First, numbers would be required to see exactly how the market is "economically upheld" by VCs. Second, I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but your exampl

First, numbers would be required to see exactly how the market is "economically upheld" by VCs. Second, I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but your example seems poorly chosen. Uber and Lyft live off of venture capital. Even absent Uber/Lyft, the transportation market was/still is one of the most cartelised around. Third, you could certainly find satisfactory counter-examples where the money "ends up" (money keeps flowing, btw, that's why simplistic diagrams aren't very interesting) in the hands of a larger pool of companies. But if the point of the article is to tell us that social networks is a highly concentrated industry, that's hardly an upvote-worthy revelation. Judging by the language used in the article, it is apparent that the author has a beef with advertising. I'm glad he can have a lifestyle business sustained by earned advertising he gets with mentions on Hacker News, but it seems a little disingenuous to pretend that can work for all businesses.