Comment by robertlagrant
21 hours ago
> Nobody is risking their reputation, that's just being over-dramatic.
Of course they are; if someone's going to get money from VCs they risk their reputation in asking for it.
> Money? Sure. There's two kinds of people here: (Rich/obscenely rich)
No - lots of VCs represent large pools of money including pension funds that service giant numbers of people. Your "rich" company example, Factio, is about the silliest example I can imagine of a capital-intensive business. Your "obscenely rich" example isn't really about money any more, but so few people are like this it doesn't really affect anything.
> It can get complex but let's not pretend it's worse than the current salary negotiations where one side is basically blind and pair per unit of work and the other has all the information and takes a cut from everyone's output.
It's impossible to tell if it's worse, as you haven't described it yet. It's likely to be worse though, as people don't do it.
> Of course they are; if someone's going to get money from VCs they risk their reputation in asking for it.
You are unintentionally proving me right. There 2 kinds of people starting businesses which need an investment - those risking their own money (and not reputation) and those risking other people's money (and even then, if a VC wants to judge their reputation, they should look at the details, not binary failed/succeeded).
As a result, you have rich people risking nothing of relevance to them, just playing a game where they statistically win. All the risk if borne by the people doing actual work who are not obscenely rich.
> No - lots of VCs represent large pools of money including pension funds that service giant numbers of people
And there's still some rich asshole at the top who takes a cut which represents more money (sometimes by orders of magnitude) than a person doing positive-sum work can make. So he's not even risking his own money, great, a real improvement.
> Your "rich" company example, Factio, is about the silliest example I can imagine of a capital-intensive business.
I gave it as an example of people saving up in order to quit their day jobs and start a company. How is that silly? Would people saving up to open a small store also be silly? Would a person saving up to buy equipment to open a motorcycle repair shop be silly? Because those are all things people who want to do positive-sum work do.
> Your "obscenely rich" example isn't really about money any more, but so few people are like this it doesn't really affect anything.
Funny how much noise those "few" make. Not so long ago one of them pretty much bought himself a president in a very rich country. Though I have a feeling that is one investment which didn't go as well as he planned.
I also directly know a person who owns so many houses, office spaces and companies he never has to work again and can keep buying more. And he's still several orders of magnitude less rich than the first narcissistic asshole.
Both live a parasitic lifestyle.
Here's something else you (judging by your attitude) won't like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM - to quote "1% of of America has 40% of all the nation's wealth". Does that fall under your "doesn't really affect anything"?
> It's impossible to tell if it's worse, as you haven't described it yet.
In the case of 1 designer, 1 producer, they distribute compensation according to how much work each did. Assuming design took a few orders of magnitude than producing a single item, the designer gets most in the beginning. As more items are produced, the designer gets less and producer more.
- If the producer would earn too little at first, they might agree on recalculating after a batch instead of single item,
- or the producer would go into debt owed to the designer (optionally there could be a condition that the debt is to be repaid only if the item makes enough to repay it),
- or they would both agree on a scheme which is mutually agreeable to both (licensing the design for a fixed price for a fixed number of items at first).
Point 1 is the designer as a person owns his design, there is no company which takes it because he did it "on company time".
Point 2 is all transactions and agreements are made with consent of those doing the real work.
Note that if you're unwilling to engage constructively, I am unwilling to write thousands of words in a HN comment you're just gonna passively aggressively dismiss.
> It's likely to be worse though, as people don't do it.
1) People do it, just rarely - those working in cooperatives almost always recommend the experience. Can't say the same for people in hierarchical organizations.
2) People do it rarely because most have never even heard about it. (And because there's a direct way to remove a dictatorship - those successful gain the top level of power and become the judges or right and wrong; there's no direct way to remove the C-suite - if you employ the same methods people historically used to remove dictators, even democratic governments will attack them in turn while calling it punishment.)
3) For most of history, with rare exceptions, governments were dictatorships. If we lived 200 years ago, would you say democracy is likely worse as people don't do it? This whole last sentence is fallacious.
---
BTW, if you're gonna insult me, I don't see any point in continuing this. It does not matter how covert your insults are, the intent matters.
> BTW, if you're gonna insult me, I don't see any point in continuing this. It does not matter how covert your insults are, the intent matters.
There aren't any insults in their posts. You're conflating someone dismantling your claims with insulting you. Which is obviously, clearly, laughably false.
You claimed something that's just wrong:
> Nobody is risking their reputation, that's just being over-dramatic.
Then they proceeded to show how you're wrong, and you deflected with
> You are unintentionally proving me right.
Then you throw in emotionally manipulative statements like
> but let's not pretend
> Both live a parasitic lifestyle.
> Here's something else you (judging by your attitude) won't like
Then link to a random YouTube video that says that the richest people in America have a much larger fraction of the wealth than they would if it was evenly distributed (which is extremely obvious), with zero actual elaboration of any sort of negative effects, then say
> Does that fall under your "doesn't really affect anything"?
And make arbitrary moral claims like
> Ownership does not have to be exclusive. In fact, it almost never should.
There's no coherent arguments here. Just angry opinions and envy and greed invoked by those that have more than you. The only person being "unwilling to engage constructively" here is the one being outraged and thinking that their outrage is a substitute for an argument, and who is unable to parse actually coherent arguments and so thinks that they're "passive aggressive dismissal".
> There aren't any insults in their posts.
Intellectual dishonesty is a form of insult. As is, for example, "laughably false". If you think I am wrong, you can explain why. But you choose to insult me because you enjoy it.
> manipulative statements
"But let's not pretend" is not manipulative, it's a figure of speech.
Parasitism is a fairly well defined term in biology which can be extended to sociology/economy.
"Here's something else you (judging by your attitude) won't like" - you're right, I lost patience with someone defending rich people and being dismissive without any reason.
> the richest people in America have a much larger fraction of the wealth than they would if it was evenly distributed
That's not what the video says. I suggest rewatching with a less dismissive attitude.
> And make arbitrary moral claims like
It's called an opinion. Now, entertain me, which part do you have an issue with? Do you think ownership or a product made by multiple people should usually be exclusive?
---
The rest can be summed up as you defending inequality and trying to provoke me into insulting you. I have no problem with people who work harder or more skillfully than me having more (proportionally). I have a problem with people getting themselves into positions of power which allow them to take a cut from other people's work without contributing much or anything at all.
> I gave it as an example of people saving up in order to quit their day jobs and start a company. How is that silly? Would people saving up to open a small store also be silly? Would a person saving up to buy equipment to open a motorcycle repair shop be silly? Because those are all things people who want to do positive-sum work do.
Just responding to this as it seems the simplest: a capital-intensive business is something that will need millions of dollars over many years before it turns the first inkling of a product. Excluding this incredibly important type of business, and only thinking about tiny businesses when you're thinking of the phrase "capital-intensive business" is the problem.
You brought capital-intensive business into it and it's a fair example which needs more elaboration but now you're acting like that's the only example that matters.
There are plenty of businesses, not just "tiny" ones as you say, which can be built up gradually without large investments.
As for capital-intensive:
There are 2 currencies - money and human time. You can call them resourced but it's the same thing. What I object to is that two people can invest roughly the same amount of time into something and one can get several orders of magnitude more money out of it.
That goes directly against the party line that "everybody is equal".
Anyway, there is clearly a conversion rate between human time and money - hourly rate. So in a system where people own the product of their work according to the amount of work, we can factor invested capital as additional work performed by the investor and reward them accordingly.
We could use for example the median wage but it would be interesting to consider using the investor's past hourly wages (the more they got pair per hour, the less their investment would gain them now).