Billionaires Blast off

[laughing dog]

Your jabber proves you missed the point - many innovators are not motivated by wealth.

It's not jabber - it's showing that your claim does not fit the example you provided.

No, it is jabber.

Just because Orville Wright died with a net worth of "only" 10 million (in today's dollars) does in no way show he was not motivated by wealth. Because
a) 10 million net worth is still pretty wealthy
b) the brothers made some business blunders that limited their wealth creation no matter their motivation
c) the big commercial success of aviation came many decades after their first flight

You miss the point. $10 million is not that much when the discussion is revolving about billions of dollars. The Wright brothers made a truly revolutionary innovation without reaping billions of dollars which suggests that there are innovator who are not motivated solely by the reward of billions of dollars.

 

[lpetrich]

Reality doesn't have the concept "fair". It's purely a way of pretending workers should be paid more than market rates.

Define "market".

 

[bilby]

Inventions with revolutionary potential made by a mysterious aerospace engineer for the U.S. Navy come to light.

https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/us-navy-inventions-change-reality

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK?

The U.S. Navy controls patents for some futuristic and outlandish technologies, some of which, dubbed "the UFO patents," came to light recently. Of particular note are inventions by the somewhat mysterious Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais, whose tech claims to be able to "engineer reality." His slate of highly-ambitious, borderline sci-fi designs meant for use by the U.S. government range from gravitational wave generators and compact fusion reactors to next-gen hybrid aerospace-underwater crafts with revolutionary propulsion systems, and beyond.

Of course, the existence of patents does not mean these technologies have actually been created, but there is evidence that some demonstrations of operability have been successfully carried out. As investigated and reported by The War Zone, a possible reason why some of the patents may have been taken on by the Navy is that the Chinese military may also be developing similar advanced gadgets.

Among Dr. Pais's patents are designs, approved in 2018, for an aerospace-underwater craft of incredible speed and maneuverability. This cone-shaped vehicle can potentially fly just as well anywhere it may be, whether air, water or space, without leaving any heat signatures. It can achieve this by creating a quantum vacuum around itself with a very dense polarized energy field. This vacuum would allow it to repel any molecule the craft comes in contact with, no matter the medium. Manipulating "quantum field fluctuations in the local vacuum energy state," would help reduce the craft's inertia. The polarized vacuum would dramatically decrease any elemental resistance and lead to "extreme speeds," claims the paper.

I don't know much (anything) about creating quantum vacuums, but it doesn't sound like stuff that someone could undertake in their garage. Nor does this sound like something for which an enterprising individual might succeed via a go-fund-me campaign, or even by recruiting venture capitalists to invest in. Yet the return might (or might not) dwarf the accomplishment of creating a reusable rocket booster - the only truly novel part of Musk and Bezos' celebrated endeavor (Binnie flew higher in SpaceShipOne - twice - some seventeen years ago).

I'm not trying to say that anything truly new always requires government investment, but some things require risks that the private sector simply will not shoulder.

During the Cold War, both sides leaked "classified research" into hugely difficult but potentially game-changing technologies, with the sole intention of wasting their opponent's resources in pursuit of these impossible goals.

An enemy who wastes billions trying to match your (alleged) breakthroughs in the creation of quantum vacuum multi-substrate supersonic vehicles, is an enemy not spending those billions on research projects that might actually prove fruitful, or on current technology like submarines, aircraft, missiles, and nuclear warheads.

I see no reason to imagine that this strategy was abandoned when the Cold War ended.

 

[bilby]

Fair pay for productive work is not taking from the employer. Taking advantage of an imbalance of power by paying the workers as little as possible, it's the employer who takes potential earnings from employees.

Which means that you have it backwards.

Reality doesn't have the concept "fair".

Humanity does though.

It's purely a way of pretending workers should be paid more than market rates.

It's not a pretence.

Everyone - worker or not - should be provided with enough to survive.

There's no physical law that says we must allow people to starve if they can't persuade the market to exchange their labour for sufficient resources.

Indeed, most people in society already live by the labour of others. Children and retirees, housewives and homemakers, the sick and the injured - huge numbers of people do no paid work, or are paid too little to support themselves, and are dependants of others.

Humans are a social species. We're not able to be self sufficient, and proposing that we should be, because free market economics demands it, is frankly insane. It's entirely a matter of political choice, to what extent we let market forces dominate our economy. They're not the word of god, or an unassailable fact of reality; They're a choice.

Every OECD nation redistributes some wealth from rich to poor. The question is not, and never was, 'Should this happen?'. It has always been 'How much should this happen?'.

You cannot even approach that second question if you start with the blatantly absurd false premise that money should only go to those the free market directs it to.

 

[DBT]

Fair pay for productive work is not taking from the employer. Taking advantage of an imbalance of power by paying the workers as little as possible, it's the employer who takes potential earnings from employees.

Which means that you have it backwards.

Reality doesn't have the concept "fair". It's purely a way of pretending workers should be paid more than market rates.

Who do you think sets 'market rates?' If most of the profits/wealth flows into the hands of a small percentage of the population....who is regulating fair distribution of wealth for work performed in generating that wealth?

The 'market?' I don't think so.

Why should workers not get their share? Or are workers supposed to sacrifice for the profit of the extremely rich? Is that your ideal world?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Fair pay for productive work is not taking from the employer. Taking advantage of an imbalance of power by paying the workers as little as possible, it's the employer who takes potential earnings from employees.

Which means that you have it backwards.

Reality doesn't have the concept "fair". It's purely a way of pretending workers should be paid more than market rates.

That isn't actually true. The concept of "fair" is what happens when probabilistically positive and negative behavior is rewarded based on an artificial allotment based on the probability rather than the probabilistic outcome, so as to allot rewards based on values and behaviors rather than randomizations.

Some things must not be perfectly fair. Too much fairness robs a system of it's dynamism. But fairness certainly allows for more useful outcomes at selection; Too much individual variation against a core attribute makes it impossible to reliably prevent false negatives/positives on the axis of discrimination.

It's really a matter of tuning the balance between fairness and probabilistics so as to encourage enough bad selection to guarantee the presence of abnormal or borderline capabilities (dynamism) but ensure that the majority of success happens because of work.

Reality comes into it that this is going to create better outcomes for agents that adopt the strategy. We have adopted it, and the conclusion is "the system as it stands does not include enough fairness for optimal function".

Present an objective means of measuring "fair".

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Fair pay for productive work is not taking from the employer. Taking advantage of an imbalance of power by paying the workers as little as possible, it's the employer who takes potential earnings from employees.

Which means that you have it backwards.

Reality doesn't have the concept "fair". It's purely a way of pretending workers should be paid more than market rates.

Who do you think sets 'market rates?' If most of the profits/wealth flows into the hands of a small percentage of the population....who is regulating fair distribution of wealth for work performed in generating that wealth?

The 'market?' I don't think so.

Why should workers not get their share? Or are workers supposed to sacrifice for the profit of the extremely rich? Is that your ideal world?

Market rates are a result of supply and demand.

That's why labor prices are going up--a lot of people left the labor market because of the pandemic.

 

[Jarhyn]

That isn't actually true. The concept of "fair" is what happens when probabilistically positive and negative behavior is rewarded based on an artificial allotment based on the probability rather than the probabilistic outcome, so as to allot rewards based on values and behaviors rather than randomizations.

Some things must not be perfectly fair. Too much fairness robs a system of it's dynamism. But fairness certainly allows for more useful outcomes at selection; Too much individual variation against a core attribute makes it impossible to reliably prevent false negatives/positives on the axis of discrimination.

It's really a matter of tuning the balance between fairness and probabilistics so as to encourage enough bad selection to guarantee the presence of abnormal or borderline capabilities (dynamism) but ensure that the majority of success happens because of work.

Reality comes into it that this is going to create better outcomes for agents that adopt the strategy. We have adopted it, and the conclusion is "the system as it stands does not include enough fairness for optimal function".

Present an objective means of measuring "fair".

I already did:

when probabilistically positive and negative behavior is rewarded based on an artificial allotment based on the probability rather than the probabilistic outcome

This is what makes fair. It's fairly apparent to me that the means of measuring is to observe whether doing something with a "7:6 payout" is on the side of spitting out 7 for every 6 you put in, or whether it pays out 0 most times and then 6*7 the one time.

A perfectly fair system returns the same output to every instance of input. Less fair systems are more winner take all. Lotteries are an example of an inherently unfair system.

 

[ZiprHead]

 

[DBT]

Who do you think sets 'market rates?' If most of the profits/wealth flows into the hands of a small percentage of the population....who is regulating fair distribution of wealth for work performed in generating that wealth?

The 'market?' I don't think so.

Why should workers not get their share? Or are workers supposed to sacrifice for the profit of the extremely rich? Is that your ideal world?

Market rates are a result of supply and demand.

That's why labor prices are going up--a lot of people left the labor market because of the pandemic.

Great demand does not necessarily translate in higher pay for workers, which typically means higher profits lining the deep pockets of those already very rich.

Plus I have given many examples of the exploitation of vulnerable workers in the name of profit.

You are not willing to consider the possibility that you are an apologist for excessive wealth and exploitation of vulnerable workers.

 

[DBT]

Who do you think sets 'market rates?' If most of the profits/wealth flows into the hands of a small percentage of the population....who is regulating fair distribution of wealth for work performed in generating that wealth?

The 'market?' I don't think so.

Why should workers not get their share? Or are workers supposed to sacrifice for the profit of the extremely rich? Is that your ideal world?

Market rates are a result of supply and demand.

That's why labor prices are going up--a lot of people left the labor market because of the pandemic.

Workers don't get a cut of the profits of demand according to their value and input. Workers get whatever employers decide to pay, what they can get away with....hence some move to developing nations to benefit from low labour cost.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I already did:

when probabilistically positive and negative behavior is rewarded based on an artificial allotment based on the probability rather than the probabilistic outcome

This is what makes fair. It's fairly apparent to me that the means of measuring is to observe whether doing something with a "7:6 payout" is on the side of spitting out 7 for every 6 you put in, or whether it pays out 0 most times and then 6*7 the one time.

A perfectly fair system returns the same output to every instance of input. Less fair systems are more winner take all. Lotteries are an example of an inherently unfair system.

There are too many variables in your definition for it to be objective.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Who do you think sets 'market rates?' If most of the profits/wealth flows into the hands of a small percentage of the population....who is regulating fair distribution of wealth for work performed in generating that wealth?

The 'market?' I don't think so.

Why should workers not get their share? Or are workers supposed to sacrifice for the profit of the extremely rich? Is that your ideal world?

Market rates are a result of supply and demand.

That's why labor prices are going up--a lot of people left the labor market because of the pandemic.

Workers don't get a cut of the profits of demand according to their value and input. Workers get whatever employers decide to pay, what they can get away with....hence some move to developing nations to benefit from low labour cost.

And thus going a long way towards bringing the world out of poverty. If you truly care about poverty outsourcing should be seen as a good thing.

 

[Bomb#20]

I see Tesla reported a QUARTERLY profit of $1.2 billion dollars. A couple of things on that, Musk will no doubt be well rewarded for that, seventh straight quarter of profit I believe. Why does the government continue to subsidize the purchase of these overpriced cars with tax credits ?

It doesn't. The tax credit for Teslas ran out back in 2019.

 

[Bomb#20]

Does anyone else find themselves secretly hoping that one of them explodes?

That’s wrong I know, but what’s the point of these trips? They aren’t advancing science. They’re just going a multi million dollar thrill ride.

I don't. This is how technological progress is made.

View attachment 34612

Somebody constructs the wheels, the struts, the engine, wings, seats, propeller so the 'rich guy' can realize their dream. Where they all working for a fair wage, or the bare minimum?

See any wheels or seats there? The struts, engine, wings and propellers they built themselves. They didn't want to build their own engine but all the ones they could buy were too heavy. The propellers, they not only carved themselves, they invented themselves. Previous attempts at powered flight were based on the notion that an aircraft propeller is a kind of steamship screw; it was W. and O. who figured out an aircraft propeller actually needs to be a 90-degree-rotated wing.

 

[Bomb#20]

No, you have missed the implications of your position. You take away the wealth, you take away what that wealth produces.

Nonsense - many innovators are not motivated by wealth. I believe when Orville Wright died, he was worth about 10 million in today's dollars, hardly a lot for the inventor of manned flight.

But not for lack of trying -- he spent a lot of his life in court trying to enforce his patent rights against an unending series of infringers.

 

[Bomb#20]

I see it as talking around the fact that the American standard of living is becoming more in line with the rest of the world, by decreasing the SoL for most people and concentrating wealth among a very few.

But the US standard of living for most people is increasing*. "More in line with the rest of the world" means poorer countries are rising faster and catching up. They're converging on us; we're not converging on them...

Perhaps true for the "average" American. But a nation shouldn't be judged on how it treats the wealthy, nor the average, citizen. It should be judged (particularly if it's a very wealthy nation overall) on how it's poorest citizens fare.

Thank you John Rawls. In the first place, I didn't say America is how a country should be; I said Elixir's claim about decreasing SoL for most Americans was wrong. And in the second place, your and Rawls' opinion is a preference, not a fact. Who's in charge of deciding whether the needs of the many near the median are outweighed by the needs of the few or the one at the bottom? Certainly not Rawls -- I read his book and a fair summary is "Utilitarianism with math errors".

View attachment 34639
Well, that's a problem we obviously need to work on. But it's not at all clear that it means Viet Nam has a better idea about social organization than America. You've identified a 0.001% sliver of the population who are less likely to die in Viet Nam; but there are an awful lot of 0.001% slivers of the population who are more likely to die in Viet Nam, since overall U.S. life expectancy is higher. And, since it's 0.001% of the population, it's not at all obvious that those are the U.S.'s poorest citizens. We have all manner of government programs that are effective at keeping the poorest several percent from dying of malnutrition. So how do you know those on your chart aren't for example, mainly victims of the drug war, or of the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill?

 

[Trausti]

What if the government confiscated Jeff Bezos wealth and invested it to create a highly efficient supply chain to lower the prices of goods, and the speed at which they were delivered.

This would greatly improve the lives of everyone!

 

[untermensche]

What if the government confiscated Jeff Bezos wealth and invested it to create a highly efficient supply chain to lower the prices of goods, and the speed at which they were delivered.

This would greatly improve the lives of everyone!

Why should we as a society have to deal with Jeff Bezos? Or the whims of any billionaire?

His wealth should be taxed massively.

To pay for stuff like Medicare for All.

 

[DBT]

Workers don't get a cut of the profits of demand according to their value and input. Workers get whatever employers decide to pay, what they can get away with....hence some move to developing nations to benefit from low labour cost.

And thus going a long way towards bringing the world out of poverty. If you truly care about poverty outsourcing should be seen as a good thing.

Workers dragged themselves out of poverty by forming unions and collectively withdrawing their labour, which enabled negotiating pay and conditions through an improved balance of power.

The industrialists were quite happy to keep workers poor, pay slave wages and allow horrendous conditions, and reap the profits.


You don't consider history or reality.