Hacker News Reader

Comment by planetsprite | Hacker News Reader

That's why u never become an employee in the modern age. The only way to become wealthy nowadays is to own things: own companies, securities, certificates that allow you to perform certain useful jobs. The actual work is dirt cheap; access to the results of the work is pure gold.

View on HN

"That's why u never become an employee in the modern age."

Suppose everyone follows your advise- how will the economy function?

I work for others as an employee so that I can buy assets and businesses (e.g. house, 401k) for myself.

I think our economy would function very well if more people do this. Many already do.

Sounds like collective bargaining to me

People would decide to form companies, so we would never get what the commenter wants.

This idea was explained really well back in 1937, in The Nature of the Firm. It explains why we form companies instead of all being individual contractors making trades with each other.

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

Worse unless someone has figured out how to do the internal coordination that companies do. That’s a huge part of why first world countries are richer. They have large companies that embody social technologies and make long term and large scale coordination easier. Most people want security more than you be an entrepreneur and perhaps get rich, with much higher chances of losing everything and higher stress because the buck stops with you.

It wouldn't. If your society goes down that path it will sink with all the grifters.

What about winner takes all markets? For instance there's only a few major ridesharing companies. It would be hard to start a small, profitable ridesharing business. And they couldn't pay staff engineers 500k+.

Don't start a ridesharing company then. Start a company that VC's couldn't possibly invest in (or don't want to) but is profitable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com