Immortality, Billionaires, and Copying Business Ideas is not immoral
Discussion started by Moritz Wallawitsch
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.
Most people hold fundamentally wrong ideas about morality. This includes those that copying business ideas is moral […]
Don’t you mean immoral?
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.
The part “This includes those that” doesn’t sound right grammatically. You could instead write: ‘Most people hold fundamentally wrong ideas about morality. They think that copying business ideas is (im?)moral, that death is moral, …’
[…] and threatened me to damage my reputation.
Drop ‘me’. It should say ‘and threatened to damage my reputation.’
If society hinders a scientist from inventing and distributing a cure for cancer that is deeply immoral.
Add a comma after ‘cancer’.
The most fundamental tenant of morality is to not remove the means of problem-solving and error correction.
Should credit Deutsch.
The most fundamental tenant of morality is to not remove the means of problem-solving and error correction.
Tenet, not tenant. https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/tenant-vs-tenet-difference-usage
(Peter Thiel famously proclaimed this in his book Zero to One).
Period should go inside the parentheses.
Building another AI headshot app wouldn’t be a great idea if the demand for AI headshots would be shrinking rapidly.
If the demand were shrinking, not ‘would be’.
(Peter Thiel famously proclaimed this in his book Zero to One).
Book titles are commonly italicized.
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.
Add hyphen between ‘AI’ and ‘image’. Add comma after ‘possible’. Replace ‘is exploding’ with ‘explodes’.
It can also be immoral if the invested resources could have led to a greater error correction.
Remove the word ‘a’.
Such as death being the only reason that life is “precious” (there are other great reasons).
The word ‘other’ implies that death is a great reason.
Some people claim that the fact that billionaires exist is immoral.
The part ‘that the fact that’ sounds awkward. Just say ‘Some people claim billionaires shouldn’t exist.’
I'd even go so far to say not wanting to be a billionaire is wrong.
Add ‘as’ after ‘far’. Add ‘that’ after ‘say’.
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.
I don’t think that’s a valid use of the word ‘likely’. This quote isn’t about the probability calculus. I’d use the word ‘plausible’ instead.
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.
You got that from Deutsch. Just quote the corresponding passage from BoI chapter 9:
[I]f any of those earlier experiments in optimism had succeeded, our species would be exploring the stars by now, and you and I would be immortal.
As I recall, though, he published an erratum on the BoI website about this passage. Might be worth looking into.
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.
Replace ‘through’ with ‘throughout’.