > In other words, if you live in a world where only the rich have cars, you reduce inequality by making cars for the poor like Henry Ford, not by taking rich people's cars. Then Henry Ford displaces John Jacob Astor. You still have wealth inequality, in fact it might have even increased. But the poor now have on-demand mobility to any part of the country in a matter of days. I don't understand the focus on relative wealth. Why should someone not have, to borrow a phrase, more money than God, if it's not being stolen from others. Why should ability and capital be envied instead left to its own devices?

slowmovintarget 4y ago

The damage to democracy can last for generations, though. In 30 years Germany went from 19th century democracy, to socialism, to nazism. What they had was a filter-bubble where the people were constantly told that the cause of their problems was some particular scapegoat and the solution was more state control. Social media produces these filter-bubbles in a far more powerful fashion. Worse, it's setting up conditions for a civil war where one big bubble is told that the problem is "The System" and the other big bubble is told the problem is "those lefties" and both sides are told the solution is to stamp out the other side. The Morgans, the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, the Astors, and the Carnegies never built anything like that. They built infrastructure, and leveraged economies. Oil, railroad, finance... not the same thing as social connection engines.

sofixa 4y ago
> In 30 years Germany went from 19th century democracy, to socialism, to nazism You have a few misconceptions there. 19th century Germany wasn't a democracy, it was a constitutional monarchy with a very strong monarch. It was never socialist, it was social democrat (SPD). The actual socialist and communist uprisings were defeated, by the SPD collaborating with everyone, including the far-right Freikorps.

HWR_14 4y ago

What on earth makes you think the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers and Astors aren't part of the ruling class?

JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
> Upon her death, Vanderbilt left her son, Anderson Cooper, almost her entire estate, which was valued at less than $1.5 million. Gloria Vanderbilt wasn’t ultra wealthy by any means. Lots of retirees from modest backgrounds have $1.5 million upon death. My uncle is a cnc machinist and had a retirement of about a million dollars.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  You think the ruling class is only predicated on inherited wealth (at death, ignoring what could be given over a lifetime or via trusts)? Your example is that someone over a million people regularly listen to for an hour each work-night is not part of the ruling class? And that one branch of the family tree that was embroiled in litigation from when she was a minor over her trust and had 4 failed marriages may have only left seven-figures is evidence of total decline? Meanwhile, the median estate is under $300k and the median bequest is under $100k. The top one percent have seven figure bequests. Also, she left her fancy NYC condo to someone else, which was probably worth more than the amount she left Anderson. Which actually does put her in line with most Americans, in that their wealth is primarily in a home. > My uncle is a cnc machinist and had a retirement of about a million dollars. Retirement or bequest when he died at age 95?

stephc_int13 4y ago

This is true to some extent, but also not a given. A stable society/economy works like a Monopoly game, after a few rounds the distribution of wealth becomes rigid. Perturbations are needed to trigger wealth redistribution. This is why we need revolutions, pandemics, wars and technological innovations to reset the game. Big money hates innovation because it is always associated with risk, and usually, for mega corps, innovating means killing the golden goose. The problem, in my opinion, is that there is an end-game to everything, including technology, we're not there yet, hopefully.

goldenkey 4y ago

You are a fool if you think time will balance scales of inequality. [1] Sure, Musk and Bezos are the richest men in the world, according to publicly available data. That doesn't mean these other families are all poor. Some have squandered their wealth. Others have magnified it. And all that still have it have become better at hiding it from the public, something that the "new" rich don't have much experience or capability in. The poor still, well, are poor. New kings for old kings doesn't change shit. But alas we should wait out the neo-feudal age, that's your plan? [1] https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-1427-are-still-the-richest-families-in-florence/ https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-14...

ericmcer 4y ago

They do work themselves out, but sometimes the timeline for that can be 50+ years. Which is basically your entire youth and productive lifetime. It is pretty cold comfort to know that income inequality that makes home ownership an impossibility right now will work itself out in a few decades.

Cupertino95014 4y ago
> home ownership an impossibility LOL. Maybe you need to move somewhere unfashionable. You know, be around all those yucky people who go to church & stuff.
- elromulous 4y ago
  This comment is needlessly derisive / combative (and frankly has no place on HN). There are many reasons why one would choose to live in a more populated area.
jmyeet 4y ago
> They do work themselves out, but sometimes the timeline for that can be 50+ years. So if Google ends up being dominant for 50+ years does it really matter? I mean, does that somehow materially impact your life? > It is pretty cold comfort to know that income inequality that makes home ownership an impossibility right now will work itself out in a few decades. That's a completely separate issue and one I agree with you on. But the US in particularly has too many brain-broken temporarily embarrassed millionaires who will die on the hill to avoid Jeff Bezos paying slightly more in tax to pay for th esociety that made his wealth possible and continues to make it possible. This is late-stage capitalism. Some argue it's the beginning of neo-feudalism. I'm not quite that pessimistic whiele agreeing the situation sucks. What people in power need to realize is the ultimate valve for extreme wealth inequality is violence. War or revolution is the ultimate form of wealth redistribution. But the political landscape in the US is one where just arguing that trans people shouldn't be murdered gets you labelled as "far left". America is not ready to have the conversation that a capitalist organization of the economy is screwing them over. Personally if I was 22 and just graduating college with huge debt, no prospect of owning a house and income that means living paycheck to paycheck I would just... leave [1]. [1]: https://www.studentloanplanner.com/flee-country-student-loans/ https://www.studentloanplanner.com/flee-country-student-loan...

spicyusername 4y ago

> These things have a way of working themselves out. Yes, but how they work themselves out and where they work themselves out to matter quite a lot. Also, both of those things, the how and the where, are not random. They are influenced dramatically by the blood, sweat, and tears of people with ideals and the willingness put in the work. Those people putting in the work, are they people who share your vision of what the world should be like? If you don't participate in the process, you can't complain about the result.

m-i-l 4y ago

> "In 100 years the descendants of Bezos won't be the ruling class in the same way the Vanderbilts, Astors, Rockefellers, Carnegies and Morgans aren't." Andrew Carnegie believed in 100% inheritance tax, on the condition that the money raised was used to provide a level playing field for absolutely everyone to have the same opportunities. I can't imagine many/any of today's billionaires believing this, given that pretty much all of them have depended on the backing of generational wealth and the unequal opportunities that gave them to make their fortunes.

achenet 4y ago
> I can't imagine many/any of today's billionaires believing this, Haven't they all signed the Giving Pledge? > given that pretty much all of them have depended on the backing of generational wealth and the unequal opportunities that gave them to make their fortunes. While it is true that most of them come from upper-middle class backgrounds, AFAIK the vast majority of the fortunes of Page, Brin, Zuck, Bezos et al. is "self-made" and comes from their companies. Unless you mean generational wealth as in "they were rich enough to pay for a university that costs $80,000/year", at which point, yeah I could see that.
- m-i-l 4y ago
  > "Haven't they all signed the Giving Pledge?" While choosing to give most of your money to various charities, generally of your choosing and while you are still alive to see the benefits, is all well and good, it is very different from favouring having all your money being taken on death by a government you trust enough to use that money provide equal opportunities to all. > "AFAIK the vast majority of the fortunes of Page, Brin, Zuck, Bezos et al. is "self-made" and comes from their companies." For most of today's billionaires it isn't just an expensive education, it is family conenctions, e.g. Gates being set up with IBM via his mum, or family investments, e.g. Bezos, Zuckerberg, Page etc. having parents who gave or loaned them the money to start their companies (not to mention the safety net they'd have had should they have failed) - this isn't "self-made" in the traditional sense.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

Honestly, I think the fallacy is to just believe that Google's dominance will magically end. I have a different take, which is that tech leadership rarely changes in a particular technology, it's just that new technologies arrive that displace the old. Microsoft is still absolutely dominant in desktop operating systems. IBM has 90%+ marketshare in mainframes. Oracle is still the top enterprise database. So we seem to see these posts periodically now on HN, about "who is going to displace Google in search?" Sorry, that ain't happening. First, despite HN missives, Google still tends to work better than all the competition. Second, the startup costs to have a viable generic Internet search engine are now astronomical, to the point that hardly any VC would invest in a startup whose approach would be "just be a better Google" WRT search. So the question really is, "what new technology could displace Internet search?" And it's very, very difficult for me to come up with an answer to that looking out 50-75 years or so. In addition, companies now are much more aware of "disruption" theories and will actively try to acquire their disrupters (e.g. Google's acquisition of Android and Facebook's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp were key to keep them from getting displaced in mobile). I would easily make the bet that Google (or potentially their government-induced offspring) will continue to totally dominate search 50 years from now.

visarga 4y ago
Now language models are on the rise. They allow access to information (including verified information from trusted sources) in a more accessible and adaptive format. I think Google isn't happy for losing the ad space but the interface we use to search will improve a lot thanks to big language models. I think they are too expensive to deploy now but will be everywhere soon. LM's will be the new "operating system".
deleted 4y ago
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mrkramer 4y ago
>So we seem to see these posts periodically now on HN, about "who is going to displace Google in search?" Sorry, that ain't happening. Google is no longer focused on its core business >Search. They have 99 other projects they are focused on. For example there is no dedicated search for Audio content on Google Search like there is for Images and Videos. There is no way to search comments on YouTube and there is no way to search your own YouTube playlist! This are just few shameful examples on how Google no longer thinks and behaves like a Search company. I really like Larry and Sergey but unfortunately for them and Google the current Google's approach is not good for the future of Web. Maybe the culprit is ad business model, maybe it is their de facto Internet Search monopoly or maybe both but if Google is how the future of Web is going to look like then we are all in a big trouble.

frozencell 4y ago

> In 100 years the descendants of Bezos won't be the ruling class in the same way the Vanderbilts, Astors, Rockefellers, Carnegies and Morgans aren't. Who told you they are not funding and ruling U.S. institutions anymore?