Comment by abletonlive
4 hours ago
It's so funny to me how many people have taken envy up as their core personality. Billionaires happened to have created the most opportunities for everybody. Amazon is amazing for the consumer that seeks convenience, but it's also amazing if you want to dropship and make your living off of that. Independent sellers make up 65% of all sales on Amazon. So somewhere the idea that nobody benefits from the creations of billionaires has to be questioned.
Illegal and legal immigrants are being completely supported by Uber right now in NYC. If you lived here you would know that this is their primary source of income for many of them.
The gate that previously blocked your ability to disseminate your ideas to a wide audience and create a living off of it has been completely torn down by the billionaires that create platforms like Tiktok. There are scores of people that have made a living off of this, which was virtually impossible before. The barrier to entry to start from grass roots and build a following and then monetize it has been erased.
It's completely banal at this point to just point at billionaires and say they are the problem just because of envy. I wish there was a plugin for it so I can erase it from my consumption.
The premise that billionaires are less efficient than the government at deploying capital to serve society is incongruent with reality, but sure, they are a convenient scapegoat if your heart is poisoned by envy and lack. That's really all it is and it needs to be called out more often because it's a mind virus that is easy to infect others with. Your life is not served by being clouded by envy and lack, and spreading it is detrimental to all consciousness.
There is objectively more paths to success than ever before. Being preoccupied with what you don't have currently and pointing the finger to blame at some boogeyman billionaire is not going to change anything for your personal life. The buck is on the person with the finger to improve their life and take advantage of the opportunities that are presented to them. Spending your time being mad that people have created something society deems worthwhile and are being rewarded for it is spending your time being envious about something that has nothing to do with your own problems.
It is less amusing how many of our brethren think the Landed Gentry got there by merit and deserve to live in their castles untroubled by the rabble.
Some 20% of US billionaires grew up poor, or at least without well-off parents. 60+% were upper middle class or below. So, I think we can note that they've created enough value for the rest of us and deserve to keep the fraction of that value that they were able to negotiate.
Another comment that's clearly coming from a place of envy, entirely framed about what billionaires deserve rather than having any sort of introspection.
You know nothing about me, yet you assume everything. I think having that much money is egregious and I am certainly not envious of people who have an endless void to fill, let alone those who aspire to be like such people. My life is quite full, thank you very much.
I think it's a bit ridiculous that these individuals feel the compulsion to min-max their capital at the expense of pursuits that could better be fueled by it, specifically for the collective good. I think it is shameful behavior and not something we should be promoting in society.
... you read an awful lot into that comment, I think you are being a bit uncharitable.
Though I agree with many of your points, what I think the OP was gesturing at was the idea that billionaires are more avaricious than the average person; hence we shouldn't be surprised that Paul Graham is wary about paying an effective tax rate that would put him on par with majority of tax payers in this country.
This isn't an new or particularly controversial observation: e.g. "Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one." Benjamin Franklin
"The love of money grows as the money itself grows." Juvenal
Having worked for several billionaires and seen them in their day-to-day, those quotes resonate with me.
> the idea that nobody benefits from the creations of billionaires has to be questioned
Who said that? Not in the post that prompted your reply, nor in the parent post.
> Illegal and legal immigrants are being completely supported by Uber right now in NYC.
Can you prove that taxis wouldn't have been able to do that, if Uber didn't exist? That wealth taxes wouldn't have been able to support them?
> The gate that previously blocked your ability to disseminate your ideas to a wide audience and create a living off of it has been completely torn down by the billionaires that create platforms
Musk is also erecting new gates, to promote himself and his ideas. I have to admit, I'm surprised what he lets stay up there, but I still don't believe it's an actual free platform.
> I wish there was a plugin for it so I can erase it from my consumption.
Vibecode it; the billionaires tore down the gates that previously blocked your ability to have any software you want -- as long as the billionaires accede to your use of their AI and running your own software against their platforms, of course.
You complain about open platforms filled with people giving you their ideas for free, and you just don't like what they're saying, but you just cited exactly that openness as one of the valuable things that billionaires deserve to have billions for.
> The premise that billionaires are less efficient than the government at deploying capital to serve society is incongruent with reality
Nobody said that, explicitly. Maybe the people arguing against billionaires don't believe capital efficiency is paramount, so you'd have to persuade them of that first, otherwise you're just saying "But capitalism is the right way, of course!"
> Can you prove that taxis wouldn't have been able to do that, if Uber didn't exist?
Yes, because we only have to go back a few decades to see that the cab industry in NYC were being gatekept by medallions that people were paying 800k+ for just to have the opportunity to drive cab. That was not a system made by billionaires. That was a system made by the government and unions, which is exactly the system that you're fighting for.
> Musk is also erecting new gates, to promote himself and his ideas. I have to admit, I'm surprised what he lets stay up there, but I still don't believe it's an actual free platform.
It's more free and less friction than what we had before. The fact that you can't accept it despite the evidence in front of you and your own observations about being surprised is highlighting that you are failing to be objective.
> Vibecode it; the billionaires tore down the gates that previously blocked your ability to have any software you want -- as long as the billionaires accede to your use of their AI and running your own software against their platforms, of course.
Sure, another capability that billionaires unironically gave me. I do have other more interesting things to work towards.
> ou complain about open platforms filled with people giving you their ideas for free, and you just don't like what they're saying, but you just cited exactly that openness as one of the valuable things that billionaires deserve to have billions for.
Yes, and notice that I didn't say that they should be banned from the platform and their speech oppressed. I turned it around to make it about my own consumption. I have the free will. You're not arguing against me, you're proving my point.
> Maybe the people arguing against billionaires don't believe capital efficiency is paramount, so you'd have to persuade them of that first
Maybe we shouldn't assume the people without capital know what is paramount and what isn't when it comes to capital. It's hilarious to think there's some poor chap out there saying these people are being too efficient with capital and accumulating it while also believing that capital efficiency is not paramount. Hello? The problem you're pointing out is directly related to capital efficiency, yet you think the solution is to be capital inefficient. That has clearly not worked out for you or for anybody else in this society. We have countless examples where capital inefficiency has hurt us badly in this society.
I don't think anyone is simply envious. People mean to point out that allowing individual accumulation of wealth to extreme degrees lead to runaway structural problems. Billionaires and companies existing and providing wages are not inextricably intertwined. It's entirely possible to have one while preventing the other. The idea that the only way you can incentivize individuals to start companies is to allow them to accumulate so much wealth that they become tiny kings is patently absurd. The world has thousands of companies and founders who happily sustain their businesses without ever reaching this ungodly and idiotic level of uber wealth.
this post drips with envy
If they were saying that kings shouldn't have the unchecked right to execute people, this response would be akin to "Oh, you just wish you could kill anyone. Your argument is invalid."
1 reply →
> I don't think anyone is simply envious.
I think most are.
> The idea that the only way you can incentivize individuals to start companies is to allow them to accumulate so much wealth that they become tiny kings is patently absurd. The world has thousands of companies and founders who happily sustain their businesses without ever reaching this ungodly and idiotic level of uber wealth.
And how many of those companies and founders have given back to society at the scale that these uber wealthy people have? Entire new economies have been built up.
> ungodly and idiotic level of uber wealth.
This is still just envy. You should try to prove that you're being oppressed by the systems these billionaires have created because we don't have to go very far back to observe when these systems and economies did not exist. I'll remind you that for example, in NYC before Uber, taxi medallions were being sold for over a million dollars and people were going into debt just for the opportunity to drive a cab. If you go far back enough creating a virtual store front to sell your ideas and goods was a gate that was actually very high. Thanks to the systems that are in place now you have the opportunity to spin this up for very little risk and prove out your idea. Structural problems such as what? The idea that wealth is power? That's the same structural problem that has always existed, except that there are more players than ever before. You can launch an entire grass roots political campaign on social media for free. Does that sound like a system that oppresses or is that a system that has given you opportunity to enact change?
Even the barrier to invest in companies and participate directly in the profits and value creation has been erased or lowered. Hundreds of millions of people are directly benefitting from this everyday. It is now a few simple clicks of a button and you're in. Who lowered that barrier? It was the billionaires. And yes, because they did that they will get an asymmetrical reward because their impact and value creation for society is asymmetrical to yours.
You're not doing this, but when you try to have this conversation amongst the general population what is the response? Once you start poking holes at the concept it always reverts to "you're a bootlicker", "why are you defending billionaires, they don't care about you". These responses highlight envy, not reality or the desire to be objective.
Deep down a lot people either don't realize how much free will and agency they now have in this society or they are just living with contempt because everywhere they look they see people that are using that free will to accomplish more than them. It's lack and envy all the way through.
Thank you for spelling out some good points. They always seemed obvious to me but I could never clearly explain them.