<story><title>Shut Up, Paul Graham: The Simplified Version</title><url>http://eev.ee/blog/2016/01/04/shut-up-paul-graham-the-simplified-version/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>gregdoesit</author><text>&amp;quot;Perhaps someone with millions of dollars could give more of their money to organizations fighting poverty rather than investing in a premium coffee subscription service.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I do look up to Paul Graham and don&amp;#x27;t like to see him attacked unrightfully. However reading the several responses made me ask as well: why does someone like PG just accept economic inequality, and blog about it, instead of using some of his visiblity to reduce it, however little this might be.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t like economic inequality which is why I do a small bit of my own - loans on Kiva and volunteering every now and then. I&amp;#x27;m just a software engineer and this is what I decided to do based on my belief and my available resources. Bill Gates has more of the means and he is also using some of his resources to reduce poverty, and thus economic inequality. There are many other people who care about it, and do something, and even more who just don&amp;#x27;t care and don&amp;#x27;t do anything about it.&lt;p&gt;We know PG also cares about economic inequality, as this is his second blog post. It only is fair to ask: what is he doing to help reduce it? If he shared some of this, it would make his post much more credible.</text></comment>
<story><title>Shut Up, Paul Graham: The Simplified Version</title><url>http://eev.ee/blog/2016/01/04/shut-up-paul-graham-the-simplified-version/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>chiaro</author><text>Kevin Systrom made around $400M before tax when he sold Instagram. After 15% CGT, there&amp;#x27;s $340M left in cash. Whether this is a &amp;quot;fair&amp;quot; reward or not is a political opinion. I&amp;#x27;ll put forward mine here:&lt;p&gt;1. Equity stake is a poor proxy for share of value added, or risk assumed. One man alone did not create $400M worth of value.&lt;p&gt;2. Massive payouts provide incentives, but is $340M such a greater incentive than, say, $100M? If founders knew they could not make more than $100M, they would work just as hard.&lt;p&gt;3. The amount of money gained exceeds both the value created and the amount required to be sufficiently motivating. The remaining $300M, could therefore more equitably be used to save around 60,000 lives with negligible ill effect.&lt;p&gt;This is one case (sorry Kevin) but I think it illustrates how out of whack things can seem.&lt;p&gt;The whole pg post came off as very defensive, almost kind of persecuted. Which is understandable, that&amp;#x27;s the knee-jerk reaction to criticism levelled at one&amp;#x27;s moral standing. Here&amp;#x27;s hoping he&amp;#x27;ll be a little more analytical and take his ego out of the analysis in future.</text></comment>