Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What does it mean for American innovation to be backed by oil wealth?

vicki.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 129 posts

Re: What does it mean for American innovation to be backed by oil wealth?

#11

Post by mc32 »

save_ferris wrote: post #10
mc32 wrote: post #5

Saudi wealth is seeking to diversify, so its using its patrimony to seek alternative income streams to oil. So good for Saudis. This fund is seeking opportunity in many places, among them SV. That’s also a good thing, for the most part. In short, I don’t see it being so negative that it comes from oil. It’s funneling research away from oil

You don’t see it as a negative that SV has received billions in investment money from a Saudi prince who had a journalist brutally dismembered in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul?

The questions is about taking money from “Oil wealth”. It’s not about who owns the money per se. if that were the case, people would be refusing lots of money. Lots of institutions would have refused Epstein after the first indictment... but they didn’t.

Re: What does it mean for American innovation to be backed by oil wealth?

#12

Post by jofer »

One thing to point out: Oil is still _huge_ when it comes to investment and sheer amount of financing available. Anything involving large-scale finance will have oil money involved in it in some way.

Frankly, even at the height of the tech boom, the tech industry has never had significant capital available compared to the oil industry. I've worked in both... Folks in tech think 100 million in capital is a lot. In oil, that doesn't even qualify as a project that needs sign-off by upper management. (The last project I managed had a ~$200 million per year budget. I was a low-level peon 5 years out of grad school in charge of it because it wasn't considered a large enough project budget-wise to give to someone experienced. There are a few caveats around this -- the discretionary budget was on the order of 10 million and the rest was fixed through long-term contracts, but still...)

Significant investments in the energy industry are measured in tens of billions per project. Profits from each of those projects are in the trillions, but spread out over 20-100 years.

As a result, a big chunk of the finance industry is directly or indirectly tied to oil. There aren't many funds that don't have money somehow invested in or sourced from the energy industry.

Re: What does it mean for American innovation to be backed by oil wealth?

#13

Post by jonfw »

luckylion wrote: post #9
mc32 wrote: post #5

Saudi wealth is seeking to diversify, so its using its patrimony to seek alternative income streams to oil. So good for Saudis. This fund is seeking opportunity in many places, among them SV. That’s also a good thing, for the most part. In short, I don’t see it being so negative that it comes from oil. It’s funneling research away from oil

> I don’t see it being so negative that it comes from oil. I don't believe that's the actual problem. If it was Norway investing its oil money, this wouldn't be an issue. It's oil money from a state that is very much not aligned with the values SV companies claim.

I guess you and I have different ideas about SV company values! I think that SV has very lax attitudes on censorship and data collection, and frankly I think that some of these companies practices would be much better accepted by the ruling parties Saudi Arabia than in most of America

Re: What does it mean for American innovation to be backed by oil wealth?

#14

Post by bennylope »

luckylion wrote: post #9
mc32 wrote: post #5

Saudi wealth is seeking to diversify, so its using its patrimony to seek alternative income streams to oil. So good for Saudis. This fund is seeking opportunity in many places, among them SV. That’s also a good thing, for the most part. In short, I don’t see it being so negative that it comes from oil. It’s funneling research away from oil

> I don’t see it being so negative that it comes from oil. I don't believe that's the actual problem. If it was Norway investing its oil money, this wouldn't be an issue. It's oil money from a state that is very much not aligned with the values SV companies claim.

Are those SV companies aligned with the values they claim?

Re: What does it mean for American innovation to be backed by oil wealth?

#15

Post by [deleted] »

krn wrote: post #3

> Uber. WeWork. Flexport. Slack. MapBox. DoorDash. What do all of these hip American companies have in common, other than appearing regularly in tech headlines (and, now, being leading indicators of a tech bubble)? > They are - or were at one point - all backed by SoftBank’s Vision Fund, an enormous venture capital fund run by Softbank, a Japanese holding company. If many of these startups might not have reached IPO…

[deleted]

Re: What does it mean for American innovation to be backed by oil wealth?

#16

Post by throwaway66920 »

jofer wrote: post #12

One thing to point out: Oil is still _huge_ when it comes to investment and sheer amount of financing available. Anything involving large-scale finance will have oil money involved in it in some way. Frankly, even at the height of the tech boom, the tech industry has never had significant capital available compared to the oil industry. I've worked in both... Folks in tech think 100 million in capital is a lot. In oil…

I was at an iron works a while back where I learned that an industrial grade blast furnace was, ballpark, $100 billion. This was built 100 years ago. That day I decided I just didn’t and wouldn’t ever understand capital markets.

Re: What does it mean for American innovation to be backed by oil wealth?

#17

Post by GuardianCaveman »

mc32 wrote: post #5

Saudi wealth is seeking to diversify, so its using its patrimony to seek alternative income streams to oil. So good for Saudis. This fund is seeking opportunity in many places, among them SV. That’s also a good thing, for the most part. In short, I don’t see it being so negative that it comes from oil. It’s funneling research away from oil

For me it’s not the oil that’s the problem. It’s the wahabi sect of Saudi, the weekly public execution of bloggers and dissenters. The international kidnapping and torture of journalists, the constant bombing of schools and children in Yemen. It’s THAT money. I worked there on a foreign military sale contract and I saw a lot that disgusted me. The male Filipino workers told me they grow facial hair to make themselves less attractive to be raped by their male employers and employer friends. I’d walk through chop chop square on my way to get to the gold market downtown as they were power washing the blood off some feminist activist off the ground of the square (officially named Deera Square). I worked with sensitive elements of their military and am aware of indiscriminate bombing. Hell they shot down one of their own fighters when his wingman accidentally fingered the trigger while inspecting the lead plane for fuel leaks he thought he was having so you can imagine the incompetence around dropping bombs on targets, not to mention viewing Yemenis as subhumans.

Imagine if the westboro Baptists accidentally struck oil and became billionaires and tried to export that version of Christianity and we see why maybe it’s not good that they are allowed to participate in the international community and invest their money that happens to come from oil into these startups. It’s like if Epstein gave money. It doesn’t matter where it came from but from whom.

Re: What does it mean for American innovation to be backed by oil wealth?

#19

Post by caconym_ »

mc32 wrote: post #5

Saudi wealth is seeking to diversify, so its using its patrimony to seek alternative income streams to oil. So good for Saudis. This fund is seeking opportunity in many places, among them SV. That’s also a good thing, for the most part. In short, I don’t see it being so negative that it comes from oil. It’s funneling research away from oil

I think the perceived negative is more that it comes from the Saudis, and less about the oil per se.

I don't really disagree. America (e.g.) does some fairly disgusting things but at least we (most of us) recognize women as first-class human beings, don't throw people in dungeons and/or whip them in the public square for being critical of the government, and so on. These things are gimmes.

Assuming liberal democracy doesn't totally collapse in the near future, I wonder if a rising tide really does lift all boats—if accepting Saudi investment is the fastest and least bloody way to help those oppressed under their dogshit ass-backwards regime. Right now it almost seems like the reverse is happening.

Post reply on HN