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Silicon Valley startups: being evil, again and again

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Re: Silicon Valley startups: being evil, again and again

#121

Post by fluoridation »

tucnak wrote: post #120
fluoridation wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Let me make a comparison: Me: "People should be able to walk to work" You: "If someone can't walk 10 miles to work along the side of a road with cars whizzing by at 100mph, why should they be able to walk to work?" Yeah, like I said, you completely missed the point of my comment. Here, let me fix the analogy for you: A: The fact that people drive cars on roads is a bug, not a feature. B: A bug where? Like, in people…

I'm sorry, but it is you who completely misses the point, and have so far failed to engage with your opponent's rhetoric on any meaningful level. (Using latin words like sequitur does not count!) To borrow your analogy: there is, in fact, major issue in people driving cars on roads. This is why many cities elect to reduce car use by means of policy. This is accomplished because there's a dialectic where "should" tran…

>so far failed to engage with your opponent's rhetoric on any meaningful level.

I have not failed to do it, I have chosen not to do it. I asked a specific question and received as an answer something that's totally irrelevant. I am decidedly not interested in whether "it would be possible to have a system where startups to require less funding, for example, by UBI, or normalizing bootstrapping". It has nothing to do with my original comment, and I'm not going to engage with it.

Re: Silicon Valley startups: being evil, again and again

#122

Post by treyd »

labcomputer wrote: post #80
treyd wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Property is the only way that we can build complex things. This assertion needs to be substantiated, even if it is true. You give an example of how property "allows us to build complex things", but you don't prove that it's impossible for any other system of ownership or of mediating access to resources/"things" to allow that.

> but you don't prove that it's impossible for any other system of ownership or of mediating access to resources/"things" to allow that. You can’t prove a negative, so the onus is actually on you to show an example of a working alternative that does not rely on property. And it has been tried in the 20th century. Several times, in fact. Despite all the industrial espionage committed by the Soviet Union (which saved t…

The legal system in USSR also had the concept of property.

Re: Silicon Valley startups: being evil, again and again

#124

Post by sershe »

This is basically saying wage labor is theft, nothing to do with silicon valley as such

Comically though, it's also self-refuting, since it leads with how voluntary exchange of something for money is ok, even if someone gets a bad deal. Buy, you see, if you voluntarily exchange your labor for money - creating that something (notably your employer is not interested in your labor especially in the case of the startup, only that you give them the product); and then your counterparty voluntarily exchanges that product for somewhat more money with someone else, that is now theft, and also evil.

This is just propaganda. Collectivism is evil, startups are fine.

Re: Silicon Valley startups: being evil, again and again

#125

Post by labcomputer »

treyd wrote: post #122
labcomputer wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but you don't prove that it's impossible for any other system of ownership or of mediating access to resources/"things" to allow that. You can’t prove a negative, so the onus is actually on you to show an example of a working alternative that does not rely on property. And it has been tried in the 20th century. Several times, in fact. Despite all the industrial espionage committed by the Soviet Union (which saved t…

The legal system in USSR also had the concept of property.

Yes, it did[1]! Because they rather quickly discovered that you can’t build complex things without it. Which brings us back round to the original point!

[1] But… they did make a go of it without property before discovering that it wouldn’t work. It turns out (shockingly!) that indentured serfs (who make the food) like the idea of land reform when it means they own the land. But they don’t like it so much when it means nobody owns the land. And when they are not happy then you have no food. And then those quotes about “x meals until y” start to have some salience. And then you start to think about the most effective way to use the number of bullets you have on hand (which is smaller than the number of mouths you need to feed).

Re: Silicon Valley startups: being evil, again and again

#126

Post by labcomputer »

ffsm8 wrote: post #99
labcomputer wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren’t thinking this through. If a startup defaults, it is because they have no money left (which is because they do not have a viable business yet). So there is nothing of value to repossess. This is the same reason the bank asks for an independent valuation of a house (and requires the buyer to maintain insurance) before releasing the money to pay for it: The value of the collateral needs to plausibly match the…

Naw, you're making a claim that's just not true. The company will have some value left on default. E.g if it's a software company it will have the IP for the software etc pp Now wherever that's enough for anyone to be willing to take that risk with the loan is another story and thus I could now quote my previous comment in its entirety

Meanwhile, back here in reality…

Failed startups don’t have value left at the end. They go until they run out of money. Then they liquidate the office furniture to make the last payroll. Sometimes they don’t wrap up early enough and the founder and board members are personally liable for it.

Nobody wants to buy the custom software needed to run “The pets.com for GenAI” because it would be cheaper to start from scratch than to understand the codebase and make it do what you want.

Companies like 23-and-me that accumulate valuable data while going bankrupt are the rare exception… but banks/VCs do not know a-priori which ones will be that exception! If they did, they just wouldn’t make the bad loans in the first place!

> Now wherever that's enough for anyone to be willing to take that risk

Well, but it clearly isn’t, right? So everything else you wrote is sort of irrelevant.

I mean, why don’t you lend a startup $1000 on the condition they pay you back $1500 in two years[1] if they succeed and nothing if they fail? Pass the hat around your neighborhood and I bet you could fund a few real startups!

Except that.. oh.. when it’s your money on the line, suddenly you realize those are very stupid terms. You lose the whole $1000 90% of the time, break even 5% of the time and make a +$500 profit 5% of the time. The math isn’t mathing here.

So you’ll want to very carefully vet the founders and their plan. Be very picky about who you fund. Maybe you’ll ask them to personally guarantee some fraction of the loan. Suddenly, your highly moral terms look exactly like the business loans that approximately 0% of startups use because VCs offer them a better deal.

[1] Any more than that would be usury, which is immoral, right?

Re: Silicon Valley startups: being evil, again and again

#127

Post by labcomputer »

yogurt-male wrote: post #85
labcomputer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should they get ownership of the business? When you get a mortgage for your house, the bank doesn’t permanently own part of your house after you pay it off. Because the VCs are funding the startup on extremely favorable terms? If the startup fails, the founders can just walk away. They are not personally liable for anything. They can (and often do) subsequently form another startup, often funded by the very sam…

> VCs are happy to throw away money on 99 failed startups precisely because they are entitled to the continued surplus from 1 successful startup. And why is this a good thing? I think the past decade and the current bubble point to this being a bug, not a feature. What I mean to say is that VCs seem far too eager to throw money at ventures with untenable business plans or that lack any edge over competing firms, whic…

> And why is this a good thing?

Ok, well, I personally really like driving a car with zero tailpipe emissions, and the cleaner air that comes from it (Tesla).

I think it’s awesome having a little rectangle in my pocket that sends text messages from anywhere on earth and summons an encyclopedia (Apple, Google, Starlink, Intel).

I enjoy talking to (and seeing) my friends and family while they are thousands of miles away (Cisco, Apple, and many others).

I think it is fantastic that we continue to find new labor-saving methods of farming so that fewer people need toil in the fields (the current batch of ag-drone and ag-AI startups).

This is like asking “well, why do we need that science mumbo jumbo anyhow?”

Re: Silicon Valley startups: being evil, again and again

#128

Post by immibis »

fluoridation wrote: post #121
tucnak wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but it is you who completely misses the point, and have so far failed to engage with your opponent's rhetoric on any meaningful level. (Using latin words like sequitur does not count!) To borrow your analogy: there is, in fact, major issue in people driving cars on roads. This is why many cities elect to reduce car use by means of policy. This is accomplished because there's a dialectic where "should" tran…

>so far failed to engage with your opponent's rhetoric on any meaningful level. I have not failed to do it, I have chosen not to do it. I asked a specific question and received as an answer something that's totally irrelevant. I am decidedly not interested in whether "it would be possible to have a system where startups to require less funding, for example, by UBI, or normalizing bootstrapping". It has nothing to do…

I am decidedly not interested in whether it's possible to build a society where grandma doesn't need to defend herself with a flamethrower at the grocery store. That has nothing to do with my comment and I won't engage with it. I am simply asking what's wrong with grandma defending herself with a flamethrower at the grocery store.

Re: Silicon Valley startups: being evil, again and again

#129

Post by ffsm8 »

labcomputer wrote: post #126
ffsm8 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naw, you're making a claim that's just not true. The company will have some value left on default. E.g if it's a software company it will have the IP for the software etc pp Now wherever that's enough for anyone to be willing to take that risk with the loan is another story and thus I could now quote my previous comment in its entirety

Meanwhile, back here in reality… Failed startups don’t have value left at the end. They go until they run out of money. Then they liquidate the office furniture to make the last payroll. Sometimes they don’t wrap up early enough and the founder and board members are personally liable for it. Nobody wants to buy the custom software needed to run “The pets.com for GenAI” because it would be cheaper to start from scratc…

Take a deep breath and reread my comment please, you're interpreting things into it that I never said, and I'm not sure how you could've gotten the impression were in there - I merely pointed out that this behavior is core to capitalism, because the people with money own said money - and are in no way responsible to create a "fair" (from the perspective of the person receiving money) playing field

Re: Silicon Valley startups: being evil, again and again

#130

Post by judahmeek »

HumanOstrich wrote: post #107
judahmeek wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Atlantic just wrote an article that references this concept: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/11/marjorie-taylor-gr... They also have several older articles directly targeting insider trading by politicians.

Insider trading by politicians is not really what's being discussed. Rich people and corporations lobbying politicians is different.

I was talking more about the mentality of the politicians who "get the joke"
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