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Comment by galacticaactual | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand this article. People with money want to do stuff with that money. Somehow the thesis is that people should intervene? Where does that stop? Should VC investment be subject to democratic vote? Perhaps we should first get good at demanding how our own tax dollars are being spent before making demands on how folks ought to spend their personal fortunes.

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It's a fair point. One thought that comes to mind is Mark Zuckerberg. No doubt Mark has grit, work ethic, and level of intelligence greater than most people. Even if he never founded Facebook, these are some of the key ingredients for above-average success and he still had a high likelihood to become very wealthy.

Where things get weird is that he is one of the wealthiest people in the world by a large margin. It's weird because it's due to the most potent ingredient: luck. This doesn't invalidate how extraordinary he is, it's just an important factor. Right place, right time, right family, etc.

So that has made him one of the wealthiest people in the world, meaning he can shape society and move governments. Do you think it makes sense for that kind of power to come down to a roll of the dice?

> Do you think it makes sense for that kind of power to come down to a roll of the dice?

Yes. Do you think it makes sense to look at human prosperity and say “there’s a large random component to who gets wealthy and who does not. Lets change that from “random” to “I decide.”” Do you see why other people would rather have wealth distributed by a randomized meritorious process than by bureaucratic fiat?

Luck or Uncle Sam?

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense for that sort of power to be a dice roll. If the system is completely deterministic then people start gaming it and the result is politics. It is better to allow the dice to roll than to mandate everyone goes with a bad choice.

I see a call in your comment for rewards to be given out of innate qualities rather than observed outcomes. If you have a method for determining that; how about we do a small trial in politics first - where it would do more good - and argue about how well it worked? There is no evidence in my view that it is possible to determine people's innate qualities from a distance. The difference between a genius and a fool is too slim. It is doubtful that there has ever been a method to do that which worked.

Between, say, the American way of embarrassing riches and the EU way of equality I note one didn't produce many tech companies.

Interesting argument that gives me something to think about. Though the last line doesn't make much sense to me.

  Between, say, the American way of embarrassing riches and the EU way of equality I note one didn't produce many tech companies

You seem to be implying that producing many tech companies is somehow indicative of a superior result. It's borderline heresy to argue otherwise in HN of all places, but are we certain about that?

> Between, say, the American way of embarrassing riches and the EU way of equality I note one didn't produce many tech companies.

This is a great point that is often ignored. People like to claim that X or Y EU nation is better governed than the US or enjoys greater happiness. However they are also beneficiaries of all the innovation that has come out of America for them to have those standards of living - things like the smartphones and the Internet in recent times.

How about www (invented at CERN)?

What was invented in CERN was hypertext. WWW and internet was largely built and commercialized in US.

I think it’s fair to say that a lot of innovative technologies were invented in Europe, but most of them end up being commercialized in US due to market incentives and the whole funding and support infrastructure these incentives created.

By "inventing the WWW" I meant designing HTTP and HTML as well as implementing the browser and the server software. This all was done by Berners-Lee around 1990.

>these are certainly all the ingredients for above-average success and that's expected and he certainly would have become very wealthy

(My emphasis).

That's simply not true. People nearly always ignore the element of luck that allowed success to happen, and it's the biggest mistake that people make in terms of their politics, IMO. There are countless examples of people's success which they put down to characteristics such as these, but they ignore the luck that allowed those things to come to fruition (and indeed the blind luck that allowed them to have the skills in the first place). They didn't happen to many others with the same characteristics, who no-one has ever heard of.

Sure, we're in agreement, I just didn't word it properly. Updated

By that definition all men are born equal and the only thing that differentiates them is luck. Luck to be born somewhere, luck to attend some school, luck to earn money, luck to start a business, luck to have a physical prowess.

Floyd Mayweather Jr., arguably the most successful boxer so far is also luck? Luck to be born a great boxer?

I've been at the right place at the right time many, many times and totally failed to recognize the opportunity, as did most everyone else.

> the blind luck that allowed them to have the skills in the first place

Oh phooey. I don't know anyone who was touched by the wand of the Magic Skill Fairy and suddenly was a chess master, a virtuoso guitar player, a physicist, a champion bodybuilder, etc.

> They didn't happen to many others with the same characteristics, who no-one has ever heard of.

Because they failed to recognize the opportunity, or couldn't be bothered to do the work to take advantage of it.

What do you replace the luck with?

We already elect governments and they already have immense resources, more resources than even the richest individuals. So replacing "luck" with democratic election probably just ends up with more and bigger government? That just concentrates all power in government which I think would be worse than the problem you see.

How much luck goes into becoming a successful politician?

I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just wondering if things are any better in government roles.

> So that has made him one of the wealthiest people in the world, meaning he can shape society and move governments. Do you think it makes sense for that kind of power to come down to a roll of the dice?

Everything is a roll of the dice if you stretch it enough.

All the politicians, all the wealthy and rich people are right place, right time and right skill set.

That can be said for anyone, including our elected leaders. Obama was "lucky" to be gifted with high intelligence (genetic lottery), good public speaking skills and high extroversion, which eventually led to his election as POTUS. Does this mean his outsized influence was undeserving?

We need a rubric that doesn't entail boiling people down to their causal antecedents, because doing so doesn't let us dismbiguate between worthy and unworthy - everyone and everything is a byproduct of this definition of luck.

Those personal fortunes are also products of laws. Jeff Bezos is wealthy because he owns a huge number of shares in Amazon. He is able to do this because this is a legally recognized form of corporate governance.

Imagine a bunch of Amazon workers suddenly decide to start ignoring directives from on high and pursuing goals other than enriching the shareholders. They're fired, naturally. They keep showing up to Amazon and using its resources. Some people from payroll are in on it. Why can't this happen? At some point the government gets involved and people start getting arrested.

The idea that private wealth is somehow separate from public governance is common enough in our society, and it's easy to hold on to if your idea of government is always an interference with the status quo, but if you consider that the status quo is created by a system of government actions in the first place, it's clear that this idea doesn't actually make sense.

I think a core realisation is how those money come around. Opposite to popular belief, it is not an individual that earn money, it is the society that awards money to an individual. We should think about how that works.

As a democracy, we are free to think up tax schemes to ensure engaging activities, hope, and meaning for that masses.

As a supporter of the democracy, I can not say that is happening when only a few govern the largest sums of wealth.

Society doesn’t award money to individuals. Other individuals award money to individuals, through mutually beneficial exchange (wages, purchases, etc). Don’t make the mistake of giving society too much credit. Sure we need roads, power, and the basics to be able to build businesses at all. But society doesn’t do much more than that to fuel success - that is still largely built on the backs of a few intelligent, hardworking risk takers.

Society is especially at its worst when they get in the way of individual freedoms and free market distribution of wealth. I think a good example of this is California, whose policies are bad for business, whose public services are terrible despite massive taxes, and whose overall economic size is more because of a lucky agglomeration in the Bay Area than because of intentional governmental policy.

I think you are mixing up society with governance.

People with money want to do stuff with that money. Somehow the thesis is that people should intervene?

We do this already, they’re called laws.

Nobody can buy their way out of civilisation, even if some people obviously dream of doing so. No man is an island entire of itself.

The whole point of seasteading like the MS Satoshi in the article, and space colonization to a lesser degree, is to remove yourself from the constraints of a country's laws and develop a society of your own.

Yeah, and I’m saying it’s not possible. Everything these people do and have done is with the blessing of established countries, they simply don’t have the resources to establish viable corporate colonies outside the reach of civilisation.

The primary blocker is that the nations who have nurtured these characters will not take kindly to any assertion of independent sovereignty. They’re funny that way, and tend to start to start wars over such things. $200 billion is a lot of money for a person to posses, but it’s a rounding error in an international conflict.

Best to stick to what they are good at: finding highly profitable niches (through profit and government subsidies) within existing civilisations (which I suspect is what they’re actually planning).

> Nobody can buy their way out of civilisation, even if some people obviously dream of doing so. No man is an island entire of itself.

Sure they can. Find a place which is not taken already, have enough money and you're on.

Find a place which is not taken already

There isn’t anywhere, and if there is, there will be war over it. Things like seasteading and colonising the solar system are for the birds; these are not prime areas of real estate. You’re talking about places that we struggle to keep robotic probes alive for a significant amount of time, never mind people. If I was to attempt this, I’d probably go for Antarctica, but the challenges involved make the endeavour just seem absolutely ludicrous.

have enough money

Nobody on earth has enough money for this.

This is all ignoring the fact that once you found a new nation, you’re just recreating what you were trying to escape from in the first place: the hell of other people.

Probably worth just paying the parking fines instead.

> Should VC investment be subject to democratic vote?

In an ideal world, yes, especially if those investments end up influencing the lives of millions/billions afterwards.

Why? Those with wealth have typically earned it by creating value for others and getting paid for it. That money is theirs to spend as they see fit. Why should society intervene and have a say in what they earned through voluntary transactions? That seems unjust and arbitrary to me.

Moreover there is no reason to believe that a democratic process will produce better outcomes than alternative (technocratic?) processes. The public is poorly informed, manipulable, and their sentiments aren’t optimal.

So much for freedom. If another person isn’t hurting you by building a colony, why should you have a say? Sounds like a society based on jealousy and envy.

If you want a colony, go advocate for more funding for NASA. The US government’s budget is in the trillions and up till now it deficit spends like crazy. That is far larger than the entire net worth of any of these billionaires.

The real issue is that government and society now is too fractured and inefficient to actually execute on such a project and people just want to commandeer things instead.

> So much for freedom. If another person isn’t hurting you by building a colony,

Who said anything about "non-hurting"?

Going back to tech investments, I'm pretty sure that if we were to put the initial investments into companies like Facebook, Twitter or even Google up to vote ("do they deserve the money or not given their future influence on society?") the results would be pretty close, given how much they actually did hurt part of our society.

The same goes for these "colonies", which are basically just another tech investment with the potential to influence the life of millions/billions in the future, potentially for the worst.

You still have not shown a single way these colonies hurt. They don’t exist yet. You just read hypotheticals from one side. It is also known as pre-crime.

Here are some examples. Look at the Pilgrims. They left because of religious persecution. It doesn’t matter at all if they were or were not rich. Why should you have a say as to why they should not be able to leave?

So you are putting up to a vote whether a person or group of people get to leave?

If you have an issue with Twitter in current form, go get a law passed. Don’t prosecute them before they have done anything. Don’t go pass laws that violate rights such as freedom of movement.

When you say colonies, my mind renders these dystopian plots when one guy builds a great community with tricky rules and then covertly abuses a whole next generation, because they grew up with it and most of them can’t see anything wrong or decide to quit. Thank god it’s only fiction and we don’t have that irl.

You read too much dystopian fiction. I don't see why society where sicko runs things is more likely than society where virtuous person builds heaven.

There are far more ways for things to go wrong than ways to go right.

One could argue that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with unlimited wealth and unlimited spending as long as there is no money-power equivalence. Unfortunately, there is (money-power equivalence). This is not a case of buying bigger and bigger yachts. This is a case of influencing the very fabric of society, including its laws, by a small minority.

> Somehow the thesis is that people should intervene?

People already "intervene", by enacting laws and systems that subsidize the creation of individuals like Zuckerberg or Bezos in the first place.

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