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I thought it was fairly stereotypical how it was only after he was making lots of money that he was able to find a girlfriend let alone lose his virginity. Mayb

by codexon 17y ago

I thought it was fairly stereotypical how it was only after he was making lots of money that he was able to find a girlfriend let alone lose his virginity. Maybe for some people this is part of the allure of being an entrepreneur. About the business ethics though, there's a reason why the saying "behind every great fortune lies a great crime" is often said. Because the currency economy is mostly a zero-sum game in the sense of total money ownership (barring inflation), the people that have less scruples than you will often rake in more money than the more honest counterparts.

xenophanes 17y ago
zero sum? but people take raw materials (e.g. glass and aluminum) and make awesome, valuable stuff out of it all the time.
- codexon 17y ago
  Please read more carefully. I'm talking about possession of currency which is zero-sum except when the Fed prints out more bills. You can make a billion pretty trinkets with glass and aluminum, and it won't get you any dollars if no one with dollars wants to trade you dollars, and the Fed is not printing extra.
  - xenophanes 17y ago
    but moving currency between people, for "trinkets" is called "trade". trade is not a zero sum process. it creates wealth. so, i buy something from you for $20. then you buy something from me for $20. although the currency comes out equal, we're both ahead. there's no scam here, no incentive or advantage for low scruples, no problem at all.
    - codexon 17y ago
      How many times do I have to repeat myself? I never said "wealth" exchange was a zero-sum game. I said currency exchange is a zero-sum game.
      - xenophanes 17y ago
        You mean trading currency for currency doesn't go anywhere? Umm, I guess so. What's your point? The guy wasn't in the currency exchange business.
        forensic 17y ago
        You'll have to scroll up to see his point. It was related to how the title of article was aiming at the possession of currency rather than the possession of wealth.
        codexon 17y ago
        Yes it's quite sad how I had to repeat myself 3 times. At least you understand :) What I don't understand is why when anyone here sees the word "zero-sum" they rush in to talk about Paul Graham's explanation of wealth creation regardless of what the subject is. And sadly I've since then lost 5 karma from people who like to jump on this "wealth is not a zero-sum game" bandwagon.
        xenophanes 17y ago
        Is it sad that you assume all capitalist people here are repeating views from PG, rather than explaining their own independent views?
        forensic 17y ago
        But they are repeating PG's views. And they're doing it out of context.
        codexon 17y ago
        What's happening here is that Paul Graham wrote about apples, and I am writing about oranges. You saw the word fruit and now you keep saying apples apples apples.
        codexon 17y ago
  - julio_the_squid 17y ago
    What about interest and electronically created debt? It doesn't depend on the Fed printing anything.
    - forensic 17y ago
      That is currency... the far majority of currency in the world is "electronic".
  - barrkel 17y ago
    If you have a billion pretty trinkets, and by pretty I mean that other people desire to have them at some positive price, you only need one single dollar in the system - or other agreed form of money - and you can sell every single one of those trinkets, albeit slowly. And because what you really need is money, rather than currency, you do not require a central bank. All you need is trust in the value of whatever you choose as money - it could be debt backed by a legal system - and that the money has sufficient money-like attributes. If your trinkets are small and durable enough, they might even do as money directly.
    - forensic 17y ago
      While what you say is true, it is a non-sequitor. In reality there is not a fixed amount of currency, there is a printing press pumping out more dollars and the dollars are given to someone who then lends them at interest to someone else who then uses them to buy a trinket. As the printing press makes more dollars, the value of each goes down, and so the wealth of everyone in system doesn't actually depend on how much currency they hold but rather the order in which they receive the more recently printed currency. The wealthiest are defined by those who receive it first. It is a pecking order. Whoever receives it last actually doesn't have enough to buy food because by the time he receives the currency, it is already too worthless to be used to compel food from the other members. He either abandons the system and lives off the grid, or starves to death. So while in theory currency does not have to be a zero-sum game, our modern implementation of currency is indeed a zero-sum game. And I say currency specifically because, as everyone loves to point out, basically anything is technically "money" as soon as it is traded. P.S. Note that both pg and this fellow had the same people signing the checks - Yahoo. Yahoo is pretty high on the pecking order because it has always had excellent access to investment bankers who in turn have excellent access to banks who in turn have excellent access to central banks who printed the new batches of money. The closer you are to the central bank, the richer you'll be.
      - v3rt 17y ago
        Since when is HN new-world-order-conspiracy-central? We live in an economy with a certain amount of economic activity and overall wealth, which tend to go up over time (barring recession). To facilitate trade, the central banks of nations issue currency, which acts as a "dual" of the economy (or more precisely, a piece of it - there aren't enough dollars circulating to buy every good and service in the US simultaneously), a pure trade good with fiat value. If the economy kept growing and the supply of currency stayed constant, deflation would result, as previously noted. However, by Keynesian theory (which is not absolutely proven be right, but has worked pretty well over the past 75 years), inflation (at reasonable levels) is more conductive to investment and consumption and overall economic vitality than deflation, due to people being more inclined to spend and invest money that would lose value just sitting there. Thus, the government prints more money every year than would be necessary to match the growth in the economy. This is not some ridiculous plot by the Swiss and the Jews to enslave us all; it's simply a tax on everyone who holds dollars (or, in other countries, other currencies), since the government dilutes the overall pool of currency to grant itself spending money. This "inflation tax" is always a very small percentage of overall government revenues in the US, and even if Keynesian theory were totally wrong, the policy would not be particularly harmful. It would just be another tax, although somewhat regressive, since the poor tend to have more of their net-worth in cash than the rich. And, it makes absolutely no difference who gets the money straight from the printing press, aside from the value of enjoying crisp, shiny new bills. The government spends money it got from printing in exactly the same places as it spends money procured from taxes. I understand what psychological processes drive people to conspiracy theory, but it still frustrates me to no end that so many people believe in the laws of cigar-munching cabals instead of those of economics.
timwiseman 17y ago
Because the currency economy is mostly a zero-sum game in the sense of total money ownership (barring inflation), This statement is true in its literal sense but very misleading. Holding currency is close to a zero sum game, holding wealth is nowhere near that. If someone were to, say, sell me a pound of gold for $1, he would win in terms of pure currency. He would have one more dollar, and I would have one less, but I think I would come out ahead. Similarly, if someone sold me a tool I needed to do my job, he would clearly win in terms of money in that transaction, but I could turn around and use that tool to create new things that never existed before and create more value in the world. Paul Graham talks about this in more detail and more eloquently than I can hope to at http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html (Edited to add a small comment).
- codexon 17y ago
  This statement is true in its literal sense but very misleading. Holding currency is close to a zero sum game, holding wealth is nowhere near that. I already understand that "value" can be generated regardless of how much currency is available. Why is everyone here on HN in a rush to ignore that currency exchange is a zero-sum game and keeps trumpting that wealth can be generated? Perhaps it is because Paul Graham wrote that article. Wealth is a different subject from currency. You can generate all the "wealth" in the world, and if there is only $100 circulating in the world, all that "wealth" isn't magically going to expand this $100 except when you convince the government to print more money. This has important limitations on the liquidity of your "wealth". Let's say that you've created $1 quadrillion worth of meat. You want to convert this into alternative forms of wealth such as currency and medical supplies. However, is it at all likely that you will be able to convert all this wealth before it expires? Nope. And this is one of the most important distinctions between wealth and currency. The supply of currency is artificially limited by the government, while the supply of wealth is an arbitrary measure that people decide to assign their work and belongings.
  - nazgulnarsil 17y ago
    wealth creation with fixed currency causes deflation. deflation means you can now buy more products and services with the share of the currency you do have. so you're wrong.
barrkel 17y ago
Money is just a generally accepted means of transferring wealth from one place to another. Currency is a subset of all money. Lots of things can take the place of money, as long as they have the right attributes (mutual trust, fungible, not easily debased or forged, transportable, etc.) Money is not a "zero-sum game", and in particular, wealth has almost no relationship with money. Money is just the "working capital" in various ongoing wealth exchanges, the water in the pipes, as it were, if the economy was viewed as an interlocking system of flows. And currency, the printed stuff from a central bank, is not the total sum of this money.

by codexon 17y ago

xenophanes 17y ago

zero sum? but people take raw materials (e.g. glass and aluminum) and make awesome, valuable stuff out of it all the time.

codexon 17y ago
Please read more carefully. I'm talking about possession of currency which is zero-sum except when the Fed prints out more bills. You can make a billion pretty trinkets with glass and aluminum, and it won't get you any dollars if no one with dollars wants to trade you dollars, and the Fed is not printing extra.
- xenophanes 17y ago
  but moving currency between people, for "trinkets" is called "trade". trade is not a zero sum process. it creates wealth. so, i buy something from you for $20. then you buy something from me for $20. although the currency comes out equal, we're both ahead. there's no scam here, no incentive or advantage for low scruples, no problem at all.
  - codexon 17y ago
    How many times do I have to repeat myself? I never said "wealth" exchange was a zero-sum game. I said currency exchange is a zero-sum game.
    - xenophanes 17y ago
      You mean trading currency for currency doesn't go anywhere? Umm, I guess so. What's your point? The guy wasn't in the currency exchange business.
      - forensic 17y ago
        You'll have to scroll up to see his point. It was related to how the title of article was aiming at the possession of currency rather than the possession of wealth.
        codexon 17y ago
        Yes it's quite sad how I had to repeat myself 3 times. At least you understand :) What I don't understand is why when anyone here sees the word "zero-sum" they rush in to talk about Paul Graham's explanation of wealth creation regardless of what the subject is. And sadly I've since then lost 5 karma from people who like to jump on this "wealth is not a zero-sum game" bandwagon.
        xenophanes 17y ago
        Is it sad that you assume all capitalist people here are repeating views from PG, rather than explaining their own independent views?
        forensic 17y ago
        But they are repeating PG's views. And they're doing it out of context.
        codexon 17y ago
        What's happening here is that Paul Graham wrote about apples, and I am writing about oranges. You saw the word fruit and now you keep saying apples apples apples.
      - codexon 17y ago
- julio_the_squid 17y ago
  What about interest and electronically created debt? It doesn't depend on the Fed printing anything.
  - forensic 17y ago
    That is currency... the far majority of currency in the world is "electronic".
- barrkel 17y ago
  If you have a billion pretty trinkets, and by pretty I mean that other people desire to have them at some positive price, you only need one single dollar in the system - or other agreed form of money - and you can sell every single one of those trinkets, albeit slowly. And because what you really need is money, rather than currency, you do not require a central bank. All you need is trust in the value of whatever you choose as money - it could be debt backed by a legal system - and that the money has sufficient money-like attributes. If your trinkets are small and durable enough, they might even do as money directly.
  - forensic 17y ago
    While what you say is true, it is a non-sequitor. In reality there is not a fixed amount of currency, there is a printing press pumping out more dollars and the dollars are given to someone who then lends them at interest to someone else who then uses them to buy a trinket. As the printing press makes more dollars, the value of each goes down, and so the wealth of everyone in system doesn't actually depend on how much currency they hold but rather the order in which they receive the more recently printed currency. The wealthiest are defined by those who receive it first. It is a pecking order. Whoever receives it last actually doesn't have enough to buy food because by the time he receives the currency, it is already too worthless to be used to compel food from the other members. He either abandons the system and lives off the grid, or starves to death. So while in theory currency does not have to be a zero-sum game, our modern implementation of currency is indeed a zero-sum game. And I say currency specifically because, as everyone loves to point out, basically anything is technically "money" as soon as it is traded. P.S. Note that both pg and this fellow had the same people signing the checks - Yahoo. Yahoo is pretty high on the pecking order because it has always had excellent access to investment bankers who in turn have excellent access to banks who in turn have excellent access to central banks who printed the new batches of money. The closer you are to the central bank, the richer you'll be.
    - v3rt 17y ago
      Since when is HN new-world-order-conspiracy-central? We live in an economy with a certain amount of economic activity and overall wealth, which tend to go up over time (barring recession). To facilitate trade, the central banks of nations issue currency, which acts as a "dual" of the economy (or more precisely, a piece of it - there aren't enough dollars circulating to buy every good and service in the US simultaneously), a pure trade good with fiat value. If the economy kept growing and the supply of currency stayed constant, deflation would result, as previously noted. However, by Keynesian theory (which is not absolutely proven be right, but has worked pretty well over the past 75 years), inflation (at reasonable levels) is more conductive to investment and consumption and overall economic vitality than deflation, due to people being more inclined to spend and invest money that would lose value just sitting there. Thus, the government prints more money every year than would be necessary to match the growth in the economy. This is not some ridiculous plot by the Swiss and the Jews to enslave us all; it's simply a tax on everyone who holds dollars (or, in other countries, other currencies), since the government dilutes the overall pool of currency to grant itself spending money. This "inflation tax" is always a very small percentage of overall government revenues in the US, and even if Keynesian theory were totally wrong, the policy would not be particularly harmful. It would just be another tax, although somewhat regressive, since the poor tend to have more of their net-worth in cash than the rich. And, it makes absolutely no difference who gets the money straight from the printing press, aside from the value of enjoying crisp, shiny new bills. The government spends money it got from printing in exactly the same places as it spends money procured from taxes. I understand what psychological processes drive people to conspiracy theory, but it still frustrates me to no end that so many people believe in the laws of cigar-munching cabals instead of those of economics.

timwiseman 17y ago

Because the currency economy is mostly a zero-sum game in the sense of total money ownership (barring inflation), This statement is true in its literal sense but very misleading. Holding currency is close to a zero sum game, holding wealth is nowhere near that. If someone were to, say, sell me a pound of gold for $1, he would win in terms of pure currency. He would have one more dollar, and I would have one less, but I think I would come out ahead. Similarly, if someone sold me a tool I needed to do my job, he would clearly win in terms of money in that transaction, but I could turn around and use that tool to create new things that never existed before and create more value in the world. Paul Graham talks about this in more detail and more eloquently than I can hope to at http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html (Edited to add a small comment).

codexon 17y ago
This statement is true in its literal sense but very misleading. Holding currency is close to a zero sum game, holding wealth is nowhere near that. I already understand that "value" can be generated regardless of how much currency is available. Why is everyone here on HN in a rush to ignore that currency exchange is a zero-sum game and keeps trumpting that wealth can be generated? Perhaps it is because Paul Graham wrote that article. Wealth is a different subject from currency. You can generate all the "wealth" in the world, and if there is only $100 circulating in the world, all that "wealth" isn't magically going to expand this $100 except when you convince the government to print more money. This has important limitations on the liquidity of your "wealth". Let's say that you've created $1 quadrillion worth of meat. You want to convert this into alternative forms of wealth such as currency and medical supplies. However, is it at all likely that you will be able to convert all this wealth before it expires? Nope. And this is one of the most important distinctions between wealth and currency. The supply of currency is artificially limited by the government, while the supply of wealth is an arbitrary measure that people decide to assign their work and belongings.
- nazgulnarsil 17y ago
  wealth creation with fixed currency causes deflation. deflation means you can now buy more products and services with the share of the currency you do have. so you're wrong.

barrkel 17y ago

Money is just a generally accepted means of transferring wealth from one place to another. Currency is a subset of all money. Lots of things can take the place of money, as long as they have the right attributes (mutual trust, fungible, not easily debased or forged, transportable, etc.) Money is not a "zero-sum game", and in particular, wealth has almost no relationship with money. Money is just the "working capital" in various ongoing wealth exchanges, the water in the pipes, as it were, if the economy was viewed as an interlocking system of flows. And currency, the printed stuff from a central bank, is not the total sum of this money.