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> if you're young and good at technology... > ... but if you want to become super rich, and you're young and good at technology, working on what you're most in

> if you're young and good at technology... > ... but if you want to become super rich, and you're young and good at technology, working on what you're most interested in becomes a good idea again. It's sad to me that the wealth inequality manifested and upheld by the current structure of capitalism, that people like Graham full throatily endorse, creates this mentality. "If you're young" is a euphemism for "if you are free from the necessities of responsibility, and so are able to forego the lack of consistent income (and if you're in the states, a lack of employer provided health care". pg, encourage the companies you give money to pay an equal portion of profits to their employees, and maybe even the "olds" can be free do what they love; rather than the fear induced indentured servitude currently so predominant. May even give us better products and solutions, or as you say, allow people to do actual "great work".

slowmovintarget 2y ago
> wealth inequality manifested and upheld by the current structure of capitalism I've been having this conversation over dinner with my wife for the last few years. What else is there? Here are the broadly categorized economic systems that I'm aware of (I sincerely request correction if I'm incomplete or mistaken): - Subsistence (hunter/gatherer, limited farming... etc.) - Despotism, feudalism, and other ruler-based economies that mix governance with economy by fiat - Marxism (and it's entanglements into governance: socialism and communism) - Capitalism, though it eventually captures governance as a failure mode Of these systems, with the possible exception of subsistence, only capitalism really works. All forms of Marxism ever practiced lead to despotism, which most of us can agree is a bad thing. Even with a benevolent dictator for life, that life ends and the system degenerates at most in two generations of hereditary leadership. How do you reset capitalism so that we refresh to healthy markets (a prerequisite for capitalism to act as a force for societal welfare)? How do you turn back the clock on regulatory capture, and monopolized consolidation where firms move to become parasitic instead of exchanging value? Is there something else? And no, Marxism and collectivism is not it. Drowning the individual is not it. Marxism hasn't lost its appeal precisely because it's one of the few models that addresses dramatic pay disparity. But it was created in Britain thinking about the factory workers of the time. We know now that it includes errors and misunderstandings of fundamental human behavior that make it turn into tyranny every time. We also know that it necessarily leads to central planning which is fragile and collapses. So that's not it. If not Marxism, and not capitalism, then what?
- feedforward 2y ago
  > All forms of Marxism ever practiced lead to despotism, which most of us can agree is a bad thing. What you call a Marxist system is something that Marx said could only work in the most advanced country if it was ready for it, which in that time was Germany. He said such a system would not work elsewhere. So what form of Marxism failed? Even Lenin, who many Marxists did not consider Marxist, was a Marxist enough to say that Russia would not establish communism. That the Russian self-described Marxists had the chance to take power in Russia and they took it. That Lenin wanted to take power in early 1917 came as a surprise to Stalin, Trotsky, Kamenev etc., in fact Trotsky was not even with Lenin then. It surprised them because it was not a Marxist idea. Then Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy, i.e. capitalism. Then he died. Marx clearly spelled out what not to do, and some did what he said not to do, then people attribute the failures of those who did what Marx said not to do, to Marx.
  - mionhe 2y ago
    This kind of argument seems to always pop up in this context. There have been 17 attempts that I'm aware of to create a government based off of the ideals that Marx preached. Of those 17 attempts, every one has ended up creating extreme poverty for the masses. Every one has led to massive amounts of death and abject misery. Every one has led to a dictator that sees his people as just cogs in a machine, easily replaced. No matter how great Marx's system is (and having seen the aftermath personally of one of those attempts to enact it, I'm inclined to think that his system of thinking is semi-articulate garbage), it's obvious that we can't do what he prescribed and get the results he claimed we would. Frankly, the part where all of the power temporarily concentrates before redistribution is the problem area: no one can withstand the temptation to just keep it. Or possibly they never intended to let it go in the first place.
    - desumeku 2y ago
      There are far more than 17 capitalist countries which meet every criteria you've listed as an evil of Communism.
    - 2y ago

slowmovintarget 2y ago

> wealth inequality manifested and upheld by the current structure of capitalism I've been having this conversation over dinner with my wife for the last few years. What else is there? Here are the broadly categorized economic systems that I'm aware of (I sincerely request correction if I'm incomplete or mistaken): - Subsistence (hunter/gatherer, limited farming... etc.) - Despotism, feudalism, and other ruler-based economies that mix governance with economy by fiat - Marxism (and it's entanglements into governance: socialism and communism) - Capitalism, though it eventually captures governance as a failure mode Of these systems, with the possible exception of subsistence, only capitalism really works. All forms of Marxism ever practiced lead to despotism, which most of us can agree is a bad thing. Even with a benevolent dictator for life, that life ends and the system degenerates at most in two generations of hereditary leadership. How do you reset capitalism so that we refresh to healthy markets (a prerequisite for capitalism to act as a force for societal welfare)? How do you turn back the clock on regulatory capture, and monopolized consolidation where firms move to become parasitic instead of exchanging value? Is there something else? And no, Marxism and collectivism is not it. Drowning the individual is not it. Marxism hasn't lost its appeal precisely because it's one of the few models that addresses dramatic pay disparity. But it was created in Britain thinking about the factory workers of the time. We know now that it includes errors and misunderstandings of fundamental human behavior that make it turn into tyranny every time. We also know that it necessarily leads to central planning which is fragile and collapses. So that's not it. If not Marxism, and not capitalism, then what?

feedforward 2y ago
> All forms of Marxism ever practiced lead to despotism, which most of us can agree is a bad thing. What you call a Marxist system is something that Marx said could only work in the most advanced country if it was ready for it, which in that time was Germany. He said such a system would not work elsewhere. So what form of Marxism failed? Even Lenin, who many Marxists did not consider Marxist, was a Marxist enough to say that Russia would not establish communism. That the Russian self-described Marxists had the chance to take power in Russia and they took it. That Lenin wanted to take power in early 1917 came as a surprise to Stalin, Trotsky, Kamenev etc., in fact Trotsky was not even with Lenin then. It surprised them because it was not a Marxist idea. Then Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy, i.e. capitalism. Then he died. Marx clearly spelled out what not to do, and some did what he said not to do, then people attribute the failures of those who did what Marx said not to do, to Marx.
- mionhe 2y ago
  This kind of argument seems to always pop up in this context. There have been 17 attempts that I'm aware of to create a government based off of the ideals that Marx preached. Of those 17 attempts, every one has ended up creating extreme poverty for the masses. Every one has led to massive amounts of death and abject misery. Every one has led to a dictator that sees his people as just cogs in a machine, easily replaced. No matter how great Marx's system is (and having seen the aftermath personally of one of those attempts to enact it, I'm inclined to think that his system of thinking is semi-articulate garbage), it's obvious that we can't do what he prescribed and get the results he claimed we would. Frankly, the part where all of the power temporarily concentrates before redistribution is the problem area: no one can withstand the temptation to just keep it. Or possibly they never intended to let it go in the first place.
  - desumeku 2y ago
    There are far more than 17 capitalist countries which meet every criteria you've listed as an evil of Communism.
  - 2y ago