3 ms·

There are many reasons not to like this but circumventing market mechanisms doesn't register. You want Mark to have to have to report to a bunch of investors s

by ipaddr 5y ago

There are many reasons not to like this but circumventing market mechanisms doesn't register. You want Mark to have to have to report to a bunch of investors so they can vet his ideas before he is allowed to proceed. If this was investor funded couldn't Mark fund this himself? Should we have prevented Amazon from investing into AWS? The meta universe seems like the next social platform and it's related to the facebook mission of connecting people virtually.

nicoburns 5y ago
> Should we have prevented Amazon from investing into AWS? It's not about preventing it outright. It's about constrain resources to bias towards the invested-in company actually being profitable to allow other companies to compete with them on a level playing field. > If this was investor funded couldn't Mark fund this himself? If Facebook didn't make as much money then Mark wouldn't have as much money to invest. Which IMO would be a good thing as it would mean that wealth would be more distributed which would likely lead to it being used more wisely due to the wisdom of the crowd. Mark could probably still launch such a project (and I have no problem with that), just not with "hiring 10,000 staff in Europe for an unproven project" level of resources (which I do have a problem with).
- hytdstd 5y ago
  It sounds to me like you have a problem with the concept of conglomerates utilizing their capital.
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    I have a problem with them having so much capital in the first place because I think on average they don't tend to use it very well compared to smaller companies.
    - hytdstd 5y ago
      Purely out of curiosity: why does poor capital utilization concern you? It's their gamble, their resources, their right, I think.
- JohnPrine 5y ago
  By this logic Facebook never would have gotten funded in the first place. What makes you so sure the metaverse concept will fail?

by ipaddr 5y ago

nicoburns 5y ago

> Should we have prevented Amazon from investing into AWS? It's not about preventing it outright. It's about constrain resources to bias towards the invested-in company actually being profitable to allow other companies to compete with them on a level playing field. > If this was investor funded couldn't Mark fund this himself? If Facebook didn't make as much money then Mark wouldn't have as much money to invest. Which IMO would be a good thing as it would mean that wealth would be more distributed which would likely lead to it being used more wisely due to the wisdom of the crowd. Mark could probably still launch such a project (and I have no problem with that), just not with "hiring 10,000 staff in Europe for an unproven project" level of resources (which I do have a problem with).

hytdstd 5y ago
It sounds to me like you have a problem with the concept of conglomerates utilizing their capital.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  I have a problem with them having so much capital in the first place because I think on average they don't tend to use it very well compared to smaller companies.
  - hytdstd 5y ago
    Purely out of curiosity: why does poor capital utilization concern you? It's their gamble, their resources, their right, I think.
JohnPrine 5y ago
By this logic Facebook never would have gotten funded in the first place. What makes you so sure the metaverse concept will fail?