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Your phrase “extract” betrays a fundamental disagreement with what Paul is saying. (Externalities does so again) It assumes a zero-sum game where the job is to
by TheTaytay 3mo ago
Your phrase “extract” betrays a fundamental disagreement with what Paul is saying. (Externalities does so again) It assumes a zero-sum game where the job is to shift money from one person to another. Value, and thus money/wealth can be created. Literally.
You are saying, in different words, that no one can do it “honestly”. He is saying one can.
- Avicebron 3mo agoCan he provide evidence of one that has?
- cm2012 3mo agoLook around you and see we are not living in mud and huts anymore
- inigyou 3mo agoActually I'd rather start from a mud hut and then upgrade it myself than live in the current rental system, but I don't have that option because landlords own most of the land.
- saghm 3mo agoHousing prices certainly can get high, but they aren't anywhere close to a billion dollars, which is the actual number under discussion
- margalabargala 3mo agoThe thing being discussed is that wealth can be created, not merely stolen. The existence of housing is an example of something vlauable being created. The price of housing is not relevant to the example.
- oh_my_goodness 3mo agoAlways the same straw man argument. Nobody here is arguing that wealth can't be created.
- margalabargala 3mo agoDid you not read the comment chain above? That's precisely the point that was being discussed, then misunderstood.
- oh_my_goodness 3mo agoI read the comment chain above. I just went back and read it again. I question whether you've done the same.
- margalabargala 3mo agoI can't understand the writing for you. But I can present it. TheTayTay said "wealth can be created". Avicebron asked for an example of wealth creation. cm2012 provided one, housing. saghm misunderstood the intent of the example. I pointed out the error, and then you came in and have apparently repeatedly failed to understand again multiple comments, both the people who literally are saying that some quantity of wealth cannot be created, and myself. If you didn't get that after a reread, all I can suggest is that you seek out a literacy class at a local community college. It will improve your life, because this certainly won't be the first or only time you misunderstand written words.
- oh_my_goodness 3mo agoI'm sorry to say that you don't seem to have read either the thread or my comment. What you bring to the discussion is the straw-man argument that "wealth can be created, not only stolen." Nobody was disputing that. Nobody is disputing it now. It's common ground. Saghm tried to return to the actual topic, but you don't seem to have understood (or you aren't willing to acknowledge) what that topic actually was. People were talking about how to fairly divide wealth, not about whether it can be created or not.
- crawfordcomeaux 3mo agoIt's racism that fuels this comparison with value. I'm living in a yurt and would gladly trade it for a mud hut. Humans are currently threatening most life (including our own species) on the surface with extinction in multiple ways. That's not value and it is an inevitable conclusion to any form of binary thinking at scale. That includes the thinking that says "this way of life has more value than that way of life." We're living in the curse of the Greeks, whereby we've grown away from connection with our environments in the same ways they did by pedestaling their ways, including a form of logic that's too constrained to model reality. Here's a paper on uncertainty logic to expand from. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.03123 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.03123
- AndrewKemendo 3mo agoThank you for saying it. The racism is so embedded into western society it’s intractable
- sieabahlpark 3mo ago[dead]
- crawfordcomeaux 3mo agoAnd saying so will get you downvoted on here most times. To anyone downvoting, show us the depth of your reasoning for it?
- cm2012 3mo agoThe fact that while racism exists, Western society is certainly not at the forefront of it? If anything the collective "West" is the most sensitive about race and racial issues.
- crawfordcomeaux 3mo agoIt's performative because resolving it would require the end of the governments within the "West" and replacing with reindigenizing governance. Supremacy is at the foundation of the whole "West" and racism will always exist while that's in play. The racism is systemic and cultural. Sensitivity isn't sufficient; there needs to be actual systemic shifts that help drive cultural shifts and vice-versa. Not simply language changes, either. Rooting out binary thinking is key to it all. Nondual animist views are more aligned with how things work in the cosmos than dualism/nonanimism.
- BurningFrog 3mo agoAlso note that we're 8 billion people living on a much higher average material living standard than when we were 2 billion 100 years ago.
- atwrk 3mo agoNo one is arguing that such a thing as wealth creation doesn't exist. The question is about who or what creates it. Which is a topic of intense discussion in economics over the last few hundred years, BTW, and the discussion here so far has shockingly few references to those.
- cyanydeez 3mo agono one is doing it honestly in the disparity musk isnt a trillionaire because his assets would equate to physical product. his valuation is an inflated target of market manipulation. when you add up all the physical goods in the world that directly benefit people, that comes nowhere near these valuations. and externalities are one way wealth is taken from the environment. then theyre parlayed.
- twoodfin 3mo agoWhy should we only count physical goods as benefits? That sounds like a pretty impoverished world to live in. No music, no art, no communication with our friends and family beyond speech…
- thelastgallon 3mo agoAnd no nfts and crypto
- tsimionescu 3mo agoI don't think that was the point, you can add those to the physical goods list as well, as well as many other human services (education, cutting hair, open air games, etc). The point was that the real money comes from finance games, like the stock market, forex trading, etc - things of much more dubious value when you actually look at them objectively.
- jrm4 3mo agoPercievable goods and services, then.
- inigyou 3mo agoYes, and the art of this game is to extract value which you did not create. It may or may not come alongside creating value. Uber creates value in the form of an app marketplace for taxis, but it also pushes taxi wages down below the sustainability line without pushing prices down that far, and pockets the difference for itself. Apple made a cool phone that it sells for a high but fair price, but it also takes 30% of everything you buy with that phone, just because it can.
- nfw2 3mo agoThe word "create" is too fuzzy here. If the thing that your company is selling wouldn't exist if you hadn't started the company, did you not "create" it?
- ip26 3mo agoParallel invention would like a word. Elisha Gray registered a patent for a telephone the same day as Alexander. It's impossible to fully prove a counterfactual, but few things "wouldn't exist at all" if "that one person" hadn't done it. Netflix is a decent example. Many people saw the coming of video streaming. We would still be able to stream videos today even if Hastings had stayed at Rational.
- nfw2 3mo agoSure, if you extend time horizon to infinity, everything would probably be invented eventually by someone else. Two people filing patents on the same day is an exceptional case though, not the norm. There are also products that seemingly should exist but don't because no would-be inventor has found capital, eg. a decent bluetooth keyboard+trackpads with the same layout as a laptop. I know because I spent an hour trying to find one yesterday, and they basically just don't exist.
- ip26 3mo agoYou don't need to project to the heat death of the universe to get Facebook without Zuckerberg.
- tw04 3mo agoThere is a finite amount of land on earth, and a finite amount of most natural resources. We currently have no indication we will EVER develop faster than light technology. Any discussion not grounded in those facts is a dishonest discussion. It is a zero sum game until those externalities change because ultimately our species is built upon extraction resources to produce wealth. It IS a zero sum game until you or someone else invents a means of solving the first order problems.
- cm2012 3mo agoOn a trillion year time frame, sure.
- tw04 3mo agoHow much of the land on planet earth is currently unclaimed by a nation state or individual? You don’t need a trillion year scale for the average man to already be dealing in finite resources and ability to create wealth. It takes 30 seconds of research to see the cost of an acre of land has far exceeded inflation over the last 50 years. That’s finite resources at work.
- CommieBobDole 3mo agoIsn't most of our economic growth based off inputs of energy (in the form of labor, electricity, etc) that ultimately derive from the sun, though, rather than primarily non-renewable non-recyclable resource extraction? The sun is technically a non-renewable resource, I guess, but only on cosmic timescales.
- tw04 3mo agoWhere do you get photovoltaic cells? Where do you get copper wire to transport it? Where do you get transformers? Where do you get batteries? Anyone downvoting me because they think renewable energy overcomes the finite resources on planet earth are absolutely delusional. We literally have evidence of the scarcity of resources when China started threatening to limit access to rare earths. CaN other countries build capacity at some point? Sure. What happens when you’re in a country that has none naturally and the countries that do have access don’t feel like selling you any? What’s that? It’s a finite resource that results in a zero sum game?
- hjkl0 3mo agoBased on this article at least, he is not disagreeing with those claims, he is not even acknowledging they exist. The original claim, as I understand it, is basically this: you can’t be an honest actor in a dishonest system. And it’s not even necessary to claim that billionaires did something uniquely wrong to become billionaires. It’s just that their share of the exploitation is so, so, so much bigger.
- aloe_falsa 3mo ago> The original claim, as I understand it, is basically this: you can’t be an honest actor in a dishonest system. Right, but, taken to its logical conclusion, you cannot earn any amount of money honestly at all, because you'll always create negative externalities to some extent, or supporting people who do/companies who exploit their workers, even as a rank-and-file employee.
- tyre 3mo agoFrom an HN comment recently: > There are three ways to make a living: > 1) Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich. > 2) Tell the truth to those who want the truth, and you’ll make a living. > 3) Tell the truth to those who want to be lied to, and you’ll go broke.
- csallen 3mo agoHe explicitly and clearly disagreed with the claims, and argued against them: > 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. To any honest reader, it's clear he's saying the system isn't necessarily dishonest, and that it's possible (if not common) to rapidly earn money in the system by simply creating things of value and selling them to willing customers.
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- jmyeet 3mo ago"Extract" here has two meanings: 1. Extracting from the market or the economy. It seems like (correct me if I'm wrong) this is what you're reading it as? Here you're generally exploiting what private equity calls "pricing power" or what economists call "enclosures" (or "rent-seeking") so inelastic demand (eg housing) or market protection (eg making municipal broadband illegal); and 2. Extracting from labor. This is the basis of the labor theory of value [1]. The point of comments like AOC's is mostly the second one, which is to say that you only become a billionaire by extracting it from your workers. And yes, this is a fundamental disagreement with many people. Some will say that the startup founder who makes a billion dollars deserves it by taking the risk or being the leader or however you want to frame it. The counterargument is that that value simply wouldn't exist if it wasn't for those workers and their work. Even Instagram, which famously had only 13 employees when acquired for $1 billion, still needed those workers. It would've been nothing without them. Take Google as another example. The profit per employee has famously been (at times) over $1 million per year. The term for this is "surplus labor value". [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value
- taffer 3mo agoAs the Wikipedia article states, the labour theory of value (LTV) was replaced by the theory of marginal utility in mainstream economics due to its major inconsistencies. > Take Google as another example. The profit per employee has famously been (at times) over $1 million per year. So, are you saying that the employees were exploited in some way? I could give you examples of how value is created without any work at all.
- overfeed 3mo ago> So, are you saying that the employees were exploited in some way? Google ads "extracted" value from traditional advertising in newspapers and magazines, so the "exploitation" (or efficiency gains, if you're charitable) came at the expense of employees at other organizations worldwide.
- jmyeet 3mo ago> As the Wikipedia article states, the labour theory of value (LTV) was replaced by the theory of marginal utility in mainstream economics due to its major inconsistencies. "Mainstream economics" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. It didn't "replace" LTV. Marginal utility is simply an an ideological rejection of it with the confusion of price vs value that ignores class exploitation. The proponents of this were the gensis of the so-called "Austrian school" [1] and thus the fathers of neoliberalism [2]. > So, are you saying that the employees were exploited in some way? Yes, objectively, as measured by profit. The counterargument is that many were well-paid compared to their non-tech colleagues. While true, they still created way more value than what they were paid. > I could give you examples of how value is created without any work at all. I'm all ears. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_school_of_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_school_of_economics [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
- jrm4 3mo agoBut he seems wildly oblivious to the fact that there even is an argument to be had here, which there emphatically is. Reasonable people can disagree as to the nature/extent -- or even the existence of -- exploitation, but this guy absolutely has impermissibly strong blinders on, rendering most of this article a waste.
- altcognito 3mo agoSeriously, the paragraph is bad enough to warrant an accusation of bad faith. Like, does PG really not understand that nobody is arguing that a company can build a billion dollars worth of value? Has he not read Adam Smith? Is his definition or understanding of rent seeking so limited that he can't see the grey areas between "extraction" and "earning" money? Anybody who earns significant income from investment, including VC money, should recognize that they are at some level extractive, not the hard won dollars that the folks at the ground level are generally putting in. For guys like PG, Musk, Bezos, Zuck, Ellison, Thiel their very identity is tied to winning this as a game, and thus, any actions they take must defended at all costs, and the score must be seen as righteous and deserved and free from interference.
- inigyou 3mo agoI think most people who make their living by owning stocks sincerely don't believe their way of making money is fundamentally different from ours.
- stuaxo 3mo agoYou can have a system that generally isn't one of zero sum games that was that at the same time can become one when it becomes extremely unbalanced (e.g. when billionaires exist).
- nrdxp 3mo agoMoney is not a representation of value. It is a representation of desire. I agree that, in principle, an economy does not have to be set up as a zero sum game, and at smaller scales (many of us don't realize that 1 billion is relatively small for global scale economics), it really doesn't have to be. I agree that value can be created. But value doesn't run this economy, desire does. And sometimes desire runs totally counter to what is _actually_ valuable. Not to mention that, especially in a fiat environment where currency is printed out of thin air, it is literally a zero-sum game by definition. When the printer winds up, the bankers win big at everyone elses expense; setting the tone for the entire market. Anecdotal success stories of hard working, honest billionaires is a nice distraction, but that's all it is. The substantive reality of the status quo is one of unprecedented levels of extraction, and as we continue down this AI power consildation story, that will be harder and harder to deny as we go forward. If you happen to win big as an outlier, more power to you, but the article even admits to the rarity of this story implicity. 20 years. thousands of companies. 30 billionaires. Even if every single one of those people are honest to goodness saints, that's only slightly better odds, perhaps, than winning the lottery.
- _DeadFred_ 3mo agoDon't forget this is from the group of people who get an extraordinary helping hand in the form of YC and all that represents, and of businesses hand picked to be the most likely successes. And even then, it's still just winning the lottery.
- geysersam 3mo agoThe word "extracted" does not betray a belief that value cannot be created. You can "extract" value that is created just as you can extract value that was there already. The question is not whether or not value was created, the question is who deserves to control the value that was created. The fact is the billionaire managed to extract value from the market. The ethical question is: who deserves to get the value that was created by the market? The answer could be "the founder" but it could also be the funder, the worker, the customer, the political structure that enables the market economy, the mother of the funder who raised them to be hard working, the nurse that treated the founders minor illness in an early stage and prevented it from causing a physical disability, etc.
- clear-octopus 3mo ago[dead]
- automatic6131 3mo agoYou're asserting a dichotomy that doesn't exist. One can both create and extract at the same time. That's why we're here debating, because one can create value, and one can extract value. Both statements are true and easy to argue for. The synthesis is that creating value also grants licence to extract since it's impossible (possibly even theoretically impossible) to define exactly where the line between the two is.