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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

I'd rather be with a group of backwoods rednecks to be perfectly honest.

But I digress. The economy isn't about heros fighting nature to save the day. Its about everyone working together to make an environment where creation is possible. You take Zuckerberg and leave him in the middle of the woods, and what happens? Does he still create wealth? No, he's useless without being plugged into the larger economy. That larger economy is made up of ordinary people. They are poorly compensated not because their contribution doesn't matter, collectively, but because they are fungible. Is fungsbility a fair criterion for structuring an economy?

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>You take Zuckerberg and leave him in the middle of the woods, and what happens? Does he still create wealth?

If I were to bet on it, I'd bet very heavily on him creating wealth under those circumstances. As measured by creating a system for survival. Obviously not as well as someone trained in such things (as implied by your dodge), but better than someone who lacked his intelligence, and more importantly, his drive.

Ordinary people are compensated ordinarily because their contributions to the economy are ordinary. That actually does seem quite fair to me. I appreciate the work cleaners do, but their jobs simply don't contribute to the economy as much as building a large company like Facebook does.

That's not to say everyone who is highly compensated contributes highly to society, we all know that isn't true. But that's also not really what we're discussing.

Maybe it only seems ordinary to you, because it doesn't interest you. Its upper-middle-class arrogance showing, that nobody's job is as important as jobs like mine. What makes cleaning 'ordinary'? Try firing your cleaner/garbage man/street sweeper for a month and see how that impacts you.

And what on earth does it mean, to contribute to an economy wherein only 'non-ordinary' folks benefit? That's pretty circular reasoning. I'd argue that the esoteric jobs of building web gadgets are the fluff and foam of our economy, unimportant to real health and welfare, and way, way overcompensated.

>And what on earth does it mean, to contribute to an economy wherein only 'non-ordinary' folks benefit?

I have no idea where that came from or what it means, so I can't respond to it.

I made a point of saying that I respect the importance of ordinary workers. I've spent most my life in ordinary jobs, your assumptions about me aside.

However, the fact remains that individually their contribution to the economy is much, much less than the individual contribution of someone who founds and directs the construction and growth of a large company.

Glad to hear about respecting 'ordinary' workers. Still, I suspect there's a difference between respect and understanding the importance of these workers.

If the pay of 'ordinary' jobs is to be set to some low minimum level, then the 'job making' or 'economy building' of the non-ordinary people will have no benefit for most folks. Its fine to brag about building wealth; but if its the highly-educated building wealth for themselves then who cares? But them of course.

The economy is not the plaything of those that have figured out the system. Its not there to make them wealthy, though I have no problem when that happens. As long as we remember the whole system is supposed to be for everybody.

There is a long chain of responsibility in an organization to allow anyone to function effectively at their job. Repeating what I wrote above, take away 'ordinary' tasks and the company grinds to a halt exactly as dead as if the CEO were removed. Maybe not; a company can go on for a year or so without a CEO on momentum; it stops dead if payroll stops processing, or heck if the lock on the front door breaks and nobody can get into the building.

I agree with you in general, but you are not winning any loyalties to your idea with this attitude. Shaming a person and accusing of snobbery is a bad way to drive your point across.

When I debate the social good aspect of entrepreneurship and tech entrepreneurs priorities, I try to appeal to the rationality of the self-interested agents. We, as a humanity, have two unambigous pathes in future. Either everything is really good or everything is equally bad. We are heading to near-utopia or to full-blown dystopia.

Tech entrepreneurs and investors hold the power to change the world faster than anyone else. More wealth inequality --> closer to the dystopia. It rational for anyone with power to influence the world and possible future to contribute to the decrease of wealth inequality.

I guess such approach to discussion would be more beneficial to your cause.

>> Tech entrepreneurs and investors hold the power to change the world faster than anyone else. More wealth inequality --> closer to the dystopia. It rational for anyone with power to influence the world and possible future to contribute to the decrease of wealth inequality.

Unless they think that their lives will be better by increasing inequality, particularly in their individual case (cf. Tragedy of the Commons). And that may well be true, as they would disproportionately hold power and capital. Is it better to be a rich man in a society slowly going to hell or a poor one in a society slowly on the rise?

It's a non-empathic viewpoint, but I can understand why some would consider it rational and self-interested.

Wealth hoarding is mostly a hyperprophied survival instinct. The rational person would optimize for happiness, not wealth. The connection between those is not linear, see: http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2010/09/07/the-perfect-salary-fo...

Also helping other is a significant factor in emotional wellbeing.

I mostly blame the current snapshot of evolving social system, not the actors, even psychopathic ones.

IMHO, it has nothing to do with importance or impact of the work one does. It has to do with the supply and demand: Even if we assume the irrational that e.g. a cleaner's work is 100x more important than Zuckerberg's work, the fact that for every Zuckerberg we can find much more than 100 cleaners means that a Zuckerberg is much more important than a cleaner, not that cleaning is more important or less important that Zuckerberg's work. In fact, personally, the impact from absence of cleaning would be much bigger than the impact from absence of Facebook. But if I take the importance of cleaning and multiply it by the scarcity of cleaners I get a smaller product than multiplying the importance of Facebooks with the scarcity of Zuckerbergs.

I don't think there is a true scarcity of Zuckerberg's as every day I walk down the street and am amazed at the overwhelming mass of self important d-bags walking around....

All trolling and snark aside your comment is the antithesis of the point that many factors outside of the individual contribute to their success. If you believe that then the number of those individuals capable of similar success rises dramatically. Also those who clean and do "ordinary" jobs are people who are similarly shaped by many factors they don't control.

Also I am very certain that people would get by better without Facebook then they would with the lowly legions of those toiling away to keep the world merely "clean".

> Also I am very certain that people would get by better without Facebook then they would with the lowly legions of those toiling away to keep the world merely "clean".

I totally agree with that. That's why I weight it with the scarcity. Of course you disagree with the scarcity of Zuckerberg, but in my comment I assume that what defines a "Zuckerberg" includes the outside factors that the individual doesnt control.

"You take Zuckerberg and leave him in the middle of the woods, and what happens? Does he still create wealth?"

I doubt that ability grow the company and be the CEO correlates much with the ability to hunt and kill an animal. Especially if we are talking about hunting in isolation, CEO skill is mainly in dealing with people and making strategy. If you drop someone alone in the middle of woods, he needs to be strong, fast and know a lot about nature. Otherwise said, Zuckenberg would do as good as any other random man.

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