
Paul Graham's response to AOC's statement on billionaires - 3131s
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1292219835804528653
======
onyva
Startups would not have existed if not for free and open source software. You
know, Stallman and the like, which people like Graham pretend don’t exist or
don’t matter. But than again, a person that retweets trump is not someone I’m
particularly interested in hearing what they have to say in general.

------
vsskanth
While I really like the open debate directly between influential people
without journalists gatekeeping, I don't think Twitter is a good medium for
this.

There's only so much nuance you can convey in a few short sentences.

Really wish politicians wrote essays to persuade their case instead of just
tweets or news interviews.

------
UncleMeat
Ridiculous. PG says that startups cause billionaires as though this is a law
of the universe. Why should it be? It would surely be possible to structure
society in such a way that startup founders of unicorns don't obtain more
wealth than they can possibly spend in a lifetime.

Further, not all startups become decacorns or megacorps. Small business
exists, even though PG and the broader VC community would rather focus on the
startups that make it huge. A sustainable business that employs 30 people,
even under existing social structures, won't make the owner stunningly
wealthy. And yet these businesses provide jobs just as well as the next uber
or airbnb.

~~~
avmich
> they can possibly spend in a lifetime

Doesn't seem as a good working schema, in my opinion. Surely its possible to
know how to spend quite large amounts, like quadrillions of dollars, in a
lifetime.

~~~
briefcomment
Maybe we should not enable what happens after you get more than, say, $50
million. After you've bought a few really nice houses and given your kids the
best education money can buy, all you're really doing with that money is
imposing your will on others without that kind of money, and often without
their say. Lobbying politicians, setting up foundations, etc., is usually a
rich person telling others what they should do, rather than enabling
individuals to do what they think is best. Maybe this is ok if rich people
were really just always super intelligent, but I think it's clear that that's
not necessarily true (luck (and sometimes even a bit of ruthlessness and lack
of compassion) is big in getting rich). And people who are experts in one
field can be clueless in other fields without realizing it. Just give the
excess money to individuals, on the basis of need, and we'll probably see it
used more efficiently.

~~~
naveen99
Maybe we should ban prime numbers above 50 million also...

Or stop fighting reality...

:)

~~~
briefcomment
Fighting reality? Socialism has already existed in the real world.

------
olliej
Startups aren’t made by billionaires, the workers at those startup aren’t
billionaires, the people who make the most money out of a startup are the
billionaires who invest in the first place.

The people who design an iPhone are seldom millionaires, ditto for the people
who write the software, the people who actually build them, and the people who
buy them.

Startups may make billionaires, but that doesn’t mean those startups haven’t
benefited primarily from no -billionaires.

More over the bulk of the money those billionaires have are either cash (so
not contributing anything to anyone), or investment funds (eg not adding
capital to new businesses, and not injecting money into the economy).

So the bulk of assets held by billionaires are only benefiting those
billionaires, and then they aren’t actually doing anything with it except
hoarding.

Billionaires don’t add value to the economy. Because one billionaire is never
going to be spending more than 20 _thousand_ times more than an average
American. So they aren’t contributing proportional to the amount they benefit
from the economy.

------
sorokod
"Paul Graham @paulg · 15h ... she typed into her iPhone, and then posted on
Twitter.

(Lesson: You don't need billionaires per se, but you do need startups, and
startups cause billionaires.)"

Twitter and all but "startups cause billionaires"? Really?

~~~
oautholaf
Also I was basically in the room for the birth of the modern consumer
smartphone and I'm not a billionaire. Huh.

