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I think there are many arguments against AOC's comments, but I agree that PG here is misrepresenting her point. I don't think anyone reading PG's blog is cluel

by sofard 4mo ago

I think there are many arguments against AOC's comments, but I agree that PG here is misrepresenting her point. I don't think anyone reading PG's blog is clueless about the power of compounding or the difference between salary and wealth through asset growth. Her point is essentially whether the entire capital system is "fair." And to be fair to PG I don't think AOC articulated a particularly strong point either.

nfw2 4mo ago
This is a transcript to a speech originally made to students at Oxford, not to his blog readers.
csallen 4mo ago
He very explicitly engaged with her claim that the system is unfair/unethical, and whether you agree with him or not, he argued against it: > What [AOC] meant was that it's impossible to get that rich without doing something bad — without cheating in some way... The reason [my founder's] startup was growing so fast was simply that users loved what she'd built. So she could feel from her own experience how wrong [AOC] was. She wasn't exploiting anyone. Exactly the opposite in fact. The reason her startup was growing so fast was that she and her cofounder had been working their asses off to make their users happy, and as a result the users had been telling their friends. And that gets you exponential growth. In other words, he's saying that rapid wealth creation can (and often does) come from creating and selling things of value to willing buyers, at scale, and that that's not unethical to do. I do agree with you that AOC's point is not particularly strong, though :)
- pohl 4mo ago
  I wonder why he didn't argue against the point by using an actual billionaire to illustrate. Instead he chose someone who is not a billionaire, and imagined them becoming one with nine and a half months of constant 93% growth. Couldn't his counterargument become stronger without the underpants gnome logic?
  - nostrademons 4mo ago
    He is probably the actual billionaire in question, but doesn't want to highlight that point given the populist backlash against billionaires.
    - deaux 4mo ago
      Popular, or "common", rather than populist.
      - nostrademons 4mo ago
        I actually meant populist, meaning affiliated with populist ("of the ordinary people") political parties on both right and left.
        beepbooptheory 4mo ago
        Do all the non politically affiliated people who hate billionaires not count? Or why is the granularity here important? Your point is stronger the other way!
        nostrademons 4mo ago
        Populism is a "thin" political ideology that often gets layered on top of other political ideologies, both left- and right-wing. It simply means "policies that appeal to ordinary people" (vs. a rich and perceived corrupt elite). By definition, someone who hates billionaires simply because they are billionaires is a populist. They might hate other populists that have attached themselves to other political ideologies (and have different scapegoats or preferred policy prescriptions to rectify the inequality), but they are still a populist.
        deaux 4mo ago
        > By definition, someone who hates billionaires simply because they are billionaires is a populist. You've ascribed to them an ideology they don't hold. They don't hold that view "simply because they are billionaires".
- danlitt 4mo ago
  He only really addresses the fact that the system can be nasty. It can be and regularly is, but he only argues that a company doesn't have to be nasty, so he can conveniently ignore specific examples. But the system is not just nasty (and AOC mentions this). It also disproportionately rewards good fortune. That's not cheating, since anyone can have good fortune, but it is unfair, since fortune is not a consequence of hard work or ethical behaviour.
  - lkjdsklf 4mo ago
    He also doesn’t engage with the fact that this company required funding from y combinator to get to that point Which is something that is not an option for most people. Look at where y combinator founders come from. It’s 99% people from elite institutions That is a core part of AOC’s point Getting a startup funded is just not something that is possible for most people. They just aren’t in the right circles. Does not matter how good of an idea you have However, if you’re in the right circle, you’ll get shitloads of chances even after repeatedly failing. Just look at how many of these founders that “made it” drove multiple companies into the ground before making it. It’s a lot easier to find “good fortune” when you have a lot of chances than when you have 0 chances
    - csallen 4mo ago
      Yes, you have to accomplish extraordinary things to get extraordinary results. How else should it work? Should investors give funding to people who haven't built anything, whose startups don't have any users, who had bad test scores and did poorly in school, and who have no references? If you think so, why? And how is that fair? If you believe that, should professional sports teams draft mediocre players? Players who didn't play in college or even in high school? Players who didn't make the JV team? If so, why? If not, why not, and how exactly is that so different? We all know there is no such thing as a perfect meritocracy. There never will be. Things will never be perfectly fair. That's life. But we can try to come as close as we can. And that obviously requires offering more opportunities to people who perform the best. Otherwise, what incentive is there to even strive and try to do well? The alternative isn't fairness, it's randomness.
- Demiurge 4mo ago
  How often does this actually happen? People have been studying capitalism for more than a 100 years and this argument has been rehashed for a long time. Free market capitalism will only allow a startup to gain ground via innovation and offering of a superior product or service if the market is not totally free and monopolies are not allowed to form. Monopoly is the natural end state for capitalism. Furthermore, the company motivated by profit that does not have to pay for polluting the environment will also pollute the environment. Regulation is also necessary to pay for long term externalities and other boom and bust cycles. There is nothing new in PG take except COPE and blame shifting about the increasing inequality and other societal and environmental issues.
  - csallen 4mo ago
    In my view, there is no such thing as free market capitalism without regulation. The only thing that could create anything resembling a "free market" in the first place is regulation. The whole point of the endeavor is to enact regulations that essentially play whack-a-mole in making every means of profit illegal, except for means that serve the greater good, i.e. producing, serving, innovating, and/or lowering prices, or investing in those that do. Without regulations (just a fancy word for "laws"), few people would bother to do any of these things. As it would be much more profitable to simply sabotage competitors, form cabals or monopolies, oppress and steal from the populace, conquer and loot your neighbors, lie and deceive and trick your partners, etc. And even if it weren't, anyone who did want to truly innovate or produce something useful would be discouraged by the fact that, due to others engaging in the above activities, they wouldn't see any profit. So, to answer your question… > How often does this actually happen? All the time! Hundreds of thousands of times per year! Because we don't live in an unregulated free market, because there's no such thing and the concept is absurd on its face. There are plenty of gaps and inefficiencies where new businesses can provide value to customers at scale who will happily part with their money in return. Not to mention the fact that the constant march of technology (as well as changes in policy, culture, environment, knowledge, etc.) are constantly tearing open new holes in the market.
- theptip 4mo ago
  But his N=1 anecdote doesn’t prove anything. He shares a feel-good story about an early stage company with very high growth on a small base. This person is not a billionaire yet. The actual comparison would be to look at all the startups with billionaire founders (so likely $10B companies) and then analyze the market dynamics that enable them to keep growing so fast.
  - csallen 4mo ago
    That's an argument for AOC to make. This post is about PG responding to the argument she actually did make. She has made vague, handwavy, and (depressingly) oft-repeated statements that "there are no ethical billionaires" and that "it's impossible to earn a billion dollars," but she has rarely supported with these statements with any facts or evidence whatsoever.
    - stouset 4mo ago
      The statement that there are no ethical billionaires who’ve gotten there by creating something approximating a billion dollars of value can be trivially disproven through a single counterexample. The fact that her detractors have spilt gallons of ink arguing against her point without providing such a counterexample speaks volumes.
      - csallen 4mo ago
        Plenty of counterexamples have been provided, people just don't accept them because the definition of ethical is subjective. And when you have circular reasoning that defines making money itself as unethical, then you become impossible to please. But here's a quick list from the top of my head: Judy Faulkner of Epic Systems, Hamdi Ulukaya from Cobani, the founders of Canva, the founders of Stripe, Tobi Lutke from Shopify, Paul Graham himself, Taylor Swift, Beyonce, George Lucas, Roger Federer, J.K. Rowling. Probably dozens/hundreds of others. If you do something that somebody likes and they give you $1000, that's ethical. But if you do something a million people like, and they give you $1000, then you're a billionaire, somehow you must be unethical?
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
clear-octopus 4mo ago
[dead]
cco 4mo ago
I disagree, I think she articulated it very well. At scale you have sound bites, that's it. She captured the truth, that our current system vastly favors capital over labor (etc etc etc), and did that in around six or seven words. You can't really do better than that when communicating ideas at scale. What she said is true, it's for essays, economic papers, and laws to provide the nuance.

by sofard 4mo ago

nfw2 4mo ago

This is a transcript to a speech originally made to students at Oxford, not to his blog readers.

csallen 4mo ago

He very explicitly engaged with her claim that the system is unfair/unethical, and whether you agree with him or not, he argued against it: > What [AOC] meant was that it's impossible to get that rich without doing something bad — without cheating in some way... The reason [my founder's] startup was growing so fast was simply that users loved what she'd built. So she could feel from her own experience how wrong [AOC] was. She wasn't exploiting anyone. Exactly the opposite in fact. The reason her startup was growing so fast was that she and her cofounder had been working their asses off to make their users happy, and as a result the users had been telling their friends. And that gets you exponential growth. In other words, he's saying that rapid wealth creation can (and often does) come from creating and selling things of value to willing buyers, at scale, and that that's not unethical to do. I do agree with you that AOC's point is not particularly strong, though :)

pohl 4mo ago
I wonder why he didn't argue against the point by using an actual billionaire to illustrate. Instead he chose someone who is not a billionaire, and imagined them becoming one with nine and a half months of constant 93% growth. Couldn't his counterargument become stronger without the underpants gnome logic?
- nostrademons 4mo ago
  He is probably the actual billionaire in question, but doesn't want to highlight that point given the populist backlash against billionaires.
  - deaux 4mo ago
    Popular, or "common", rather than populist.
    - nostrademons 4mo ago
      I actually meant populist, meaning affiliated with populist ("of the ordinary people") political parties on both right and left.
      - beepbooptheory 4mo ago
        Do all the non politically affiliated people who hate billionaires not count? Or why is the granularity here important? Your point is stronger the other way!
        nostrademons 4mo ago
        Populism is a "thin" political ideology that often gets layered on top of other political ideologies, both left- and right-wing. It simply means "policies that appeal to ordinary people" (vs. a rich and perceived corrupt elite). By definition, someone who hates billionaires simply because they are billionaires is a populist. They might hate other populists that have attached themselves to other political ideologies (and have different scapegoats or preferred policy prescriptions to rectify the inequality), but they are still a populist.
        deaux 4mo ago
        > By definition, someone who hates billionaires simply because they are billionaires is a populist. You've ascribed to them an ideology they don't hold. They don't hold that view "simply because they are billionaires".
danlitt 4mo ago
He only really addresses the fact that the system can be nasty. It can be and regularly is, but he only argues that a company doesn't have to be nasty, so he can conveniently ignore specific examples. But the system is not just nasty (and AOC mentions this). It also disproportionately rewards good fortune. That's not cheating, since anyone can have good fortune, but it is unfair, since fortune is not a consequence of hard work or ethical behaviour.
- lkjdsklf 4mo ago
  He also doesn’t engage with the fact that this company required funding from y combinator to get to that point Which is something that is not an option for most people. Look at where y combinator founders come from. It’s 99% people from elite institutions That is a core part of AOC’s point Getting a startup funded is just not something that is possible for most people. They just aren’t in the right circles. Does not matter how good of an idea you have However, if you’re in the right circle, you’ll get shitloads of chances even after repeatedly failing. Just look at how many of these founders that “made it” drove multiple companies into the ground before making it. It’s a lot easier to find “good fortune” when you have a lot of chances than when you have 0 chances
  - csallen 4mo ago
    Yes, you have to accomplish extraordinary things to get extraordinary results. How else should it work? Should investors give funding to people who haven't built anything, whose startups don't have any users, who had bad test scores and did poorly in school, and who have no references? If you think so, why? And how is that fair? If you believe that, should professional sports teams draft mediocre players? Players who didn't play in college or even in high school? Players who didn't make the JV team? If so, why? If not, why not, and how exactly is that so different? We all know there is no such thing as a perfect meritocracy. There never will be. Things will never be perfectly fair. That's life. But we can try to come as close as we can. And that obviously requires offering more opportunities to people who perform the best. Otherwise, what incentive is there to even strive and try to do well? The alternative isn't fairness, it's randomness.
Demiurge 4mo ago
How often does this actually happen? People have been studying capitalism for more than a 100 years and this argument has been rehashed for a long time. Free market capitalism will only allow a startup to gain ground via innovation and offering of a superior product or service if the market is not totally free and monopolies are not allowed to form. Monopoly is the natural end state for capitalism. Furthermore, the company motivated by profit that does not have to pay for polluting the environment will also pollute the environment. Regulation is also necessary to pay for long term externalities and other boom and bust cycles. There is nothing new in PG take except COPE and blame shifting about the increasing inequality and other societal and environmental issues.
- csallen 4mo ago
  In my view, there is no such thing as free market capitalism without regulation. The only thing that could create anything resembling a "free market" in the first place is regulation. The whole point of the endeavor is to enact regulations that essentially play whack-a-mole in making every means of profit illegal, except for means that serve the greater good, i.e. producing, serving, innovating, and/or lowering prices, or investing in those that do. Without regulations (just a fancy word for "laws"), few people would bother to do any of these things. As it would be much more profitable to simply sabotage competitors, form cabals or monopolies, oppress and steal from the populace, conquer and loot your neighbors, lie and deceive and trick your partners, etc. And even if it weren't, anyone who did want to truly innovate or produce something useful would be discouraged by the fact that, due to others engaging in the above activities, they wouldn't see any profit. So, to answer your question… > How often does this actually happen? All the time! Hundreds of thousands of times per year! Because we don't live in an unregulated free market, because there's no such thing and the concept is absurd on its face. There are plenty of gaps and inefficiencies where new businesses can provide value to customers at scale who will happily part with their money in return. Not to mention the fact that the constant march of technology (as well as changes in policy, culture, environment, knowledge, etc.) are constantly tearing open new holes in the market.
theptip 4mo ago
But his N=1 anecdote doesn’t prove anything. He shares a feel-good story about an early stage company with very high growth on a small base. This person is not a billionaire yet. The actual comparison would be to look at all the startups with billionaire founders (so likely $10B companies) and then analyze the market dynamics that enable them to keep growing so fast.
- csallen 4mo ago
  That's an argument for AOC to make. This post is about PG responding to the argument she actually did make. She has made vague, handwavy, and (depressingly) oft-repeated statements that "there are no ethical billionaires" and that "it's impossible to earn a billion dollars," but she has rarely supported with these statements with any facts or evidence whatsoever.
  - stouset 4mo ago
    The statement that there are no ethical billionaires who’ve gotten there by creating something approximating a billion dollars of value can be trivially disproven through a single counterexample. The fact that her detractors have spilt gallons of ink arguing against her point without providing such a counterexample speaks volumes.
    - csallen 4mo ago
      Plenty of counterexamples have been provided, people just don't accept them because the definition of ethical is subjective. And when you have circular reasoning that defines making money itself as unethical, then you become impossible to please. But here's a quick list from the top of my head: Judy Faulkner of Epic Systems, Hamdi Ulukaya from Cobani, the founders of Canva, the founders of Stripe, Tobi Lutke from Shopify, Paul Graham himself, Taylor Swift, Beyonce, George Lucas, Roger Federer, J.K. Rowling. Probably dozens/hundreds of others. If you do something that somebody likes and they give you $1000, that's ethical. But if you do something a million people like, and they give you $1000, then you're a billionaire, somehow you must be unethical?

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

clear-octopus 4mo ago

[dead]

cco 4mo ago

I disagree, I think she articulated it very well. At scale you have sound bites, that's it. She captured the truth, that our current system vastly favors capital over labor (etc etc etc), and did that in around six or seven words. You can't really do better than that when communicating ideas at scale. What she said is true, it's for essays, economic papers, and laws to provide the nuance.