This makes me feel genuinely sad. Say what you like about the first dot-com bubble, but those founders were at worst naive. In today's SV, we seem to have acti

This makes me feel genuinely sad. Say what you like about the first dot-com bubble, but those founders were at worst naive. In today's SV, we seem to have actively embraced malevolent business models. Make something slightly more convenient, then use subtle psychological tricks to exploit your customers. A $700 juicer with DRM? Individual plastic pouches for a few ounces of vegetables? You can dress that up with new-age buzzwords, but it's an awful way to make a living. A mountain of waste and expense just to avoid the inconvenience of chewing your food. There's a vulgarity to all of this. A naked, grasping search for recurring revenue at any cost. I recently saw a book entitled Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products with a front-cover endorsement by Eric Ries. Those are the ethics of Philip Morris, without a hint of embarrassment. Maybe we've picked all the low-hanging fruit. Maybe there are no more good businesses left. Maybe you can't make a profit by selling a useful product at a fair price. Maybe the future of business is just wringing money out of people with dark patterns. I hope not.