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I think this is super interesting (because the answer is not at all obvious to me): What do you mean by "through work alone"? Can it only be work if I can map a

I think this is super interesting (because the answer is not at all obvious to me): What do you mean by "through work alone"? Can it only be work if I can map a human hour cleanly onto someone paying an invoice for that hour?

ForHackernews 4mo ago
Yes. Investment gains are not work, inheritance is not work,capital appreciation is not work, winning the PayPal stocks lottery is not work.
- jstummbillig 4mo ago
  What if I build and run a SaaS?
  - tomrod 4mo ago
    The common argument would be that, unless you set it up as a co-op/full profit share or never hire employees, you're extracting value (exploiting) from what your employees' labor earned the company. Missing from both sides of this argument, IMHO, is BATNA.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiated_agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiat...
    - jstummbillig 4mo ago
      So if one finds a way to do it and not hire people they actually earned the money by that definition? We presume that people at large would be ready say "Oh yeah, in that case: You earned that billion dollars for sure, nothing wrong with any of that, go you"? Whereas: If they hire a single employee to help with, idk, responding to support tickets that would get them into "well maybe you did not earn it"-territory? Because if that is the depiction we are going with: I have my doubts.
      - tomrod 4mo ago
        Reasonable thoughts. Folks have been arguing about this forever. Both sides - community-focused and individual-focused -- have reasonable points on the ethics and morals of what they claim. Both sides want claim to a split of the pie produced by the efforts of individuals. Just like you're mentioning Obama's lambasted "you didn't build that" comments -- his point was completely valid, in that the individual profiteers didn't build the roads their products ship on, the energy infrastructure their cloud providers consume to host their digital footprint and logistics, etc. etc. But people pay for a large part of what they DO consume -- the cases where they don't are what we squirrelly and bookish economists call "externalities" (costs of production gotten too cheap/free). Trying to correct for every externality is a maddening and endogenous exercise in navel gazing -- but huge and easily seen externalities are not crazy to want to address (e.g., Erin Brokovich, pollution, etc.). In your example of someone getting hired to field support tickets -- if that person weren't hired, the founders would spend all their time chasing down those tickets. So did the founder earn the cash, or did both people earn the cash despite one of the jobs being less favorable? If an egalitarian share is unwarranted, what is a reasonably fair trade? Why is an egalitarian share unwarranted? Etc. The core question embedded in all these arguments are - what is a fair tax on the economy? If a government's policy encourages large economic growth for everyone, then perhaps it is good to fund it via tax with all the associated tradeoffs like crowding out, marginal decisions impacted, and so on. Getting it right looks like Scandinavia. Getting it wrong looks like Cuba / final days of the USSR. Ignoring it (on both sides of the aisle) looks like Venezuela and Argentina. But there is no doubt that without the people who produce there would be no taxes, and a 100% tax would push everyone away from doing anything. This is why the way-too-simplistic Laffer curve argument seemed compelling in the 80s -- "unshackle the economy by lowering taxes." I haven't kept up with pg (fairly or unfairly) since some of the techbrokings adopted Yarvinism as a goal, so I have no idea what he has said recently.
        inigyou 4mo ago
        I thought the problem with Cuba was it being embargoed because the USA is jealous it didn't get some profits several decades ago.
  - ForHackernews 4mo ago
    Building the SaaS is work, responding to customer support tickets is work; collecting rents every month on a capital asset you own is not work.
- Ntrails 4mo ago
  > Investment gains are not work Say, for example, my job is allocating capital across the S&P 500. My work is picking the stocks, the fruits of my labour are excess returns. Are those excess returns not work? What are they?
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - saghm 4mo ago
    > Are those excess returns not work? What are they? Wealth extracted from a market, which is what the parent commenter said in the first place
    - twoodfin 4mo ago
      What do you mean “extracted”? The wealth is sitting there in his 401(k) being risked through (highly) fractional ownership of various publicly traded business ventures.
      - saghm 4mo ago
        I mean "not earned through work", as evidenced by your description of it "as as sitting there". Risk isn't the same as work.
        zarathustreal 4mo ago
        Do you think “work” means literally “manual labor”?
        well_ackshually 4mo ago
        Work means the creation of things. Clicking on stocks for your 401k is not working.
        4mo ago

ForHackernews 4mo ago

Yes. Investment gains are not work, inheritance is not work,capital appreciation is not work, winning the PayPal stocks lottery is not work.

jstummbillig 4mo ago
What if I build and run a SaaS?
- tomrod 4mo ago
  The common argument would be that, unless you set it up as a co-op/full profit share or never hire employees, you're extracting value (exploiting) from what your employees' labor earned the company. Missing from both sides of this argument, IMHO, is BATNA.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiated_agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiat...
  - jstummbillig 4mo ago
    So if one finds a way to do it and not hire people they actually earned the money by that definition? We presume that people at large would be ready say "Oh yeah, in that case: You earned that billion dollars for sure, nothing wrong with any of that, go you"? Whereas: If they hire a single employee to help with, idk, responding to support tickets that would get them into "well maybe you did not earn it"-territory? Because if that is the depiction we are going with: I have my doubts.
    - tomrod 4mo ago
      Reasonable thoughts. Folks have been arguing about this forever. Both sides - community-focused and individual-focused -- have reasonable points on the ethics and morals of what they claim. Both sides want claim to a split of the pie produced by the efforts of individuals. Just like you're mentioning Obama's lambasted "you didn't build that" comments -- his point was completely valid, in that the individual profiteers didn't build the roads their products ship on, the energy infrastructure their cloud providers consume to host their digital footprint and logistics, etc. etc. But people pay for a large part of what they DO consume -- the cases where they don't are what we squirrelly and bookish economists call "externalities" (costs of production gotten too cheap/free). Trying to correct for every externality is a maddening and endogenous exercise in navel gazing -- but huge and easily seen externalities are not crazy to want to address (e.g., Erin Brokovich, pollution, etc.). In your example of someone getting hired to field support tickets -- if that person weren't hired, the founders would spend all their time chasing down those tickets. So did the founder earn the cash, or did both people earn the cash despite one of the jobs being less favorable? If an egalitarian share is unwarranted, what is a reasonably fair trade? Why is an egalitarian share unwarranted? Etc. The core question embedded in all these arguments are - what is a fair tax on the economy? If a government's policy encourages large economic growth for everyone, then perhaps it is good to fund it via tax with all the associated tradeoffs like crowding out, marginal decisions impacted, and so on. Getting it right looks like Scandinavia. Getting it wrong looks like Cuba / final days of the USSR. Ignoring it (on both sides of the aisle) looks like Venezuela and Argentina. But there is no doubt that without the people who produce there would be no taxes, and a 100% tax would push everyone away from doing anything. This is why the way-too-simplistic Laffer curve argument seemed compelling in the 80s -- "unshackle the economy by lowering taxes." I haven't kept up with pg (fairly or unfairly) since some of the techbrokings adopted Yarvinism as a goal, so I have no idea what he has said recently.
      - inigyou 4mo ago
        I thought the problem with Cuba was it being embargoed because the USA is jealous it didn't get some profits several decades ago.
- ForHackernews 4mo ago
  Building the SaaS is work, responding to customer support tickets is work; collecting rents every month on a capital asset you own is not work.
Ntrails 4mo ago
> Investment gains are not work Say, for example, my job is allocating capital across the S&P 500. My work is picking the stocks, the fruits of my labour are excess returns. Are those excess returns not work? What are they?
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- saghm 4mo ago
  > Are those excess returns not work? What are they? Wealth extracted from a market, which is what the parent commenter said in the first place
  - twoodfin 4mo ago
    What do you mean “extracted”? The wealth is sitting there in his 401(k) being risked through (highly) fractional ownership of various publicly traded business ventures.
    - saghm 4mo ago
      I mean "not earned through work", as evidenced by your description of it "as as sitting there". Risk isn't the same as work.
      - zarathustreal 4mo ago
        Do you think “work” means literally “manual labor”?
        well_ackshually 4mo ago
        Work means the creation of things. Clicking on stocks for your 401k is not working.
        4mo ago