And also the argument appears to be that we should accept progressive politicians as the arbiters of morality. Because they have the best of intentions, or so I'm told, even if the practical results of their policies are uniformly disastrous.

Is there going to be a no-true-scotsman if I ask about the last time the US had a budget surplus (4 in a row iirc)?

Highest average rankings over decades on nearly every common measure of quality of life going to.. right, the Scandinavian countries who happen to have had the most progressive governments over the same timespan.

Uniformly disastrous, should very much have followed the leads of politicians like Russia's. A prime example of the polar opposite of progressive.

pg’s argument is essentially 1. Build something people want to buy 2. If you do, you can get exponential growth of people buying it 3. This isn’t inherently immoral.

There are many assumptions around this you could argue about, but he’s directly addressing the original statement (which was also simple, and did not explicitly include the assumptions either).

I agree they are talking past each other - a lot of this is more related to marginal cost differences than anything else imho (basically how leveraged the value of my labor could practically be).

1. That exponential is a sigmoid in disguise. Who knows if it'll top out above 1 billion?

2. If you don't have an unfair anticompetitive moat, you'll have competitors, driving your profit towards zero as usual.

1. Who knows that it will? The point is just that it’s possible.

2. This is one of the (many) side assumptions that are worth discussing.