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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

#21

Post by cmrdporcupine »

omarhaneef wrote: post #11

At the heart of this article is the claim that buying equity is a form of theft. That is an extreme claim (in the sense of surprising, remarkable, unusual, and one that needs a lot more support than ordinary claims). It is inadequately defended here. The argument that it violates fair exchange is tautological.

The article is clearly written from a bit of a Marxian perspective and I think there's a lot assumed ... presuppositions about exploitation and value theory.

So yeah, even though on first skim I think I agree with the thrust of this article, I think you're right it's poorly defended, assuming it's at all for an audience outside of people who already think this way.

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

#22

Post by fooqux »

morcus wrote: post #4
fooqux wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have a tendency to think they're special, that they won't (or will) be the outlier. Gambling, unprotected sex, etc. We're not great at risk evaluation/comparison. But hey, without this, our public schools wouldn't get funding from lottery tickets! So I'm forced to conclude it's a good thing.

It is not your main point, I know - but for everyone I know who buys lottery tickets, they're more thought of as an entertainment purchase than a financial purchase.

I've heard this argument before about casinos, but never lottery tickets. I'm not sure I personally buy that, but let's go with it.

If they're entertaining, then presumably it's from the thrill of maybe winning. Why would winning be thrilling? Why, because you get money- potentially a life-changing amount of it. If they made a lotto game with a maximum payout of a dollar I'm reasonably certain nobody would play it. Or hell, anyone could write down a series of heads/tails on a paper and then flip a coin to see if they're a winner! Yet, we don't see that, even though it's free and (I would argue) has the same entertainment value.

So yeah, I'm sure entertainment is the facade, but underneath it all, it's financially motivated for the vast majority.

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

#23

Post by frankest »

This seems like a throw back in time - as if one of the Communist propaganda arms of Eastern Europe wrote it. This article doesn’t understand tech or modern evil. It just spews worker vs equity owner arguments.

Any engineer today could start their own business. They could instantly become equity owners. Especially with AI. Many giants paid salaries and equity packages to the best, to keep them from starting competition.

En engineer can also leave a tech giant and in California, unlike NY, non-competes don’t apply. Tech work scales infinitely - so you can make a product for millions of users with your own two hands, unlike manual labor workers, who are limited by physics.

The evil not recognized is when the scalability of tech and AI is used to create and power up addictions that drain human brains, instead of giving them bycicles of the mind. Leaches on the brain. Industries where you can do well by the customers but you make a LOT more money if you do badly by them: Advertising (pumping ad impressions by refreshing pages, putting ads under common buttons to create unintended clicks that charge small businesses dollars per click, not delivering traffic or real audiences and making the small business pay even more thinking it’s their fault). Making gambling and games with horrible dark patter dynamics that wake users at night and expose them to chronic sleep depravation and wallet draining just to keep them addicted or with some status or in some league.

If you count human brain time and attention as the most valuable and sparse of resource - think about how much of it is killed by true evil. VC funding won’t be needed when AI is used to build things without the need for much funding anymore. What truly matters is not building evil things.

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

#24

Post by cmrdporcupine »

endofreach wrote: post #16
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #8

[flagged]

...yet kids are pretty quick (and eager) to understand "mine"... and seem to struggle understanding "not mine" at first. Transgenerational greed? And still, not respecting these concepts make you the thief today. So, what now?

The person who coined the "Property is theft" quote (Proudhon if I recall) clearly made a distinction between capital-p Property and personal possession. And I think most regular people do, too.

I don't necessarily think of my stocks and bonds in my retirement funds in the same category as my toothbrush, suit jacket, or even my house or garden or whatever.

Classical liberalism and its descendants want to blur the distinction between the two. And you're welcome to adopt that view. But you shouldn't assume there aren't legitimate challenges to that point of view.

Proudhon himself wasn't terrible coherent. Marx I think clarified the distinction between dominance and control of capital and production vs personal private property better.

From a certain perspective, capitalism has been the process of enclosing things that were once common, or could be common, into "private" property. And despite the rhetoric of free exchange and liberty, it has mainly done this by force and coercion since the acts of enclosure and the age of colonialism until now.

My 6 acres of "private property" that my house sits on here was acquired mainly by force from its prior inhabitants two centuries ago. What does that do its status -- and to me -- now?

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

#26

Post by jaybrendansmith »

As a democratic socialist, I find this article fails to back its claim that equity is theft. Workers at startups get equity; this is why they work so hard. Would a worker cooperative be better? Possibly, but there is little incentive for the person with the capital to risk their wealth if they don't get a stake that is commensurate to the risk they are taking. I think if anything, startups are a massive improvement over public corporations because they regularly provide a means for a talented person with no capital to become an owner. If I were to critique capitalism, I would hardly start with a startup, which is the closest thing we have to a worker cooperative. I would go after private equity, which is perhaps the most evil of all of capitalism in its various forms, the equivalent of a blood sucking creature straight out of the D&D Monster Manual.

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

#27

Post by wslh »

fooqux wrote: post #15
wslh wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, people consistently overestimate their chances of being the exception. But in parallel, I think we also lack hype around the opposite direction: learning to live with less, intentionally and intelligently. I'm not talking about UBI or forced austerity, but about developing smarter ways to live frugally without feeling deprived. That mindset would relieve a lot of the pressure that the "you must win the startup…

That's antithetical to capitalism and consumerism. Not to mention human nature. While I agree with you in principle, I don't know how one would even start to effect any change here at a societal level. Especially when it's impossible to not be bombarded with marketing from people who are extremely good at using your emotions against you here. Well, I suppose I do know of one. Mindfulness training I think has been sho…

Capitalism or consumerism don't define human nature. Human behaviour existed long before those systems, and it will exist long after them.

What has changed, and this is where I agree with your point about difficulty, is the scale and precision of behavioural manipulation. We've never had a period where advertising, content, and emotional triggers were personalized with such speed and accuracy. Tobacco harmed the body, today's hyper-personalized content ecosystems can easily harm attention, mood regulation, and overall mental health.

So yes, it's hard to shift things at a societal level when the environment is engineered to keep people reactive.

On mindfulness: in its modern form it's often packaged as another consumer product, but its roots, like those of yoga, Zen, and other contemplative traditions, come from outside capitalist logic. The original practices were tools for resisting impulse and cultivating awareness, not selling calmness subscriptions.

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

#28

Post by cmrdporcupine »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #12
wslh wrote: post #2

At the end of the day I don't think Silicon Valley represents anything fundamentally different from the world at large. The world is unfair, and it may become even less fair. What is disturbing is how the hype-machine around "startups" and the unicorn myth encourages people to believe they can be the next big thing. But basic arithmetic makes that impossible: you can't have an abundance of unicorns when the attention…

Silicon Valley is different in my mind because, well, back in the 1970's, it was arguably not evil. Woz and the nerds were making machines at home, later hooking them up to one another with the janky telephone service as the interconnect. And this kid, just getting a taste of BBSs in Kansas in the mid 1980's, was so envious of the outrageous number of BBSs in Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Cupertino, San Jose…—all strange…

All that is different is that you and I have had bargaining power and scarcity far far beyond the average skilled worker.

That bargaining power came from our ability to surf the crest of the wave that was over and over crashing through existing industries, turning them on their head with the promise and practice of automating via computation. In many cases deskilling the jobs of other workers.

We could play the part of magicians who knew these arcane arts and get paid accordingly.

There is precisely zero guarantee that any of this will continue. In the latest wave it seems like it is we ourselves who are being submerged beneath the wave.

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

#29

Post by Avicebron »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #24
endofreach wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...yet kids are pretty quick (and eager) to understand "mine"... and seem to struggle understanding "not mine" at first. Transgenerational greed? And still, not respecting these concepts make you the thief today. So, what now?

The person who coined the "Property is theft" quote (Proudhon if I recall) clearly made a distinction between capital-p Property and personal possession. And I think most regular people do, too. I don't necessarily think of my stocks and bonds in my retirement funds in the same category as my toothbrush, suit jacket, or even my house or garden or whatever. Classical liberalism and its descendants want to blur the dis…

> my house sits on here was acquired mainly by force from its prior inhabitants two centuries ago.

This argument can be used for practically any piece of earth, it's nonsensical to fixate on it.

The issue has always been that capital (and it's quiet sibling power) can compound itself endlessly absent any checks against it. Societal unification against power and wealth consolidation should be the same as it would be against a plague or cancer in a body.

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

#30

Post by wslh »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #12
wslh wrote: post #2

At the end of the day I don't think Silicon Valley represents anything fundamentally different from the world at large. The world is unfair, and it may become even less fair. What is disturbing is how the hype-machine around "startups" and the unicorn myth encourages people to believe they can be the next big thing. But basic arithmetic makes that impossible: you can't have an abundance of unicorns when the attention…

Silicon Valley is different in my mind because, well, back in the 1970's, it was arguably not evil. Woz and the nerds were making machines at home, later hooking them up to one another with the janky telephone service as the interconnect. And this kid, just getting a taste of BBSs in Kansas in the mid 1980's, was so envious of the outrageous number of BBSs in Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Cupertino, San Jose…—all strange…

I conjecture that what you're describing was deeply tied to the size, quality, and spirit of that original community (and consumers). A relatively small cluster of tinkerers, shared physical spaces, and a sense of discovery created a moral atmosphere very different from today's massive global tech hub shaped by billions in capital.

To put the scale shift in perspective: Apple sold only a couple of million Apple IIs in that entire era. Today, the iPhone sits in the multi-billion range since 2007. Once a technology ecosystem expands by three orders of magnitude, its culture cannot remain the same.

The early Valley wasn’t "good" in an absolute sense, it was simply relatively small, intimate, and guided by shared values. As growth, global competition, and finances took over, the culture changed in ways that were probably inevitable.

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