One classic experiment has the reseacher give the chimps tokens in exchange for simple tasks, like finding a pebble and bringing it to the reseacher. Then the chimp can exchange the token for food. The chimps will do this all day for slices of cucumber. But if a chimp sees the researcher give another chimp a grape in exchange for the token then suddenly cucumber isn’t good enough any more. If the researcher keeps giving the first chimp cucumber then it will scream and throw it back, even uselessly threaten the reseacher.
Rationally the chimp is still as well off as before. It still prefers cucumber over kibble, and it is still worth the chimp’s time to earn the cucumber. What it doesn’t like is the _unfairness_.
> But seeing valuation rounds of tens of billions and now a net worth of a trillion dollars - million times million - it just feels like the game is eternally uneven and I can't in good conscience support these ideas anymore.
Do you see how you are making the same mistake? If you earn the millions you wanted then you will still be just as well off as you would have been before you found out about someone earning a trillion.
Of course it’s not entirely a mistake to want fairness. Fairness is a good thing in many cases. But when it comes to self–improvement we have to look beyond fairness and try to be more rational. Earn those millions and be satisfied. They will provide you just as much stability now as they ever would have.
The thing tied to the dictionary shared by the people here - SAFEs, pre-seeds, Sand Hill Road - has shifted.
~Ten years ago SF and the Valley represented the opportunity to meet quirky people, have smart fun, build something and maybe get an order or two magnitudes richer than your parents.
Now Paul Graham is lecturing Oxford students about how you can become a billionaire in 9 months.
It's all gotten insane.
I used to respect him, have his book in print and now I feel like everything he and his world represents is shifting further and further away from what I consider a disciplined, virtuous life.
I no longer want to play their game.
Having a YC badge on my front page has turned from something I longed for to an idea that's oddly cringe now.
Start a company, sell something people want, earn your stability.
What part of that requires associating with Paul Grahram or YC?
It’s not the same mistake. I’m doing fine. I have completely tuned my life and aspiration to my income. I need know more and I am personally satisfied. But forget morality and “who has enough”. Money is just not moving sufficiently in the system. And even traditional capitalists are sounding the alarm on this. It’s not about how much Elon Musk has compared to me. It’s looking at the total distribution of money.
But like all the rules about the economy and capitalism not being a zero sum game are dependent on moderation and a set of rules. AI companies really are sucking up all the capital leaving less money for smaller firms.
Depending on how AI companies tie themselves to the government, you could see bailouts and inflation that make us all poorer.
JD Rockefeller aside from starting a monopoly had deals with the railroads most people at the time found immoral and this was either against or before the concept of common carrier.
So like - there are a lot of ways in which - I want to be a sort of economically conservative capitalist. I want to live in a world where we have a set of rules that create a level playing field. But we’ve had this slow drip of deregulation and norm breaking over the past 100 years, and yet debates of socialism vs capitalism still sort of come down to oversimplified debates of “are you meritocratic or not”.
And then cap this off with the fact that business wealth is extremely concentrated in the magnificent 7; capitalism isn’t capitalism without competition. I forget the name of the group, but there are even though leaders on the right that see that like wealth is not currently distributed the way any reasonably moderate person - left or right - idealizes it to be. It feels like we are so far from the colloquial definition of - “someone has a good idea, invents it, sells it to people, and gets rewarded”.
On some level, if Elon musk sold 100 million cars and pocketed 10k each, I might not care if he was a trillionaire, but we need to realign incentives with tangible value and not financial games.
And you can't really say that, because instantly you're attacked with "so you want Elon's money!" - I don't. I'm not even a US citizen. Not even a resident. But I also see the Starlink trails from my balcony and there are three Teslas parked in front of the building I live in right now. It's global.
I just believe owning $100B+ worth of assets, paying less % in taxes than the average Joe, while taking out loans against said assets is... corrupt. Not legally, but morally.
I really like Porsche. Then again, I made friends with a homeless guy a couple corners away. He's been on the streets for two years, can still make his way back.
I can't imagine sitting in a 911 without having first made sure he has a roof over his head.
And I'm not trying to signal virtue here, this is an anonoymous account after all.
I went to the kind of elite east coast college where people were generally mostly pretty left and weren't too "capitalist" to begin with, but even my friends who were more business-oriented or economically moderate before are now openly pointing out that it's not working out well for the vast majority of people.