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Comment by Sven7 | Hacker News Reader

Since the crowd around here can't exist without an increase in poverty, the real question is how many poor people do we need to produce one Zuckerberg. If we want more Zuckerbergs we need more poor people, just as if we want more whales in the ocean we need more ocean.

Pretty sure Trump can work out a nice formula to export the poor into the developing world, in return for an expansion of H1B visas or something. Given the clamor I still see in China and India for people coming in, shouldn't be too hard to work out. Also they don't use toilet paper there.

And yes I am that cynical of the crowd around here and the effect the tech industry has had on increasing poverty.

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This comment is absolutely baffling to me - I can't even disagree because I don't understand what you are saying.

There was a recent discussion about startups and an increase in income inequality.

It seems some people think that there is no such thing as too much income inequality.

I believe the op is referring to the debate about wealth creation and distribution, where one could have a view that people in IT-startups like Zuckerberg are not creating wealth, just distributing it. And to distribute, you need to have someone to distribute FROM and someone to distribute TO. Now the comment should be more legible, I believe.

Ok, and yes that makes sense. The wealth creators don't have to be low paid drones though.

> Since the crowd around here can't exist without an increase in poverty, [...]

How does that work?

In so many ways. You can find the pattern everywhere once you start looking.

On a recent trip I saw the after effects of a Nokia factory closing. Now one would think given the boom in phones it wouldn't be an issue for the employees to get new jobs. Two years after loosing their jobs the majority were involved in evangelical churches or multilevel marketing schemes.

Disruption does many useful things, but I feel the benefits are accruing to fewer and fewer people at the expense of many.

Everyone has a smart phone these days when they used to have a feature phone (or even earlier, no mobile phone).

That's a big benefit to billions of people. The few people working in phone factories are a drop in the ocean.

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