> capitalism is the driver of equality?
Nope. It is the driver of opportunity, though. It's up to individuals to take advantage of the opportunity, or not.
> capitalism is the driver of equality?
Nope. It is the driver of opportunity, though. It's up to individuals to take advantage of the opportunity, or not.
Capitalism incentivizes risk taking because the payoff is enormous - the most successful risk takers get to own the world 50 years later.
The problem: there's a second phase 50 years later, where the risk takers from 50 years ago own the world and do their best to prevent further rewards flowing to new risktakers. We are in that phase now.
The other problem: when the reward is so great, you do everything to get ahead, even illegal things, because the expectation value (winning*P(winning) + prison*P(caught)) is still positive.
> the most successful risk takers get to own the world 50 years later.
Musk creating wealth has taken nothing from me. How about you?
> there's a second phase 50 years later, where the risk takers from 50 years ago own the world and do their best to prevent further rewards flowing to new risktakers. We are in that phase now.
Did you know that Hackernews is run by wealthy people who fund startups?
What illegal things did Bezos do to get rich? Jobs? Gates? Musk?
> Musk creating wealth has taken nothing from me. How about you?
That's exactly what he'd like you to believe. Where did that money come from? Did he just print it himself?
> Musk creating wealth has taken nothing from me. How about you?
Considering that billionaires are actively involved in writing the laws that ostensibly apply to them (see also: regulatory capture), I hardly think that legality should be highest bar that we hold them to. After all, the lords of medieval France acted "legally" when they executed their tenant farmers for failing to pay rent after a bad harvest.
> Where did that money come from?
The value created by his company. That value can be turned into money by selling shares of it (stocks), or by borrowing against it (bonds).
Money is created by banks. When banks loan you money, that money is created by a notation in the bank's ledger. But they only loan money on collateral, which would be in this case the value of the company. The money gets destroyed (!) when the loan is paid off. But the value of the collateral remains.
> The value created by his company.
A company is just a legal fiction. It doesn't do anything without people. The value was actually created by the people who work for Musk. In other words, those employees create a large value, and are paid a relatively low compensation. The difference goes to Musk, who contributed no value at all.
That's called theft.
> Money is created by banks.
Huh? No it plainly is not.
>It's up to individuals to take advantage of the opportunity, or not.
The problem is that after decades monopolies consolidated and you have massive offshoring of labor to cheap countries and offshoring of profits to tax havens, there's not much opportunities the working class individuals can take, as all the opportunities are now geared towards the asset owning rent seeking class.
There are endless businesses you can start with little to no capital.
> There are endless businesses you can start with little to no capital.
Well, that's good news. I guess the cause of poverty must simply be laziness.
That's convenient, because it allows me to demonize the lower economic classes without having to address the systemic inequality that rewards capital ownership over labor.
My dad told me I wasn't afraid at all of hard work. I had no problem lying down next to it and going to sleep.
Value is created by some combination of 1) working 2) taking risks.
Entertaining as it is, participating on HackerNews is not a path to making money.
Like what? Will they be profitable?
I started my own software business with no capital.
That's very impressive. How did you write software without a computer?
The school had one. When I wasn't at school, I wrote code in spiral notebooks.
Today you can buy a computer for $25. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=raspberry+pi
You can pick up a keyboard at the thrift store for about $5, and a monitor for maybe $15.
Okay so you admit that you did in fact have capital and you were lying before?
Did you ever compensate the school for their involuntary loan of that computer or are you now admitting that you are a thief?
If you count being a Doordash or Uber eats self employed sole proprietorship as "endless business opportunities", then yeah you could be right.
I had a paper route as a boy. It was definitely a business, as I contracted with the newspaper publisher for it. I bought the papers from the publisher, delivered them, and collected money from the customers. How much money I made was a function of how many customers I could sign up for delivery. I made enough to buy a car.
Real estate agents operate in much the same way.
Have we already gotten to the part of the conversation where you just admit that your entire understanding of economics is based on a handful of personal anecdotes?