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The venture capitalist's dilemma

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Re: The venture capitalist's dilemma

#21

Post by zpeti »

cornholio wrote: post #15

Capital is just another name for power and powerful people fight to maintain and accumulate more power - welcome to the world, summer child. It's woefully naive to expect individuals to give that power up for social-positive goals, it practically never happened throughout human history. We achieve social-positive goals by behaving as a society and limiting what the powerful can do with their power - democracy, market…

Yet "capitalism" is actually the best way to limit that power of powerful people and make status pretty closely linked with ability.

In every other attempt at forming different societies (from feudalism to capitalism) it's generally the ones good at power games that win, not the ones with the actual best abilites.

It is said of Stalin he was the best power game player ever born, he was equalled by no one in power accumulation games.

The possible exception to this is small tribes, where it was usually the people who added the most to a tribe that got power (if you were a power game player two friends could basically topple you).

But we're not going back to tribal life, so there we go. Capitalism is still the best of all the bad systems we have.

Re: The venture capitalist's dilemma

#22

Post by fisherjeff »

One interesting aspect to me: If you extend the dilemma to N prisoners, and one prisoner starts shouting from the rooftops that he’s starting to rat people out, it does seem rational to immediately start doing the same.

Like, once you know the Founders Fund companies are rushing to pull their cash, yeah you should maybe start thinking about getting out too, before you’re the only uninsured depositor left.

Re: The venture capitalist's dilemma

#24

Post by kqr »

zpeti wrote: post #21
cornholio wrote: post #15

Capital is just another name for power and powerful people fight to maintain and accumulate more power - welcome to the world, summer child. It's woefully naive to expect individuals to give that power up for social-positive goals, it practically never happened throughout human history. We achieve social-positive goals by behaving as a society and limiting what the powerful can do with their power - democracy, market…

Yet "capitalism" is actually the best way to limit that power of powerful people and make status pretty closely linked with ability. In every other attempt at forming different societies (from feudalism to capitalism) it's generally the ones good at power games that win, not the ones with the actual best abilites. It is said of Stalin he was the best power game player ever born, he was equalled by no one in power acc…

I'm incredibly curious what your sources are. Many of the confident claims in your comment go counter to what I've learned.

Re: The venture capitalist's dilemma

#25

Post by louwrentius »

blippage wrote: post #23

[flagged]

> VCs, and capitalists in general, put money at risk in the hope of generating wealth above their initial capital. They produce goods or services that benefit society, absent the internet-controlled juice-squeezers.

VCs hoarding even more capital doesn't contribute anything to society, they are all 100% rent-seeking juice-squeezers. They are a huge example of why capitalism is so broken.

> Society has benefited greatly from capitalism. I wouldn't leave it up to the likes Molly White to produce anything meaningful.

Society and the world has been - and continues to be - tremendously damaged by capitalism. But of more interest is the ad hominem against Molly White.

I know Molly's work and I'm quite confident that she did a lot more for the world - especially in the crypto space and wikipedia space - than you ever did. See how I can play your game too?

The behaviour of Facebook and Google, or Microsoft (in the past) of people like Bill Gates and his contemporaries like Elon Musk only show why people should never be allowed to own billions, especially while 60% of just people in the USA live paycheck to paycheck.

To me it's not Venture Captitalism but Vulture Capitalism.

Re: The venture capitalist's dilemma

#26

Post by surgical_fire »

cornholio wrote: post #15

Capital is just another name for power and powerful people fight to maintain and accumulate more power - welcome to the world, summer child. It's woefully naive to expect individuals to give that power up for social-positive goals, it practically never happened throughout human history. We achieve social-positive goals by behaving as a society and limiting what the powerful can do with their power - democracy, market…

> And it just so happens that the current system we came up with - a mixed market with a strong, democratically elected public authority, yet freedom for individuals to pursue taxable profits

This is naive to the point of absurdity, when the rich and powerful quite often are gifted loopholes for the profits to not be taxable, with a wink and a nudge from the "democratically elected public authority".

I would certainly love to live in your illusion that "we are privileged to live in a society where the powerful are so limited in what they can do with their power" when they are constantly bailed out from their mistakes and get literal "get out of jail free cards" from their misdeeds. Things that would get you in prison get them a slap on the wrist at most.

Re: The venture capitalist's dilemma

#27

Post by polygamous_bat »

blippage wrote: post #23

[flagged]

> VCs, and capitalists in general, put money at risk in the hope of generating wealth above their initial capital. , absent the internet-controlled juice-squeezers.

You're so close to getting the point, yet so far. The whole point of the article is that there is nothing in the VC handbook that has anything to do with the "benefits society" part of your "They produce goods or services that benefit society" statement.

In fact, if slavery is magically made legal today, I will bet that the Anderssen Horowitzs of this world will fund the Adam Newmanns of this world to start a slave trading startup before the weekend is over. And we need people like Molly White to keep them accountable, to build consensus on what's legal but not moral, and push for a better society where we can live with human dignity.

Re: The venture capitalist's dilemma

#28

Post by cornholio »

surgical_fire wrote: post #26
cornholio wrote: post #15

Capital is just another name for power and powerful people fight to maintain and accumulate more power - welcome to the world, summer child. It's woefully naive to expect individuals to give that power up for social-positive goals, it practically never happened throughout human history. We achieve social-positive goals by behaving as a society and limiting what the powerful can do with their power - democracy, market…

> And it just so happens that the current system we came up with - a mixed market with a strong, democratically elected public authority, yet freedom for individuals to pursue taxable profits This is naive to the point of absurdity, when the rich and powerful quite often are gifted loopholes for the profits to not be taxable, with a wink and a nudge from the "democratically elected public authority". I would certainl…

[flagged]

Re: The venture capitalist's dilemma

#29

Post by foverzar »

surgical_fire wrote: post #26
cornholio wrote: post #15

Capital is just another name for power and powerful people fight to maintain and accumulate more power - welcome to the world, summer child. It's woefully naive to expect individuals to give that power up for social-positive goals, it practically never happened throughout human history. We achieve social-positive goals by behaving as a society and limiting what the powerful can do with their power - democracy, market…

> And it just so happens that the current system we came up with - a mixed market with a strong, democratically elected public authority, yet freedom for individuals to pursue taxable profits This is naive to the point of absurdity, when the rich and powerful quite often are gifted loopholes for the profits to not be taxable, with a wink and a nudge from the "democratically elected public authority". I would certainl…

> the rich and powerful quite often are gifted loopholes for the profits to not be taxable.

Those loopholes aren't free and their nature is typically temporary. One example would be tax cuts in exchange for committing to provide N jobs.

Re: The venture capitalist's dilemma

#30

Post by foverzar »

cornholio wrote: post #28
surgical_fire wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And it just so happens that the current system we came up with - a mixed market with a strong, democratically elected public authority, yet freedom for individuals to pursue taxable profits This is naive to the point of absurdity, when the rich and powerful quite often are gifted loopholes for the profits to not be taxable, with a wink and a nudge from the "democratically elected public authority". I would certainl…

[flagged]

> and by living I mean bring your backpack and no cash, and try to make a comfortable life, obtain employment or start a business without using your existing capital or home country connections.

I don't really suppose the experience would be vastly different to being an alien in an OECD country, tbh.

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