
Shut Up, Paul Graham: The Simplified Version - amluto
http://eev.ee/blog/2016/01/04/shut-up-paul-graham-the-simplified-version/
======
gregdoesit
"Perhaps someone with millions of dollars could give more of their money to
organizations fighting poverty rather than investing in a premium coffee
subscription service."

I do look up to Paul Graham and don't like to see him attacked unrightfully.
However reading the several responses made me ask as well: why does someone
like PG just accept economic inequality, and blog about it, instead of using
some of his visiblity to reduce it, however little this might be.

I don't like economic inequality which is why I do a small bit of my own -
loans on Kiva and volunteering every now and then. I'm just a software
engineer and this is what I decided to do based on my belief and my available
resources. Bill Gates has more of the means and he is also using some of his
resources to reduce poverty, and thus economic inequality. There are many
other people who care about it, and do something, and even more who just don't
care and don't do anything about it.

We know PG also cares about economic inequality, as this is his second blog
post. It only is fair to ask: what is he doing to help reduce it? If he shared
some of this, it would make his post much more credible.

------
chiaro
Kevin Systrom made around $400M before tax when he sold Instagram. After 15%
CGT, there's $340M left in cash. Whether this is a "fair" reward or not is a
political opinion. I'll put forward mine here:

1\. Equity stake is a poor proxy for share of value added, or risk assumed.
One man alone did not create $400M worth of value.

2\. Massive payouts provide incentives, but is $340M such a greater incentive
than, say, $100M? If founders knew they could not make more than $100M, they
would work just as hard.

3\. The amount of money gained exceeds both the value created and the amount
required to be sufficiently motivating. The remaining $300M, could therefore
more equitably be used to save around 60,000 lives with negligible ill effect.

This is one case (sorry Kevin) but I think it illustrates how out of whack
things can seem.

The whole pg post came off as very defensive, almost kind of persecuted. Which
is understandable, that's the knee-jerk reaction to criticism levelled at
one's moral standing. Here's hoping he'll be a little more analytical and take
his ego out of the analysis in future.

~~~
argonaut
> Massive payouts provide incentives, but is $340M such a greater incentive
> than, say, $100M

Yes, it can be. At least the general principle of not capping upside. For
someone with $0, sure, I'd agree that $100M is approximately within the same
region of desire as $340M, and maybe even $1B.

But if a founder had already made $100M, the prospect of making _only_ another
$100M will ensure that you'll have fewer repeat founders. You'll still have
people like Elon Musk, who I think would have started SpaceX/Tesla even if he
knew he couldn't become a billionaire for tax reasons, but some founders would
be dissuaded from starting new companies after their initial $100M gain, if
there wasn't the prospect of making billions on their next venture.

Ironically, at some point in time Elon Musk went broke spending his money on
his post-PayPal ventures, and was borrowing money from friends. If he had made
less money from PayPal, we would not have Tesla/SpaceX, or at least he would
have sold them early.

------
apsec112
This post opens by stuffing words in Paul Graham's mouth:

"I wrote a LiveJournal post so preposterous that even Hacker News didn’t
swallow it. I’m painting this as ‘controversial’, which only makes sense if
you accept that I am roughly as important as the entire rest of the Internet.
Rather than step back and wonder if I might be wrong, I wrote this patronizing
Playskool edition, to give the unwashed masses a second chance at appreciating
my brilliance. Please admire my generosity."

Oh come on. This is just a better-spelled version of "ur a fag!!!!!!". Reminds
me of Scott Alexander's post about micronations:

"I think everyone should have the media perform a hatchet job on them at least
once. It’s this really scary feeling when you know you’re trying to be honest
and do the right thing, and yet you see how easy it is for a hostile writer to
cast every single thing you do as corrupt and destructive. And how quick
everyone is to believe them. And how attempts to set the record straight get
met with outraged “how dare you give one of those typical sputtering non-
apologies!”. It reminds me of those computer games where “ACCUSE” is just a
button you press, and it doesn’t even matter what the accusation is or whether
it makes sense." \- [http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/15/things-i-learned-by-
spe...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/15/things-i-learned-by-spending-
five-thousand-years-in-an-alternate-universe/)

~~~
foolrush
Maybe the brutal terseness, toilet language and straw manning is apparently
holding traction against his blogging? It seems the longer, more eloquent, and
extremely well researched works that shame PG's ridiculous lower-than-high-
school-sociological waxing _do not_.

I know it is often viewed as a grand cop-out to withdraw from an a debate
until someone has read XXX, however I can't help but feel that this is the
case with PG. Go take some sociology classes. Go study the humanities. Go
learn in that place you constantly tell people to drop out from.

Except he won't. He doesn't need to. His privilege buys him a platform, ears,
and a ridiculous following that actually defends his pompous soap boxing.
Worse, again, is that it simply isn't bringing anything to the table. At all.

So while I am not a huge fan of the language or attack posturing, I also feel
better knowing that there is a wave rising up against the derivative pablum PG
peddles. The hubris it takes to actually forward thoughts as his and _believe_
they are novel, valuable, or even remotely insightful is... Frightening.

~~~
argonaut
Uh... I'm not saying this legitimizes his arguments in any way, but to
interpret your comment literally, he did study the liberal arts - both of
them:

Paul Graham has a BA in Philosophy from Cornell "and studied painting at RISD
and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence."

[http://www.paulgraham.com/bio.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/bio.html)

~~~
foolrush
I suppose I should have been more explicit with “humanities”, but alas. Have a
bump for your accurate correction.

------
ploxiln
>> No doubt even this version leaves some room. And in the unlikely event I
left no holes, some will say I’m backpedalling or doing “damage control.” But
anyone who wants to can test that claim by comparing this to the original.

> “It is literally unthinkable that my ideas are bad.”

This "translation" is ridiculous. Clearly, PG is claiming that his simplified
version is fully consistent with his long version, and in this quoted part not
making claims of value.

I could similarly "translate" eevee's translation to "This has nothing to do
with logic and everything to do with how evil you are!"

------
neosat
"This seems akin to suggesting that skin cancer is not bad per se" is not a
fair analogy. What PG is trying to say is that the state of inequality can
arise from a system (of incentives) that is beneficial to humanity as a whole
(you may or may not agree with him). But your biased analogy isn't a fair
criticism of his argument.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Is it not? Paul seems to be saying, essentially, that because <things Paul
Graham likes> cause economic inequality, it therefore doesn't matter.

~~~
redthrowaway
He's saying that inequality is the wrong thing to optimize against. Rather
than attacking inequality writ large, it's best to attack the negative causes
of it.

The author ignores this, and says that economic inequality is bad, full stop.
PG does a much better job than the author of making his point.

Consider the case of global warming. It's caused by CO2. But lots of things
produce CO2. Some, like people and farm animals, are good. Others, like coal,
are less so. Attacking CO2 production as a whole, rather than the CO2
production we can do without, is likely to lead us to make poor decisions
about what sorts of CO2 we limit.

Creation of wealth is good. Concentration of wealth can result from the
creation thereof. That's not a bad thing. Fighting economic inequality by
limiting the creation of wealth would be asinine. That's what PG was saying,
which the author went out of his way to not acknowledge.

------
afarrell
> YC invested in five different career websites

Which makes sense given how much of a person's time and brainspace is taken up
by their career. Why shouldn't significant resources be devoted to improving
that?

------
rdtsc
Not sure this needs to be this inflamatory.

Are people surprised that PG will defend and explain away income inequality
the way he did? Why was there that much shock and dismay. I don't get it. Are
people afraid others will read post and start believing it because it comes
from PG?

Startup envoronment thrives on myths, promises and hope. Myths are what keep
it alive: founders have to say they have a burning desire to change the world
(even if they really want a phat exit). Early employees are given magic points
(options) that they believe will turn into money. Investors hope the company
they invested in will grow a horn and four hooves.

One of the things leaders do is build up these myths. Without them things
might start to fall apart. So one problem everyone is talking about lately is
income inequality. It is not just crazy hippies, some more serious people are
mentioning it. This inequality thing seems to be a odds with what startups do,
and, most imporantly, with what keeps them going. So PG as a good leader
stepped up to provide an interpretation, and surprise! it is favorable to
startups.

If someone approaches a founder and says, "Your Uber for dogs just got
valuated at $27B... what do you think about income inequality in this
country". Well, they can safely pull out the phone, surf to the "essays"
section and say something like "it's complicated, and let's look at the
causes" etc.

To put it another way, would anyone be as surprised if say if Starbucks
published an article how coffee is really good for you, etc.

------
metafunctor
What would be the proposed alternative to economic inequality? Some type of
communism, only somehow tweaked so it wouldn't be the total disaster it was
before?

------
such_a_casual
You lost me at "weed delivery service". Weed delivery service is an amazing
experience that is already a thing. It is natural that this service will be
monopolized/oligopolized by capitalists given enough time.

~~~
askafriend
What's funny is that Eaze, a weed delivery startup is founded by the cofounder
of Yammer which sold to Msft for something like $1.2B.

------
digbyloftus
If what creators are making is so great and they have an audience that loves
their work then they wouldn't be "scraping by". You can have all the free
users in the world but if people aren't willing to pay you for your work then
I'm sorry but the conclusion isn't that you're valuable. Some guy earning
$20k/year on patreon and someone founding a multimillion dollar startup are
not even in the same ballpark of creating value. In a market economy you get
rich by giving people what they want.

This whole rant is poorly written and riddled with obvious holes. Twitter is
full of ads BECAUSE users don't value the service all that much, not the other
way around. If people were willing to cough up as much cash as they spend time
on Twitter and demanded an ad free one then that's what they'd get. People
value a free ad supported Twitter over a premium one though. Just like with
most other web apps they use. So that's what the market gives them.

Did the author stop to think that people might actually want smart luggage,
valet dry cleaning, or weed delivery? On face value those all sound like the
kinds of things people want to me. Drinking water to Africa? I know far more
people that smoke weed regularly than I do people that care about how Africa
is doing. Perhaps the author is just misinformed as to how self interested
people are and is confusing business accommodating that as forcing it?
Shooting the messenger so to speak. The day people start caring about Africa
more than they do about getting high, YC will be full of a ton of startups to
that effect.

YC invested in 5 different career websites and the author claims this as
evidence that PG thinks we need 5 competing career websites. I can't read that
as anything other than disingenuous. Even the most casual reader of PG would
understand that he expects most startups to fail.

~~~
hype7
This is complete bullshit. The number of famous artists/scientists/writers/etc
that have been completely unpopular until after they died is staggering. Using
$ as a basis for value is a completely flawed measure.

~~~
digbyloftus
I don't see how that's relevant. They weren't valued at the time. Later they
were. $ being a flawed measure of value doesn't make any sense. $ IS value.

------
EGreg
This is pretty silly.

Also, Paul Graham's premise, I'm sorry to say, is sensationalized (by invoking
concepts like "inequality" and "startups") but wrong. The premise is,
basically, "inequality has bad CAUSES, but startups and technology are never
one of them."

Only at the end does he hint at what I believe to be the more accurate
analysis: AUTOMATION and OUTSOURCING lowers demand for expensive human labor,
therefore reducing one of the main ways that money trickles down to the middle
and lower class. The better and more widespread the technology, the more I can

1) Outsource jobs to regions with a lower cost of living, leading to two
losses of trickle-down:

1a) local workers don't get the job, and the money goes to someone in another
country

1b) either way my company writes the expenses off its taxable income, but my
country doesn't get the tax $$ from the worker's income to spend on social
programs, safety nets etc.

This by itself is fine, unless you're a nationalist, because it helps reduce
poverty where people are poorer, which is outside your country. However,
technology also enables:

2) AUTOMATION, which means I now reduce the amount of HUMAN workers, and once
again it has two aspects:

2a) Now, the demand for human labor drops, and since the supply of workers
remains the same, their average wages drop.

2b) The worst one: monopolies with server farms, contracts of adhesion, and
all the power. Like Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Uber, etc.
extracting rents from users and providers, until open source disrupts them.

By commoditizing the providers and workers, they get squeezed. See Amazon's
dealings with wage slaves, and its tactics with publishers (middlemen which it
eliminates). But those same workers are also supposed to be spending money
back into the economy on things they need.

It takes time to invent new industries and educate everyone, there is no
guarantee that will happen forever, and there is no guarantee that demand
shocks for labor won't be severe. So, there should probably be unconditional
basic income, negative tax or some other scheme for people to KEEP BEING ABLE
TO AFFORD THE BASICS even if they face no prospects of making money, which a
growing unemployed class will.

On the bright side, automation will help wean countries from their dependence
on an ever-growing population to fund social security schemes. Endless
population growth is unsustainable, and countries are currently worried about
birth rates mainly because of that. So in a global sense, the solution is: tax
the gains from automation, redistribute the proceeds, use condoms.

~~~
such_a_casual
2a) I would even argue that the supply of workers on the market is increased.

~~~
EGreg
Well, the number of humans willing to work remains the same... unless you mean
the number of humans willing to work BELOW A CERTAIN RATE has increased, but
that's the market clearing level, not supply. I know you are agreeing with me,
and I don't want to nitpick, just clarifying.

------
hayksaakian
i've noticed this article just disappeared from the front page (flagged to
death i presume).

I totally disagree with the person who wrote the article, but I think it's sad
that the "flag" button is now a "i'm offended" or "i disagree" button.

the comments in this discussion provide interesting perspectives that are now
hidden to the general readership.

I think this is why 4chan still has a massive user base -- less opinionated
moderation.

~~~
noobie
Flagged stories have a [flagged] tag. This is plain blatant censorship.

~~~
dang
That's false. [flagged] is displayed when a story is flagged by enough users
to be killed (closed to new comments). This story did receive that many flags,
but we don't kill threads when they have a lot of comments, so in this case
the flags demoted the article but didn't kill it. No moderator touched it or
AFAIK even saw it until now.

Edit: hmm this one got killed after I posted the above, which looks like a bug
in the software. We've unkilled it now.

------
noobie
Why isn't this on the front page?

------
duncan_bayne
Stephen Hicks produced a flowchart that helpfully explains the recent fixation
on inequality:

[http://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-
content/uploads/2009/11/hicks...](http://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-
content/uploads/2009/11/hicks-ep-chart-56-evolution-of-socialist-
strategies.gif)

~~~
duncan_bayne
It's funny how the HN user base is sensitive to propaganda of some kinds (for
example, relating to encryption) but are hostile to the idea that the
inequality issue might be an example of the same.

------
gizi
The problem seems to revolve around: what is good and what is evil? The age-
old answer is that it is forbidden to do a number of things but that besides
that, you are free to do as you please. Unfortunately, these waters are
muddied by the existence of man-made law ("high incarceration rates and tax
loopholes"). With unfair inequality the result of the ultrarich buying man-
made law, the problem can only get solved by getting rid of man-made law,
while people like Evee usually propose to solve the problem by creating some
more man-made law.

------
natmaster
"This seems akin to suggesting that skin cancer is not bad per se, because
it’s caused by the sun, and the sun is good. Where would we be without the
sun? Attacking the sun is a bad idea. So stop trying to fight sun-related skin
cancer. Also, I own a large share of the sun."

The author's right. Communism is bad. It results in mass poverty among many
other atrocities.

In the real world, everyone isn't an altruistic completely selfless person.
Therefore, communism has never worked and never will. The entire premise of it
is founded on an assumption that, if true, would render the entire need for
forceful conscription mute.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
You're attacking a strawman. No one has suggested anything remotely resembling
full-one Marxist Communism.

