6 ms·

Yeah, but they benefited from a system that coerces people to trade their labor for less than it is worth. Zuckerberg is worth >3x the annual income of all sur

Yeah, but they benefited from a system that coerces people to trade their labor for less than it is worth. Zuckerberg is worth >3x the annual income of all surgeons in the US. It is implausible that his net worth reflects his replacement cost. Even PG has said (to Zuckerberg) that if it wasn't him, it would have been someone else.

imgabe 6y ago
The amount of value you can obtain by trading something is by definition what it is worth. If nobody is willing to pay you an amount for something, it's not worth that much. > It is implausible that his net worth reflects his replacement cost. Why should it? His net worth reflects the expected value of the portion of Facebook that he owns. Why would it have anything to do with his replacement cost?
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Hmm, not really. The cost of labour is actually generally agreed to be the replacement cost of the labour. As a society, the only thing that we take out of Zuckerberg is his labour, so he shouldn't get anymore than the replacement cost of his labour. In other words, if someone would have done Zuckerberg's work for less compensation - and the GP asserts it is the case - then we as a society lose by having Zuckerberg do it instead of the lower compensated alternative. In other words, when someone gets paid more than their replacement cost, there is a market inefficiency that causes loss to the vast majority.
  - imgabe 6y ago
    He doesn't "get" anything. His net worth is due to ownership in the company he made. When people talk about his net worth increasing, that's due to the shares appreciating. He didn't get more of anything. He owns the same number of shares, they just became more valuable. Zuckerberg is not employed by society. We're not all collectively paying him a salary. If you're saying we should completely abolish private property, that's a different thing altogether.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      Private property exists because it is an organization of things that is useful to society. That's why we heavily limit it using taxation and so forth. We allow people to own capital because it motivates them to do some types of work. If we allow people to concentrate more capital than necessary to motivate them to do that work, we lose.
      - imgabe 6y ago
        There is no "we" allowing or disallowing anything. Who is this "we" and why do use suppose they have some divine insight into the ideal allocation of capital?
        metabagel 6y ago
        LLCs and copyright law are rather arbitrary constructs which our laws have created in the belief that they promote some benefit to society - be it better allocation of capital, rewarding creators/inventors, etc. Shares of stock, the secondary stock market - these are also arbitrary constructs which have been created to serve some purpose. There’s some magical thinking regarding capitalism - that it practically runs itself; that is ensures efficient allocation of capital. Capitalism may tend to decentralize economic decision-making, and it may tend to align production incentives with actual demand. But, that doesn’t mean it’s efficient. Efficiency would mean that incentives would nearly match the minimum to ensure satisfaction of demand. What we in America have is a system which highly rewards people who control the labor of others. Our society values wealth, not work.
        sudosysgen 6y ago
        "We" is the People, the Sovereign, the Government, whatever you like, whatever makes laws that allow for private property and regulates it. We suppose they have some divine insight into the ideal allocation of capital because empirically, so far, this system has shown to be the best way to allocate capital in many situations, so we allow it. Outside of it, capitalist ideology also has the idea of the divine invisible hand of the free market, which is certainly an exageration, but in the real world markets with the proper conditions and regulations are pretty good at allocating capital.
  - rtx 6y ago
    What you wrote is very scary. As someone who grew under a communist party rule, I have come to realize that there is no way to rationalize with communist. I think McCarthy came to the same realization.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      This is literally the argument for why communism hasn't worked. Without private property it was impossible to motivate people to do some kinds of work - taking on risk, organizing production, and some kinds of innovation - to a sufficient degree and without many drawbacks. If someone found a way to motivate people to do those kinds of labour properly - and force doesn't work well for many reasons, so it would have to be non-violent, but without having to allow ownership of capital and wealth concentration, why wouldn't we consider it? The Communists of old thought they found a way to do so and were wrong, but if someone today found a way to do it that doesn't cause many drawbacks, it would be foolish and dogmatic not to consider it, and if it works well, implement it.
      - username90 6y ago
        Capitalism automatically allocates more resources to those who uses the resources well via markets mostly choosing to buy better or cheaper products. That works much much better than allocating resources via committees or strict laws, until you have a better solution for resource allocation any replacement for capitalism will fail. However this also means that as long as we keep the resource allocation thing mostly intact you can manipulate all other aspects of it, like adding lots of taxes, giving aid to the poor etc. None of that messes with the main feature of resource allocation, which is why Scandinavian countries still have good economies.
        sudosysgen 6y ago
        Ah, but you have to make the difference between resources. There's capital, which I agree are often better allocated in capitalism, but other kinds of resources aren't problematic. Which is pretty much what I said :). Organizing production was a proxy for capital allocation.
- rmrfstar 6y ago
  > The amount of value you can obtain by trading something is by definition what it is worth. That is one important definition, but it's just a statement of ideology. Was Instagram only worth $1bn when they sold to Facebook in 2012. Are we supposed to ignore the fact that Instagram's options were sell for $1bn or face "Zuckerberg destroy mode"?
missedthecue 6y ago
I feel like there's a false equivalence being made here. You're comparing wage to net worth. Zuckerberg's net worth is not a function of his replacement cost. It's the percentage of his own company that he owns, valued at market price. This happens to be worth $100B at current market levels, but it is independent of whether he continues to work at Facebook or anywhere else. It's not compensation for labour.

imgabe 6y ago

The amount of value you can obtain by trading something is by definition what it is worth. If nobody is willing to pay you an amount for something, it's not worth that much. > It is implausible that his net worth reflects his replacement cost. Why should it? His net worth reflects the expected value of the portion of Facebook that he owns. Why would it have anything to do with his replacement cost?

sudosysgen 6y ago
Hmm, not really. The cost of labour is actually generally agreed to be the replacement cost of the labour. As a society, the only thing that we take out of Zuckerberg is his labour, so he shouldn't get anymore than the replacement cost of his labour. In other words, if someone would have done Zuckerberg's work for less compensation - and the GP asserts it is the case - then we as a society lose by having Zuckerberg do it instead of the lower compensated alternative. In other words, when someone gets paid more than their replacement cost, there is a market inefficiency that causes loss to the vast majority.
- imgabe 6y ago
  He doesn't "get" anything. His net worth is due to ownership in the company he made. When people talk about his net worth increasing, that's due to the shares appreciating. He didn't get more of anything. He owns the same number of shares, they just became more valuable. Zuckerberg is not employed by society. We're not all collectively paying him a salary. If you're saying we should completely abolish private property, that's a different thing altogether.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Private property exists because it is an organization of things that is useful to society. That's why we heavily limit it using taxation and so forth. We allow people to own capital because it motivates them to do some types of work. If we allow people to concentrate more capital than necessary to motivate them to do that work, we lose.
    - imgabe 6y ago
      There is no "we" allowing or disallowing anything. Who is this "we" and why do use suppose they have some divine insight into the ideal allocation of capital?
      - metabagel 6y ago
        LLCs and copyright law are rather arbitrary constructs which our laws have created in the belief that they promote some benefit to society - be it better allocation of capital, rewarding creators/inventors, etc. Shares of stock, the secondary stock market - these are also arbitrary constructs which have been created to serve some purpose. There’s some magical thinking regarding capitalism - that it practically runs itself; that is ensures efficient allocation of capital. Capitalism may tend to decentralize economic decision-making, and it may tend to align production incentives with actual demand. But, that doesn’t mean it’s efficient. Efficiency would mean that incentives would nearly match the minimum to ensure satisfaction of demand. What we in America have is a system which highly rewards people who control the labor of others. Our society values wealth, not work.
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
        "We" is the People, the Sovereign, the Government, whatever you like, whatever makes laws that allow for private property and regulates it. We suppose they have some divine insight into the ideal allocation of capital because empirically, so far, this system has shown to be the best way to allocate capital in many situations, so we allow it. Outside of it, capitalist ideology also has the idea of the divine invisible hand of the free market, which is certainly an exageration, but in the real world markets with the proper conditions and regulations are pretty good at allocating capital.
- rtx 6y ago
  What you wrote is very scary. As someone who grew under a communist party rule, I have come to realize that there is no way to rationalize with communist. I think McCarthy came to the same realization.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    This is literally the argument for why communism hasn't worked. Without private property it was impossible to motivate people to do some kinds of work - taking on risk, organizing production, and some kinds of innovation - to a sufficient degree and without many drawbacks. If someone found a way to motivate people to do those kinds of labour properly - and force doesn't work well for many reasons, so it would have to be non-violent, but without having to allow ownership of capital and wealth concentration, why wouldn't we consider it? The Communists of old thought they found a way to do so and were wrong, but if someone today found a way to do it that doesn't cause many drawbacks, it would be foolish and dogmatic not to consider it, and if it works well, implement it.
    - username90 6y ago
      Capitalism automatically allocates more resources to those who uses the resources well via markets mostly choosing to buy better or cheaper products. That works much much better than allocating resources via committees or strict laws, until you have a better solution for resource allocation any replacement for capitalism will fail. However this also means that as long as we keep the resource allocation thing mostly intact you can manipulate all other aspects of it, like adding lots of taxes, giving aid to the poor etc. None of that messes with the main feature of resource allocation, which is why Scandinavian countries still have good economies.
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
        Ah, but you have to make the difference between resources. There's capital, which I agree are often better allocated in capitalism, but other kinds of resources aren't problematic. Which is pretty much what I said :). Organizing production was a proxy for capital allocation.
rmrfstar 6y ago
> The amount of value you can obtain by trading something is by definition what it is worth. That is one important definition, but it's just a statement of ideology. Was Instagram only worth $1bn when they sold to Facebook in 2012. Are we supposed to ignore the fact that Instagram's options were sell for $1bn or face "Zuckerberg destroy mode"?

missedthecue 6y ago

I feel like there's a false equivalence being made here. You're comparing wage to net worth. Zuckerberg's net worth is not a function of his replacement cost. It's the percentage of his own company that he owns, valued at market price. This happens to be worth $100B at current market levels, but it is independent of whether he continues to work at Facebook or anywhere else. It's not compensation for labour.