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Gig workers are not the only losers. Any small business which doesn't receive VC funding is also disadvantaged because they aren't able to give consumers the s
by jondubois 8y ago
Gig workers are not the only losers.
Any small business which doesn't receive VC funding is also disadvantaged because they aren't able to give consumers the same kinds of deals that these consumers have gotten used to.
What some of those big VCs have been doing is criminal and has been hurting both workers and value-producers for over a decade.
I hope that they'll end up in jail after it all goes belly up because this is very serious.
It's not hard to see what's really happening; VCs are shoving investors' money into each others' pockets and then dumping the bi-product on the public market so that the public foots the bill... A lot of which ends up taking a chunk out of regular people's retirement funds.
The crime is made even worse by the fact that many of those who end up footing the bill don't even have a choice. If I have a compulsory retirement fund like 401k or Superannuation, then I often don't have much say about where my money is invested... Maybe it goes to an index fund; part of which goes to big corps like Google which then use the money to acquire worthless VC startups from people who are friends with executives.
- TAForObvReasons 8y agoEveryone is a loser except for the investors. If you really take it to the logical conclusion, the business model is Dumping [1]: capture the market, drive out everyone else, then jack up prices when you are the only show in town. And the winners in the endgame are the investors. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)
- skrebbel 8y agoI'm not doubting your point, but at the same time I struggle to name an example that did the "then jack up prices when you are the only show in town" step.
- TAForObvReasons 8y agoNo one, not even Amazon, reached the "only show in town" scale. Walmart's online presence for most popular items is competitive and many times offer lower prices. Uber, Airbnb, and other companies in this space are valued based on the assumption that they will in fact be able to reach that scale. And if they do, no doubt many of these unicorns will well exceed the trillion dollar market cap
- oarsinsync 8y agoWhile not reaching literal "only show in town", Wintel did exactly this when reaching dominance.