Reading 06: Wealth Creation

 I think that Paul Graham's pitch about startups is a fair assessment of the impact that tech-based startups in particular have had over the job landscape in the past 20-30 years. A lot of the most successful tech companies were born out of startups. However, I believe that the average startup is far less profitable than Paul Graham would like to believe. I think that the vast, vast majority of startups fail within the initial designing and testing phase, and don't make it to full production. These are usually unseen and fairly unheard of, as most of the strife that the startup accumulates is all internal and within the first weeks or months of the idea spawning. Most of these failed startups are heavily unprofitable, and depending on the amount bought in to the startup, tend to accumulate a lot of debt. I think that applying and joining an already mildly successful startup, as Graham says, is a much better and more reliable way to get rich, as a lot of the financial burden and internal strife has already happened, making it more consistent. Continuing further, I disagree completely with the second statement of income inequality. Extremely rich people today live eerily similar to those in the past. Houses full of servants is replaced with houses full of minimally paid housekeepers and landscapers, they still wear elaborate and uncomfortable clothes, and instead of a horse-drawn carriage they ride in multimillion dollar private jets. I think that thanks to technology, the sentiment among a lot of people is that these people do live similarly to we do. Those people are wrong. Technology has increased the difference in the lives of the rich and poor by an insanely drastic margin. Just because we use the same social media platforms and watch the same media means nothing in terms of the actual gap in wealth disparity.

I think that the next big thing that a lot of social media companies are trying to accomplish has already happened, but only in China. The next big thing that has been strived over ever since social media was invented was the true app that does everything. Banking, livestreaming, photos, chatting, gaming, achievements, videos on demand, TV, etc. all in one place that can be monopolized and marketed by one company to devalue and deflate all of those other markets individually so that they are the only ones left. This already has happened in China with WeChat. I took 4 years of Chinese in HS, and had the opportunity to go to China for a language immersion trip. The absolute stranglehold that WeChat has on China is incredible, and I experienced it firsthand. Every tour guide and local asked us if we had WeChat, and for good reason It is the app that has everything (in China), including but not limited to: banking, messaging, payments, streaming, advertising, mapping, gaming, translation, and integration with nearly literally any other Chinese tech service. I believe that your native-born Chinese WeChat account is directly tied somehow to your Chinese citizenship number and government profile, but do not quote me on that, I believe that is just a rumor. I got stopped a couple of times by people for pictures, not because they thought I was famous, but because there was a WeChat achievement for posting a picture with a group of American tourists. This obviously is only possible because of China's unique governmental situation, but American and European companies are stiving to do as many things as WeChat does within the rough legal bounds of the countries they are based in. The 'next big thing' is a race to see who can legally (or illegally) accomplish as many things on the list as possible, drawing users from as many places as possible to create an unstoppable tech conglomerate. This is impossible for small developers. And this is also why every social media keeps stealing from every other social media, from For You Pages, to Stories, to liking commenting and subscribing.