Hacker News Reader

Comment by cercatrova | Hacker News Reader

Why should the difference not be so stark? That's how the power law works, most people follow only a few accounts.

Because inequality beyond a certain excess makes a system unstable, and given the chance, even wealthy people would rather be wealthy in a stable world than an unstable world.

There is not only one power distribution, there is a whole set of them.

I don't think it's stark. That's how the entertainment business naturally works. Footballers, youtubers, actors, etc...

Onlyfans has a very low barrier to entry and being better than a 100 other people isn't all that hard, assuming you have the body for it and the marketing chops.

I don't understand why you'd want a company doing the government's job, that's what taxes are for.

Did you comment on the right thing? I don’t understand how that relates to what I wrote.

Can you refer to any evidence that inequality makes systems unstable? There is no reason that I can think of for that. OnlyFans looks pretty stable, in fact. And It doesn't make sense that a political system gets unstable when some people get wealthy. Political systems fall apart when large numbers of people can't afford food (an issue which has nothing to do with equality).

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake

Inequality much more extreme than that was quite stable. Antoinette was only wealthy compared to people in the 1700s. She was basically an equal to the peasants wealth-wise compared to the inequality we've seen since after the industrial revolution.

We've probably got more poor people today than were alive then in absolute numbers, and our wealthy are orders of magnitude more wealthy. And the situation is much more stable.

Except that if food is plentiful, but not everyone has equal access to food, then it has everything to do with equality.

Actually, many wars and rebellions in history have been due to some kind of inequality, whether perceived or real, when individuals or groups were motivated to fight to seek redress. And wars are very much unstable.

> That's how the power law works

who says that the payout distribution has to follow the power law? And even if it does naturally, OnlyFans doesn't have to just let it happen. They could take a bigger cut from the larger accounts, and distribute it such that the payouts are more linear.

If they do this, won’t they just fracture and drive the larger accounts elsewhere?

If every single user wants to be a soulless robot (pure capitalism), then yes. However if the userbase understands that larger accounts will be subject to larger fees, in order to support smaller accounts, then I would like to think at least some users would support that. Not everything in life has to be decided on a purely selfish basis.

So OnlyFans should pay people to post nudes ? (Rather than providing a place to post pictures and charge other people for them, in case you missed it)

I see this same argument made about Tinder, from guys who can't get laid.

You realize it's just a platform don't you ? Those are real human beings on the other side of that screen. OnlyFans can't choose for the humans on the platform.

Hang on. Capitalism means private ownership of the means of production. It sounds like you are talking about choices made by consumers.

Communist systems have consumers who make choices, too. Soviet citizens were perfectly free to choose which goods to queue up for.

>who says that the payout distribution has to follow the power law?

The payout distribution is proportional to the number of subscribers, which follows a power law.

>And even if it does naturally, OnlyFans doesn't have to just let it happen. They could take a bigger cut from the larger accounts, and distribute it such that the payouts are more linear.

How is taking a larger relative cut from the content creators bringing in the most traffic a good (much less optimal) business decision?

If you're a new creator, and you look at this:

https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1335725267340251137

are you really going to want to start an account on that site? Your comment seems to align with typical capitalist motives: focus on short term gains, ignore everything else.

>are you really going to want to start an account on that site?

If I thought it would benefit me and was worth my time, then yes? Is the implication one shouldn't try to earn extra income because someone else earns more?

>Your comment seems to align with typical capitalist motives: focus on short term gains, ignore everything else.

That's somewhat of an ad hominem. Anyways I'm all ears if you have a superior evidence-based economic model, instead of selling utopia.

> Anyways I'm all ears if you have a superior evidence-based economic model

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32454155

Do you have sources or evidence that this linear payout system can work? Any businesses, platforms, or countries that have successfully used this type of model?

Do you have sources or evidence that this linear payout system wont work?

Nope. But I'm also not the one claiming a new model I've invented will work and should replace the current system. Your claim would be more convincing if you could point to an existing business or platform that uses the linear payout successfully.

Right, because its a brand new model that I created, one that has never existed, or even been imagined before:

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Redistribution_of_income_and_weal...

Okay, but that's in the context of the state which can use its monopoly on violence to enforce such a redistribution. How might that work in private organizations? If you think governments should get involved, what do you think of the side effects? Such redistribution is effectively a tax on the top performers and a subsidy for the bottom performers. A popular saying is that "you get more of what you subsidize and less of what you tax". Why should we encourage more people into selling intimate pictures of themselves? Is that a policy that governments should really be pushing? You could argue onlyfan producers have some duty to their community or whatever, but they already pay income taxes. Why must they face additional redistribution compared to lawyers or programmers?

Do YouTube, Insta, and TikTok also have similar distributions?

Maybe slightly less skewed but these sorts of networks seem to promote a winner-takes-all situation for each differentiated subsegment.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com