13 ms·

Look, to be honest, I just think we have vastly different opinions and views on the world and how it works. There is absolutely nothing in your message that gav

by rocgf 3y ago

Look, to be honest, I just think we have vastly different opinions and views on the world and how it works. There is absolutely nothing in your message that gave me any pause, and I think we start from irreconcilable positions. > I'm only responding to the people who use the phrase to justify massive inequality of wealth, so I'd like to hear what you think it means, and how it justifies that inequality. I do think that there is probably too much inequality for it to be healthy for society, but I am not of the opinion that "billionaires should not exist" or that anyone rich is some version of evil. I believe fundamentally that two workers who have different productivity and/or different work ethics should be compensated differently. Elon Musk (and many rich people) have, on average, better work ethic and considerably better output. Just by the fact that Elon has been involved in so many successful ventures at a global level, that is by definition proof that he is doing something better than virtually all of us. > I don't even know what "hard work" is supposed to mean here In previous replies you associated hard work with physically strenuous work. I think they are orthogonal concerns. Working hard means making progress on problems at the edge of your abilities. By your definition, someone shovelling bricks for 8 hours is working harder than someone working 8h in an office. By mine, that is not necessarily true. Also, even if your definition was true, paying someone purely on how 'hard' they work would still not be a good idea. > Without that lucky jackpot, none of your "revolutionary companies" would exist. This sentence does not sound as good as you think it does. Sure, loads of people end up with the biggest percentage of shares in a company like PayPal and then also continue with other extremely impactful ventures, one after the other at the edge of technology. Repeated moonshots is "lucky". > I don't believe in the Mars fairy tale that's been sold to space nerds Me neither, but have a look at how many launches have happened each year before and after SpaceX, in a field entirely dominated by national agencies. No matter which way you cut it, SpaceX has ushered in a new era in space exploration. I won't even bother arguing more about this, this is honestly ridiculous.

lapcat 3y ago
> I believe fundamentally that two workers who have different productivity and/or different work ethics should be compensated differently. Elon Musk (and many rich people) have, on average, better work ethic and considerably better output. Half the population has better than average work ethic. Does Musk have a better work ethic than his lesser paid employees? That's dubious. After all, he infamously demanded that Twitter employees be "extremely hardcore" and work "long hours at high intensity". But these employees are not compensated nearly as much as Musk. They're not even rewarded at all in many cases. He still fired a bunch of them afterward, even the women who tweeted a photo of herself sleeping in the office. What about the work ethic of the poor people who work multiple jobs because one job doesn't pay enough? How is there any relation whatsoever between work ethic and income? Note that Jeff Bezos, one of the other five richest men whose income doubled, actually quit his job! You don't make massive money from working for wages, you make massive money from owning assets and waiting for them to appreciate. This is how Musk got his PayPal payoff despite having been removed from power by other investors. There are countless people in the world who are extremely smart and have a great work ethic. But that doesn't automatically bring great wealth. A lot of it is being in the right place at the right time. Do you need to be smart and have a good work ethic to take advantage of the opportunity? Yes, probably. But most people aren't lucky enough to get those opportunities in the first place. It also helps to ruthlesslessly pursue wealth with no regard for ethics... > Just by the fact that Elon has been involved in so many successful ventures at a global level, that is by definition proof that he is doing something better than virtually all of us. He makes more money than virtually all of us. That's beyond dispute, and indeed the subject of the submitted article. It's basically a tautology though and not an explanation. > Working hard means making progress on problems at the edge of your abilities. Well, as I mentioned, loading shampoo bottles into crates for 8 hours was definitely on the edge of my abilities. > Sure, loads of people end up with the biggest percentage of shares in a company like PayPal and then also continue with other extremely impactful ventures, one after the other at the edge of technology. Repeated moonshots is "lucky". You're missing the point. Musk was kicked out of his own company not just once but twice for incompetence. Yet he still got a $175 million payoff. That's failing upwards. He ought to be kicked out of Twitter for incompetence too, but unfortunately he can't be. > have a look at how many launches have happened each year before and after SpaceX I did, and I already said I don't like it: "I think there are too many rocket launches polluting the atmosphere and too many satellites being put in orbit."
- rocgf 3y ago
  You seem hell bent on pretending to not understand what I am saying. I'm sorry, but I will not be replying anymore.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    Why would I pretend? That makes no sense. I have nothing to gain from pretending. At this point, more than 24 hours after the article submission, which is apparently now flagged, and 14 hours after my previous comment, nobody is reading this thread except for you and me. You can call me stupid if you want, though you would be sorely mistaken, but don't call me a liar.
    - rocgf 3y ago
      I don't think you're stupid or a liar, but there are two strong trends I'm noticing recently - playing the contrarian and a hate for the rich. To me, it is just an axiom that working harder is correlated with more wealth. What you've done in previous replies is a typical reductionist approach, which is to pretend that a multivariate problem, with those variables on various continuums, can be presented as "Elon Musk doesn't work harder than someone stocking shelves with shampoos". I honestly do not understand how someone frequenting HN could genuinely think that this is a valuable argument. In simpler terms, if you exclude all the obvious counter-examples like inheritance, crypto pump and dumps, lottery winners and so on, it is empirically true that richer people work harder than poor people. Before you give some example of how some billionaire simply got lucky, I did say about that this is a multivariate equation. There are many, many things that go into it, and luck is one, hard work another. The simple logic is: you work harder -> your productivity is higher -> you make more money. You may find some exaggerated counter-example, but this is the truth. If Elon had just been involved in the PayPal business, yeah, he would be some forgotten rich dude living his life on some island. It boggles my mind that anyone can think of Tesla, SpaceX, OpenAI as unimpressive. There is such a visceral hate for "rich people" that there is no room for any positives. This is looking to me more like a cult.
      - 3y ago

by rocgf 3y ago

lapcat 3y ago

> I believe fundamentally that two workers who have different productivity and/or different work ethics should be compensated differently. Elon Musk (and many rich people) have, on average, better work ethic and considerably better output. Half the population has better than average work ethic. Does Musk have a better work ethic than his lesser paid employees? That's dubious. After all, he infamously demanded that Twitter employees be "extremely hardcore" and work "long hours at high intensity". But these employees are not compensated nearly as much as Musk. They're not even rewarded at all in many cases. He still fired a bunch of them afterward, even the women who tweeted a photo of herself sleeping in the office. What about the work ethic of the poor people who work multiple jobs because one job doesn't pay enough? How is there any relation whatsoever between work ethic and income? Note that Jeff Bezos, one of the other five richest men whose income doubled, actually quit his job! You don't make massive money from working for wages, you make massive money from owning assets and waiting for them to appreciate. This is how Musk got his PayPal payoff despite having been removed from power by other investors. There are countless people in the world who are extremely smart and have a great work ethic. But that doesn't automatically bring great wealth. A lot of it is being in the right place at the right time. Do you need to be smart and have a good work ethic to take advantage of the opportunity? Yes, probably. But most people aren't lucky enough to get those opportunities in the first place. It also helps to ruthlesslessly pursue wealth with no regard for ethics... > Just by the fact that Elon has been involved in so many successful ventures at a global level, that is by definition proof that he is doing something better than virtually all of us. He makes more money than virtually all of us. That's beyond dispute, and indeed the subject of the submitted article. It's basically a tautology though and not an explanation. > Working hard means making progress on problems at the edge of your abilities. Well, as I mentioned, loading shampoo bottles into crates for 8 hours was definitely on the edge of my abilities. > Sure, loads of people end up with the biggest percentage of shares in a company like PayPal and then also continue with other extremely impactful ventures, one after the other at the edge of technology. Repeated moonshots is "lucky". You're missing the point. Musk was kicked out of his own company not just once but twice for incompetence. Yet he still got a $175 million payoff. That's failing upwards. He ought to be kicked out of Twitter for incompetence too, but unfortunately he can't be. > have a look at how many launches have happened each year before and after SpaceX I did, and I already said I don't like it: "I think there are too many rocket launches polluting the atmosphere and too many satellites being put in orbit."

rocgf 3y ago
You seem hell bent on pretending to not understand what I am saying. I'm sorry, but I will not be replying anymore.
- lapcat 3y ago
  Why would I pretend? That makes no sense. I have nothing to gain from pretending. At this point, more than 24 hours after the article submission, which is apparently now flagged, and 14 hours after my previous comment, nobody is reading this thread except for you and me. You can call me stupid if you want, though you would be sorely mistaken, but don't call me a liar.
  - rocgf 3y ago
    I don't think you're stupid or a liar, but there are two strong trends I'm noticing recently - playing the contrarian and a hate for the rich. To me, it is just an axiom that working harder is correlated with more wealth. What you've done in previous replies is a typical reductionist approach, which is to pretend that a multivariate problem, with those variables on various continuums, can be presented as "Elon Musk doesn't work harder than someone stocking shelves with shampoos". I honestly do not understand how someone frequenting HN could genuinely think that this is a valuable argument. In simpler terms, if you exclude all the obvious counter-examples like inheritance, crypto pump and dumps, lottery winners and so on, it is empirically true that richer people work harder than poor people. Before you give some example of how some billionaire simply got lucky, I did say about that this is a multivariate equation. There are many, many things that go into it, and luck is one, hard work another. The simple logic is: you work harder -> your productivity is higher -> you make more money. You may find some exaggerated counter-example, but this is the truth. If Elon had just been involved in the PayPal business, yeah, he would be some forgotten rich dude living his life on some island. It boggles my mind that anyone can think of Tesla, SpaceX, OpenAI as unimpressive. There is such a visceral hate for "rich people" that there is no room for any positives. This is looking to me more like a cult.
    - 3y ago