3078

The idea that the tax and regulatory regime in 1910 was ‘progressive’ boggles the mind. Sure, there was a progressive movement, and sure they were making progress against corruption and the depredations of industry, but an actual broad progressive regulatory regime didn’t emerge until the advent of FDR.

3079

The idea that no one else would have done what Amazon did is, well, absurd, in much the same way that the idea that no one would have done what Microsoft did is absurd. People were actually doing it. Sometimes there are market winners, and sometimes they end up being monopolies, but that doesn’t mean that what they do wouldn’t have been done had they not existed.

3080

At the end of the day is the “Great Man” theory of history applied to economics.

Which is suitably 19th century.

3081

That’s fair, but I was more responding to the idea of the “nothing to a billion” billionaires that Andy and Strollen seem to think are great for society. To go from zero dollars to a billion dollars, absent any other factors, can only be done through exploitation, not hard work and gumption.

Part of my issue with the way that capital accumulates that you mention is that it’s not a level playing field there either. If you’re already wealthy, you can invest in whatever stock or crypto you want, and you can even influence the price of it - your wealth gives you those opportunities that average investors don’t have, and your overall risk is so low that even if some of your stocks tank, you will almost certainly make that money up by the gains in your more stable ones. It really is like wealth reproduces asexually.

We look to moonshot millionaires who put their life savings into bitcoin or Tesla as success stories or visionaries, when the reality is that they gambled and won big. I wouldn’t look up to them any more than I would look up to the guy who wins the lottery.

He did it all himself? The sprawling Prime logistical network was built with his hands and his labor, not that of his builders? The plans for it were fully his, no engineers or project managers involved?

Like, I know you’re a capitalist and you think that being paid for the tiniest fraction of the value you create is fine as long as you agree to be thus exploited, but saying Bezos is self-made is as ridiculous as your boss saying he did your work.

And I still take issue with the idea that this entire private logistical network is a net positive for mankind. I’m not necessarily saying it isn’t, but the fact that it is a private network and the fact that Amazon is currently overrun with shit products, shit sellers, and gamed systems make me think that maybe it’s only really a net positive for certain people, not humanity as a whole.

For the wealthy in that time period, the French Revolution was about as far away time-wise from them as they are from us today. They had a hundred years of recent history to look at, so yes, they were keenly aware of what happens when you hoard your wealth at the expense of society.

3082

I mean the French Revolution was definitely not the end of said conversation. There were dozens of other smaller revolutions in that span, I flagged 1848 for a specific reason as at least a dozen countries had some form of uprising against aristocratic governments. The late 19th century was also the rise of socialist politics, and would soon boil over in Russia in 1917. After having had failed revolutions in Russia for over 20 years for the same cause.

If you don’t think they were keeping a side eye at the rise of groups like The International (which had US members and representatives) explicitly proposing international cooperation in a socialist Revolution to overthrow the existing power structures then you miss the context of the day. The International explicitly called for workers in Europe to refuse to fight in the coming Great Power war they feared, and instead use the government calling said war as an opportunity for workers of the world to rise up and overthrow the government. Their literal stated plan was, if Russia, Germany, France etc went to war for the workers not to fight or support the war, but to cooperate and overthrow their domestic governments in the great socialist Revolution.

Because the reality is that it is quite possible that, absent the rise of the progressive era, that a doubling down on entrenched wealth and exploitation could easily have led to the exact same outcomes as Russia saw, with the overthrow of the government.

Much the same way we look at the rise of authoritarianism in western societies today, it would be incomplete to say people today fear authoritarians because of Mussolini. It would be true, but paint a very incomplete picture by ignoring the very real contemporary examples.

For them the French Revolution could be one way it ended. But the starting currents were already active. It was a modern movement that the end state was informed by past examples, so a change in the conditions was needed lest things end where they feared.

3083

I think the increases in life expectancy and physical health are a pretty major component of standard of living.

I’m more familiar with America’s tycoons than Europe. Who is the European equivalent to Rockerfeller, who’s net worth was over $400 billion in today’s dollars?

That’s the thing… the richest people of that period were much richer than the richest people of today. The idea that we’re over the historical inequality maximum from the last 150 years isn’t accurate.

The data kind of obscures this though, because with cases like Carnegie and Rockefeller, the wealth wasn’t concentrated in the top 1%… it was concentrated in one or two individual people. It was concentrated in the top 0.0001%, and then the wealth falloff from them was dramatic before you got to the “normal” rich folks.

3084

Royalty? Many of them too, not concentrated in one or 2 individuals…

But Nicholas II was himself at the level of a Rockefeller

3085

When people talk about the contributions of CEOs, no one is claiming that the CEO manually programmed everything and engineered the hardware and packaged the shipments himself. That’s a ridiculous strawman. When a CEO innovates, it’s about making decisions and prioritizing things that other people wouldn’t.

You notice how you never see anyone with iPods anymore? That’s not because it was beaten by a superior MP3 player, but because Steve Jobs figured that smartphones would soon beat out MP3 players, so he started working on an Apple smartphone. I can easily see most CEOs (like some of Apple’s former ones) just milking the wildly successful iPod for years, and then being totally blindsided when smartphones came along and ate their lunch.

Plenty of people can design hardware or ship products, and of course that’s an essential part of the business. But if someone skips something incorrectly, the company maybe loses a couple of bucks; if a CEO makes a bad decision, it costs the company billions of dollars and thousands of jobs.

3086

…but not one you can really attribute to gilded age magnates.

3087

Honestly one of the most prominent benefits of capitalism is offloading risk to individuals, for exchange of them able to make significant personal gains. If a nation takes that risk on and fails, they get to join England as part of the UK. So letting a bunch of gilded age magnates make continental railroads makes a bit of sense if you squint hard enough.

The downside is that offloading risk isn’t just to nations to individuals, but from individuals to individuals, to the point where a significant portion of the population now exists as a bank from which to withdraw / create wealth at the cost of their wellbeing and/or potential, and those wealthy now expect the nation to take on the burden (the cost) of those risks collectively while they pocket the profits personally. See: Walton Family.

This is also why money-tree wealth, ie, stock market appreciation, is harder to track to 19th-20th century economics - it doesn’t “feel” like you’re oppressing anyone if your stock in Oracle goes up by 150%. It’s easy to see downtrodden French gleaners and iron miners in the Urals and understand the levers of oppression.

3088

I think most other people wouldn’t implement policies that result in their workers peeing in bottles on the job so I’ll agree with you here. The way that these great innovators like Bezos and Jobs exploited labor is absolutely disgusting yet some here believe they should be admired and near-worshiped for what they’ve done.

3089

I’m curious how many people 100 years ago claimed cars and trains only existed thanks to Ford and Rockefeller.

3090

It is important. However, it’s just not how standard of living is usually measured, specially historically (it’s more used when comparing countries at the same time). Moreover, while there’s indeed a correlation between improvements in economic conditions and life expectancy, that is assuming a somewhat constant medical science. If you look at life expectancy in the period 1900-1940, it shoots up everywhere regardless of economic conditions. For example in this chart you can see that the progression of Life expectancy in Germany did not change regarless post-war conditions (the period bt. WWI and WWII is the key here). The standards of living post WWII were certainly lower, and the economy a disaster, yet life expectancy kept shooting upwards:

image

3091

Here I was talking about the value of leadership in general, but yeah some specific leaders have made bad decisions so I guess the general case must not be true. You really got me on that one.

3092

Eh, nevermind.

3093

CEOs make decisions that affect thousands of lives and millions of dollars, and in some cases create entirely new industries. The existence of bad decisions doesn’t change that fact.

3094

Actually Musk first company was a video game company and at about 12. Of the 500+ business plan pitches I’ve seen at least 70% have a friends, family, and fools round. The $300K Jeff from his parent got is certainly on the high side, but hardly unprecedented. Every few months on Shark Tank, you see an entrepreneur who’s parents took a loan to help start the business. But you conveniently left out the rest of the origin story. He also raised a $1 million from local investors at $50K for 1% of the company, and he did by making 60 pitches. Which is a pretty impressive pitch average. If they held on to the stock today they’d be worth around $10 billion each.

3095

What company is this about? Where were the local investors?

3096

Geez, have you looked at other companies e-commerce web-sites? Try ordering Pet food from Petco, you’ll tear your hair out. Seriously, go check out a dozen other brick and mortar stores website and tell me, Amazon’s nothing special.

Obviously 150 million prime customers disagree with you about the value of Amazon products. Millions of other make their living selling on Amazon. But sure random guy, on the internet you must be right and everyone else is wrong they are “overrun with shit products and shit sellers”

3097

Amazon, Seattle I believe.