The "I can't have it so nobody should" is a powerful and pervasive mindset that has infiltrated many different aspects of life. It has found a home in many angry people and often masquerades effectively as the noble idea of fairness.
"Billionaires shouldn't exist" is one manifestation.
I truly believe some people believe they are working towards fairness, but when you investigate their motivations, they give off all the signals of someone who is motivated by something else. The masquerading can also exist in the form of hiding what you truly believe from yourself.
As an example, try this: ask someone who doesn't believe that billionaires should exist if they could snap their fingers and make all billionaires vanish, but nobody would become any wealthier, would they? I've seen that answered yes way too many times. That tells me that some people just don't want to know that someone is doing better than them, regardless of if it actually impacts them or not.
That's fair. I'll be modifying my question for next time to rule out that possibility.
Though to be even more fair, if the political class didn't prostitute their influence, there would be nothing for the wealthy to buy, so making billionaires vanish does not address that problem.
“Steal” is a deliberately inaccurate word there. Especially considering that in your own list of offences “steal” only makes a single appearance. Even then, I’m not sure if “steal” is the correct verb for “non-optimal profit distribution”.
Note I’m pretty sympathetic to the argument that extreme wealth inequality (billionaires) are are symptom of a poorly configured economic system and should be minimised, but your hyperbole is off-putting. And it’s probably hindering rather than helping you make your point.
But the comment you replied to had a subtantitive point about the linked article, and you replied to a tertiary part of that post with a political message (no billionares exist without theft/etc) that had nothing to do with the thrust of the conversation.
That led me to believe you were being a troll. You engaged in a way that seemed straight forward so maybe you are just somebody who feels very strongly about a political view.
ycombinator actively takes ownership of the means of production by providing loans. Any founder knows how predatory external funding is, but, it is the only choice to get a company up and running.
A founder with the choice of taking YC money also is free to make the decision not to take YC money. What's the problem besides some abstract argument of moral superiority?
Yes, indeed if you assume that the current system for allocating capital is good then you conclude that the current system for allocating capital is good. If you apply a bit more critical thinking you can start to question whether the fact that a small proportion of people have a monopoly on the ownership, allocation, and creation of capital, and are therefore able to extract rent from loaning it out without providing any value themselves, whether that is a good thing at all.
The "small monopoly" in this thread is Paul Graham, who created his capital himself.
First-a, he deserves what he has (as far as you can make such a statement in a complex society). He provided some value, got paid for it, he now takes a risk helping others do the same. The only difference between him and me consuming X, providing X+Y value, and using the Y to buy tiny parts of public companies to have some claim on their profits is scale.
First-b, and yes, if someone came and took away my Y for "fairness", I would start working less to just make what I consume. And I mostly /like/ my job, unlike most people.
Second-a, after critically thinking about it, I actually believe it's better for people like him to allocate capital, instead of either some "democratic process", or even worse some semi-elected bureaucrats. I wish we could have people like Bezos, Buffett, Graham, etc. run MANY MORE things (generally speaking, not attached to a particular implementation). We have all of history to indicate who does things better. Second-a-a, even if we were to say "free market is bad in this area, no free market is allowed [e.g. healthcare or housing]" (to be clear, I disagree with that, but let's say we did) I would prefer to install a conventionally-defined-self-made billionaire from another industry to run said area, instead of a govt bureaucracy like we do now.
Third, as others have mentioned you don't have to take his money, you can bootstrap (and then get rich and loan money just like him).
Second-b, combining second-a and third in a more narrow scope, do you think either voters or bureaucrats would fund startups (and, do it better than the likes of VCs)? It has happened, but rarely and almost always in response to an existential threat. Viaweb FAQ says they were financed by angels to the tune of $2m 90ies-dollars. What are the alternative sources of funding you envision in the "fairer" allocation structure for such startups, be it Tesla, Google, or Viaweb, given their success rate?
If it isn't good then what does that make the failed alternatives? While both money and bullshit talk, actual ability takes action and gets results.
Communism is an outright religion - there is no experimentalism, outcomes are preordained, and no results may change the assumptions. The only thinking is telological. If anybody pays X for a product and sells it for X + Y where Y is greater than zero it is automatically exploitation by their conveniently loaded definitions.
1. The idea that loaning it out isn't providing any value in itself is objectively wrong. If it provides no value is ridiculous in even a preindustrial economy - let alone an industrialized one where economies of scale and large capex are why markets wind up dominated by big players.
2. The idea that it is a small monopoly is also objectively wrong - money is fungible and it doesn't matter if you get one million in a loan from one entity or ten thousand ones. Even if we accept the standards of morality "if it is a good thing" is irrelevant a question as asking if it is a good thing that vehicles use electricity or break down fuels to move. Those are the mechanisms by which it works - we don't have an option of movement without expending energy. Similarly if you ask for all loans to be free to avoid "exploitation" there is no reason to lock up the money in delays and put it at risk.
If that were true, it shouldn't take much effort to point out a few of them, right?
Your response is typical of psudo-intellectuals called out on their bullshit. It's a lot easier to say "I'm right regardless of the facts" instead of directly addressing the points raised.
1. Conflating any criticism of the current system of neoliberal capitalism with "ah! then you must prefer to live in north korea!" is a classical tactic of misdirection.
2. "Communism is an outright religion - there is no experimentalism, outcomes are preordained" is a case of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong. I don't even know what I'm supposed to say to this other than "pick up a book".
3. "If anybody pays X for a product and sells it for X + Y where Y is greater than zero it is automatically exploitation by their conveniently loaded definitions." Again, this is the idea of "communizm" I had when I was 12 or 13. As you can imagine, either everyone who is a socialist or anarchist or left-libertarian or whatever is a complety drooling idiot, or this is a stupid straw-man designed to fool people with zero critical thinking skills.
4. "If it provides no value is ridiculous in even a preindustrial economy - let alone an industrialized one where economies of scale and large capex are why markets wind up dominated by big players." Again, this is circular reasoning: in the current system providing capital is a valuable service, therefore the system is good since in the system the system is good... do you see what I mean? You cannot justify a thing by reasons internal to the thing itself.
5. "Those are the mechanisms by which it works" See above. I'll also add: capitalism (and specifically our current flavour thereof) is not a Law of Nature: it is the result of a very specific course that history took over the past 300 years. Alternatives are possible. Criticism is legitimate. Ambition to improve is a good thing.
Shall I go on? I learned it's not useful to talk with people who are not in good faith from the get go. Why bother?
Think out of the box for a second, is this really the only possible choices we have here? Or are billionaires using and designing the system to create more opportunities to make $$$ at the expense of others work.
It's not out of the box thinking. The problem is that you want to throw one of the values out of the calculation box. You want billionaires to provide capital because there is 'no other way to get a startup going (paraphrasing)' but you don't want to assign a value to that (as in, the workers are what is creating the value).
I have a $1m MMR startup that I founded without any external funding - but mostly because I was naive to such structures existing at all. I would have saved years of struggling if I had an initial cash infusion of a few hundred thousand.
Idk about you, but I would trade 10% of my $1m MMR company for more free time during my early 20s.
It is more predatory than simple business lending leading to making enough revenue to justify more private lending leading to forming a small public company. The only reason there is so much VC money in this industry is because there is little revenue in selling user data or eyeballs at small scale.
> "Warren Buffett has made his money using ... land ownership and exclusivity ... a human construct"
Well, sheesh... if your starting frame of reference is that "capitalism is stealing by definition", then there's really no further discussion to be had.
I'm a founder. I can tell you, external funding is as generous now as it's ever been, and in my network there are YC alumns (and 2-time alums) that would disagree with your take.
Also, we are in a golden age of bootstrapping, you don't need to raise to get a company up and running.
All this to say: Maybe just possibly capitalism isn't so bad? My dad is the manager of a gas station, and I am the founder of a startup with financial security. Anything really is possible when you work for it.
Ironically, you know who else thought the exact same thing, lavishing praise on capitalism? Karl Marx. Maybe educate yourself and open your horizons to something outside your narrow views. I have no problem with people being ignorant (nobody knows everything), but it's grating when somebody is proud of it.
> Anything really is possible when you work for it.
Actually nevermind, such naivete is mind-boggling.
2. Do you consider all the supply chain related deaths, all the prison related deaths, all the civilians killed in America going after oil part of "people killed under capitalism?"
> Who did he steal from and what damage did he cause to the people who worked for him?
All the staff that made his shows possible. All the workers that made his ability to make tons of profit possible, and they saw essentially no real amount of it.
Nobody watched Seinfeld because they were a fan of Key Grip #2, and Key Grip #2 was compensated accordingly. Why should they receive anywhere near the amount of compensation that Jerry Seinfeld receives when they are not anywhere near as important to the success of the show as he is?
Why do you consider that stealing? I think many readers of your comment define the word stealing as "taking without permission". Are you suggesting that he took that wealth from the staff without their permission? Do you think the staff feels tricked/stolen from? Or would you define stealing differently?
What do you think are the conditions like at the factories where they make Harry Potter merch? As they say, "Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made."
I'm not saying she's personally responsible for the factory conditions (if anything I'd blame Disney). I'm saying that it's virtually impossible to create a billion dollars of personal wealth without negative externalities somewhere along the line.
There are ~500mm Harry Potter books in print (all years, all languages). Author royalties are between 6 and 15 percent of the cover price. She would definitely have been wealthy, but not billionaire.
What's your actual "you've provided too much value to willing participants" amount? If she negotiated royalties of 20% she would have been a bad person? If she put her money in an index fund and it doubled every 10 years, she'd become immoral later?
The problem isn't that she got money, it's she got on the order of ~1,000,000,000£ of it. There's no "merit" that warrants that kind of reward. There is definitely a case to be made that such massive amounts of wealth need to be more progressively taxed. Not as in "evil gobernmint comes to steal your hard work", but as in that's the pay-back to society for enabling that success in the first place, that's the social contract.
For you to realize that creating wealth, on its own, isn't a problem? If I write a poem 1B people want to pay for, nobody was harmed?
The actual problem is people can use wealth to corrupt others, e.g., buy political influence. But instead of railing on that, you can't see that you're fighting against value generation itself.
We shouldn't have to depend on the good will and wisdom of a very small number of people in order to be able to improve our lives. I thought we were past kinds and lords and all that ;)
It's not a punishment. It's value-based pricing for the ability to live in the society that made accumulating that wealth possible. Billionaires get the most value out of society, so they should pay the most for it.
it's not slavery when someone voluntarily contributes to a game like minecraft instead of choosing one of the many other activities available -- including money-earning ones.
> So you mean they're paper billionaires by "owning the means of production" Yeah. I know. :)
I don't know how you could misread this badly. A paper billionaire means that they don't have billions in the bank; it's just the sale price of the last share that was traded in their company multiplied by the number of shares they own. It's not real, and any attempt to confiscate shares will not result in real money being given to anyone else. Shares are only worth real money when they're sold, and no one will buy shares in a confiscation world.
Do you think Tesla made anything near $113 billion last year?... not even close ... Paper billionaire means they are only a billionaire because of stock they own. Tesla stock value is detached from the reality of the company and its assets. Who did Elon exploit to make "chad the mega Elon tech bro" buy Tesla stock as a meme and in turn make the stock value go up?
Because it has nothing to do with the company and what it produces. And also they do all get stock options. So the irrational value of the stock does benefit them.
People act like we don't understand how "value" and "equity" works.
We do. We don't want money. The idea is to own the means of production. Amazon is nothing without its workers. No company is anything without its workers. The workers deserve to be represented in that huge equity.
A useful enterprise requires at least three things: direction, organization, and labor. Disorganized labor without a direction isn't going to be able to produce anything useful for anyone, comrade. Simply seizing the means of production and chasing out the capitalists is only going to see the printers rust for lack of use.
> People act like we don't understand how "value" and "equity" works.
Every time you say things like "we" and "people" you discredit yourself. It's a pointless statement. You can have equity; start a company, or join a company (such as Amazon) that awards share options.
In general I agree with you, but how about Warren Buffett, or the younger Kardashian? Neither of them have added value to the world, but neither seem particularly evil either. Unless your claim is that unequal ownership under capitalism is itself "stealing profits from workers", in which case sure, I don't think there are any billionaires without equity.
> I don't think there are any billionaires without equity.
That becomes the crux of this. "Billionaires are bad" is a discussion about the system that actually allows them to exist, rather than the people themselves.
Warren Buffett has made a ton of his money using state-backed monopolies like real-estate. Land ownership and exclusivity, even when the land use is unproductive, is a human construct after-all.
In Warren Buffett's case, I'd say there certainly is value in scouting out profitable, well-managed companies and giving them access to a large centralized pool of capital. Probably not $100 billion worth of value, but I do think the Berkshire Hathaway umbrella helps the acquired companies to grow beyond what they'd be able to achieve without it.
"“Billionaires should not exist” does not mean certain people should not exist. It means no person should have a billion dollars. The ascent of billionaires is a symptom & outcome of an immoral system that tells people affordable insulin is impossible but exploitation is fine." - https://twitter.com/aoc/status/1179237019043729410
Some people are angry because education system screwed them or somebody else over, retaliatory or punitive actions still aren't a good approach for solving things and the people who cater to them are dishonest demagogues.
To be fair, that has pretty much the same result as "magically we're all billionaires" - when you find it's going to cost you 120k for a burger, as the billionaires need more money to get them out of bed and into the McDonalds kitchen.
The nasty-but-necessary aspect of capitalism is that you need a few rich people at the top and many more beneath agreeing to those rules that put them there on the offchance they'll make it up to those lofty heights themselves.
"Billionaires shouldn't exist" is one manifestation.