https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffiel/
"CEO and cofounder of Twilio"
> and what thread did he jump into?
I don’t think any CEO can be moral if your primary obligation is “shareholder value”. Or in plain language: making other people more rich at the cost of others.
I’m just happy the guy got out when the company didn’t align with his values anymore and he has the means to afford himself a conscience.
Not everything is zero sum. There is a reason that when you purchase something both sides say thank you.
unless you can legally appropriate property with no money or any other type of compensation then where is this magical free pie?
But if we're considering utility-- how useful stuff is to me-- it is far from zero sum.
If I produce lots of wheat, being able to trade some of it for my neighbor's beef makes both of us richer.
You have a fixed amount of already acquired property
You do specified labor on that
You exchange your labor + property for someone else’s labor + property
That’s commerce and has nothing to do with the question I’m talking about, which is: How you acquired the property in the first place is the ethical question.
What’s unethical is if your a neighbor was struggling to survive and instead of caring for him out of your property and labor, you convinced him to trade your excess money for a portion of his property in perpetuity.
So no, there is no more uncaptured “pie.” It should have never been caputured in the first place - it’s equally everyone’s right
We may no longer be peasants (hard to prove), but a large number of extinct species and ecological disasters would like to argue the “not zero sum” point.
Nobody cares about your stupid degrowth ideology that advocates for death and people to be poorer. Just state what you actually are, which is anti-human.
>Nobody cares about your stupid degrowth ideology that advocates for death and people to be poorer.
Is also not true. Having a 1km lawn is excess. Flying solo on a private plane to visit an office halfway across the world for 1-2 days every other week is excess. No sane person arguing for this position is claiming that people who can barely find food every day is living in excess and must suffer degrowth. It is the privileged that needs to degrowth and redistribute their excess wealth. Do you really think that the Earth can sustain had every single person on Earth lives like the ultra wealthy? Or even as the middle-class American with single unit home in the suburb? We would probably annihilate almost all of "interesting" flora/fauna and be left with chickens and cows if that at all. Maybe that's a perfectly reasonable trade? AFAIK humanity must take priority over every other being AFAIC.
I think this depends on how you classify peasant. If we can agree that it's about income inequality, and not quality of life, then there was a study done comparing income inequality in the late eighteenth century to current day, which concluded that "Incomes were much more equally distributed in colonial America than in America today, or in other countries in the late eighteenth century". https://www.nber.org/papers/w18396
Ultimately it depends on the specifics and the dates we are comparing. I don't think people fully realize how significant income inequality really is today.
Is it a problem, say, if we all achieved nirvana but some achieved better nirvana? Must we rebel against them too?
> Calling the modern middle-class human a peasant is quite misguided imo.
The modern middle class is shrinking fast. About 17%. Most people are either low income or poor.
> It is important to acknowledge that we have fared much better than our ancestors.
Look, we generally live much longer these days, so I think that's a decent measurement that we're far better off in aggregate compared to the middle ages. However life expectancy has actually been decreasing recently in many places, and we have some really big global problems to solve if we don't want that trend to continue. If that trend does continue though, then it becomes very hard to say we're better off than our ancestors.
> Is it a problem, say, if we all achieved nirvana but some achieved better nirvana? Must we rebel against them too?
Probably yes. Most people aren't zen. It's in our nature to measure our status among our peers, and probably responsible for most people's wealth and their drive to do better. Better is always relative. Before arguing the morality of this, you'll need to also defend the morality of billionaires (what's the point really?).
This statement is straight up false. Obviously you gain and lose value, and are interested in whether it's a net gain or loss. It's worth nothing that a gain or a loss here is only anecdotal to our own human experience so far and without accounting for potential debts (externalities) still owed... like global warming, monoculture, antibiotic resistance, nukes, etc. You're attempting to make a rule in an extremely non-scientific manner, and making a ton of assumptions to boot.
> Nobody cares about your stupid degrowth ideology that advocates for death and people to be poorer. Just state what you actually are, which is anti-human.
I've never even heard of this Degrowth ideology... My ideology, if you can call it that, is simply taking responsibility for our actions instead of making up a bunch of buzzword horseshit. I'm not advocating for anything but the basic admission that it stinks when we fart. This "not zero sum" statement is as much a fantasy as religion is. I'm not asking you to stop farting or to save a whale. Just stop polluting my ears / eyes with corporate doublespeak.
Suicide is quickly becoming the leading cause of death
I’m not sure we’re any better off now holistically
So... If you are complaining about destruction of habits for animals, and global warming, then yeah. If you are complaining about us extracting minerals... Rocks don't have feelings, they don't get a vote. If we could mine them without polluting and destroying ecosystems, not only we probably should, but we should start thinking on how to also mine asteroids and stuff.
> decimated humanity
How did we do that? There are more people now than in any previous point in history. There are a lot of people suffering, but quality of life by numbers is probably a lot better now than it has ever been.
> globally hopeless (look at birth rates)
So is population growth a good thing cause it shows people are happy, or a bad thing cause it means we won't have enough resources? I prefer us to have a stable population for the long run, at least until we can get to space.
> individual alienation has never been wider spread
How informed do you think illiterate peasants used to be?
What is happening, is that the American empire is in a state of decay right now. But the world is bigger than just the Western cultural world. Yeah, it might suck to not get getting all the fruits of imperialism that the US and European countries used to get. It makes the imperialist countries poorer not to have that. But for the formerly colonized people, their life gets better.
This is the society we live in, created by capitalism that demands unsustainable growth.
Scarcity is the problem, not capitalism.
Attention and logistics. The cost of getting things where they need to go, the administration of an empire, frequently dwarves by orders of magnitude the cost of the materials being transported to and fro. The problem is not solved by localisation given the increased exposure to volatility that brings.
I’d say the capitalists do a better job.
Capitalism is the framework that makes all those people work together: The nun, the family guy, the corporate shark, the idealist who can buy land and create an inefficient community based on non-monetary exchange.
Capitalism also makes us globally quite rich (by virtue of allowing us to simply take the revenue we generate in our startups), which affords us the luxury of giving 63% to the state. Supposedly in exchange for the state taking care of poor people. It’s the capitalism that allows me that money.
So I get it, you pin everything bad on capitalism. It’s just that you allow CEOs to pactise with the state to remove freedoms from you. Meanwhile you forget that this unprecedented lifestyle improvement since the industrial revolution, it’s also due to capitalism.
Who are you blaming? If you're so virtuous, why don't you give away half of your money to a homeless person?
Sorry but I get really frustrated by this lazy kind of 'well why don't you do it?' response. It just feels like you're trying to convince yourself that you're right not to care (to be clear, I have no idea whether you do or not), and implying that anyone who does, and hopes for something better, is just a hypocrite.
But that is a very uncharitable framing of their philanthropy.
The whole point, is to point out that some people have enough money to uplift hundreds of thousands out of poverty. Some have greater personal wealth than the GDP of an entire country, and that those people should either:
Give up some part of their wealth for the greater good.
Never be allowed to accumulate that much personal wealth in the first place.
The common person, like myself, doesn't have that kind of money. I cannot even afford a house for myself.
And you think they don’t?
So no. And especially so for the corporations they own.
I am really glad I am starting to see a lot more posts here on HN with regard to this fact. Capitalism is literally destroying everything and has proven itself not to be a viable system for long term sustainability and a healthy society and ecosystem.
Some of the smartest people on the internet aggregate on HN and some have still not figured this out. Either because 1) They haven't taken the time to look into the n-order knock on effects that are produced by capitalism in it's current form, or 2) they are too interested in self-enrichment to make any changes to behavior for their own comfort and convenience.
We should get of publicly traded corporations and Wall Street should disappear in my opinion. It is that publicly traded shareholder value that drives all the crimes against society/environment in this late stage. However, we are up against a severely selfish and entrenched minority with a ton of power who won't let that happen ... at the cost of everything.
You can't give credit all the credit to capitalism. Communism destroyed what was the fourth-largest lake in the world, which was so big that it was called a "sea"[0].
> Some of the smartest people on the internet aggregate on HN and some have still not figured this out. Either because 1) They haven't taken the time to look into the n-order knock on effects that are produced by capitalism in it's current form, or 2) they are too interested in self-enrichment to make any changes to behavior for their own comfort and convenience.
The age-old adage that anyone opposed to your viewpoint is either stupid or evil.
The age-old adage that if it is not capitalism, it must be communism.
> The age-old adage that anyone opposed to your viewpoint is either stupid or evil.
Which one are you? Sure my take was reductionist, but you are using my critique to distract is disingenuous. You are trying to defend capitalism by saying that you are not stupid or evil. If I have missed an adjective to describe people who have not discovered this ruthless system of destruction what would it be? Ignorant? Willfully Ignorant?
I don't think HN is for you.
There's always Reddit.
Says one with the hubris to decide what is right for me.
This is what largely I am arguing against. I think the benefits of capitalism have been proven, but the negatives are largely brushed aside. I think this form of capitalism is dangerous (and I should have been more explicit about that in my original comment). My original comment was to get rid of publicly traded companies and remove wall street altogether. Private companies can continue to exist and compete but the profit motive to solely deliver growth and profit to public shareholders has distorted the whole system into pro-forma income sheets at the best and to outright devastation and exploitation at the worst. Private companies would be largely in check because they wouldn't grow unchecked by raising capital they don't have by going public. In so doing, they wouldn't be "in debt" (overloaded non-technical sense of debt) to shareholders. This would lead to more sustainability and less growth over everything mindset. The knock on effects I mentioned would contribute to a more just and fair system.
That said, I am not an economist, but I would like to see this world exist for future generations. And this economic system isn't it.
Why would a for profit company invest into basic research without a clear goal to monetizing that research while their competitor is spending that money on marketing?
"Why would a for profit company invest into basic research without a clear goal to monetizing that research while their competitor is spending that money on marketing?"
The only form of R&D spend that cannot be monetised is that which fails to better meet consumer demand, which is a purposeless waste of money.
Rephrase your question so it make sense.
I get a monthly magazine called Jacobin that is filled with bough criticisms and alternatives
Trying to find people who aren’t either fundamentally greedy or barely hanging on is nearly impossible so it’s just mostly people exploiting each other.
I am personally trying to build a cooperative that is mutually owned by employees, and it’s structurally really hard because the legal system doesn’t know anything about how to do that. The entire system is built on the assumption of profit maximization. You don’t go into a banking situation, without telling them the type of business, and the type of profit that you expect. so in every single aspect of attempting to do commerce in the United States, or worldwide today, the default functional system, which everybody uses, because there is no alternative system to use, makes it effectively impossible to do something else without totally building it yourself from scratch.
But that's because you're not just banking with someone, you're asking them for a loan. That money has a cost associated with it so the bank quite reasonably wants an indication you're able and likely to repay it.
Waste is waste under any economic model: if the input costs in whatever form they take exceed outputs the endeavor isn't viable.
You can't go up to people and say "hey, I have this incredible idea for an art project, please give me enough money for 5 years go work on this". A few artists can, but most a) won't convince other people that their specific idea is as good as it might be, and b) can't create enough publicity to actually get enough people's eyes on their ideas.
Your "it's not great if people don't want to pay for it" might work in a system where every human can talk to every artist and compare everything. But that is not our world. There will always be people who are undiscovered, there will always be people who could create great things, but don't have enough money.
But I don't think a capitalist can actually understand this.
They are (almost identical) to a dividend, which yes, enriches shareholders but
a) that's kind of the point of a business
b) especially in startups employees are often shareholders as well, and meaningfully so
c) even if they weren't, how do they hurt employees?
The modern, for-profit stock corporation with EXTREMELY rare exceptions, does not materially benefit labor in the long run.
In the US at least, the fact of employment isn’t some gift to the laborer, which a lot of employers claim. You will literally die decades earlier as an unemployed person unless you have a job and you have no say in keeping it.
What funny is, a decade ago here on Hacker News the vast majority of advice was “don’t expect any payout as an early employee at a startup” and “VC aren’t your friends”
However it’s been a big shift since then with people (mostly non engineers) arguing on behalf of shareholder primacy as valid and ethical.
(this audience is extremely biased by the way given that its mostly made up of the global 1% that befits from capitalism)
If you ignore the wages (direct and indirect) paid, then sure. Otherwise, I'm not sure how you can argue that in good faith when the largest expense almost any corporation has is labour.
Unless you consider employment itself being a benefit to the laborer, your statement is only reflective of expense grouping in financial statements.
But it's not an entirely invalid viewpoint. There really is a lot of room for reasonable minds to disagree.
(Full disclosure: former Twilio employee and current Twilio stockholder.)
I didn't know, and apparently yes, Twillio employees get RSU at entry as a standard perk. Now, those are still just RSU.
I couldn't get an exact number but if they are in line with most other companies, the stock raising while hypothetically the employee compensation goes down the drain would still a net negative for employees.
Stock buybacks benefit those with previously free capital while at the same time hurting those without free capital currently. In a capitalist system this does hurt workers quite a bit.
Are you saying the price of an individual stock is what's pricing people out? Having trouble reconciling that with the fact that only a few stocks are above $1000 (which doesn't seem to hard to reach if you want any substantial savings), and then stock splits and fractional shares happen often.
Or are you just saying that they will own a smaller percent of the total stock, so they have less say as stockholders?
It's a totally valid debate.
If workers want to take on the risks of the business they can become investors
If capital wants to take on the risks of being suddenly fired and losing access to healthcare, injured on the job, sued for non-compete, being forced to relocate to keep benefits, lack the freedom of vacations, sick leave, parental and bereavement leave, being forced to commute to and work in an office with other people during a deadly global pandemic, deal with stress and potentially harassment and discrimination, sometimes be forced to surrender their work life balance to handle completely predictable emergencies, be forced to work on days off because of shortages and scheduling screw ups, be forced to travel to keep their job, they can roll up their sleeves and Get A Job.
It's ridiculous to pretend this isn't a valid negotiation.
If you own a lawnmower (capital), and you want to hire someone to mow your yard (labor), it's clearly and obviously a negotiation for appropriate wages. Why would it be ANY different if you're paying them to mow your neighbor's yard, and you pocket the profit???
Oh I forgot, you went to the HOA and pulled a regulatory capture coup d'etat and convinced them that only Certified lawn companies should be able to charge to mow in the subdivision, and there's a prohibitive fee and delays and inspections, making it practically impossible for the guy to save up and buy his own lawn mower to compete with you and "take on the risks" of business ownership you worried about.
Software development is a really interesting capital class, because the means of production are humans. So it’s not the same as owning a big loom machine and expecting a return on your capital investment, in software the loom is people, you don’t own them and they are directly linked to your value creation. This needs more thought than simple: worker vs owner dichotomy
or pensions, fully paid HC, the list goes on.
One purpose of the free market is to deliver the best value to consumers at the lowest expense possible. If a company is making excessively vast profit, then there isn’t enough competition making a cheaper product of the same value to the consumer.
‘Excess profit’ can be argued as the free market not working. Profit has no value to humanity if the system doesn’t deliver on other promises.
Plenty of privately owned businesses IPO and become subject to the same forces. Less than 50% of publicly listed companies are VC backed.
If you avoid the venture investor route, you can avoid both outcomes (a) and (b), keep the company privately owned, just stay awesome and customer-friendly forever, and avoid being forced to eventually prioritize shareholders over customers.
The owners have either (at great pain) developed a sufficient capital base and succession plan to provide continuity (which would require significant ongoing investment in R&D out of cash flow in order to develop competitive products), or they must find a plan for the business. Going public solves this problem for them, so does selling privately. Neither option really eliminates the requirement to remain competitive.
(a) Some dude is making $500K/year at Google or $250K/year elsewhere or whatever
(b) They start a privately-owned company and hit $1M/year personal income and are pretty happy, at least happy enough to not want to go back to working for someone else
(c) But then soulless conglomerate offers them $20M+ in one go for an acquisition
I don't blame them for taking the $20M. It can be a life-changing amount of money.
The public market is the idealized landing spot for VC and in fact is usually the default and desired pathway for all institutionally funded companies
To the extent that startup boards choose or heavily push a specific category of CFOs in order to drive company structure that would lead to an IPO.
Go look at the employee history of a lot of startups and you’ll see they either changed CFOs or got one for the first time, after a massive B but certainly not long after a C round.
I think investors are the start of the cycle. If they wanted a different breed of founder, we'd all be singing a different tune, here on this webpage and elsewhere.
As a former Twilio employee (and current stockholder), I have to disagree with this. Stock buybacks generally raise the stock price (or at least keep it from falling). Up until 2020 or so, Twilio was fairly generous with equity comp (at least for some of us; obviously I can't speak for all employees), so employees do indeed benefit from stock buybacks.
This is a typical cycle for a venture backed technology business. There’s just nothing else to say here other than this is 100% expected outcome if you decide to build a product on venture capital money, which requires an exit and an increasingly large exit to the point where you IPO.
Unless you avoid this structural pathway, you will be 100% guaranteed to do this.
I am unaware of a venture capital funded technology company that has maintained the core of what they do, and the value proposition, but didn’t push most of their money into paying for sales marketing executive compensation and eventually finally, stock buybacks, or other things that directly enrich investors at the cost of employees.
Having had a couple points with Jeff Lawson I believe he’s a good person who wants to do the right thing for the most amount of people and do it ethically, which is why he jumped into this thread. However, he faces the same pressures as everybody else, and so it’s honorable that he is attempting to find ways to mitigate the downside harms of this new direction but at the end of the day the arrow of history is clear.