Hey tech billionaires, if you want to talk about radical change, let’s abolish venture capitalism

I'm just gonna be straight up that probably none of you have any real experience with VC. Just statistically, it's probably the case. It's anecdotal, but I want to share my story.

I helped found a company about three years ago. It's a software/ services company that focuses on specific kinds of climate change risk. No I won't tell you who we are. Anyways, me and my cofounders are first time founders, although we both have built business segments within companies, this was our first time in our own. We did try for VC that first year. We basically got rejected all around. What I learned is that the basic function of VC isn't to fund good ideas. It's a filter to keep opportunities in the hands of those who already have them. It's a kind of social filter to make sure only the "right" kind of people get funded. It's pure credentialism and institutionalism. Anyways, several of our competitors took the cash. As a result, they ballooned in head count and we're forced to do things the way the vcs expected them to. As a result, almost all of these companies failed or pivoted. We didn't get funded. We got rejected by all fronts. Instead we just built our client base one brick at a time. Well, now their customers are our customers. We're signing deals with the big names and still haven't taken VC money. We've got the best in class technology and they are bleeding money.

VC is a poison pill. It's not there to drive innovation but to filter down who has access to opportunities. Their ideas about what works or doesn't are bad, and largely driven by the culture they are apart of. They worship elitism and credentials, but will the respect for those who are willing to do the work. It's inherently extractive. They add nothing. Want to kill a business? Take VC money.

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For everyone debating numbers, billionaires, millionaires, whatever. The absolute numbers are irrelevant, what matters is the wealth gap. If the absolute top of the wealth pyramid, 0.01%, earns more than the bottom 5% combined, it's a problem. A bigger ratio means more wealth concentration, or inequality, whichever term you prefer. The 1% controlling nearly half the wealth of any place, whether city, state or nation, should sound all alarms to do something ASAP to reduce the inequality.

Which never happens, because when you have that much money, you call the shots. Capitalism became a neofeudalism.

I'm gonna say what the author - as well as many here - don't dare to.

We all know modern capitalism is bad, many know capitalism in general is bad and its modern form is inevitable, but that's magically where people stop.

I'm gonna say it. We need to revisit socialism. This is the only way.

What ultimately helped to solve the issue luddites have raised is the rise of socialist agenda, the idea of secure workplace, fair pay, and technology bringing equal prosperity for everyone.

You can relate to socialism whichever way you want, but through the previous industrial revolution the socialist rise was the thing that finally delivered that prosperity, even in capitalist countries, and allowed people to actually benefit from progress. When first states turned socialist, we suddenly got fairer working conditions, free education and healthcare (except for redscared America), and yes - a giant boost in prosperity and equality.

Now, on the brink of the next technological revolution, we either allow those on the top to reap everything they can, or we fight back again to reclaim technology for the benefit of everyone. And socialism is the structure allowing us to do the latter.

We should return to that discourse, no matter how much red scare we face to this day. Saying capitalism is bad is not gonna hurt them. Saying "capitalism is bad, and here's an alternative" will.

What we have now is barely capitalism. Back in the day, companies actually competed. Microsoft wouldn't make a good version of Word for Mac, so Apple reverse engineered the format and created their own office suite that interoperated.

If anyone tried something like that now they'd get sued or get bought. In fact, the practice of simply buying potential competitors is fairly common. Facebook buying upstart social media app Instagram is just one example.

If there's no competition, markets can't work. And to have competition you need to let businesses fail. And to let businesses fail you need a robust safety net so people aren't destitute when some idiot like Musk drives a company into the ground.

I work in a consulting role and the company I am currently working for is a vc funded provider group specialty healthcare docs. It’s all about volume. They’re completely inept in the way they’re running the company. They are incapable of making decisions that need to be made for the future of the organization so they keep pushing them down the road and papering over the terrible fundamentals because for them it’s all about hoovering up practices to gain market power. Everyone is miserable and always fighting at the highest levels. No one has authority over the organization. And people in lower rungs of the org have some of the worst insticts and are rewarded for it. VCs are making bad businesses significantly worse. They all operate under the same fundamental logic:

Get big enough at all costs until you are undeniable.

Jack up prices.

Then reduce the labor force to reap short term profits.

Then sell off to a bigger player without any regard for how the chips fall.

Or keep getting so big that you are unmanageable.

Consumers suffer.

Rinse.

Repeat.

Who are all these extremist wackos who don't already want to abolish capitalism?

Based on my experience with venture capital, I'm not convinced venture capital has ever produced anything worthwhile.

lol oh yes billionaires care about ethics

But why would they want any change? You not going to talk these people out of been greedy sociopaths

The concept of loaning money to start a business is just fine.

The culture of venture capital, especially as exemplified by bloody dochebags like Marc Andreesen, is what’s toxic and should be stamped out.

I know they're just trying to sound clever but what a dumb framing. "Oh ho ho Greta Thunberg, you want immediate change, let's nuke the North Pole! Not so into immediate change now, are you?"

Obviously people don't want a thing that vaguely aligns with a phrase they use but which is 100% antithetical to their interests.

Getting pretty tired of seeing people skirt around the issue and instead of zooming out a little more and seeing the big picture, are surrendering to existence under capitalism, and make a living telling us how to make the "best" of it (like they're convinced they are? I'm not even sure anymore).

Hey tech billionaires, if you want to talk about radical change, let’s abolish venture capitalism

Imagine that being delivered like a cartoon cigar to all 2000+ of them, and it exploding off their face. That would actually be fucking radical, not this bullshit..

Of course they'd be against it. It's basically a free money machine, once you get into it

Oh yes. Tethics.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

In his new self-published Techno-Optimist Manifesto, Andreessen presents his case for the advancement of technology under capitalism as “virtuous” and capable of creating “abundance that lifts all humans”.

Along the way he champions trickle-down economics (famously effective at increasing inequality), claims technology can solve any problem and suggests that slowing AI development is akin to murder.

Andreessen lambasts academia for being “disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable – playing God with everyone else’s lives, with total insulation from the consequences”.

Echoes can be heard of Mark Zuckerberg’s infamous former motto: move fast and break things, of Sam Altman comparing OpenAI to the Manhattan Project, and of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos’ shared vision of space colonisation.

The future that tech elites imagine looks remarkably similar to the one we’re in: unchecked power, consolidated wealth, low regulation and minimal consequences when technology proves to be harmful.

It is possible for technology to play a prominent and positive role in our collective future but this won’t happen by succumbing to a wilfully ignorant, starry-eyed vision of optimism.

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