I disagree. This is about as meritocratic as it gets.
A person, the professor, who put in the work to learn an advanced subject with the potential to advance society, evaluated two others who also put in the effort to push the boundaries of knowledge and engineering.
Together, they wanted to bet on being able to develop something with a ton of utility. And they did.
There is an argument for insufficient social safety nets or excessive wealth/income gaps due to insufficient wealth/income/property/estate tax, but this example is not evidence of an unfair system.
>A person, the professor, who put in the work to learn an advanced subject with the potential to advance society, evaluated two others who also put in the effort to push the boundaries of knowledge and engineering.
Who was born in Canada in 1951 near one of the best engineering universities in the world, perfectly suited to benefit from economic liberalization and was lucky enough to be interested in computers at a time when almost nobody was and as a result was able to be around the best computer science people.
So yeah I'd say born pretty lucky - made a lot of really timely calls that lined up. Lets not pretend this was $10B of hard work - they aren't comparable
There were many many startups from that time period that failed. Most venture capital funds lose money. 20 years after the fact everyone is a genius. Heck, if it's all so obvious what's going to work, why weren't you mining Bitcoin on your home computer in the early days?
They risked their money and reaped the awards of there investment. The success of a company is not determined by a dice roll, it is determined by the founder’s execution and product market fit. Given this, I’m not sure how you would consider this to be an inequitable “lottery”. Do founders who do not execute properly and make a low quality product deserve the spoils of success?
However, I do agree that we should keep the rest of humanity in mind.
The key assumption of what you're saying is it had to do with luck & that luck should be more evenly distributed. However, it was definitely out of meritocracy and deliberate effort.
No, the incentives are actually perfectly aligned.
Risk is correlated with reward. People who invest $100,000 with a 0.001% chance of even getting their original capital back, should see massive returns when the investment works out.
lotsofpulp|2 years ago
A person, the professor, who put in the work to learn an advanced subject with the potential to advance society, evaluated two others who also put in the effort to push the boundaries of knowledge and engineering.
Together, they wanted to bet on being able to develop something with a ton of utility. And they did.
There is an argument for insufficient social safety nets or excessive wealth/income gaps due to insufficient wealth/income/property/estate tax, but this example is not evidence of an unfair system.
AndrewKemendo|2 years ago
Who was born in Canada in 1951 near one of the best engineering universities in the world, perfectly suited to benefit from economic liberalization and was lucky enough to be interested in computers at a time when almost nobody was and as a result was able to be around the best computer science people.
So yeah I'd say born pretty lucky - made a lot of really timely calls that lined up. Lets not pretend this was $10B of hard work - they aren't comparable
peyton|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
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narrator|2 years ago
blueyoda|2 years ago
However, I do agree that we should keep the rest of humanity in mind.
neximo64|2 years ago
Rury|2 years ago
People B did the initial legwork.
People C paid for the growth (which came from work they did elsewhere).
In the end, person A disproportionately benefited on the backs of persons B and C for the amount of work they did in the entirety of the outcome.
Yeah, person A is arguably merited a ROI, but the insane amount is what some people find is unmerited here.
refurb|2 years ago
Risk is correlated with reward. People who invest $100,000 with a 0.001% chance of even getting their original capital back, should see massive returns when the investment works out.