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  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #1654.

Elaboration:

I recently spent a Sunday vibe coding an ai image-gen micro-SaaS. The person that inspired me accused me of copying his product and threatened me to damage my reputation. However, I improved on his idea by implementing several features his product didn’t have such as allowing for multiple output styles and a landing page that better explained the product.

Most people hold fundamentally wrong ideas about morality. This includes those that copying business ideas is moral, that death is moral, that the existence of billionaires is wrong, and that not helping others is immoral. 

Morality is the knowledge about what to want, and what to strive for.

The most fundamental tenant of morality is to not remove the means of problem-solving and error correction. If society hinders a scientist from inventing and distributing a cure for cancer that is deeply immoral. Many regulations that restrict the freedom of people are immoral. 

Copying someone's business

The Samwer brothers famously copied Airbnb and other companies, but these companies provided the solution to people in different geographies or demographics, improving access to the solution. 

Their Airbnb clone, Wimdu largely failed because it was only a surface level copy that didn’t innovate on any aspect of the business. It incentivized Airbnb to innovate on better host support, internationalization, trust infrastructure, and regulatory compliance.

Opening a lemonade stand two blocks from an existing one incentivizes both lemonade stand operators to improve their lemonade. Competition leads to innovation and holding back innovation is immoral.

I think it’s interesting to ponder how this wrong moral belief originated. Why do most people believe that copying someone’s business is immoral?

I think the main reason is that people think ideas can be “stolen”. That is wrong. Ideas are non-rivalrous. And everyone should be incentivized to reproduce them and correct their errors. Problems are solvable and there is an infinity of problems (people always want more). IP law is another way to incentivize people to innovate. However, large companies like Amazon (with hundreds of people in their internal legal department working on IP law) are exploiting this system to prevent competition. 

Competition is not always for losers

But isn't competition for losers? (Peter Thiel famously proclaimed this in his book Zero to One). In a demand constrained market—yes. Building another AI headshot app wouldn’t be a great idea if the demand for AI headshots would be shrinking rapidly. It is not. 

Even Founders Fund (Thiel’s venture firm) invested in companies with strong competition:
* Ramp: Launched two years after Brex; both grew quickly as financial operations digitalized.
* Spotify: Entered a crowded market (iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody) just as music streaming took off.
* Rippling: Entered HR/payroll after Gusto, ADP, and Paychex; succeeded by bundling HR, IT, and finance as businesses moved to the cloud.
* Postmates: Was started after Grubhub and Seamless, but grew fast as on-demand delivery became a habit.
* Icon.com: Was started after there were already countless AI ad generator platforms. As more people consume short-form video content and realistic AI image and video generation becomes possible demand for this kind of software is exploding.

It would be stupid to claim these companies are immoral because they copied another business.

Helping others

Helping can be immoral if it prevents people from learning to solve their own problem. It can also be immoral if the invested resources could have led to a greater error correction. Socialism is the embodiment of this error. For example, taxing the 343 million Americans ~$1.2 trillion per year (that’s ~$3,580 per person on avg.) to fund a public education system that is stuck in the 1800s. These people could have used the resources the state took from them to buy education services from private companies that have a clear profit incentive to improve their service. To quote myself, “They don’t care if the students hate school” nor if they end up in student debt.

Being immortal 

Everyone has heard bad arguments about death being good. Such as death being the only reason that life is “precious” (there are other great reasons). Ultimately I think these originated to cope with the fear of death. My friend Arjun explained this further in his blog post.

Wanting to be a billionaire

Some people claim that the fact that billionaires exist is immoral. That is wrong. I'd even go so far to say not wanting to be a billionaire is wrong. Ambition is a consequence of optimism.

Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral
—Javier Milei

We are like billionaires to people living 2000 years ago. If some of these people did not desire immense wealth we’d probably still live in mud huts now. We're like iron age peasants to the people that will live 2000 years from now. 
Similarly, it’s likely that because certain people prevented the means of error correction through history we are not immortal and exploring the stars by now.
Thanks for reading this. I’ll now continue playing the infinite game of capitalism.

#1654·Moritz WallawitschOP, about 2 months ago

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #1654.

Elaboration:

I recently spent a Sunday vibe coding an ai image-gen micro-SaaS. The person that inspired me accused me of copying his product and threatened me to damage my reputation. However, I improved on his idea by implementing several features his product didn’t have such as allowing for multiple output styles and a landing page that better explained the product.

Most people hold fundamentally wrong ideas about morality. This includes those that copying business ideas is moral, that death is moral, that the existence of billionaires is wrong, and that not helping others is immoral. 

Morality is the knowledge about what to want, and what to strive for.

The most fundamental tenant of morality is to not remove the means of problem-solving and error correction. If society hinders a scientist from inventing and distributing a cure for cancer that is deeply immoral. Many regulations that restrict the freedom of people are immoral. 

Copying someone's business

The Samwer brothers famously copied Airbnb and other companies, but these companies provided the solution to people in different geographies or demographics, improving access to the solution. 

Their Airbnb clone, Wimdu largely failed because it was only a surface level copy that didn’t innovate on any aspect of the business. It incentivized Airbnb to innovate on better host support, internationalization, trust infrastructure, and regulatory compliance.

Opening a lemonade stand two blocks from an existing one incentivizes both lemonade stand operators to improve their lemonade. Competition leads to innovation and holding back innovation is immoral.

I think it’s interesting to ponder how this wrong moral belief originated. Why do most people believe that copying someone’s business is immoral?

I think the main reason is that people think ideas can be “stolen”. That is wrong. Ideas are non-rivalrous. And everyone should be incentivized to reproduce them and correct their errors. Problems are solvable and there is an infinity of problems (people always want more). IP law is another way to incentivize people to innovate. However, large companies like Amazon (with hundreds of people in their internal legal department working on IP law) are exploiting this system to prevent competition. 

Competition is not always for losers

But isn't competition for losers? (Peter Thiel famously proclaimed this in his book Zero to One). In a demand constrained market—yes. Building another AI headshot app wouldn’t be a great idea if the demand for AI headshots would be shrinking rapidly. It is not. 

Even Founders Fund (Thiel’s venture firm) invested in companies with strong competition:
* Ramp: Launched two years after Brex; both grew quickly as financial operations digitalized.
* Spotify: Entered a crowded market (iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody) just as music streaming took off.
* Rippling: Entered HR/payroll after Gusto, ADP, and Paychex; succeeded by bundling HR, IT, and finance as businesses moved to the cloud.
* Postmates: Was started after Grubhub and Seamless, but grew fast as on-demand delivery became a habit.
* Icon.com: Was started after there were already countless AI ad generator platforms. As more people consume short-form video content and realistic AI image and video generation becomes possible demand for this kind of software is exploding.

It would be stupid to claim these companies are immoral because they copied another business.

Helping others

Helping can be immoral if it prevents people from learning to solve their own problem. It can also be immoral if the invested resources could have led to a greater error correction. Socialism is the embodiment of this error. For example, taxing the 343 million Americans ~$1.2 trillion per year (that’s ~$3,580 per person on avg.) to fund a public education system that is stuck in the 1800s. These people could have used the resources the state took from them to buy education services from private companies that have a clear profit incentive to improve their service. To quote myself, “They don’t care if the students hate school” nor if they end up in student debt.

Being immortal 

Everyone has heard bad arguments about death being good. Such as death being the only reason that life is “precious” (there are other great reasons). Ultimately I think these originated to cope with the fear of death. My friend Arjun explained this further in his blog post.

Wanting to be a billionaire

Some people claim that the fact that billionaires exist is immoral. That is wrong. I'd even go so far to say not wanting to be a billionaire is wrong. Ambition is a consequence of optimism.

Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral
—Javier Milei

We are like billionaires to people living 2000 years ago. If some of these people did not desire immense wealth we’d probably still live in mud huts now. We're like iron age peasants to the people that will live 2000 years from now. 
Similarly, it’s likely that because certain people prevented the means of error correction through history we are not immortal and exploring the stars by now.
Thanks for reading this. I’ll now continue playing the infinite game of capitalism.

#1654·Moritz WallawitschOP, about 2 months ago

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #1654.

Elaboration:

I recently spent a Sunday vibe coding an ai image-gen micro-SaaS. The person that inspired me accused me of copying his product and threatened me to damage my reputation. However, I improved on his idea by implementing several features his product didn’t have such as allowing for multiple output styles and a landing page that better explained the product.

Most people hold fundamentally wrong ideas about morality. This includes those that copying business ideas is moral, that death is moral, that the existence of billionaires is wrong, and that not helping others is immoral. 

Morality is the knowledge about what to want, and what to strive for.

The most fundamental tenant of morality is to not remove the means of problem-solving and error correction. If society hinders a scientist from inventing and distributing a cure for cancer that is deeply immoral. Many regulations that restrict the freedom of people are immoral. 

Copying someone's business

The Samwer brothers famously copied Airbnb and other companies, but these companies provided the solution to people in different geographies or demographics, improving access to the solution. 

Their Airbnb clone, Wimdu largely failed because it was only a surface level copy that didn’t innovate on any aspect of the business. It incentivized Airbnb to innovate on better host support, internationalization, trust infrastructure, and regulatory compliance.

Opening a lemonade stand two blocks from an existing one incentivizes both lemonade stand operators to improve their lemonade. Competition leads to innovation and holding back innovation is immoral.

I think it’s interesting to ponder how this wrong moral belief originated. Why do most people believe that copying someone’s business is immoral?

I think the main reason is that people think ideas can be “stolen”. That is wrong. Ideas are non-rivalrous. And everyone should be incentivized to reproduce them and correct their errors. Problems are solvable and there is an infinity of problems (people always want more). IP law is another way to incentivize people to innovate. However, large companies like Amazon (with hundreds of people in their internal legal department working on IP law) are exploiting this system to prevent competition. 

Competition is not always for losers

But isn't competition for losers? (Peter Thiel famously proclaimed this in his book Zero to One). In a demand constrained market—yes. Building another AI headshot app wouldn’t be a great idea if the demand for AI headshots would be shrinking rapidly. It is not. 

Even Founders Fund (Thiel’s venture firm) invested in companies with strong competition:
* Ramp: Launched two years after Brex; both grew quickly as financial operations digitalized.
* Spotify: Entered a crowded market (iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody) just as music streaming took off.
* Rippling: Entered HR/payroll after Gusto, ADP, and Paychex; succeeded by bundling HR, IT, and finance as businesses moved to the cloud.
* Postmates: Was started after Grubhub and Seamless, but grew fast as on-demand delivery became a habit.
* Icon.com: Was started after there were already countless AI ad generator platforms. As more people consume short-form video content and realistic AI image and video generation becomes possible demand for this kind of software is exploding.

It would be stupid to claim these companies are immoral because they copied another business.

Helping others

Helping can be immoral if it prevents people from learning to solve their own problem. It can also be immoral if the invested resources could have led to a greater error correction. Socialism is the embodiment of this error. For example, taxing the 343 million Americans ~$1.2 trillion per year (that’s ~$3,580 per person on avg.) to fund a public education system that is stuck in the 1800s. These people could have used the resources the state took from them to buy education services from private companies that have a clear profit incentive to improve their service. To quote myself, “They don’t care if the students hate school” nor if they end up in student debt.

Being immortal 

Everyone has heard bad arguments about death being good. Such as death being the only reason that life is “precious” (there are other great reasons). Ultimately I think these originated to cope with the fear of death. My friend Arjun explained this further in his blog post.

Wanting to be a billionaire

Some people claim that the fact that billionaires exist is immoral. That is wrong. I'd even go so far to say not wanting to be a billionaire is wrong. Ambition is a consequence of optimism.

Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral
—Javier Milei

We are like billionaires to people living 2000 years ago. If some of these people did not desire immense wealth we’d probably still live in mud huts now. We're like iron age peasants to the people that will live 2000 years from now. 
Similarly, it’s likely that because certain people prevented the means of error correction through history we are not immortal and exploring the stars by now.
Thanks for reading this. I’ll now continue playing the infinite game of capitalism.

#1654·Moritz WallawitschOP, about 2 months ago

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #1654.

Elaboration:

I recently spent a Sunday vibe coding an ai image-gen micro-SaaS. The person that inspired me accused me of copying his product and threatened me to damage my reputation. However, I improved on his idea by implementing several features his product didn’t have such as allowing for multiple output styles and a landing page that better explained the product.

Most people hold fundamentally wrong ideas about morality. This includes those that copying business ideas is moral, that death is moral, that the existence of billionaires is wrong, and that not helping others is immoral. 

Morality is the knowledge about what to want, and what to strive for.

The most fundamental tenant of morality is to not remove the means of problem-solving and error correction. If society hinders a scientist from inventing and distributing a cure for cancer that is deeply immoral. Many regulations that restrict the freedom of people are immoral. 

Copying someone's business

The Samwer brothers famously copied Airbnb and other companies, but these companies provided the solution to people in different geographies or demographics, improving access to the solution. 

Their Airbnb clone, Wimdu largely failed because it was only a surface level copy that didn’t innovate on any aspect of the business. It incentivized Airbnb to innovate on better host support, internationalization, trust infrastructure, and regulatory compliance.

Opening a lemonade stand two blocks from an existing one incentivizes both lemonade stand operators to improve their lemonade. Competition leads to innovation and holding back innovation is immoral.

I think it’s interesting to ponder how this wrong moral belief originated. Why do most people believe that copying someone’s business is immoral?

I think the main reason is that people think ideas can be “stolen”. That is wrong. Ideas are non-rivalrous. And everyone should be incentivized to reproduce them and correct their errors. Problems are solvable and there is an infinity of problems (people always want more). IP law is another way to incentivize people to innovate. However, large companies like Amazon (with hundreds of people in their internal legal department working on IP law) are exploiting this system to prevent competition. 

Competition is not always for losers

But isn't competition for losers? (Peter Thiel famously proclaimed this in his book Zero to One). In a demand constrained market—yes. Building another AI headshot app wouldn’t be a great idea if the demand for AI headshots would be shrinking rapidly. It is not. 

Even Founders Fund (Thiel’s venture firm) invested in companies with strong competition:
* Ramp: Launched two years after Brex; both grew quickly as financial operations digitalized.
* Spotify: Entered a crowded market (iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody) just as music streaming took off.
* Rippling: Entered HR/payroll after Gusto, ADP, and Paychex; succeeded by bundling HR, IT, and finance as businesses moved to the cloud.
* Postmates: Was started after Grubhub and Seamless, but grew fast as on-demand delivery became a habit.
* Icon.com: Was started after there were already countless AI ad generator platforms. As more people consume short-form video content and realistic AI image and video generation becomes possible demand for this kind of software is exploding.

It would be stupid to claim these companies are immoral because they copied another business.

Helping others

Helping can be immoral if it prevents people from learning to solve their own problem. It can also be immoral if the invested resources could have led to a greater error correction. Socialism is the embodiment of this error. For example, taxing the 343 million Americans ~$1.2 trillion per year (that’s ~$3,580 per person on avg.) to fund a public education system that is stuck in the 1800s. These people could have used the resources the state took from them to buy education services from private companies that have a clear profit incentive to improve their service. To quote myself, “They don’t care if the students hate school” nor if they end up in student debt.

Being immortal 

Everyone has heard bad arguments about death being good. Such as death being the only reason that life is “precious” (there are other great reasons). Ultimately I think these originated to cope with the fear of death. My friend Arjun explained this further in his blog post.

Wanting to be a billionaire

Some people claim that the fact that billionaires exist is immoral. That is wrong. I'd even go so far to say not wanting to be a billionaire is wrong. Ambition is a consequence of optimism.

Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral
—Javier Milei

We are like billionaires to people living 2000 years ago. If some of these people did not desire immense wealth we’d probably still live in mud huts now. We're like iron age peasants to the people that will live 2000 years from now. 
Similarly, it’s likely that because certain people prevented the means of error correction through history we are not immortal and exploring the stars by now.
Thanks for reading this. I’ll now continue playing the infinite game of capitalism.

#1654·Moritz WallawitschOP, about 2 months ago

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #1654.

Elaboration:

I recently spent a Sunday vibe coding an ai image-gen micro-SaaS. The person that inspired me accused me of copying his product and threatened me to damage my reputation. However, I improved on his idea by implementing several features his product didn’t have such as allowing for multiple output styles and a landing page that better explained the product.

Most people hold fundamentally wrong ideas about morality. This includes those that copying business ideas is moral, that death is moral, that the existence of billionaires is wrong, and that not helping others is immoral. 

Morality is the knowledge about what to want, and what to strive for.

The most fundamental tenant of morality is to not remove the means of problem-solving and error correction. If society hinders a scientist from inventing and distributing a cure for cancer that is deeply immoral. Many regulations that restrict the freedom of people are immoral. 

Copying someone's business

The Samwer brothers famously copied Airbnb and other companies, but these companies provided the solution to people in different geographies or demographics, improving access to the solution. 

Their Airbnb clone, Wimdu largely failed because it was only a surface level copy that didn’t innovate on any aspect of the business. It incentivized Airbnb to innovate on better host support, internationalization, trust infrastructure, and regulatory compliance.

Opening a lemonade stand two blocks from an existing one incentivizes both lemonade stand operators to improve their lemonade. Competition leads to innovation and holding back innovation is immoral.

I think it’s interesting to ponder how this wrong moral belief originated. Why do most people believe that copying someone’s business is immoral?

I think the main reason is that people think ideas can be “stolen”. That is wrong. Ideas are non-rivalrous. And everyone should be incentivized to reproduce them and correct their errors. Problems are solvable and there is an infinity of problems (people always want more). IP law is another way to incentivize people to innovate. However, large companies like Amazon (with hundreds of people in their internal legal department working on IP law) are exploiting this system to prevent competition. 

Competition is not always for losers

But isn't competition for losers? (Peter Thiel famously proclaimed this in his book Zero to One). In a demand constrained market—yes. Building another AI headshot app wouldn’t be a great idea if the demand for AI headshots would be shrinking rapidly. It is not. 

Even Founders Fund (Thiel’s venture firm) invested in companies with strong competition:
* Ramp: Launched two years after Brex; both grew quickly as financial operations digitalized.
* Spotify: Entered a crowded market (iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody) just as music streaming took off.
* Rippling: Entered HR/payroll after Gusto, ADP, and Paychex; succeeded by bundling HR, IT, and finance as businesses moved to the cloud.
* Postmates: Was started after Grubhub and Seamless, but grew fast as on-demand delivery became a habit.
* Icon.com: Was started after there were already countless AI ad generator platforms. As more people consume short-form video content and realistic AI image and video generation becomes possible demand for this kind of software is exploding.

It would be stupid to claim these companies are immoral because they copied another business.

Helping others

Helping can be immoral if it prevents people from learning to solve their own problem. It can also be immoral if the invested resources could have led to a greater error correction. Socialism is the embodiment of this error. For example, taxing the 343 million Americans ~$1.2 trillion per year (that’s ~$3,580 per person on avg.) to fund a public education system that is stuck in the 1800s. These people could have used the resources the state took from them to buy education services from private companies that have a clear profit incentive to improve their service. To quote myself, “They don’t care if the students hate school” nor if they end up in student debt.

Being immortal 

Everyone has heard bad arguments about death being good. Such as death being the only reason that life is “precious” (there are other great reasons). Ultimately I think these originated to cope with the fear of death. My friend Arjun explained this further in his blog post.

Wanting to be a billionaire

Some people claim that the fact that billionaires exist is immoral. That is wrong. I'd even go so far to say not wanting to be a billionaire is wrong. Ambition is a consequence of optimism.

Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral
—Javier Milei

We are like billionaires to people living 2000 years ago. If some of these people did not desire immense wealth we’d probably still live in mud huts now. We're like iron age peasants to the people that will live 2000 years from now. 
Similarly, it’s likely that because certain people prevented the means of error correction through history we are not immortal and exploring the stars by now.
Thanks for reading this. I’ll now continue playing the infinite game of capitalism.

#1654·Moritz WallawitschOP, about 2 months ago

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #1654.

Elaboration:

I recently spent a Sunday vibe coding an ai image-gen micro-SaaS. The person that inspired me accused me of copying his product and threatened me to damage my reputation. However, I improved on his idea by implementing several features his product didn’t have such as allowing for multiple output styles and a landing page that better explained the product.

Most people hold fundamentally wrong ideas about morality. This includes those that copying business ideas is moral, that death is moral, that the existence of billionaires is wrong, and that not helping others is immoral. 

Morality is the knowledge about what to want, and what to strive for.

The most fundamental tenant of morality is to not remove the means of problem-solving and error correction. If society hinders a scientist from inventing and distributing a cure for cancer that is deeply immoral. Many regulations that restrict the freedom of people are immoral. 

Copying someone's business

The Samwer brothers famously copied Airbnb and other companies, but these companies provided the solution to people in different geographies or demographics, improving access to the solution. 

Their Airbnb clone, Wimdu largely failed because it was only a surface level copy that didn’t innovate on any aspect of the business. It incentivized Airbnb to innovate on better host support, internationalization, trust infrastructure, and regulatory compliance.

Opening a lemonade stand two blocks from an existing one incentivizes both lemonade stand operators to improve their lemonade. Competition leads to innovation and holding back innovation is immoral.

I think it’s interesting to ponder how this wrong moral belief originated. Why do most people believe that copying someone’s business is immoral?

I think the main reason is that people think ideas can be “stolen”. That is wrong. Ideas are non-rivalrous. And everyone should be incentivized to reproduce them and correct their errors. Problems are solvable and there is an infinity of problems (people always want more). IP law is another way to incentivize people to innovate. However, large companies like Amazon (with hundreds of people in their internal legal department working on IP law) are exploiting this system to prevent competition. 

Competition is not always for losers

But isn't competition for losers? (Peter Thiel famously proclaimed this in his book Zero to One). In a demand constrained market—yes. Building another AI headshot app wouldn’t be a great idea if the demand for AI headshots would be shrinking rapidly. It is not. 

Even Founders Fund (Thiel’s venture firm) invested in companies with strong competition:
* Ramp: Launched two years after Brex; both grew quickly as financial operations digitalized.
* Spotify: Entered a crowded market (iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody) just as music streaming took off.
* Rippling: Entered HR/payroll after Gusto, ADP, and Paychex; succeeded by bundling HR, IT, and finance as businesses moved to the cloud.
* Postmates: Was started after Grubhub and Seamless, but grew fast as on-demand delivery became a habit.
* Icon.com: Was started after there were already countless AI ad generator platforms. As more people consume short-form video content and realistic AI image and video generation becomes possible demand for this kind of software is exploding.

It would be stupid to claim these companies are immoral because they copied another business.

Helping others

Helping can be immoral if it prevents people from learning to solve their own problem. It can also be immoral if the invested resources could have led to a greater error correction. Socialism is the embodiment of this error. For example, taxing the 343 million Americans ~$1.2 trillion per year (that’s ~$3,580 per person on avg.) to fund a public education system that is stuck in the 1800s. These people could have used the resources the state took from them to buy education services from private companies that have a clear profit incentive to improve their service. To quote myself, “They don’t care if the students hate school” nor if they end up in student debt.

Being immortal 

Everyone has heard bad arguments about death being good. Such as death being the only reason that life is “precious” (there are other great reasons). Ultimately I think these originated to cope with the fear of death. My friend Arjun explained this further in his blog post.

Wanting to be a billionaire

Some people claim that the fact that billionaires exist is immoral. That is wrong. I'd even go so far to say not wanting to be a billionaire is wrong. Ambition is a consequence of optimism.

Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral
—Javier Milei

We are like billionaires to people living 2000 years ago. If some of these people did not desire immense wealth we’d probably still live in mud huts now. We're like iron age peasants to the people that will live 2000 years from now. 
Similarly, it’s likely that because certain people prevented the means of error correction through history we are not immortal and exploring the stars by now.
Thanks for reading this. I’ll now continue playing the infinite game of capitalism.

#1654·Moritz WallawitschOP, about 2 months ago

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #1654.

Elaboration:

I recently spent a Sunday vibe coding an ai image-gen micro-SaaS. The person that inspired me accused me of copying his product and threatened me to damage my reputation. However, I improved on his idea by implementing several features his product didn’t have such as allowing for multiple output styles and a landing page that better explained the product.

Most people hold fundamentally wrong ideas about morality. This includes those that copying business ideas is moral, that death is moral, that the existence of billionaires is wrong, and that not helping others is immoral. 

Morality is the knowledge about what to want, and what to strive for.

The most fundamental tenant of morality is to not remove the means of problem-solving and error correction. If society hinders a scientist from inventing and distributing a cure for cancer that is deeply immoral. Many regulations that restrict the freedom of people are immoral. 

Copying someone's business

The Samwer brothers famously copied Airbnb and other companies, but these companies provided the solution to people in different geographies or demographics, improving access to the solution. 

Their Airbnb clone, Wimdu largely failed because it was only a surface level copy that didn’t innovate on any aspect of the business. It incentivized Airbnb to innovate on better host support, internationalization, trust infrastructure, and regulatory compliance.

Opening a lemonade stand two blocks from an existing one incentivizes both lemonade stand operators to improve their lemonade. Competition leads to innovation and holding back innovation is immoral.

I think it’s interesting to ponder how this wrong moral belief originated. Why do most people believe that copying someone’s business is immoral?

I think the main reason is that people think ideas can be “stolen”. That is wrong. Ideas are non-rivalrous. And everyone should be incentivized to reproduce them and correct their errors. Problems are solvable and there is an infinity of problems (people always want more). IP law is another way to incentivize people to innovate. However, large companies like Amazon (with hundreds of people in their internal legal department working on IP law) are exploiting this system to prevent competition. 

Competition is not always for losers

But isn't competition for losers? (Peter Thiel famously proclaimed this in his book Zero to One). In a demand constrained market—yes. Building another AI headshot app wouldn’t be a great idea if the demand for AI headshots would be shrinking rapidly. It is not. 

Even Founders Fund (Thiel’s venture firm) invested in companies with strong competition:
* Ramp: Launched two years after Brex; both grew quickly as financial operations digitalized.
* Spotify: Entered a crowded market (iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody) just as music streaming took off.
* Rippling: Entered HR/payroll after Gusto, ADP, and Paychex; succeeded by bundling HR, IT, and finance as businesses moved to the cloud.
* Postmates: Was started after Grubhub and Seamless, but grew fast as on-demand delivery became a habit.
* Icon.com: Was started after there were already countless AI ad generator platforms. As more people consume short-form video content and realistic AI image and video generation becomes possible demand for this kind of software is exploding.

It would be stupid to claim these companies are immoral because they copied another business.

Helping others

Helping can be immoral if it prevents people from learning to solve their own problem. It can also be immoral if the invested resources could have led to a greater error correction. Socialism is the embodiment of this error. For example, taxing the 343 million Americans ~$1.2 trillion per year (that’s ~$3,580 per person on avg.) to fund a public education system that is stuck in the 1800s. These people could have used the resources the state took from them to buy education services from private companies that have a clear profit incentive to improve their service. To quote myself, “They don’t care if the students hate school” nor if they end up in student debt.

Being immortal 

Everyone has heard bad arguments about death being good. Such as death being the only reason that life is “precious” (there are other great reasons). Ultimately I think these originated to cope with the fear of death. My friend Arjun explained this further in his blog post.

Wanting to be a billionaire

Some people claim that the fact that billionaires exist is immoral. That is wrong. I'd even go so far to say not wanting to be a billionaire is wrong. Ambition is a consequence of optimism.

Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral
—Javier Milei

We are like billionaires to people living 2000 years ago. If some of these people did not desire immense wealth we’d probably still live in mud huts now. We're like iron age peasants to the people that will live 2000 years from now. 
Similarly, it’s likely that because certain people prevented the means of error correction through history we are not immortal and exploring the stars by now.
Thanks for reading this. I’ll now continue playing the infinite game of capitalism.

#1654·Moritz WallawitschOP, about 2 months ago

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #1654.

Elaboration:

I recently spent a Sunday vibe coding an ai image-gen micro-SaaS. The person that inspired me accused me of copying his product and threatened me to damage my reputation. However, I improved on his idea by implementing several features his product didn’t have such as allowing for multiple output styles and a landing page that better explained the product.

Most people hold fundamentally wrong ideas about morality. This includes those that copying business ideas is moral, that death is moral, that the existence of billionaires is wrong, and that not helping others is immoral. 

Morality is the knowledge about what to want, and what to strive for.

The most fundamental tenant of morality is to not remove the means of problem-solving and error correction. If society hinders a scientist from inventing and distributing a cure for cancer that is deeply immoral. Many regulations that restrict the freedom of people are immoral. 

Copying someone's business

The Samwer brothers famously copied Airbnb and other companies, but these companies provided the solution to people in different geographies or demographics, improving access to the solution. 

Their Airbnb clone, Wimdu largely failed because it was only a surface level copy that didn’t innovate on any aspect of the business. It incentivized Airbnb to innovate on better host support, internationalization, trust infrastructure, and regulatory compliance.

Opening a lemonade stand two blocks from an existing one incentivizes both lemonade stand operators to improve their lemonade. Competition leads to innovation and holding back innovation is immoral.

I think it’s interesting to ponder how this wrong moral belief originated. Why do most people believe that copying someone’s business is immoral?

I think the main reason is that people think ideas can be “stolen”. That is wrong. Ideas are non-rivalrous. And everyone should be incentivized to reproduce them and correct their errors. Problems are solvable and there is an infinity of problems (people always want more). IP law is another way to incentivize people to innovate. However, large companies like Amazon (with hundreds of people in their internal legal department working on IP law) are exploiting this system to prevent competition. 

Competition is not always for losers

But isn't competition for losers? (Peter Thiel famously proclaimed this in his book Zero to One). In a demand constrained market—yes. Building another AI headshot app wouldn’t be a great idea if the demand for AI headshots would be shrinking rapidly. It is not. 

Even Founders Fund (Thiel’s venture firm) invested in companies with strong competition:
* Ramp: Launched two years after Brex; both grew quickly as financial operations digitalized.
* Spotify: Entered a crowded market (iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody) just as music streaming took off.
* Rippling: Entered HR/payroll after Gusto, ADP, and Paychex; succeeded by bundling HR, IT, and finance as businesses moved to the cloud.
* Postmates: Was started after Grubhub and Seamless, but grew fast as on-demand delivery became a habit.
* Icon.com: Was started after there were already countless AI ad generator platforms. As more people consume short-form video content and realistic AI image and video generation becomes possible demand for this kind of software is exploding.

It would be stupid to claim these companies are immoral because they copied another business.

Helping others

Helping can be immoral if it prevents people from learning to solve their own problem. It can also be immoral if the invested resources could have led to a greater error correction. Socialism is the embodiment of this error. For example, taxing the 343 million Americans ~$1.2 trillion per year (that’s ~$3,580 per person on avg.) to fund a public education system that is stuck in the 1800s. These people could have used the resources the state took from them to buy education services from private companies that have a clear profit incentive to improve their service. To quote myself, “They don’t care if the students hate school” nor if they end up in student debt.

Being immortal 

Everyone has heard bad arguments about death being good. Such as death being the only reason that life is “precious” (there are other great reasons). Ultimately I think these originated to cope with the fear of death. My friend Arjun explained this further in his blog post.

Wanting to be a billionaire

Some people claim that the fact that billionaires exist is immoral. That is wrong. I'd even go so far to say not wanting to be a billionaire is wrong. Ambition is a consequence of optimism.

Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral
—Javier Milei

We are like billionaires to people living 2000 years ago. If some of these people did not desire immense wealth we’d probably still live in mud huts now. We're like iron age peasants to the people that will live 2000 years from now. 
Similarly, it’s likely that because certain people prevented the means of error correction through history we are not immortal and exploring the stars by now.
Thanks for reading this. I’ll now continue playing the infinite game of capitalism.

#1654·Moritz WallawitschOP, about 2 months ago

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #1654.

Elaboration:

I recently spent a Sunday vibe coding an ai image-gen micro-SaaS. The person that inspired me accused me of copying his product and threatened me to damage my reputation. However, I improved on his idea by implementing several features his product didn’t have such as allowing for multiple output styles and a landing page that better explained the product.

Most people hold fundamentally wrong ideas about morality. This includes those that copying business ideas is moral, that death is moral, that the existence of billionaires is wrong, and that not helping others is immoral. 

Morality is the knowledge about what to want, and what to strive for.

The most fundamental tenant of morality is to not remove the means of problem-solving and error correction. If society hinders a scientist from inventing and distributing a cure for cancer that is deeply immoral. Many regulations that restrict the freedom of people are immoral. 

Copying someone's business

The Samwer brothers famously copied Airbnb and other companies, but these companies provided the solution to people in different geographies or demographics, improving access to the solution. 

Their Airbnb clone, Wimdu largely failed because it was only a surface level copy that didn’t innovate on any aspect of the business. It incentivized Airbnb to innovate on better host support, internationalization, trust infrastructure, and regulatory compliance.

Opening a lemonade stand two blocks from an existing one incentivizes both lemonade stand operators to improve their lemonade. Competition leads to innovation and holding back innovation is immoral.

I think it’s interesting to ponder how this wrong moral belief originated. Why do most people believe that copying someone’s business is immoral?

I think the main reason is that people think ideas can be “stolen”. That is wrong. Ideas are non-rivalrous. And everyone should be incentivized to reproduce them and correct their errors. Problems are solvable and there is an infinity of problems (people always want more). IP law is another way to incentivize people to innovate. However, large companies like Amazon (with hundreds of people in their internal legal department working on IP law) are exploiting this system to prevent competition. 

Competition is not always for losers

But isn't competition for losers? (Peter Thiel famously proclaimed this in his book Zero to One). In a demand constrained market—yes. Building another AI headshot app wouldn’t be a great idea if the demand for AI headshots would be shrinking rapidly. It is not. 

Even Founders Fund (Thiel’s venture firm) invested in companies with strong competition:
* Ramp: Launched two years after Brex; both grew quickly as financial operations digitalized.
* Spotify: Entered a crowded market (iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody) just as music streaming took off.
* Rippling: Entered HR/payroll after Gusto, ADP, and Paychex; succeeded by bundling HR, IT, and finance as businesses moved to the cloud.
* Postmates: Was started after Grubhub and Seamless, but grew fast as on-demand delivery became a habit.
* Icon.com: Was started after there were already countless AI ad generator platforms. As more people consume short-form video content and realistic AI image and video generation becomes possible demand for this kind of software is exploding.

It would be stupid to claim these companies are immoral because they copied another business.

Helping others

Helping can be immoral if it prevents people from learning to solve their own problem. It can also be immoral if the invested resources could have led to a greater error correction. Socialism is the embodiment of this error. For example, taxing the 343 million Americans ~$1.2 trillion per year (that’s ~$3,580 per person on avg.) to fund a public education system that is stuck in the 1800s. These people could have used the resources the state took from them to buy education services from private companies that have a clear profit incentive to improve their service. To quote myself, “They don’t care if the students hate school” nor if they end up in student debt.

Being immortal 

Everyone has heard bad arguments about death being good. Such as death being the only reason that life is “precious” (there are other great reasons). Ultimately I think these originated to cope with the fear of death. My friend Arjun explained this further in his blog post.

Wanting to be a billionaire

Some people claim that the fact that billionaires exist is immoral. That is wrong. I'd even go so far to say not wanting to be a billionaire is wrong. Ambition is a consequence of optimism.

Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral
—Javier Milei

We are like billionaires to people living 2000 years ago. If some of these people did not desire immense wealth we’d probably still live in mud huts now. We're like iron age peasants to the people that will live 2000 years from now. 
Similarly, it’s likely that because certain people prevented the means of error correction through history we are not immortal and exploring the stars by now.
Thanks for reading this. I’ll now continue playing the infinite game of capitalism.

#1654·Moritz WallawitschOP, about 2 months ago

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #1654.

Elaboration:

I recently spent a Sunday vibe coding an ai image-gen micro-SaaS. The person that inspired me accused me of copying his product and threatened me to damage my reputation. However, I improved on his idea by implementing several features his product didn’t have such as allowing for multiple output styles and a landing page that better explained the product.

Most people hold fundamentally wrong ideas about morality. This includes those that copying business ideas is moral, that death is moral, that the existence of billionaires is wrong, and that not helping others is immoral. 

Morality is the knowledge about what to want, and what to strive for.

The most fundamental tenant of morality is to not remove the means of problem-solving and error correction. If society hinders a scientist from inventing and distributing a cure for cancer that is deeply immoral. Many regulations that restrict the freedom of people are immoral. 

Copying someone's business

The Samwer brothers famously copied Airbnb and other companies, but these companies provided the solution to people in different geographies or demographics, improving access to the solution. 

Their Airbnb clone, Wimdu largely failed because it was only a surface level copy that didn’t innovate on any aspect of the business. It incentivized Airbnb to innovate on better host support, internationalization, trust infrastructure, and regulatory compliance.

Opening a lemonade stand two blocks from an existing one incentivizes both lemonade stand operators to improve their lemonade. Competition leads to innovation and holding back innovation is immoral.

I think it’s interesting to ponder how this wrong moral belief originated. Why do most people believe that copying someone’s business is immoral?

I think the main reason is that people think ideas can be “stolen”. That is wrong. Ideas are non-rivalrous. And everyone should be incentivized to reproduce them and correct their errors. Problems are solvable and there is an infinity of problems (people always want more). IP law is another way to incentivize people to innovate. However, large companies like Amazon (with hundreds of people in their internal legal department working on IP law) are exploiting this system to prevent competition. 

Competition is not always for losers

But isn't competition for losers? (Peter Thiel famously proclaimed this in his book Zero to One). In a demand constrained market—yes. Building another AI headshot app wouldn’t be a great idea if the demand for AI headshots would be shrinking rapidly. It is not. 

Even Founders Fund (Thiel’s venture firm) invested in companies with strong competition:
* Ramp: Launched two years after Brex; both grew quickly as financial operations digitalized.
* Spotify: Entered a crowded market (iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody) just as music streaming took off.
* Rippling: Entered HR/payroll after Gusto, ADP, and Paychex; succeeded by bundling HR, IT, and finance as businesses moved to the cloud.
* Postmates: Was started after Grubhub and Seamless, but grew fast as on-demand delivery became a habit.
* Icon.com: Was started after there were already countless AI ad generator platforms. As more people consume short-form video content and realistic AI image and video generation becomes possible demand for this kind of software is exploding.

It would be stupid to claim these companies are immoral because they copied another business.

Helping others

Helping can be immoral if it prevents people from learning to solve their own problem. It can also be immoral if the invested resources could have led to a greater error correction. Socialism is the embodiment of this error. For example, taxing the 343 million Americans ~$1.2 trillion per year (that’s ~$3,580 per person on avg.) to fund a public education system that is stuck in the 1800s. These people could have used the resources the state took from them to buy education services from private companies that have a clear profit incentive to improve their service. To quote myself, “They don’t care if the students hate school” nor if they end up in student debt.

Being immortal 

Everyone has heard bad arguments about death being good. Such as death being the only reason that life is “precious” (there are other great reasons). Ultimately I think these originated to cope with the fear of death. My friend Arjun explained this further in his blog post.

Wanting to be a billionaire

Some people claim that the fact that billionaires exist is immoral. That is wrong. I'd even go so far to say not wanting to be a billionaire is wrong. Ambition is a consequence of optimism.

Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral
—Javier Milei

We are like billionaires to people living 2000 years ago. If some of these people did not desire immense wealth we’d probably still live in mud huts now. We're like iron age peasants to the people that will live 2000 years from now. 
Similarly, it’s likely that because certain people prevented the means of error correction through history we are not immortal and exploring the stars by now.
Thanks for reading this. I’ll now continue playing the infinite game of capitalism.

#1654·Moritz WallawitschOP, about 2 months ago

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #1654.

Elaboration:

I recently spent a Sunday vibe coding an ai image-gen micro-SaaS. The person that inspired me accused me of copying his product and threatened me to damage my reputation. However, I improved on his idea by implementing several features his product didn’t have such as allowing for multiple output styles and a landing page that better explained the product.

Most people hold fundamentally wrong ideas about morality. This includes those that copying business ideas is moral, that death is moral, that the existence of billionaires is wrong, and that not helping others is immoral. 

Morality is the knowledge about what to want, and what to strive for.

The most fundamental tenant of morality is to not remove the means of problem-solving and error correction. If society hinders a scientist from inventing and distributing a cure for cancer that is deeply immoral. Many regulations that restrict the freedom of people are immoral. 

Copying someone's business

The Samwer brothers famously copied Airbnb and other companies, but these companies provided the solution to people in different geographies or demographics, improving access to the solution. 

Their Airbnb clone, Wimdu largely failed because it was only a surface level copy that didn’t innovate on any aspect of the business. It incentivized Airbnb to innovate on better host support, internationalization, trust infrastructure, and regulatory compliance.

Opening a lemonade stand two blocks from an existing one incentivizes both lemonade stand operators to improve their lemonade. Competition leads to innovation and holding back innovation is immoral.

I think it’s interesting to ponder how this wrong moral belief originated. Why do most people believe that copying someone’s business is immoral?

I think the main reason is that people think ideas can be “stolen”. That is wrong. Ideas are non-rivalrous. And everyone should be incentivized to reproduce them and correct their errors. Problems are solvable and there is an infinity of problems (people always want more). IP law is another way to incentivize people to innovate. However, large companies like Amazon (with hundreds of people in their internal legal department working on IP law) are exploiting this system to prevent competition. 

Competition is not always for losers

But isn't competition for losers? (Peter Thiel famously proclaimed this in his book Zero to One). In a demand constrained market—yes. Building another AI headshot app wouldn’t be a great idea if the demand for AI headshots would be shrinking rapidly. It is not. 

Even Founders Fund (Thiel’s venture firm) invested in companies with strong competition:
* Ramp: Launched two years after Brex; both grew quickly as financial operations digitalized.
* Spotify: Entered a crowded market (iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody) just as music streaming took off.
* Rippling: Entered HR/payroll after Gusto, ADP, and Paychex; succeeded by bundling HR, IT, and finance as businesses moved to the cloud.
* Postmates: Was started after Grubhub and Seamless, but grew fast as on-demand delivery became a habit.
* Icon.com: Was started after there were already countless AI ad generator platforms. As more people consume short-form video content and realistic AI image and video generation becomes possible demand for this kind of software is exploding.

It would be stupid to claim these companies are immoral because they copied another business.

Helping others

Helping can be immoral if it prevents people from learning to solve their own problem. It can also be immoral if the invested resources could have led to a greater error correction. Socialism is the embodiment of this error. For example, taxing the 343 million Americans ~$1.2 trillion per year (that’s ~$3,580 per person on avg.) to fund a public education system that is stuck in the 1800s. These people could have used the resources the state took from them to buy education services from private companies that have a clear profit incentive to improve their service. To quote myself, “They don’t care if the students hate school” nor if they end up in student debt.

Being immortal 

Everyone has heard bad arguments about death being good. Such as death being the only reason that life is “precious” (there are other great reasons). Ultimately I think these originated to cope with the fear of death. My friend Arjun explained this further in his blog post.

Wanting to be a billionaire

Some people claim that the fact that billionaires exist is immoral. That is wrong. I'd even go so far to say not wanting to be a billionaire is wrong. Ambition is a consequence of optimism.

Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral
—Javier Milei

We are like billionaires to people living 2000 years ago. If some of these people did not desire immense wealth we’d probably still live in mud huts now. We're like iron age peasants to the people that will live 2000 years from now. 
Similarly, it’s likely that because certain people prevented the means of error correction through history we are not immortal and exploring the stars by now.
Thanks for reading this. I’ll now continue playing the infinite game of capitalism.

#1654·Moritz WallawitschOP, about 2 months ago

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #1654.

Elaboration:

I recently spent a Sunday vibe coding an ai image-gen micro-SaaS. The person that inspired me accused me of copying his product and threatened me to damage my reputation. However, I improved on his idea by implementing several features his product didn’t have such as allowing for multiple output styles and a landing page that better explained the product.

Most people hold fundamentally wrong ideas about morality. This includes those that copying business ideas is moral, that death is moral, that the existence of billionaires is wrong, and that not helping others is immoral. 

Morality is the knowledge about what to want, and what to strive for.

The most fundamental tenant of morality is to not remove the means of problem-solving and error correction. If society hinders a scientist from inventing and distributing a cure for cancer that is deeply immoral. Many regulations that restrict the freedom of people are immoral. 

Copying someone's business

The Samwer brothers famously copied Airbnb and other companies, but these companies provided the solution to people in different geographies or demographics, improving access to the solution. 

Their Airbnb clone, Wimdu largely failed because it was only a surface level copy that didn’t innovate on any aspect of the business. It incentivized Airbnb to innovate on better host support, internationalization, trust infrastructure, and regulatory compliance.

Opening a lemonade stand two blocks from an existing one incentivizes both lemonade stand operators to improve their lemonade. Competition leads to innovation and holding back innovation is immoral.

I think it’s interesting to ponder how this wrong moral belief originated. Why do most people believe that copying someone’s business is immoral?

I think the main reason is that people think ideas can be “stolen”. That is wrong. Ideas are non-rivalrous. And everyone should be incentivized to reproduce them and correct their errors. Problems are solvable and there is an infinity of problems (people always want more). IP law is another way to incentivize people to innovate. However, large companies like Amazon (with hundreds of people in their internal legal department working on IP law) are exploiting this system to prevent competition. 

Competition is not always for losers

But isn't competition for losers? (Peter Thiel famously proclaimed this in his book Zero to One). In a demand constrained market—yes. Building another AI headshot app wouldn’t be a great idea if the demand for AI headshots would be shrinking rapidly. It is not. 

Even Founders Fund (Thiel’s venture firm) invested in companies with strong competition:
* Ramp: Launched two years after Brex; both grew quickly as financial operations digitalized.
* Spotify: Entered a crowded market (iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody) just as music streaming took off.
* Rippling: Entered HR/payroll after Gusto, ADP, and Paychex; succeeded by bundling HR, IT, and finance as businesses moved to the cloud.
* Postmates: Was started after Grubhub and Seamless, but grew fast as on-demand delivery became a habit.
* Icon.com: Was started after there were already countless AI ad generator platforms. As more people consume short-form video content and realistic AI image and video generation becomes possible demand for this kind of software is exploding.

It would be stupid to claim these companies are immoral because they copied another business.

Helping others

Helping can be immoral if it prevents people from learning to solve their own problem. It can also be immoral if the invested resources could have led to a greater error correction. Socialism is the embodiment of this error. For example, taxing the 343 million Americans ~$1.2 trillion per year (that’s ~$3,580 per person on avg.) to fund a public education system that is stuck in the 1800s. These people could have used the resources the state took from them to buy education services from private companies that have a clear profit incentive to improve their service. To quote myself, “They don’t care if the students hate school” nor if they end up in student debt.

Being immortal 

Everyone has heard bad arguments about death being good. Such as death being the only reason that life is “precious” (there are other great reasons). Ultimately I think these originated to cope with the fear of death. My friend Arjun explained this further in his blog post.

Wanting to be a billionaire

Some people claim that the fact that billionaires exist is immoral. That is wrong. I'd even go so far to say not wanting to be a billionaire is wrong. Ambition is a consequence of optimism.

Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral
—Javier Milei

We are like billionaires to people living 2000 years ago. If some of these people did not desire immense wealth we’d probably still live in mud huts now. We're like iron age peasants to the people that will live 2000 years from now. 
Similarly, it’s likely that because certain people prevented the means of error correction through history we are not immortal and exploring the stars by now.
Thanks for reading this. I’ll now continue playing the infinite game of capitalism.

#1654·Moritz WallawitschOP, about 2 months ago

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #1654.

Elaboration:

I recently spent a Sunday vibe coding an ai image-gen micro-SaaS. The person that inspired me accused me of copying his product and threatened me to damage my reputation. However, I improved on his idea by implementing several features his product didn’t have such as allowing for multiple output styles and a landing page that better explained the product.

Most people hold fundamentally wrong ideas about morality. This includes those that copying business ideas is moral, that death is moral, that the existence of billionaires is wrong, and that not helping others is immoral. 

Morality is the knowledge about what to want, and what to strive for.

The most fundamental tenant of morality is to not remove the means of problem-solving and error correction. If society hinders a scientist from inventing and distributing a cure for cancer that is deeply immoral. Many regulations that restrict the freedom of people are immoral. 

Copying someone's business

The Samwer brothers famously copied Airbnb and other companies, but these companies provided the solution to people in different geographies or demographics, improving access to the solution. 

Their Airbnb clone, Wimdu largely failed because it was only a surface level copy that didn’t innovate on any aspect of the business. It incentivized Airbnb to innovate on better host support, internationalization, trust infrastructure, and regulatory compliance.

Opening a lemonade stand two blocks from an existing one incentivizes both lemonade stand operators to improve their lemonade. Competition leads to innovation and holding back innovation is immoral.

I think it’s interesting to ponder how this wrong moral belief originated. Why do most people believe that copying someone’s business is immoral?

I think the main reason is that people think ideas can be “stolen”. That is wrong. Ideas are non-rivalrous. And everyone should be incentivized to reproduce them and correct their errors. Problems are solvable and there is an infinity of problems (people always want more). IP law is another way to incentivize people to innovate. However, large companies like Amazon (with hundreds of people in their internal legal department working on IP law) are exploiting this system to prevent competition. 

Competition is not always for losers

But isn't competition for losers? (Peter Thiel famously proclaimed this in his book Zero to One). In a demand constrained market—yes. Building another AI headshot app wouldn’t be a great idea if the demand for AI headshots would be shrinking rapidly. It is not. 

Even Founders Fund (Thiel’s venture firm) invested in companies with strong competition:
* Ramp: Launched two years after Brex; both grew quickly as financial operations digitalized.
* Spotify: Entered a crowded market (iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody) just as music streaming took off.
* Rippling: Entered HR/payroll after Gusto, ADP, and Paychex; succeeded by bundling HR, IT, and finance as businesses moved to the cloud.
* Postmates: Was started after Grubhub and Seamless, but grew fast as on-demand delivery became a habit.
* Icon.com: Was started after there were already countless AI ad generator platforms. As more people consume short-form video content and realistic AI image and video generation becomes possible demand for this kind of software is exploding.

It would be stupid to claim these companies are immoral because they copied another business.

Helping others

Helping can be immoral if it prevents people from learning to solve their own problem. It can also be immoral if the invested resources could have led to a greater error correction. Socialism is the embodiment of this error. For example, taxing the 343 million Americans ~$1.2 trillion per year (that’s ~$3,580 per person on avg.) to fund a public education system that is stuck in the 1800s. These people could have used the resources the state took from them to buy education services from private companies that have a clear profit incentive to improve their service. To quote myself, “They don’t care if the students hate school” nor if they end up in student debt.

Being immortal 

Everyone has heard bad arguments about death being good. Such as death being the only reason that life is “precious” (there are other great reasons). Ultimately I think these originated to cope with the fear of death. My friend Arjun explained this further in his blog post.

Wanting to be a billionaire

Some people claim that the fact that billionaires exist is immoral. That is wrong. I'd even go so far to say not wanting to be a billionaire is wrong. Ambition is a consequence of optimism.

Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral
—Javier Milei

We are like billionaires to people living 2000 years ago. If some of these people did not desire immense wealth we’d probably still live in mud huts now. We're like iron age peasants to the people that will live 2000 years from now. 
Similarly, it’s likely that because certain people prevented the means of error correction through history we are not immortal and exploring the stars by now.
Thanks for reading this. I’ll now continue playing the infinite game of capitalism.

#1654·Moritz WallawitschOP, about 2 months ago

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #1653.

Fire purifies gold, but it isn't gold itself. Reason doesn't need to be the source of knowledge to criticize other sources. The main source of knowledge is myth and things that don't make sense. All of our scientific theories are testable, hard to vary myths. As Popper states in Conjecture and Refutations (171), "[w]e shall understand that, in a certain sense, science is myth-making just as religion is."

#1653·Zelalem MekonnenOP, about 2 months ago

  Moritz Wallawitsch started a discussion titled Immortality, Billionaires, and Copying Business Ideas is not immoral. The discussion starts with idea #1654.

  Zelalem Mekonnen commented on criticism #1646.

Criticism is a form of knowledge. How does reason have access to criticism if reason is not the source of knowledge?

#1646·Dennis Hackethal, about 2 months ago

  Zelalem Mekonnen commented on idea #1649.

So the [...] or ellipsis indicates that the sentence is quoted half way.

#1649·Zelalem MekonnenOP, about 2 months ago

  Zelalem Mekonnen revised criticism #1647 and unmarked it as a criticism. The revision addresses idea #1635.

  Zelalem Mekonnen commented on criticism #1635.

That quote is better but still not quite right. You’d want to end it not in a dangling comma, but in an ellipsis to indicate that you’re cutting the sentence short. Try changing it to:

"The virtue of Rationality means the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge […]." This is wrong etc.

Then, in the section “Do the comments still apply?”, be sure to deselect the criticisms that your edit addresses.

#1635·Dennis Hackethal, about 2 months ago

  Zelalem Mekonnen revised criticism #1631. The revision addresses ideas #1618, #1619.

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #1633.

The source of knowledge is myths. Reason criticizes them and we get myths that are testable (if knowledge about the physical world), hard to vary and make some assertion about reality. Popper highlighted the myth and testable nature of scientific knowledge, and Deutsch highlights hard to vary and explanation/assertion nature of knowledge.

#1633·Zelalem MekonnenOP, about 2 months ago

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #1644.

Point taken. It is copy/pasted now.

#1644·Zelalem MekonnenOP, about 2 months ago

  Zelalem Mekonnen commented on criticism #1634.

In other situations, I would agree. For example, back when I was first learning how to code, I made it a point to type code from tutorials manually to retain it better.

But with quotes it’s different because retaining the literal letter matters. Typing it manually is too error prone and there’s no compiler (except Quote Checker) to catch errors.

#1634·Dennis Hackethal, about 2 months ago

  Dennis Hackethal commented on idea #1639.

Yeah fair. I'll admit, my example is rather contrived. My hope was to show that one could in principle maintain a belief in god in a rational fashion, at least for a time. However, just because it is theoretically possible doesn't mean that it is at all likely. I agree that this isn't what is usually going with believers.

#1639·Amaro Koberle, about 2 months ago

  Dennis Hackethal revised idea #1622. The revision addresses idea #1640.