groundzeros2015 7 hours ago

> it's impossible to create a billion dollar enterprise without a group effort

George Lucas made a movie with a (small) group effort. But what made a billion dollars is his Star Wars universe which is almost entirely his creation.

It literally creates wealth for other people. If my toy sells $10,000 without Star Wars and $100,000 with it, did I participate in making George’s billion, or am I benefiting from it?

> means that they made decisions within that enterprise that resulted in a lopsided allocation of resources at the end.

What do you mean? Every good and service involves many people, but the degree to which they participate in its creation and risk vary. For example, a Farmer may create a more efficient way to grow food. Is the grocery store now entitled to a piece of the reward? They didn’t change anything, all of the improvement is the farmer side.

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tsimionescu 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The bit about Lucas is obviously not true. The universe he envisioned does not sell itself, it was marketed, developed, painted and modeled, added to, kept fresh etc for many many years by a huge army of people. If the only Star Wars media that existed were the original film, or even the original trilogy, it would sell relatively little by now.

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groundzeros2015 6 hours ago | parent [-]

So if you were to assign value to the work to make a new Star Wars toy would you it’s (total value of Stat wars) * (number of people who have ever worked on Star Wars) / (number of people who worked on the toy)?

That’s absurd. Obviously they are creating incremental wealth and their particular toy didn’t make or break billions.

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tsimionescu 6 hours ago | parent [-]

No, I'm saying that you can't attribute any significant percent of the value of a Star Wars toy sold today to George Lucas. If Star Wars had not continued after the 1980 films, these toys would not keep selling so much today.

The post I replied to allocated all of the monetary value of the Star Wars branding of a toy to George Lucas personally, which I think is obviously wrong.

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groundzeros2015 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Hmm, what about JK Rowling and LeBron James where the vast majority of their value is explicitly going to their publisher and they keep only a small percentage. Their tiny portion is a billion after everyone else takes most of it!

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well_ackshually 6 hours ago | parent [-]

JK Rowling, the proofreaders, the reviewers, the printers, the marketing, the librarians... Everyone in that list is in effect getting stolen from by the publishers, yes.

in the same way that Lebron didn't go where with his own feet, he benefited from coaches, support, doctors, nutrionists & cooks, all dedicated to putting everything into this one man. Do you think merely being a freak of nature nets you a billion ?

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blanched 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Right, and even if we assume Lebron accomplished his entire basketball career by himself and that his salary is 100% “earned”, his salary didn’t net him a billion dollars.

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groundzeros2015 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

you’re only strengthening the argument that people deserve asymmetric compensation. LeBron and the NBA have a symbiotic relationship where both of them make more money because they exist. And I would guess the NBA made a lot more money than LeBron.

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CPLX 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Also the idea that playing on a basketball team is a good counter to the argument that everyone is on a team seems pretty odd for obvious reasons.

	▲	groundzeros2015 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Are you sure the root of your concern isn’t that people differ in ability and value? Can you quickly break down which players on the team are fairly compensated and which are oppressed by LeBron?

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groundzeros2015 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Once again, the publisher gave her something like 5-10% of sales and kept 90% to cover those costs and she is still a billionaire!!! So is your real beef with the publisher?

	▲	well_ackshually 14 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Indeed. And once the publishers have paid their fair share, JKR also will, and she won't be a billionaire anymore.

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atwrk 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> George Lucas made a movie with a (small) group effort. But what made a billion dollars is his Star Wars universe which is almost entirely his creation.

If that were actually true, how come we can't predict what the next Star Wars universe will be?

Same for pop songs etc. If it were actually about objective qualities of the creation, and not just luck, the next winners of the lottery would be apparent even before they hit the theaters.

There is null inherent quality in the Star Wars universe causing the billion dollar revenue. If George Lucas wouldn't have been there at the right spot at the right time, the dominant IP would simply have been something different.

If you have kids, you can directly observer what actually happens: The IP owners dump huge amounts of money into merch and product placements everywhere, resulting in them getting in contact with the franchise before they are out of their diapers. My kids came home from daycare roleplaying lightsaber fights without any previous contact with the franchise at our home. The trick is implanting the meme (in the original meaning of the word) into kids' brains before another meme can nest in there.

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groundzeros2015 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Inability to predict the universe does not mean the underlying mechanism is actually random. It means you don’t understand it well enough.

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atwrk 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Well that conveniently makes your assertion unfalsifiable, doesn't it?

	▲	groundzeros2015 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Your position is that any correct prediction or investment can be explained by luck. That sounds more unfalsifable to me - it sounds like you’re neglecting evidence, actually.

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CPLX an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> What do you mean? Every good and service involves many people, but

Well yes. That is in fact exactly what I mean.

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blanched 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> George Lucas

Once again, lopsided allocation - George benefited from and is directly responsible for keeping the cost of labor low: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/100...

Would he have been a billionaire without that? Who knows? But it definitely helped him get there.

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groundzeros2015 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I addressed that. The movies themselves are not the source of the wealth and yes the original was created by a group so small that theoretically Star Wars wealth could have been divided evenly and they would be billionaires.

If you say the original crew did not do all the labor required to make the franchise grow in the future (obviously true), you are now arguing different people have had incremental impact on creating the wealth, which is kind of the point.

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blanched 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I might be misunderstanding your point then.

Are you saying that he/the small group are solely responsible for Disney wanting to pay 4 billion for it?

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groundzeros2015 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes I’m arguing that the original crew created within the ball park of a billion in wealth per-head.

The Star Wars franchise earned a tremendous amount of money before the one-time Disney payout.

Jk Rowling and LeBron James are additional examples.

	▲	CPLX an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It's instructive that people like you pick people like LeBron James or J.K. Rowling to make your points. The reason is that the conflict here is between labor and capital. And those two, at least in their primary roles, are labor, as a writer and an athlete. One of them is even a union member operating under a collective bargaining agreement. They're just the absolute pinnacle top of anything that could possibly be put in that category. But if I'm arguing that this is really about the division of of the spoils between labor and capital, and you have to resort to picking members of the labor class to make your argument then you have essentially conceded my point, which is that returns to labor are different than returns to capital, and returns to capital are much harder to defend. You didn't pick Bill Ackman for a reason.