Why pay an American worker 100k + benefits out of college when you can pay an H1B worker 60k for the same level of education and also have a massive amount of leverage over them?
Of course, one of them also supports fascism; I'm not "both sides"ing.
Both major parties suck really bad here. I'm not partisan anymore, I'll vote split-ticket for whatever individual best represents my individual interests because if I'm going to exercise my apparently useless vote, I might as well use it to meekly voice my preferences in the extremely remote chance someone will decide pretending to give a shit would be helpful for them.
Our problems predate the current regime and they'll last past it. Pretty pessimistic if I'm honest.
I think we’re at the “so what are you going to do about it” phase where the courts and congress are going to tisk tisk at the most, because they don’t want the deep pockets of Elon and Co to primary-them-out
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/musk-vivek-ramaswamy-h1b-vi...
Combine that with very visible people actively promoting that, or representing that, you get yourself a discussion about knowledge, money, and capitalism. And if you dig deep enough you get current affairs and later on, philosophy involved as well.
If you were to remove all incentives on "get educated so you get paid more" and only focus on "get educated so you'll enjoy what you learn more" that might change the enrolment, but as a side-effect, it might also make it harder to find enough people for all manner of work.
Going down this thought a bit more, how much is enough? (money, knowledge) Is there such a thing as a goal or limit? Or better yet, is there a fixed quantity where it's all turned into a zero-sum game? Probably not.
So if someone will put effort in their hoard, would it then be good or bad for society at large? And either way, would such a person do it regardless of the side-effects on everyone else? Even if it has an outsized impact? Would we then not want to talk about someone with a big hoard trying to add a relatively small amount to that hoard at a cost that might be relatively big for everyone else?
After all, investing in Tesla was not a sane business decision. Nobody had ever started a successful car company in America since the 1920s or so. Bricklin, Tucker, Delorean, the path is littered with utter failure.
Neither was investing in rockets. At one point, he was down to bankruptcy if one more rocket exploded. What car executive would be crazy enough to bet it all on reusable rockets?
> be crazy enough to bet it all
Anyone who doesn't suffer any real consequences. Having parents with a lot of money makes it not matter all that much.
As for the other bad decisions; it doesn't really show much positive except maybe persistence, but persistence in a vacuum is not a good thing. In a way, it mostly read like "a skewed mind made a bunch of bets and got lucky". Perhaps mostly an example of survivorship bias in a business sense.
Now, if we go back to the hoarding; it's not about when someone didn't hoard, it's about the here and now. I'm pretty sure we can find a period of time where Gates or Kamprad didn't do any hoarding, or not the hoarding we'd expect. But concentration of anything doesn't really happen by accident, and wherever we see it now, we can assume it was intentional.
There are of course also examples of people on their death bed realising their hoard doesn't really matter anymore and they might give most or all of it away. But that doesn't mean the hoarding never happened. It doesn't turn someone into a genius or a saint. When such things happen, we might consider it commendable, but that doesn't mean history disappears.
In a way it works not like a balance or a sum but more like a ratchet; it's about the degree to which someone hoarded stuff and how they acted with their hoard (doesn't have to be money, can be property or secrets or power or knowledge etc).
I’m no fan of Musk, but he clearly isn’t guilty of the hoarding aspect, as WalterBright pointed out.
Did you know he gave away free Starlink to victims of hurricane Helena and the LA fires? When FEMA did nothing?
He's also going to rescue the astronauts abandoned in space.
My gawd, Elon is pure eeevil!!
You're not going to starve in America if you lose all your money.
Besides, Elon's dad at one point invested in Elon's company. Elon was already a success in business by then. From $20,000, he became the richest man in the world. All by luck! Pretty amazing!
Me, I could scrape up $20,000. Could I turn it into the richest man in the world? Nope. I would never have taken the risks Musk did. Nor do I have his work ethic. Nor am I as smart as he is. So I'm not envious of him.
claim, meet data: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10990269/#:~:text=%...
Walk down my street with me and I’ll show you.
> Nor am I as smart as he is.
Are you kidding?
Lots of people seem to think that Musk has blundered his way from success to success. Nobody blunders $20,000 into richest man in the world.
There are plenty of “smart” people who aren’t rich.
> There are plenty of “smart” people who aren’t rich.
Of course. And the biggest barriers to success are:
1. not getting educated in what you want to do
2. being risk averse
3. not willing to commit to the work needed
4. doing drugs and alcohol
5. believe your friends and acquaintances telling you you can't make it
This forum is part of ycombinator, an outfit looking for startups to fund. You're already in the right place at the right time.