4 ms·

I read a lot of whining on this thread (and many other, recently as well). 'Fair' pops up a lot. The world is not fair. You can either spend your time gripin

by brc 13y ago

I read a lot of whining on this thread (and many other, recently as well). 'Fair' pops up a lot. The world is not fair. You can either spend your time griping, or you can spend your time living. I sense a lot of 'daddy' models of wealth swimming in peoples heads. http://paulgraham.com/gap.html http://paulgraham.com/gap.html If you didn't win the birth lottery it's not a death sentence. You can still win. Measure your progress against your own expectations, not against the lottery winners.

barrkel 13y ago
The world is not binary either, and that doesn't mean that we can't adjust society to increase or decrease the amount of fairness. It also doesn't mean that the adjusted amount of fairness in society and its rules (both laws and social norms) can't have positive or negative effects on overall total welfare. Oh, and also: nobody wins. Some just take longer to lose.
almosnow 13y ago
The way I see it. This guy didn't won the birh lottery but his mom worked her ass off so he could have a ticket at it. The fact that he feels guilty of basically having accomplished everything that his mother ever wished for him should be a very dishonirable situation. Ooh the humanity...
quasque 13y ago
The world is not fair, therefore we should collectively just shut up and put up with this enduring inequality? The majority of the world's population are living in poverty, and well over a billion people are entirely destitute. Lacking food, water, healthcare, sanitation, education - can they still 'win'?
anigbrowl 13y ago
And then there's situations like this: https://www.secret.ly/p/feexnrnpunzjadkhinaegigziy https://www.secret.ly/p/feexnrnpunzjadkhinaegigziy (HN auto-kills secret.ly submissions, but I'm willing to bet this will be a top story next week when verifiable details emerge.)
- marvin 13y ago
  What the fuck, dude. That's just atrocious. On the other hand, this is the most beautiful sex discrimination lawsuit I've ever seen waiting to happen. I really hope she has the ability, guts and staying power to move through with it.
- joyeuse6701 13y ago
  Yeah holy crap, talk about an injustice.
  - supergauntlet 13y ago
    I just kept scrolling down and was thinking 'okay... maybe they weren't that great of a worker?' and then they claim that they both came up with the company idea and the UI/UX. If that's true that's all kinds of fucked.
    - tim333 13y ago
      I imagine if it becomes public Google would be shamed into doing something. It wouldn't make them look very good.
      - ericd 13y ago
        It seems like it's already becoming public. But yeah, I'm not a fan of how acquihires work at all - if you own 20% of the company's stock, you should get 20% of the payout upon acquisition. Otherwise, those employment and investment terms are significantly less meaningful.
        ac2u 13y ago
        This isn't just with acquihires though, the liquidation preferences set out in the term sheet for a round of investment in general could yield the same result in any sort of liquidation event. I suppose it's all the more reason to have a good lawyer and know what you're signing.
- 13y ago
EGreg 13y ago
Guys winning is relative to the game you play. Do you really think every game is going to be fair? In the games which everyone MUST play - healthcare, food, shelter - there should be a minimum safety net for ALL. This can be achieved using Basic Income. But fairness? What exactly does that mean? At the end of the day those who do better in the game will get a better reward and maybe do better in the future etc. Is this because they had more "talent"? Or got more lucky? What is fairness here? At the end of the day, people want to be happy and healthy.
ACow_Adonis 13y ago
While I agree with Paul Graham about a lot of things, its worth pointing out that the man's wikipedia page says he was born (in the US, sorry, in the UK, my bad), went to Cornell where he graduated at 22, then practically straight on to Harvard to do masters, and then a PhD, and is primarily noted for being rich because he was bought out by Yahoo. Something that cannot happen for the majority of people, merit or no, and if that black swan didn't happen for him, i imagine we'd have a significantly different opinion of him. Indeed, who is to say that Yahoo didn't make a complete mistake? We'll never know i guess because we can never see the opportunity costs of alternate futures we haven't experienced. While its possible to end up being rich if you didn't win the birth lottery, its pretty obvious Paul Graham did win it, and you'd have to be numerically or statistically illiterate to not realize that where you start the game is basically the most powerful predictor of both riches and poverty... Frankly, i wish we could just get over this nonsense of equating extremes of wealth and merit, since there seems to be such little empirical evidence of how to equate the two, or agreement on what merit even is... One thing that does seem empirically obvious though. Rich people aren't "individually responsible" for wealth themselves. No one has walked out of the amazon forest in a loin cloth and already been a billionaire because of how much wealth they were able to create while there by themselves... /no offense intended to Paul Graham, he was just used in the example, but from reading his essays I'm guessing he's not terribly insecure :P
- marvin 13y ago
  I respect PG because he's a really good essayist and also a visionary in technology. Don't know why you seem to be attributing his fame to the fact that he's rich.
- bootload 13y ago
  "... says he was born in the US, went to Cornell, then to Harvard, ..." pg is a Pom, "is an English programmer," cf: ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_%28computer_programmer%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_%28computer_program...
  - ACow_Adonis 13y ago
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
koonsolo 13y ago
If you can read and post on Hacker News, you've already won the birth lottery. Some babies are born in North Korean prison camps. If you live in the western world are handy with technology, you definitely won the birth lottery.

by brc 13y ago

barrkel 13y ago

The world is not binary either, and that doesn't mean that we can't adjust society to increase or decrease the amount of fairness. It also doesn't mean that the adjusted amount of fairness in society and its rules (both laws and social norms) can't have positive or negative effects on overall total welfare. Oh, and also: nobody wins. Some just take longer to lose.

almosnow 13y ago

The way I see it. This guy didn't won the birh lottery but his mom worked her ass off so he could have a ticket at it. The fact that he feels guilty of basically having accomplished everything that his mother ever wished for him should be a very dishonirable situation. Ooh the humanity...

quasque 13y ago

The world is not fair, therefore we should collectively just shut up and put up with this enduring inequality? The majority of the world's population are living in poverty, and well over a billion people are entirely destitute. Lacking food, water, healthcare, sanitation, education - can they still 'win'?

anigbrowl 13y ago

And then there's situations like this: https://www.secret.ly/p/feexnrnpunzjadkhinaegigziy https://www.secret.ly/p/feexnrnpunzjadkhinaegigziy (HN auto-kills secret.ly submissions, but I'm willing to bet this will be a top story next week when verifiable details emerge.)

marvin 13y ago
What the fuck, dude. That's just atrocious. On the other hand, this is the most beautiful sex discrimination lawsuit I've ever seen waiting to happen. I really hope she has the ability, guts and staying power to move through with it.
joyeuse6701 13y ago
Yeah holy crap, talk about an injustice.
- supergauntlet 13y ago
  I just kept scrolling down and was thinking 'okay... maybe they weren't that great of a worker?' and then they claim that they both came up with the company idea and the UI/UX. If that's true that's all kinds of fucked.
  - tim333 13y ago
    I imagine if it becomes public Google would be shamed into doing something. It wouldn't make them look very good.
    - ericd 13y ago
      It seems like it's already becoming public. But yeah, I'm not a fan of how acquihires work at all - if you own 20% of the company's stock, you should get 20% of the payout upon acquisition. Otherwise, those employment and investment terms are significantly less meaningful.
      - ac2u 13y ago
        This isn't just with acquihires though, the liquidation preferences set out in the term sheet for a round of investment in general could yield the same result in any sort of liquidation event. I suppose it's all the more reason to have a good lawyer and know what you're signing.
13y ago

EGreg 13y ago

Guys winning is relative to the game you play. Do you really think every game is going to be fair? In the games which everyone MUST play - healthcare, food, shelter - there should be a minimum safety net for ALL. This can be achieved using Basic Income. But fairness? What exactly does that mean? At the end of the day those who do better in the game will get a better reward and maybe do better in the future etc. Is this because they had more "talent"? Or got more lucky? What is fairness here? At the end of the day, people want to be happy and healthy.

ACow_Adonis 13y ago

While I agree with Paul Graham about a lot of things, its worth pointing out that the man's wikipedia page says he was born (in the US, sorry, in the UK, my bad), went to Cornell where he graduated at 22, then practically straight on to Harvard to do masters, and then a PhD, and is primarily noted for being rich because he was bought out by Yahoo. Something that cannot happen for the majority of people, merit or no, and if that black swan didn't happen for him, i imagine we'd have a significantly different opinion of him. Indeed, who is to say that Yahoo didn't make a complete mistake? We'll never know i guess because we can never see the opportunity costs of alternate futures we haven't experienced. While its possible to end up being rich if you didn't win the birth lottery, its pretty obvious Paul Graham did win it, and you'd have to be numerically or statistically illiterate to not realize that where you start the game is basically the most powerful predictor of both riches and poverty... Frankly, i wish we could just get over this nonsense of equating extremes of wealth and merit, since there seems to be such little empirical evidence of how to equate the two, or agreement on what merit even is... One thing that does seem empirically obvious though. Rich people aren't "individually responsible" for wealth themselves. No one has walked out of the amazon forest in a loin cloth and already been a billionaire because of how much wealth they were able to create while there by themselves... /no offense intended to Paul Graham, he was just used in the example, but from reading his essays I'm guessing he's not terribly insecure :P

marvin 13y ago
I respect PG because he's a really good essayist and also a visionary in technology. Don't know why you seem to be attributing his fame to the fact that he's rich.
bootload 13y ago
"... says he was born in the US, went to Cornell, then to Harvard, ..." pg is a Pom, "is an English programmer," cf: ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_%28computer_programmer%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_%28computer_program...
- ACow_Adonis 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

koonsolo 13y ago

If you can read and post on Hacker News, you've already won the birth lottery. Some babies are born in North Korean prison camps. If you live in the western world are handy with technology, you definitely won the birth lottery.