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First of all, if Twitter executives were compensated on whether these Twitter threads are visually easy to read, I would hope they all get fired with negative b
by supernova87a 5y ago
First of all, if Twitter executives were compensated on whether these Twitter threads are visually easy to read, I would hope they all get fired with negative bonuses each year.
Second, and more to the point, people in tech aren't getting rich "because tech is evil" or some emotionally charged political rallying cry like that. Tech people are getting rich because every single one of us is willing to part with some of our money to pay them to produce things we can't resist consuming! And these companies are operating totally rationally according to the rules we give them (and are / are not willing to change as a society).
It's like yelling at realtors getting rich when you're the one buying a house. Or cursing at the traffic jam you're sitting in. Or finding out that your minor recreational drug habit is causing a refugee crisis.
There is so much money built up in wealth around the world, and tech has found a way to tap into it.
Now, that raises other fundamental problems as we all know. But as long as we continue demanding these services, are you surprised that someone is making money from it? Or just unhappy it's not you and me?
- paulpauper 5y agoppl love hotdogs. no one getting 7 figure making them.
- standardUser 5y agoI am sure there are plenty of executives at Tyson Foods pulling in 7 figure incomes, to name just one multinational that makes hot dogs.
- supernova87a 5y agoThat's because everyone can make their own hotdogs or eat something else if they want, and there's little barrier to your local deli getting into the hotdog business if they wanted to. Google search, not so much.
- jeffreyrogers 5y agoThey are getting rich because of their exposure to the financial markets and because tech is currently an industry that lots of capital is flowing into. It has less to do with what consumers are willing to spend money on than it does on that. If it were just about what people want to spend money on then people in agriculture would be getting rich too.
- thrill 5y agoInvestment flows into the the tech where there are expectations of consumer interest.
- Ericson2314 5y agoIt's been little but "expectations" and Ponzie schemes for a decade. What do you expect next?
- Ericson2314 5y agoYeah the shocking thing about tech is how little revenue there is relative to investments. GP is exactly wrong.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y agoMaybe in startups. The companies that are generating these vast amounts of wealth are large tech cos like Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Oracle, Netflix, etc. which all are making absolute craptons of profit over the medium term.
- Ericson2314 5y agoRight. The thing we saw before was expectation of the latter influencing expectations of the former, but that might be finally starting to change.
- paulpauper 5y agoa good tech product, especially in consumer and info tech, generates high profit margins and reliable recurring revenue protected by intellectual property , network effect,s and high intellectual barriers to entry. Other industries and sectors have lower margins and low barriers. This creates an incentive to spend a lot on capital, such as human capital, to produce such tech products.
- jeffreyrogers 5y ago
- pydry 5y ago>But as long as we continue demanding these services Tech money seems to be made more via gatekeeping than providing a service. A friendly guy called Raul drives the taxi and provides the actual service. Uber puts itself between me and him. Uber doesn't make money if there are lots of people willing to be the go-between between me and Raul. Uber RAKES it in if they're one of two.
- sagarm 5y agoDid you use taxis before Lyft/Uber? They clearly improve the customer experience.
- pydry 5y agoI did, yeah. They drove down the cost more than they improved the experience. It's neat not having to dig around for cash and being able to see your driver on your phone arriving but it's not game changing. The real innovation was using a tsunami of cheap financing to engage in a predatory pricing war to gain oligopoly status and opening up being a taxi driver to anyone with a car. This was basically exploitation of wealth inequality. When I visited Buenos Aires in 2011 I was shocked that you could easily send somebody on a scooter to get you a starbucks and people regularly did. That "innovation" seems significantly less shocking these days. The west caught up.
- jimbob45 5y agoYep, this is the right read. Uber exploited under-regulation in gig economy jobs and passed (part of) the savings onto users.
- xiphias2 5y ago,, opening up being a taxi driver to anyone with a car'' That's what customers want. Taxis were always too expensive for normal people to use. In the past they needed to know the routes to any place inside a city, but since we have GPS navigation, now that knowledge is much less useful. Nowdays I care more about the car being modern than the knowledge of the driver.