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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

#131

Post by xhkkffbf »

yunwal wrote: post #82
xhkkffbf wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't many or even most of the startups essentially "employee owned"? I've heard that the average employee at NVidia is worth $25m.

So 900b total among its 36000 employees for a total of 900b/4.3 trillion market cap. Or roughly 20% employee owned (if that 25m number is correct). This article (warning: obnoxious ads) is the only one I can find that claims to know who nvidea’s shareholders are and puts the number at 4.3% https://capital.com/en-int/analysis/nvidia-shareholder-who-o... I would not consider that to be employee owned (although I certai…

I think the phrase "employee owned" means that employees own some of the company.

Do you feel that outside shareholders invalidate the claim?

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

#132

Post by haritha-j »

judahmeek wrote: post #65
haritha-j wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, when you start to lobby, when you explicitly pay people to pass laws in your favour, that's when you cross a line. You go from playing within the rules of the system to making up rules that favour you, and it's wild that it's legal much less acceptable for corporations to do that.

So who do you think should be allowed to lobby politicians & how would you avoid lobbying from bleeding through unofficial channels?

Personally, I think we need much tighter regulation. There was a study at some point that found that lobyying has a yield of 22,000% in the US, which is a wild figure (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1375082). Lobbying very seriously undermines democracy. The US system of calling lobbying via donations as free speech seems ludicrous. France, for instance, has much tighter laws on lobbying.

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

#133

Post by fluoridation »

immibis wrote: post #128
fluoridation wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

How dare I not want to talk about what you want to talk about?

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

#134

Post by yunwal »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #131
yunwal wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So 900b total among its 36000 employees for a total of 900b/4.3 trillion market cap. Or roughly 20% employee owned (if that 25m number is correct). This article (warning: obnoxious ads) is the only one I can find that claims to know who nvidea’s shareholders are and puts the number at 4.3% https://capital.com/en-int/analysis/nvidia-shareholder-who-o... I would not consider that to be employee owned (although I certai…

I think the phrase "employee owned" means that employees own some of the company. Do you feel that outside shareholders invalidate the claim?

Yes, my definition of employee owned would be “employees own a controlling share of the company”

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

#135

Post by phendrenad2 »

underlipton wrote: post #76
renegade-otter wrote: post #38

It's like accusing a pig of being a pig. Pig gonna do what pig does. What DOESN'T work is legally-enforced "norms" that we the people decide everyone has to follow. Businesses are "people" now, according to the US Supreme Court, so it's our job to make them face consequences if they refuse to behave like actual "humans" bound by laws. But it's only if we elect representatives who are not corrupt grifters.

I think we just need to get rid of corporate personhood. If you want to do something big, you need to have skin in the game. Criminal prosecution for corporate action taken under your purview should be more common. If you can't handle the heat, just come watch TV with the rest of us plebs.

Yeah, corporate personhood feels very much like the kinds of "elegant" hacks people like to use, like "who needs dropbox when FTP works fine". It's not a good match for the problem domain, but it's been stretched to fit. The unintended consequences are things we're battling to this day.

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

#136

Post by immibis »

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 Soviet Union won the space race, but I'm not sure if they had property or not. They were a dictatorship, anyway, so we probably don't want to repeat that.

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

#137

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

otterley wrote: post #74
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.

Fine. It's the only way we know of that unlocks the potential of building complex things. If you know of an alternative that is better, please tell us!

Consider a eukaryotic cell... fantastically complex, damn useful, came on the scene long before property.

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

#138

Post by zanellato19 »

labcomputer wrote: post #127
yogurt-male wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 awa…

Claiming that all of these would not exist without VC is hard to believe.
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