[ericd]

They haven't stopped, many thousands of people still work for them.

And please don't downplay what Gates has done. He may have been a ruthlessly competitive businessman, but he has had a larger positive impact on the world than almost anyone else alive.

[jamieb]

My point is, if these people are magically special, why are they not able to create more jobs now? How come they stopped creating jobs? How come 50 million americans are without jobs?

Is it not, perhaps, the case that the situation was such that these jobs would have been created anyway? My complaint is this.

There are 400 rich people. There are jobs. You attribute a causal relationship.

I say, you could have killed every one of these 400 at birth, and we would still have the jobs (and to be clear I am not advocating doing that at all, I'm just making a hypothetical argument)

Now you might say that it is not these 400 individuals that matter, but that in any system with jobs, there would be 400 people at the top, and these people would have more wealth.

However, it is the "how much more wealth" that is the complaint. Not that there are 400 of them. The complaint is not that these specific 400 people are the problem. Nor that any such 400 would be the problem. The complaint is that a system that allows for the top 400 people to have such a disparate amount of wealth compared to the other 300 million is a fucked system.

To argue that without these 400 people, or any such 400 people, there would be higher unemployment is rubbish. That "we are better off because they existed".

Fuck you, frankly.

Indeed, its more likely that the richest 400 actively act to prevent individuals from gaining wealth and power that can threaten their own. As the feudal system collapsed, small businesses flourished. In order to maintain control, the ruling classes established laws requiring tradesmen to join guilds and pay fees. In the UK for example, guilds had to be recognized by the monarch.

In modern times, these guilds have been replaced by rules and regulations that have the same effect, but their justification is the same: "its in the public interest". Just as you couldn't buy cloth from a non-guild weaver in the 15th century - because it might not be good quality - so now you can't buy a car from Tesla unless Tesla pays millions of dollars for crash testing, or buys a design from an incumbent.

Similarly, patent lawyers. Accountants. That new iPhone app that records your heart rate? Want FDA approval for that? Want to be hit with a lawsuit for a covered medical device that you released without FDA approval? (because they are covered).

I'm not saying that a capitalist world run by a species that is happy to bomb its own offspring could be any different. I'm just saying don't fucking pretend that we owe them any praise. They get away with as much as they can just short of us rising up and killing them.

[danso]

Well, many of the jobs that have been lost are of the legacy type: jobs in which the creations of Gates, Jobs, et al. have made obsolete. At a previous company I worked for, each executive had his/her own scheduling and appointment secretary. While that may have been necessary back in the day before easy-to-use, syncable-with-your-mobile-device calendars were developed, the jobs that managed such tasks were the first on the chopping block. In fact, those jobs only continued to exist because it was more of a (emotional/sentimental) cost to cut them than to just keep them.

After the company trimmed heavily during recession and bosses got used to doing their own calendars there was no justifying hiring for these secretarial positions again. Sure, talented young out-of-college kids may have found new types of work, but not these former secretaries.

[ericd]

Wow. Way to keep it civil. Thanks for cursing me out.

I had written up a long response trying to explain how much the large companies these people have founded have helped the American economy compete and people prosper. Then I got to your section implying that crash testing was primarily a way for incumbents to keep startups down rather than being for the public good and I realized that you were either trolling me or are so unreasonable right now that it's pointless trying to argue with you.

[jamieb]

To which I would have asked "compete against who?" And you would have said "china etc" and I would have said, "Who the fuck do you think let these cheap chinese goods in here in the first place"?

You would have then started talking about how economists have proved that international trade is good for jobs.

To which I would have replied that americans leading economist said that in 2005 we should all be using ARMs to buy houses.

You believe the bullshit. I don't.

You get upset when people type characters like 'f' 'u' 'c' and 'k' in sequence.

I get upset when people justify a government-economic-hierarchy that kills fucking children with bombs because of oil and tell us "we're better off for it".

Yes it is pointless trying to argue with me. Enjoy your flat earth. I must be the crazy one.

[ericd]

No, not China, that's recent history. We sell our electronics, software, and services to the world. That's competition.

Go to a bar and tell a few people you don't know "Frankly, fuck you" and see if they get annoyed with you.

You're conflating lots of of only slightly related things. I don't remember any economists saying that taking an ARM was a good idea.

I agree that the current state of the govt. is more than a little messed up and outrage is overdue, but you're doing the cause a disservice by talking about the wrong things and generally sounding like a conspiracy theorist. Public-only campaign financing is a good thing to talk about. Talking about how crash testing for cars is used to keep the good guys down is going to get you ridiculed by the opposition, and whatever movement you're associated with will be ridiculed by association.