Hacker News Reader

Comment by MisterBastahrd | Hacker News Reader

You don't get to be Musk level without reaching your hands deep into the pockets of other people and taking it for yourself. All you have to do is look at the propaganda surrounding "PPP loans" versus the money given out to stretch people's paychecks during the pandemic. Most businesses weren't affected in any substantial way, but governments still gave away trillions, and the companies got to keep the money. Meanwhile, we're supposed to hate ole Jimbob because he's poor, his hours were cut, and he received a $1200 check.

View on HN

> reaching your hands deep into the pockets of other people

I think you're right, but not in that way.

Tesla charged wealthy people a lot for the original tesla roadster. Then they took what they learned and charged wealthy people a lot for a better car, the original model S. Then the X.

He continued reaching into the pockets of wealthy people for further updates to the model S/X, updating the motor, then motors.

Now the model 3 and Y are available for less wealthy people. I'm sure the next generation of tesla cars will be more affordable, maybe even Jimbob.

And most important: Wealthy people invested into Tesla stock hype, that is where most of Musks money comes from.

If you want to understand the problems, spend less time worrying about the parts of the economy where over time you pay less and get more, and spend more time worrying about the parts of the economy where over time you pay more and get less. That's where it's broken. Health care, housing, education.

> He continued reaching into the pockets of wealthy people

I'd argue he used subsidies from the government, both direct and indirect.

Buyers get a tax credit for electric cars. SolarCity received hundreds of millions of dollars in direct grants from different state governments, I believe this all went to Tesla.

Tesla's high curb weight causes more damage to roads. Tesla's lack of unionization means that it relies on mistreatment of workers to get its cars made.

There are a lot of examples of Musk taking money both directly and indirectly from those who are not in his customer base. I won't argue whether or not Tesla has been a net benefit or not for the USA, but the result of this is that Musk can point to his company's success and marketing to pump the share price-- and he is now attempting to dump it.

The sneaky thing about inequality is that a lot of the direct costs are externalized. Musk can still appear "self-made" when he has externalized so many of his costs to the taxpayer and his workers.

> Buyers get a tax credit for electric cars. SolarCity received hundreds of millions of dollars in direct grants from different state governments, I believe this all went to Tesla.

Those cars wouldn't have been made or bought without those grants, the grants offset the extra cost of electric cars so they didn't put money into anyone's pockets, its just the government investing in getting electrification happen earlier.

Without them that money the profits would just have went to combustion car manufacturers instead like before.

Sure. But acknowledging the source of the investments would be swell. And it's a bit cheeky to be vehemently against govt and taxes after being one of the largest beneficiaries of said govt.

Yep! It's not a bad thing at all, it just ought to be acknowledged.

This is a bizarre way to look at a private transaction for a luxury good.

Nobody needs a Tesla.

If a wealthy person pays $100k for a car, it’s because they think it’s worth $100k.

If the price later drops to $80k, that’s not money out of the first persons pocket. They were willing to trade $100k for a car they wanted.

And by this very logic, lowering the price of goods over time is bad. What a insane world we’d live in if that were true.

> Nobody needs a Tesla.

But does everybody need another 100 years of gasoline cars?

It probably is a bizarre way to look at things, but the wealthy people are paying to develop EVs, then the not so wealthy to develop even more practical cars and so on until they are practical for normal folks. And they reach price parity with ICE cars.

People have been saying that the economical/low impact car to buy is a used car that was already built. Now you can buy used teslas.

This kind of zero-sum thinking - then notion that accumulation of wealth necessarily means it must have been taken from others - is extremely detrimental to society.

It is zero sum: there are finite goods and services in the world, and we're all competing for them. There are losers and winners.

"That's just zero sum thinking" has been the smokescreen for gullible people for at least fifty years.

No, goods and services are not finite. This is just patently false. How many automobiles existed in 1800? How many jey liners existed in 1900? How many smartphones existed in 1950? The pool of goods grows in absolute terms.

It's not just goods, services too grow in absolute terms. We invented radio in 1900 (ish) and introduced a wholly novel set of services. Before photography, in order to get one's likeness recorded you had to sit for a portrait painter. After practical photography was developed, portraits became much more accessible. I could go on.

Humanity is increasing the pool of goods and services in absolute terms all the time.

Buddy. Are you really trying to say that there can exist infinite goods and services in a finite universe? Growing is not the same as infinite.

Sure, it's finite in that it's can't grow with literally no limit: there's a fixed amount of mass an energy in the universe.

But the above commenter states that goods and services are zero-sum, which is not true. Goods and services do grow in absolute terms. His whole thesis is that accumulation of wealth necessarily entails the depravation of others. This is not at all true: wealthy can and does grow in absolute terms.

The above commenter is me and I say that goods and services are finite because they are. So what if there were fewer in the past and there will be more in the future. We live in the present and in the present goods and services are provided by people through labor which is finite at any given time. We're all competing: for housing, healthcare, and the political power to determine our material conditions. If wealth doesn't allow you to outcompete other people for those things then what the hell is it for?

> The above commenter is me and I say that goods and services are finite because they are. So what if there were fewer in the past and there will be more in the future.

What you're describing here is literally the opposite of zero-sum. The total set of goods and services in increasing. It directly contradicts your claim that the accumulation of wealth necessitates the deprivation of others.

At any given time are there, or are there not, finite goods and services?

At one given instant sure, but the key thing is that over time the collection of goods and services grows.

Adam, Bob, and Charlie are all shipwrecked on an island. They divy up the ship's goods equally. One day, Charlie decides to build some furniture. Now he has more goods than Adam and Bob. Did he deprive others, to achieve his comparatively greater wealth? If you just looked at one snapshot of time, you'd see Charlie with more wealth than the others, though.

> At one given instant sure [goods and services are finite]

I'm glad we finally agree that wealth is finite.

> the key thing is that over time the collection of goods and services grows.

That's cold comfort for people who never live to see a time when they can compete for those goods and services.

> I'm glad we finally agree that wealth is finite.

Wrong, wealth is not finite and it can be - and is - increased. Yes, the amount of wealth at Monday, 03-Jun-24 04:12:33 UTC is going to be finite, because that's a fixed point in time. This is just a pointless tangent, because in our world time is not frozen. In our reality, where time flows, wealth is not finite and is indeed grown in absolute terms.

> That's cold comfort for people who never live to see a time when they can compete for those goods and services.

Yes, people who lived in preindustrial societies saw more or less fixed living standards for generations. But fortunately for us, we live in one of the most economically dynamic points of in all of human history [1]. Your statement does ring true for most of human history, but not in our age.

1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_GDP_per_capita...

>>> At any given time are there, or are there not, finite goods and services?

>> At one given instant sure

> Wrong, wealth is not finite

Perhaps you could make up your mind.

> Yes, people who lived in preindustrial societies saw more or less fixed living standards for generations. But fortunately for us, we live in one of the most economically dynamic points of in all of human history [1]. Your statement does ring true for most of human history, but not in our age.

These people do not live in a preindustrial society.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/mar/28/poverty-raci...

At any one given instant in time, the planets have just one position around the sun. Does that mean orbital paths are a lie?

The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at any one point in time is fixed. At a particular instant in time, there is an exact number of CO2 molecules in the atmosphere. And that number is fixed and doesn't change, unless you pick a different timestamp. Does that mean we can just keep burning fossil fuels and the amount of carbon dioxide doesn't change?

No, because time isn't frozen. We don't live in a world where time is fixed. Seriously, I can't believe how much time I've wasted on this.

> Seriously, I can't believe how much time I've wasted on this.

Then let's cut out fanciful stories of the planets and the birds and the bees and cut to the chase.

In the 8 years between its IPO and Elon Musk taking it private again, Twitter (now X) made a profit in only two, according to Wikipedia. Meanwhile according to Glassdoor it has a median total comp for a Twitter Software Engineer in SF at $250k. But the median restaurant worker in SF makes about $40k according to Ziprecruiter. All of these people, Twitter engineers and regular restaurant workers, are generally competing for housing in the Bay Area. Tell me. Who's typically going to win those bids for housing, the Twitter engineer or the restaurant worker?

Sure, the tech workers are going to be able to afford better housing. But what happens if tech workers move out, and stop generating revenue for the city? Life would be even worse. That restaurant worker may lose their job because there's not as many customers. The city will have to raise taxes or cut services to make up for the budget shortfall from the exodus of higher paid (and thus higher tax paying) residents. This isn't speculation, this is actively happening: https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/politics/san-francisco-budge...

This is one of the more pernicious aspects of zero sum thinking: people engaging in zero sum thinking assume that reducing the wealth of some people means it'll end up redistributed to others. The reality is that it often just results in everyone being worse off.

> But what happens if tech workers move out, and stop generating revenue for the city? Life would be even worse.

No, a different mix of workers will move in. If they flatten the income distribution then life will be better for the non-tech workers who already live here. San Francisco's economy wasn't always so focused on tech, just as other vibrant cities in the U.S. aren't so focused on tech.

> That restaurant worker may lose their job because there's not as many customers.

The different mix of workers that would move in may go to restaurants just as much, and if they don't then sure, some restaurants will go out of business. So what? Some of the restaurant staff can adapt to other jobs, and they'll have longer to do so because their rent won't be so high.

> This isn't speculation, this is actively happening: https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/politics/san-francisco-budge...

That article doesn't even mention tech. What it says is:

  The snowballing shortfall is primarily caused by formerly reliable streams of revenue — namely, taxes generated by tourism and a once-thriving downtown — sputtering amid the post-pandemic recovery.

Sure, the once vibrant Manhattan-like downtown is now a ghost-town, but that's largely due to remote work to which the tech sector is acutely vulnerable. Ironically the City actually would've been buttressed against the remote work sea change had it had a more diverse, less tech-dependent economy.

> This is one of the more pernicious aspects of zero sum thinking: people engaging in zero sum thinking assume that reducing the wealth of some people means it'll end up redistributed to others. The reality is that it often just results in everyone being worse off.

If reducing the wealth of some people and creating a flatter income distribution "just results in everyone being worse off" then evidently increasing the wealth of some people and creating a skewed income distribution will have the opposite effect. Suppose you lived in a place and a time with a highly-skewed income distribution with severe winners and severe losers and you're the loserest loser of them all. Suppose as luck would have it everyone else makes more money than you do. Evidently that would "just result in everyone being [better] off" even you, right? In that case, you should be thrilled with that arrangement. What do you say? Would you be thrilled to have the lowest income in your city?

> If they flatten the income distribution then life will be better for the non-tech workers who already live here.

This, right here, is the crux of your incorrect worldview. No, a flatter income distribution is not inherently better. Which is better: 90% of people with $60,000 income and the top 10% with $600,000, or 100% of people with an income of $10,000? The latter is flatter, but even the poorest people were still much, much wealthier in the former than the latter.

> Suppose you lived in a place and a time with a highly-skewed income distribution with severe winners and severe losers and you're the loserest loser of them all. Suppose as luck would have it everyone else makes more money than you do. Evidently that would "just result in everyone being [better] off" even you, right? In that case, you should be thrilled with that arrangement. What do you say? Would you be thrilled to have the lowest income in your city?

Again: I care about my own material conditions. If a genie gave me the choice to double my income doubling (in real terms, as in the actual value of goods and services accessible to me doubles), while everyone else's income increases tenfold of course that's be a good thing. Why would I forego an improvement to my own conditions, just to keep everyone else's conditions from improving proportionally more? The fact that others benefit more doesn't change the fact that I'm left strictly better off. To do otherwise is the epitome of the crab mentality: It's better to harm everyone just to maintain your relative position.

> No, a flatter income distribution is not inherently better.

I didn't say it's "inherently" better. I said it's better for "the non-tech workers", which is just a stand-in for "anyone below the median." I'm sure flattening the income distribution might not be regarded as better by people above the median. Oh well!

> Which is better: 90% of people with $60,000 income and the top 10% with $600,000, or 100% of people with an income of $10,000?

The latter example is better for everyone except for the people who would've been in the top 10% in the former example. The scale of the dollar amounts is just arbitrary, after all. It could be a flat income distribution where everyone makes $10,000, or $100,000, or $100,000,000, and it wouldn't make a bit of difference.

> Again: I care about my own material conditions. If a genie gave me the choice to double my income doubling (in real terms, as in the actual value of goods and services accessible to me doubles), while everyone else's income increases tenfold of course that's be a good thing. Why would I forego an improvement to my own conditions?

You haven't. You just experienced a loss in your material conditions. Congratulations. Now, everyone else has 5 times as much income as you (assuming everyone started equally). They can easily outbid you for housing, for food, for vacations, for everything. You better think fast and invent something of value that they don't have so you have a little monopoly at least for a little while, otherwise you're screwed.

> The latter example is better for everyone except for the people who would've been in the top 10% in the former example. The scale of the dollar amounts is just arbitrary, after all. It could be a flat income distribution where everyone makes $10,000, or $100,000, or $100,000,000, and it wouldn't make a bit of difference.

Again, as I wrote the comment I'm talking about real value not just dollar values. Everyone is worse off in the latter scenario.

> You haven't. You just experienced a loss in your material conditions.

No, I just doubled my material conditions. Again, it seems you're just not able to comprehend the notion that material conditions are not zero-sum. The fact that other people gained more does not mean o lost.

Think of this in more concrete terms: I have a 2,000 square foot house and one car. A genie offers me the ability to get a 4,000 sq ft house and a second car, but everyone else gets a 20,000 sq foot mansion and 9 cars. I may become less wealthy relative to everyone else, but I'm still better off than I was initially.

It seems like it's just impossible for you to convince of a scenario where society can collectively experience increases in living conditions. The only way you're able to think about value is in relative terms, not in terms absolute increases. It's pretty a sad, and unfortunately common train of thought.

>> Which is better: 90% of people with $60,000 income and the top 10% with $600,000, or 100% of people with an income of $10,000?

> Again, as I wrote the comment I'm talking about real value not just dollar values.

In your example, how exactly do these people receive their income, be it $10,000 or $60,000 or $600,000?

As you wrote in your own comment, dollars are imaginary. Maybe they get paid in salary, maybe it's equity. Or benefits in the form of healthcare. The important thing is the value of goods and services they can buy. Before, they could rent 3,000 sq foot house and buy 6 cars, now they can only rent a 500 sq ft apartment and buy one car.

Again, if we achieve a flat income distribution by reducing the value of what everyone can it with their income is that a good thing? Everyone's purchasing power is reduced: the 90% can only buy 1/6th as much as they could before, the top 10% 1/60th as much. But since the income distribution is now flat, this is somehow a good thing even according to you though everyone can buy only a fraction of what they could before.

This is what you're seemingly not able to comprehend: the total sum of value in the world isn't static. If I bulldoze a 2 story apartment building and build a 20 story apartment building I've just created a 10x increase in the residential floorspace on that block. If I develop cheap rocket motors I can put satellites into orbit for much less money, and thus enable things like high speed global internet. If I build a much more efficient factory for building cars and tractors, then foods gets much cheaper and farmers can replace draught animals with machinery. And shipping companies can haul much more cargo with trucks. The total value of goods and services in the world can, and is, increased. And it has more than doubled in the span of a typical lifetime for the last century. It doesn't take ages, it happens fast.

Most people who get enormously wealthy do so by founding or investing in companies that do something novel to increase the sum of value. Let's flip the previous analogy on its head: a genie gives you the ability to increase the real purchasing power of 90% of people by 6x, and the top 10% of people by 60x. Is that a bad thing, because the income distribution is now more unequal even though everyone is left strictly better off?

> As you wrote in your own comment, dollars are imaginary. Maybe they get paid in salary, maybe it's equity. Or benefits in the form of healthcare.

Well, no, I didn't write that, but setting that aside, maybe you can pick whichever one strengthens your argument the most.

> Wrong, wealth is not finite and it can be - and is - increased

Possibly the word you want to be using is limited; it is slightly harder for people to make pretend that the pie is fixed with that one. Although your point is much stronger than your opponents - wealth is infinite, since wealth doesn't have to be physical.

> Although your point is much stronger than your opponents - wealth is infinite

LOL on at least two separate occasions my "opponent" has said that wealth is finite. Sounds like they might be your opponent!

> since wealth doesn't have to be physical.

Living in the physical world as I do, I require that my needs for physical wealth be met first: goods and services like food, shelter, safety, furnishings, entertainment, and the political power to maintain them. Non-physical wealth--love, feelings of accomplishment, etc.--are important, but they come later.

What about you? Are you satisfied with non-physical wealth alone?

> LOL on at least two separate occasions my "opponent" has said that wealth is finite

Only with the qualifier of, "at one instant in time."

Now answer this question: in the real world, are we frozen at one instant in time? Or does time flow?

> Only with the qualifier of, "at one instant in time."

That's a pretty important qualifier.

> Now answer this question: in the real world, are we frozen at one instant in time? Or does time flow?

That's two questions. Obviously, any one of us exists for a finite interval of time, that's for sure. Let's call that "a lifetime." Does technological innovation occur, does the world's productive output increase, and do average living standards rise over a typical lifetime? Sure. Does that mean that wealth is infinite? Not at all. Among other things, it depends on exactly what you mean by "infinite" which, so far, you've never said. Does time flow? I'll leave that to the philosophers.

OK. I've answered your questions. Now answer this one, please.

If a person alive now, today, in the present, is unhappy because they have a meager share of the world's wealth, would you expect them to become happy once you've explained to them that the world's wealth will be larger in the future, long after we're all dead?

> If a person alive now, today, in the present, is unhappy because they have a meager share of the world's wealth, would you expect them to become happy once you've explained to them that the world's wealth will be larger in the future, long after we're all dead?

I'd expect them to be happier when their material conditions are improved.

And how is that accomplished? Under a zero-sum mindset, this requires taking wealth from other people. So the answer is to raid and conquer neighboring countries and enslave their people. The pie is of a fixed size, so the only way to increase your lot is to reduce someone else's. This was true for much of human history, until the industrial revolution.

Fortunately, though, we live in the 21st century. We live in a time where material conditions are rising faster than at any point in human history. Much of this comes down to automation, and better energy capture. My responsibility is would be to invest in a more productive economy to raise living standards across the board. Make the pie bigger. This does not take a long time, world GDP per-capita more than doubled in the span on one lifetime: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Progress-of-the-human-sp...

Again, your statements are just factually wrong. Global average living standards have increased substantially, over the course of one person's lifetime. The growth is not "in the future, long after we're all dead". The average 70 year old has almost certainly seen drastic improvements over the span of their life.

>> If a person alive now, today, in the present, is unhappy because they have a meager share of the world's wealth, would you expect them to become happy once you've explained to them that the world's wealth will be larger in the future, long after we're all dead?

> I'd expect them to be happier when their material conditions are improved.

You didn't answer the question I asked. I mean, you're not obliged to answer any questions, but for the record, you didn't answer this one. Perhaps your justification for not answering it is something like "false premise": perhaps you believe that a person's material conditions will necessarily improve as time progresses and overall wealth increases, such that they won't need you to explain to them that they're better off because they'll be able to see it with their own eyes. If that's your belief then I don't even need to offer my counterargument because surely you must already know it by now, I've already made it enough times. But, maybe I'll give you a little hint anyway.

> world GDP per-capita more than doubled in the span on one lifetime

Hint: "per-capita" is an average, which means you're already on shaky ground

> Again, your statements are just factually wrong. Global average living standards have increased

How can my statement about "global average living standards" be wrong when I never made a statement about "global average living standards"?

> The average 70 year old has almost certainly seen drastic improvements over the span of their life.

I assume that by "average 70 year old" what you really mean is "typical 70 year old" as in "representative 70 year old" but that still demands clarification. Where does this typical, representative 70 year old live? What percentage of the world's population do they represent? However many people that is, what about the people left over, the one's whose lives are not represented by this typical 70 year old? How have their living standards changed, if at all? These are really just rhetorical questions to try to get you to think. Don't feel the need to try to answer them.

If goods and services aren't finite then they must be infinite. If they're infinite then how can they be increasing?

Because not all wealth exists in the present. It is like counting from 1 to 5 and concluding that the maximum size of an integer is finite because so far the count has only reached 5. It is not so, however. The maximum size of an integer is infinite even though any particular integer is finite.

Not all people on Earth exist in the present, either. At any given time in the past there were fewer of them, and at any given time in the near future at least there probably will be more of them. Does that mean that the number of people on Earth is infinite?

While you're thinking about that, think about this. You and I live in the present. Of what use is it to us in the present if there's more total wealth in some future long after we're gone?

> Not all people on Earth exist in the present

Correction: That should be, "Not all people on Earth who have existed in the past or will exist in the future exist in our present."

The number of people is potentially infinite. It depends on unknowns like whether we can grow exponentially, what the progress of science looks like and whether the universe is finite.

It's at this point that you're going to have to explain what you mean by "infinite".

> Infinity is something which is boundless, endless, or larger than any natural number.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity

That article describes a variety of different kinds of infinities, in mathematics, physics, logic, and philosophy, so you haven't made any progress in explaining which one you're using.

Let me help you out, because I actually know what you mean when you say the number of people on Earth is "potentially infinite" even if you don't really know what you mean. You mean that that there's no upper bound. But, that can only be true under a set of unlikely conditions:

There is no upper bound to the existence of Earth.

There is no time in the future when Earth becomes uninhabitable.

Given that the most unassailable models in science make it practically certain the Sun won't exist as it does now within 10 billion years, your necessary conditions are unlikely.

Consequently, I rate your claim: False

> Let me help you out, because I actually know what you mean ... even if you don't really know what you mean.

^_~ You do you, I suppose.

> Given that the most unassailable models in science make it practically certain the Sun won't exist as it does now within 10 billion years, your necessary conditions are unlikely.

Everything that happens is unlikely. There isn't anything in particular stopping either of those conditions being fulfilled if progress keeps up at the rate it has for all of recorded human history and the upper limit is a long way away. We'd have to move the earth at some point in the next few billion years.

It does seem most likely that we bump in to a hard limit somewhere under the same logic as the Fermi paradox - but we don't know what it is yet and until we do it is simply the case that the number of people on the earth is potentially infinite. As is wealth, as far as we know - especially since wealth doesn't have to have mass.

Gibberish

> No, goods and services are not finite

Yes, they are.

> Humanity is increasing the pool of goods and services in absolute terms all the time.

The ever-increasing amount is still finite, at any given time and even aggregated over the entire history from the evolution of humanity to its inevitable extinction.

The magical thinking in this thread is breathtaking to behold.

Wealth is not zero sum. If it were we'd still be quibbling over sticks in caves. It is generated.

That's technology, not wealth.

What do you think wealth is? A big part of wealth generation is finding new technologies and applying them to build better things.

Is that how you'd describe the wealth of Bezos?

Better shopping, or is it more about capturing shopping and taking a slice from all transactions?

I think it's abundance in one's material conditions. That's not technology. Technology is knowledge. That's completely different.

Technology is the application of knowledge. Often to improve one's material conditions. Even an average person in this day's age has amenities that nobody, not even the wealthiest noble, could have achieved in preindustrial eras. We have air conditioning, electricity, antibiotics, vaccines, antiseptic, and near-instant communication worldwide. Our material conditions have drastically improved. Wealth is not finite, not even remotely.

I suspect these people do not have ready access to air conditioning, electricity, or even antibiotics, and they're not going to get it simply by appealing to "technology."

https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/haiti/overview#1

The entire world lived in those conditions a couple hundred years ago, now it's a handful of countries experiencing that level of deprivation. That's huge progress!

Not for the people living in those conditions, it isn't.

I'm sure evaporating Musk' wealth will fix that.

I'm not. It wouldn't hurt, but it wouldn't help much, either. Evaporate the wealth of about 400 other people, then go after the next level of 4000 and then the next 40000 and then we'd be getting somewhere.

That will do absolutely nothing for those countries.

Nobody can predict the future, not even you. So you have no idea if that would have an effect on the economic output of those countries (which is what you mean by "wealth" even if you don't know it). One thing we do have an idea about and can say with certainty about some of the effects it will have on the people in those countries. We can say with certainty that 400, or 4000, or 40000 people will become less wealthy, and everyone else will become less poor.

It's wealth.

It's technology, which is information not material goods. The technology--the information--necessary to create an iPhone didn't exist in the world 40 years ago, but it does now. So what? Armed with that information alone, is that somehow going to get you an iPhone?

> It is zero sum: there are finite goods and services in the world, and we're all competing for them.

Zero-sum (or fixed-sum, since zero-sum strictly means the aggregate quantity is not only fixed and finite but actually zero) doesn't just mean the total is finite (which is obviously correct), it means that output is fixed and the choices made only affect distribution, not the quantity of goods and services that are produced and made available. This is not the case.

Yeah but the material conditions of an individual's life are determined by the goods and services they have, not by the total amount of goods and services that exist in the world. Moreover, certain material conditions--safety from harm, freedom of expression, and the political power to maintain those things--absolutely do not increase in some global sense the way that economic output does. Consequently, it's the distribution of wealth that determines the quality of an individual's life, and that's what concerns me.

So no, I don't give a fig if "total wealth" whatever that is is somehow going up in aggregate, not if it's not being shared more uniformly.

> Yeah but the material conditions of an individual's life are determined by the goods and services they have, not by the total amount of goods and services that exist in the world.

That's obviously why distribution matters as well as total production (or aggregate utility), but fixed-sum means that distribution is the only thing subject to change, and that for someone to gain someone else must lose equally. (There's also an argument that things get closer to fixed sum in utility terms if you first lift everyone out of extreme poverty, because relative wealth/deprivation becomes a much more significant source of utility/disutility than absolute wealth is of utility once you are beyond extreme poverty, but even there its much more complex than fixed sum.)

> Moreover, certain material conditions--safety from harm, freedom of expression, and the political power to maintain those things--absolutely do not increase in some global sense the way that economic output does.

They certainly don't increase in lockstep with economic output, either globally or locally, but neither are they fixed-sum, where for someone to have more someone else must have less in the same degree (except maybe "political power").

> for someone to gain someone else must lose equally

Oh, you can gain love, satisfaction, respect, and all the other things that money can't buy and it doesn't cost anyone else a thing, but the minute you gain something that money can buy, you've gained a little bit of trading power within the economy, which everyone else has lost.

> They certainly don't increase in lockstep with economic output, either globally or locally, but neither are they fixed-sum, where for someone to have more someone else must have less in the same degree (except maybe "political power").

Safety from harm and freedom of expression, perhaps, don't come at the cost of others, but those examples were meant to illustrate that some things of value--economic value even--truly are "fixed" and do not increase simply because of progress and innovation. But "political power" is the biggie, anyway. That's the most important one. That's what extremely wealthy people are buying. It's not yachts and mansions. It's political power, which has enormous implications for the rest of us.

It's true the the economy is not a zero-sum game, but it's also true that many aspects are zero-sum. Maybe some portion of Zuck's wealth does genuinely come from his innovations, and otherwise wouldn't exist. But I think it would be hard to argue that all of it is - if he had been hit by a car his first day at Harvard, maybe MySpace Tom or friendster or the Winklevoss guys would be stinking rich.

So, the question is, how much of his wealth did he actually create versus simply grab from others? When it comes to MySpace Tom the answer isn't super important, but it is very important for the masses of poor people who make up the vast majority of the planet.

If a company creates a better, or cheaper, or otherwise superior product and garners more sales than it's competitors is it "grabbing from others"? If so, then consumers benefit when companies do their best improve or invent new goods and services in their quest to "grab from others".

Also, I'm not sure why the hypothetical situation of what would happen if Zuckerberg hadn't founded Facebook would be particularly relevant to people in poverty. If MySpace became the most popular social networking company rather than Facebook, how would the poor be in a different situation?

> Also, I'm not sure why the hypothetical situation of what would happen if Zuckerberg hadn't founded Facebook would be particularly relevant to people in poverty. If MySpace became the most popular social networking company rather than Facebook, how would the poor be in a different situation?

If it was state sponsored and without ads, people would get much happier since they are no longer constantly mentally assaulted by ads intended to create cravings or feeling of missing out.

>Also, I'm not sure why the hypothetical situation of what would happen if Zuckerberg hadn't founded Facebook would be particularly relevant to people in poverty. If MySpace became the most popular social networking company rather than Facebook, how would the poor be in a different situation?

If we recognize that broadly the same pile of money would exist absent Zuck, and instead belong to Tom or Joe or Jane, this provides us a nice justification for not letting Zuck have quite so much money anyway. He's the guy who hit the lotto. It's not such a bad thing to say the government is going to take a lot of it and spend it on poor people.

No, I'm not seeing the logic behind this at all. If someone invented assembly line production before Ford, that person would accumulate an immense fortune. But said hypothetical person didn't invent assembly line production. Ford did.

The lotto ticket is a great analogy. If other people picked the winning numbers, they'd have won a lot of money too! But they didn't. Does that create an obligation for the real winner to compensate all the hypothetical would-be winners?

No. But if the tax man came and the winner said that he shouldn't have to pay because he was simply better at picking lotto numbers than all the hungry chumps out there, we'd recognize it to be a farce.

Sure, tax evasion is bad! But even after taxes, they'll still be making a lot of money. Is your allegation that Zuckerberg or Musk has engaged in tax fraud? That's a totally different statement than insisting that by simple virtue of having amassed a lot of wealth, they must have deprived others of wealth.

> If a company creates a better, or cheaper, or otherwise superior product and garners more sales than it's competitors is it "grabbing from others"?

How do they make the better or cheaper product? Did they do it by, perhaps, exploiting the people or resources of another, poorer country? Or skirting safety regulations? If so, I would say they are "grabbing from others", yes. And they are motivating other companies to follow along to keep up.

Or they may make a cheaper product by applying novel techniques like an assembly line. Or deploy heretofore unused (or under-used) technologies like electric cars. In the the case of SpaceX the big win was the more efficient gas generator cycle in the Merlin rocket engine.

If the allegation is that people made money but skirting regulations or otherwise illegal things, then it's crucial to explain the nefarious practices at play. Not just asserting that someone who is wealth must have acquired that wealth through underhanded means, simply on the basis of being wealthy.

If "wealth" is the value of labour, then there is a limit to the value you yourself can generate with your own. After that, to become more wealthy you must work out a way of taking that value from other people, and making it your own.

There is no other way capitalism can work.

Wealthy people make others more productive. Key example: By writing an engaging story, you make the people managing the printing presses more productive since it lets them print higher value stories than before and thus sell better.

The author writing the story didn't take millions of dollars from the persons manning the presses, without the author the work done by the presses wouldn't be as valuable and those millions of dollars of value wouldn't have materialized.

The same goes for most of the people who got rich on their own, they realized a way to create more value using the same number of workers, so they get rich and it didn't involve taking from anyone, just giving more value to customers.

> You don't get to be Musk level without reaching your hands deep into the pockets of other people and taking it for yourself.

There was no "reaching into others pocket". It's a luxury car, not a fire extinguisher being sold to a guy on fire.

People reached into their own pocket and handed him cash. Voluntarily. For something they wanted.

Then Elon sold off pieces of his company to people who reached into their pockets and handed him cash for it. Voluntarily. Because they wanted it.

It's one of the least coercise set of transactions I can possibly think of.

And it created homeless people in San Francisco.

NIMBYism is largely responsible

No, tech is largely responsible

No.

Yes.

More likely things like fentanyl are to blame for homelessness. It’s extremely addictive and cheap to make

There was homelessness in SF in 2000, before fentanyl was available on the street.

Surely homelessness also predates Tesla, what is the actual point you are trying to make?

That there was homelessness before fentanyl. I believe that was quite clear in my previous comment.

Considering Tesla doesn’t have offices in SF you’re going to have to explain that one.

Can you do it without absolving others, like the city, of their responsibility to make sure housing gets built?

Sure. Plenty of its employees live in SF.

Wait, so your logic is - we create more jobs and pay workers high wages creates housing demand, and that’s bad?

So new jobs and high pay are bad?

That sounds incredibly anti-worker.

> So new jobs and high pay are bad?

They're bad for the people who don't have them, like teachers, restaurant workers, and custodial staff...people who are also "workers".

Don't have what? Teacher, restaurant workers and custodial staff have jobs.

But regardless, your argument is that new, higher paying jobs are bad because other people make less?

Do you hold a general belief that all progress is "bad" because deprecates existing things? If so, how far does this go?

Would you consider a new cancer drug "bad" because all those people who received an older drug didn't get to experience such good results?

This seems like an "anti-progress" mindset.

> Don't have what?

new jobs and high pay

> your argument is that new, higher paying jobs are bad because other people make less

My argument is that new, higher paying jobs are bad for the people who don't have them. Is your argument that they're somehow good for the people who don't have them?

> Do you hold a general belief that all progress is "bad"

No. My belief is that progress is not "good" for the people who don't share in the benefits of that progress. Are you going to argue otherwise?

> Would you consider a new cancer drug "bad" because all those people who received an older drug didn't get to experience such good results?

No, but if a person suffers because they can't afford a new cancer drug and regards that as "bad", I'm not going to tell them they're wrong to make that judgement. Are you?

> Is your argument that they're somehow good for the people who don't have them?

Yes

> No. My belief is that progress is not "good" for the people who don't share in the benefits of that progress. Are you going to argue otherwise?

But people do share in them, even if they themselves don't get a new job and higher pay. The most obvious one is taxes - these new jobs create new taxes that go to the government to be spent on society.

Beyond that, isn't it better if your fellow citizen who was unemployed has a job now? Or if they switched from a lower paying job to a higher one? That's a societal benefit.

> No, but if a person suffers because they can't afford a new cancer drug and regards that as "bad", I'm not going to tell them they're wrong to make that judgement. Are you?

You missed my scenario. If a new drug comes out, is it bad that someone benefits when the people who didn't get the new drug (because it wasn't available) don't benefit?

>> Is your argument that they're somehow good for the people who don't have them?

> Yes

This ought to be good. Let's hear it.

> these new jobs create new taxes that go to the government to be spent on society

Wealthy people pay a lower tax rate than non-wealthy people do. That means the tax system is a net transfer of wealth from the less wealthy to the more wealthy. Try again.

> Beyond that, isn't it better if your fellow citizen who was unemployed has a job now?

Not if my fellow citizen outbids me on an apartment, no, it isn't.

> You missed my scenario

No, I presented a different scenario. Sorry for not playing along

> Wealthy people pay a lower tax rate than non-wealthy people do. That means the tax system is a net transfer of wealth from the less wealthy to the more wealthy. Try again.

Please provide a source.

Youre also ignoring the fact that even with a lower rate (which you haven’t proven), they may still pay more overall which benefits society.

> Not if my fellow citizen outbids me on an apartment, no, it isn't.

So you’re prefer if your fellow citizen was left unemployed, rather than you being outbid on an apartment? It sounds like you’d prefer to keep poor people down rather than have to spend more time finding housing. Isn’t that selfish?

> No, I presented a different scenario. Sorry for not playing along

Why would you refuse to give your thoughts?

> Please provide a source.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/briefing-room/2021/09/23/new-...

> Youre also ignoring the fact that even with a lower rate (which you haven’t proven), they may still pay more overall which benefits society.

Yes. I'm ignoring it because it's not relevant. Think about it. Suppose for the sake of argument 400 people took 99% of the output of the nation (~$23 trillion in 2023), and since we're supposing, let's be generous to your argument and suppose those 400 pay a higher tax rate of say 40%. That's ~$9 trillion in taxes or roughly double what the IRS actually collected. Sounds pretty good, right! Except...that leaves the remaining 300 million with a per capita income of less than $1000 per year. Would you prefer this supposed situation in which the richest 400 pay even more in total taxes (and tax rate) than they actually do in reality?

> So you’re prefer if your fellow citizen was left unemployed, rather than you being outbid on an apartment? It sounds like you’d prefer to keep poor people down rather than have to spend more time finding housing. Isn’t that selfish?

Wrongo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

"left unemployed" is not the only alternative. There are others. "Employed but with an income the same as mine" is one. Given the choice between my fellow citizens taking home so much more than I do such that I can't afford to live in my city, and my fellow citizens taking home the same as I do such that I can afford to live in my city, I would choose the latter. Would you choose the former?

> Why would you refuse to give your thoughts?

Why did you stop beating your wife? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question

I haven't refused to give my thoughts on your scenario. I chose not to elaborate on your scenario. I did "give my thoughts", however.

  No, but if a person suffers because they can't afford a new cancer drug and regards that as "bad", I'm not going to tell them they're wrong to make that judgement. Are you?

Do you that first word "No" there? That's me giving my thoughts on the "yes/no" question you'd asked. The rest is me asking for your thoughts on a different scenario, which as far as I'm aware you've not given. Would you say you "refuse" to give your thoughts on this question?

> https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/briefing-room/2021/09/23/new-...

That's not a source. That's a cherry picked, politically motivated source about 400 billionaires? The average person getting a job at Tesla and competing for your apartment isn't one of them?

Want to try again?

> Except...that leaves the remaining 300 million with a per capita income of less than $1000 per year.

But that's not what's happening. What's happening is someone is getting a job paying a couple hundred thousand at Telsa. And as a result they pay more in taxes.

> "left unemployed" is not the only alternative.

It is in the example I gave. You stated that instead of "losing an apartment" you'd prefer that person never got a job at Tesla.

> Why did you stop beating your wife? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question

You refused to answer (you literally stated you won't answer), so I asked why. That's not a loaded question.

>> That's not a source. That's a cherry picked, politically motivated source about 400 billionaires? The average person getting a job at Tesla and competing for your apartment isn't one of them?

> Want to try again? Not particularly, no. You asked for a source for my claim that the wealthy paid a lower rate in taxes, and I gave you one.

> But that's not what's happening.

I know. It's called a "thought experiment." It's designed to explore the implications of reasoning. This thought experiment illustrates that even if the wealthy pay a higher tax rate and/or higher overall taxes, the benefits to society of those taxes do not compensate for the drawbacks of there being rich people in that society.

> It is in the example I gave. You stated that instead of "losing an apartment" you'd prefer that person never got a job at Tesla.

Well, no I didn't state that, but even if I did, "never getting a job at Tesla" does not logically imply "left unemployed." There are other employers besides Tesla.

> You refused to answer (you literally stated you won't answer), so I asked why. That's not a loaded question.

No, I literally said, "No, I presented a different scenario. Sorry for not playing along." That's not a refusal. That's simply me choosing not to engage with your scenario at that time. Who knows! Maybe I'll engage with it later (not likely).

> Can you do it without absolving others, like the city, of their responsibility to make sure housing gets built?

Why would I do that? I never said that tech is the only cause of homelessness. Outcomes can result from multiple causal factors, after all.

Musk has made off with generational wealth just off of government subsidies alone. Government subsidies for businesses are just welfare for the rich.

Yep. $2T printed into the real estate market, $1T to Wall St, $800b to stimulus checks... and the latter catches 100% of the blame, though it always seems to be people benefiting from #1 or #2 doing the talking.

In every mixed economy, there's a capital side and a labor side. Rich people getting paid for owning things, poor people getting paid for working. There's a healthy tension there, but for the last 50 years capital has been kicking the shit out of labor and it's really starting to show.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com