This should surprise no one, the whole system is designed to move wealth away from poor people working for wages, into the hands of rich people who earn returns on capital. Surely this comment will get downvotes, but it's useful to learn about how the entire financial Rube Goldberg machine works in order to understand this in depth. Ray Dalio's talks (you can find many of them on YouTube) are a good place to start if you want a light introduction.
IMO it's time to rethink the financial system (and I'm a strong proponent of UBI as a way to redistribute wealth). Just because it's been done a certain way for decades doesn't mean it should continue to operate that way.
The financial system as we know it today was designed in an era where information did not flow freely, and we did not walk around with an internet connected computer in our pockets.
The financial system as we know it today wasn't really designed but rather evolved in an era of genuine technical growth. Since we can't deliver the inputs (real innovation), but desperately try to maintain the outputs (economic growth), it has become more and more unstable (bubble prone).
There are people, like Warren Buffet, who do very well riding these waves. What I find weird is that some of them are revered on HN.
The HN community has always been about finding ways to get rich. The startup/VC culture is entirely about getting rich. Pretending it's not is a big lie that SV has always perpetuated.
So, naturally, people admire those rags to riches stories.
For the record, I'm not against people trying to get rich, but I really dislike the fact that so many people try and pretend it's about something other than getting money.
Being a VC is not a charity, it's literally about growing an investment. Starting a company is not about charity, it's about generating revenue and ROI.
There's growth through technical innovation, which has pretty sweet positive externalities, and there's growth through through speculation, which is more like gambling really, looking for an edge in the game. I'm not opposed to the latter but I don't find it very impressive.
It's not correct to think that capitalism is some natural force. We form states to decide on the rules of the game. The fact that some of the rules are made by people like buffet in conversations with public officials and lobbyists is where the whole 'this system was designed' thing comes from.
Billionaires and millionaires speak with presidents all the time and develop strategies publicly with them, it's foolish to think this has no effect on the structure of the capitalistic system at all.
Of course it was designed. The wealthy pay an obscene amount of money on lobbying and political campaign donations, at every level of government from top to bottom. They don't do it out of charity, they expect a nice return on that investment, and they've gotten it. The laws are all in their favor.
Managers are the wealthy. Corporate governance is a joke, and shareholders are only nominally the "owners" of companies. They're not making the day-to-day decisions and have only very coarse influence over how corporations operate. Much like the voters' relationship to politicians.
It's a mistake to look at per-firm performance. To a large extent, the wealthy are cooperative rather than competitive with each other and collaborate on class interests. The goal is to protect their collective power. They often know each other personally, went to the same schools, sit on each other's boards of directors, and bail each other out when things go pear shaped.
Yeah, politicians share a lot of UMC views because they're UMC. That's not really lobbying though.
Either way, we don't need some marginal or even non-marginal improvement in the tax code. We need genuine, honest-to-god inventions moving the world forward.
Meanwhile, we're inventing fewer drugs and they cost more, more and more people in the academia are making slower and slower progress, tens of thousands of programmers are making slightly better IRC, USENET or Jabber programs. Trends that can't continue, won't.
You mean like people who post to HN? If you are a tech worker in the US, it’s more than likely your income is in the top quarter of household income. If you are on the west coast, you’re likely to be in top decile.
They spend all of their time focusing on the billionaires but they don’t see how the rest of the population sees them.
How many are advocating increasing taxes of people making above 200K (putting them in the highest decile)? How many admits that they have benefited from equality between their chase to “work for a FAANG” or get rich from exit?
While I'm not necessarily defending Buffett, he (like everyone else) is playing by the rules. The problem isn't the people playing the game, it's the system itself and the rules of the game.
IMO it's time to rethink the financial system (and I'm a strong proponent of UBI as a way to redistribute wealth). Just because it's been done a certain way for decades doesn't mean it should continue to operate that way.
The financial system as we know it today was designed in an era where information did not flow freely, and we did not walk around with an internet connected computer in our pockets.