There's no net loss to the economy here. If billionaires could own the means of production, fire all the humans, replace them with robots/LLMs, and keep all the money, they would. Paying those funds to workers instead of stock buybacks is one of the only ways those megacorps contribute to the economy.

> There's no net loss to the economy here.

Surely people engaging in unproductive labour is a net loss to the economy? Do you have some odd definition of "value to the economy" that is not the sum of the efficient market price of the goods and services?

A dollar in the stock market is not the same as a dollar spent on goods. Money back to billionaires becomes the former, money paid in workers' wagers predominantly becomes the latter, and is significantly more effective.

I don't wholly disagree with you, but I think it's more nuanced than that.

A dollar returned to investors and re-invested in a new technology that ends up saving everyone two dollars seems like a pretty effective use of that dollar, much more than putting that dollar in an employee's pocket who intentionally didn't do the most efficient thing.

Now, I'm not sure of the odds of that outcome. Maybe most of the time that dollar ends up getting wasted on funding Theranos or buying Twitter.

Regardless, I wouldn't fault an employee for doing something that's maximizes their own interest over the company's. Just means the company is bad at setting incentives properly. Not saying it's easy to do that, but none of us should value a company's welfare over our own. Sometimes the company's welfare aligns with ours, but not always.

Depends what the alternative use of that capital is. What “value” led Elon to buy Twitter and flush it down the toilet? When people have enough money, they stop valuing money much when they make decisions.

Having more and more money in the coffers of a tiny group of billionaires is actually deeply anticapitalistic because it prevents market forces from working.

More people I know use Twitter now than ever before… I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting it, but “down the toilet” is not where Twitter went.

Single-handedly taking your stock from 70 down to 30 is not something you can do if you can’t afford it. It’s bumped back to 53 or whatever, and lots of external stuff has happened too…but I think it’s hard to deny that his actions caused a massive dive in the stock price.

Anyway, my point was that Musk, Bezos, Gates, etc. can afford to act freely in ways (constructive or destructive) that violate all the behaviors that economics textbooks posit as being universal.

I'm confused; what stock are you referring to? Twitter doesn't publicly trade anymore, and has no stock price.

You are correct.

My experience is the opposite: while the Big Exodus didn't seem to happen, anecdotally the people in my online chat circles post fewer Twitter links than before.

I'm actually curious about HN posts: has the frequency of Twitter submissions changed since Musk's acquisition? Or, probably more usefully, has the average number of points per Twitter submission (or maybe number that make the front page) changed?

> Surely people engaging in unproductive labour is a net loss to the economy?

You mean unproductive labour like running a casino, producing tobacco, building superyachts, etc?

> In 2017, clothing worth £28.6 million was incinerated by Burberry to maintain their brand’s exclusivity.

There is a term, "Real Economy". playing on the stock market is not real economy, producing steel is. In the last 30 years, a huge change took place - we had something called Financialization, now the 'real economy' is only a small fraction of actually economy, and is dwarfed by financial markets and various bullshit.

That is some purity test thinking right there. I'll play - posting on HN is diverting your time and attention from helping feed the hungry, ergo posting is ultimately the same as contributing to world hunger.

the time you take solving world hunger means you're spending that time not curing cancer.

Posting on HN may be a vice but what that guy did was akin to a scam (crime). Also posting on HN is not doing good due to inaction where what that guy did was doing bad due to direct action.

I think that's a little harsh. What the guy did was create a lot of value for himself and the team of 50 under him. That was all at the expense of the company, but so what? It's just a company. Companies don't matter, people do.

I think the real issue is why did that company's culture and reward structure allow this to happen? It should be more "profitable" for an employee to come up with the most efficient solution. The fact that it wasn't is the company's failing.

> That was all at the expense of the company, but so what?

If somebody steals a plane or burn a building, so what? Insurance will pay.

> I think the real issue is why did that company's culture and reward structure allow this to happen?

It would be a positive outcome (for society) this kind of company (that rewards inefficiency and poor of work ethics) going bankrupt.

But it's complicated because there is a lot we don't see. Companies matter to, they are made of people and people depend on them to provide goods/services or income.

Sorta? Less wealth probably does mean less effective altruists giving half their earnings to AMF and governments giving less in foreign aid, but it's a rather indirect effect with a fairly large divisor.

Its definitely very bad though, something like this is much worse for the economy than a few welfare queens.

The company in question could set incentives so the two-week-one-person solution is rewarded much more than the nine-month-fifty-person solution. If they are incapable of doing so, then perhaps the best outcome for the economy is for that company to collapse under the weight of its own inefficiencies and incompetence, and be replaced with companies that can do the job better.

At that point they are already a government supplier of something the government needs (products, jobs, narratives).