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His entire essay is just based on a purposeful misreading of the opposing point. It's a straw man. And if you look at his history it's obviously intentional and

by CPLX 4mo ago

His entire essay is just based on a purposeful misreading of the opposing point. It's a straw man. And if you look at his history it's obviously intentional and part of his usual style of argument. The actual opposing argument is that it's impossible to create a billion dollar enterprise without a group effort, and for one person to end up with a billion dollars necessarily means that they made decisions within that enterprise that resulted in a lopsided allocation of resources at the end. Period. That's it, and it's inarguable. Every single aspect of the system is arbitrary and is a policy decision made by society. The basic building block, the limited liability joint stock company as a legal concept with some form of independent rights and entity status is arbitrary. Every lever, every part of the system, is created by people making decisions about how society is organized. The people he is arguing with are basically saying "we want the system structured differently because this one is producing too much concentrated wealth." That's a political choice and an eminently reasonable one. So if it's that simple, why would he feel a need to straw man instead of just addressing the actual argument? Well because he'd lose. The reality is is most people agree with this assessment of society and want it to change. And by the way the question of how resources get split between labor and capital is the oldest and most central political problem in human history. To adopt a condescending tone while pretending to be ignorant of stuff you learn in the first couple weeks of any real study of politics or history, betrays the deception inherent in his essay.

groundzeros2015 4mo ago
> it's impossible to create a billion dollar enterprise without a group effort George Lucas made a movie with a (small) group effort. But what made a billion dollars is his Star Wars universe which is almost entirely his creation. It literally creates wealth for other people. If my toy sells $10,000 without Star Wars and $100,000 with it, did I participate in making George’s billion, or am I benefiting from it? > means that they made decisions within that enterprise that resulted in a lopsided allocation of resources at the end. What do you mean? Every good and service involves many people, but the degree to which they participate in its creation and risk vary. For example, a Farmer may create a more efficient way to grow food. Is the grocery store now entitled to a piece of the reward? They didn’t change anything, all of the improvement is the farmer side.
- blanched 4mo ago
  > George Lucas Once again, lopsided allocation - George benefited from and is directly responsible for keeping the cost of labor low: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/100m-disney-settlement-signals-end-animators-anti-poaching-fight-970887/ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/100... Would he have been a billionaire without that? Who knows? But it definitely helped him get there.
  - groundzeros2015 4mo ago
    I addressed that. The movies themselves are not the source of the wealth and yes the original was created by a group so small that theoretically Star Wars wealth could have been divided evenly and they would be billionaires. If you say the original crew did not do all the labor required to make the franchise grow in the future (obviously true), you are now arguing different people have had incremental impact on creating the wealth, which is kind of the point.
    - blanched 4mo ago
      I might be misunderstanding your point then. Are you saying that he/the small group are solely responsible for Disney wanting to pay 4 billion for it?
      - groundzeros2015 4mo ago
        Yes I’m arguing that the original crew created within the ball park of a billion in wealth per-head. The Star Wars franchise earned a tremendous amount of money before the one-time Disney payout. Jk Rowling and LeBron James are additional examples.
        CPLX 4mo ago
        It's instructive that people like you pick people like LeBron James or J.K. Rowling to make your points. The reason is that the conflict here is between labor and capital. And those two, at least in their primary roles, are labor, as a writer and an athlete. One of them is even a union member operating under a collective bargaining agreement. They're just the absolute pinnacle top of anything that could possibly be put in that category. But if I'm arguing that this is really about the division of of the spoils between labor and capital, and you have to resort to picking members of the labor class to make your argument then you have essentially conceded my point, which is that returns to labor are different than returns to capital, and returns to capital are much harder to defend. You didn't pick Bill Ackman for a reason.
cm2012 4mo ago
[flagged]
sobellian 4mo ago
Of course it's arguable. You make it sound like founders perform some jedi mind-trick to take money from others. Here's what actually happens. Investors put in initial money because it's a win-win (they get an expected return, founders get starting capital). Employees join because it's a win-win (they get a salary, health, equity, other perks; founders get a workforce). Customers pay cash because it's a win-win (they get a product or service they want, the business gets money). At no point is someone being held down and forced to hand money to someone else.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- CPLX 4mo ago
  I am making a meta-argument, and I do think that it’s inarguable. My argument is this: the core disagreement here is about the allocation of resources between labor and capital. I’m right. It is. That doesn’t mean I have settled the argument about what those allocations should be which nobody has, it’s a core organizational element of politics. But I think his argument is bullshit. It’s a purposeful misdirection because it refuses to recognize the terms of the discussion at all.
  - cm2012 4mo ago
    One can agree that they would rather see wealth more equitably distributed while also admitting that the current system of private property and capitalism is the most effective at broadly generating wealth.
    - CPLX 4mo ago
      You could say that, but you also don't have to concede it. In fact, my argument would be that the more regulated, industrial-policy-driven economies of the recent past were better at generating wealth and improving society. For the most part, the real conflict that we're having around these topics is about the reorganization of the economy that happened starting in the mid-1970s. This change shifted the focus of the US economy to financial extraction and away from industrial policies, a role that we sold out to China for the benefit of our elite classes and the severe detriment of our working class.
dpkp 4mo ago
amusing that the most rational take on HN is immediately down-voted.
Levitz 4mo ago
>Period. That's it, and it's inarguable. No it's not, it's actually extremely easy to prove wrong: J.K. Rowling.
- CPLX 4mo ago
  She ran the printing press and picked the camera lenses and stacked the books by the cash register and booked her own press interviews? Also who taught all the kids to read?
  - HDThoreaun 4mo ago
    Why does she have to control the entire vertical process to earn a billion dollars? She sold her work and got paid a billion dollars for it. Who did she exploit? In what way were her earnings unearned?
    - CPLX 4mo ago
      That’s just back to my original point. Which was that every billion dollar enterprise is a collective or team effort and the only argument is about how the results get allocated. Which is, as I pointed out, inarguable. No one is spawned alone in the woods to start their adventure independently of the society they are in.
      - HDThoreaun 4mo ago
        PG says this in his post though. He says the people working for the startup whose founder he talked to are being compensated fairly and properly. To claim his post is a misreading you have to claim every billionaire wouldnt be a billionaire if resources were allocated correctly.
        CPLX 4mo ago
        > fairly and properly He takes that as a given but this is, in fact, the argument and you can't wave it away. By doing so he's being disingenuous. The argument here is about who gets what. And the startup founder and its employees are not the only participants in the economy. The revenue flowing in to his hypothetical startup is exogenous to the startup so you have to talk about where it's coming from, who's affected, and how that fits in with policy goals. For an extreme but accurate thought experiment, imagine concluding your analysis of FTX by noting that their employees were "fairly and properly" paid and then moving on.
fmap 4mo ago
> The actual opposing argument is that it's impossible to create a billion dollar enterprise without a group effort The other thing that we're often ignoring is that it's impossible to create a billion dollar enterprise without luck. You have to be at the right place at the right time. For the most part only capital gets to roll the dice, but even before that it's a sign of the times that we take it seriously at all when people talk about "earning" a billion dollars. We could all do with a bit more humility.

by CPLX 4mo ago

groundzeros2015 4mo ago

> it's impossible to create a billion dollar enterprise without a group effort George Lucas made a movie with a (small) group effort. But what made a billion dollars is his Star Wars universe which is almost entirely his creation. It literally creates wealth for other people. If my toy sells $10,000 without Star Wars and $100,000 with it, did I participate in making George’s billion, or am I benefiting from it? > means that they made decisions within that enterprise that resulted in a lopsided allocation of resources at the end. What do you mean? Every good and service involves many people, but the degree to which they participate in its creation and risk vary. For example, a Farmer may create a more efficient way to grow food. Is the grocery store now entitled to a piece of the reward? They didn’t change anything, all of the improvement is the farmer side.

blanched 4mo ago
> George Lucas Once again, lopsided allocation - George benefited from and is directly responsible for keeping the cost of labor low: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/100m-disney-settlement-signals-end-animators-anti-poaching-fight-970887/ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/100... Would he have been a billionaire without that? Who knows? But it definitely helped him get there.
- groundzeros2015 4mo ago
  I addressed that. The movies themselves are not the source of the wealth and yes the original was created by a group so small that theoretically Star Wars wealth could have been divided evenly and they would be billionaires. If you say the original crew did not do all the labor required to make the franchise grow in the future (obviously true), you are now arguing different people have had incremental impact on creating the wealth, which is kind of the point.
  - blanched 4mo ago
    I might be misunderstanding your point then. Are you saying that he/the small group are solely responsible for Disney wanting to pay 4 billion for it?
    - groundzeros2015 4mo ago
      Yes I’m arguing that the original crew created within the ball park of a billion in wealth per-head. The Star Wars franchise earned a tremendous amount of money before the one-time Disney payout. Jk Rowling and LeBron James are additional examples.
      - CPLX 4mo ago
        It's instructive that people like you pick people like LeBron James or J.K. Rowling to make your points. The reason is that the conflict here is between labor and capital. And those two, at least in their primary roles, are labor, as a writer and an athlete. One of them is even a union member operating under a collective bargaining agreement. They're just the absolute pinnacle top of anything that could possibly be put in that category. But if I'm arguing that this is really about the division of of the spoils between labor and capital, and you have to resort to picking members of the labor class to make your argument then you have essentially conceded my point, which is that returns to labor are different than returns to capital, and returns to capital are much harder to defend. You didn't pick Bill Ackman for a reason.

cm2012 4mo ago

[flagged]

sobellian 4mo ago

Of course it's arguable. You make it sound like founders perform some jedi mind-trick to take money from others. Here's what actually happens. Investors put in initial money because it's a win-win (they get an expected return, founders get starting capital). Employees join because it's a win-win (they get a salary, health, equity, other perks; founders get a workforce). Customers pay cash because it's a win-win (they get a product or service they want, the business gets money). At no point is someone being held down and forced to hand money to someone else.

deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
CPLX 4mo ago
I am making a meta-argument, and I do think that it’s inarguable. My argument is this: the core disagreement here is about the allocation of resources between labor and capital. I’m right. It is. That doesn’t mean I have settled the argument about what those allocations should be which nobody has, it’s a core organizational element of politics. But I think his argument is bullshit. It’s a purposeful misdirection because it refuses to recognize the terms of the discussion at all.
- cm2012 4mo ago
  One can agree that they would rather see wealth more equitably distributed while also admitting that the current system of private property and capitalism is the most effective at broadly generating wealth.
  - CPLX 4mo ago
    You could say that, but you also don't have to concede it. In fact, my argument would be that the more regulated, industrial-policy-driven economies of the recent past were better at generating wealth and improving society. For the most part, the real conflict that we're having around these topics is about the reorganization of the economy that happened starting in the mid-1970s. This change shifted the focus of the US economy to financial extraction and away from industrial policies, a role that we sold out to China for the benefit of our elite classes and the severe detriment of our working class.

dpkp 4mo ago

amusing that the most rational take on HN is immediately down-voted.

Levitz 4mo ago

>Period. That's it, and it's inarguable. No it's not, it's actually extremely easy to prove wrong: J.K. Rowling.

CPLX 4mo ago
She ran the printing press and picked the camera lenses and stacked the books by the cash register and booked her own press interviews? Also who taught all the kids to read?
- HDThoreaun 4mo ago
  Why does she have to control the entire vertical process to earn a billion dollars? She sold her work and got paid a billion dollars for it. Who did she exploit? In what way were her earnings unearned?
  - CPLX 4mo ago
    That’s just back to my original point. Which was that every billion dollar enterprise is a collective or team effort and the only argument is about how the results get allocated. Which is, as I pointed out, inarguable. No one is spawned alone in the woods to start their adventure independently of the society they are in.
    - HDThoreaun 4mo ago
      PG says this in his post though. He says the people working for the startup whose founder he talked to are being compensated fairly and properly. To claim his post is a misreading you have to claim every billionaire wouldnt be a billionaire if resources were allocated correctly.
      - CPLX 4mo ago
        > fairly and properly He takes that as a given but this is, in fact, the argument and you can't wave it away. By doing so he's being disingenuous. The argument here is about who gets what. And the startup founder and its employees are not the only participants in the economy. The revenue flowing in to his hypothetical startup is exogenous to the startup so you have to talk about where it's coming from, who's affected, and how that fits in with policy goals. For an extreme but accurate thought experiment, imagine concluding your analysis of FTX by noting that their employees were "fairly and properly" paid and then moving on.

fmap 4mo ago

> The actual opposing argument is that it's impossible to create a billion dollar enterprise without a group effort The other thing that we're often ignoring is that it's impossible to create a billion dollar enterprise without luck. You have to be at the right place at the right time. For the most part only capital gets to roll the dice, but even before that it's a sign of the times that we take it seriously at all when people talk about "earning" a billion dollars. We could all do with a bit more humility.