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meowface • today at 4:44 PM • 0 replies • view on HN

The discussion was originally about Altman. If we're going to discuss Musk: sure, he is an absolutely horrible person and political figure in myriad ways. Arguably one of the worst people alive, in some ways. (Despite his laudable business achievements and some public goods like Starlink.)

One can't lump together Altman and Musk. (Plus they despise one another.) Or lump together all tech CEOs or all billionaires.

The rest of your post is incorrect, zero-sum thinking. There is not a fixed pie which people take proportional slices out of. That's not how wealth or the economy work. Nor are relative wealth differences the most important thing people care about. People somewhat care about making more or less money than their neighbor, but they care even more about their absolute standard of living and material conditions.

Some thoughts on this topic that I agree with, by the creator of this website:

https://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

https://www.paulgraham.com/sim.html

https://www.paulgraham.com/ineq.html

https://x.com/paulg/status/2089044855158956533

https://x.com/paulg/status/2052510098035998846

As for concentration of power in societies: so long as there is still democracy and some laws preventing ultra-wealthy people from influencing politics through completely corrupt means (directly bribing politicians), it's not necessarily a big deal, if everyone already has great lives. The issue with people like Peter Thiel is they publicly say they dislike democracy, whereas someone like Sam Altman publicly (and I suspect privately) supports democracy.