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Massive wealth consolidation leads to huge piles of capital that are itching to invest in ventures, which leads to entrepreneurs sprouting up to pitch ideas for

Massive wealth consolidation leads to huge piles of capital that are itching to invest in ventures, which leads to entrepreneurs sprouting up to pitch ideas for a piece of the pie. To get the most enthusiastic investments, they don't bother building a productive company but instead pitch dazzling tech startups that operate at a massive loss in order to disrupt and grow to critical user mass, in order to replace a legacy market with a proprietary platform and thus enable indefinite rent-seeking for growth-obsessed investors. The "flywheel" tech companies aren't the point, getting hands on venture capital is the point. That sounds like good old normal capitalism as I understand it. Edit: fixed run-on sentence

goodpoint 5y ago
Capitalism should be defined by free markets, among other things. What we are seeing is an unprecedented combination of quasi-monopolies, rent-seeking, and an economy disconnected from real production of goods and services. It has been called neofeudalism.
- WitCanStain 5y ago
  But all that is the natural and inevitable consequence of capitalism. It's baked into the structure of the system.
  - maedla 5y ago
    Exactly. People want to go back to the thing that got us here
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    Indeed.
  - gwright 5y ago
    >rent-seeking, Unfortunately "capitalism" is a pretty ill-defined term. I wouldn't include "rent-seeking" as a characteristic of "capitalism" but apparently you do. This makes it very difficult to have coherent discussions. For what it is worth, I think "rent-seeking" is probably a characteristic of all economic systems and therefore isn't something peculiar to "capitalism" and so shouldn't be used as a criticism of "capitalism".
    - goodpoint 5y ago
      > I wouldn't include "rent-seeking" as a characteristic of "capitalism" According to what theory? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking fits squarely into capitalism.
      - gwright 5y ago
        Rent-seeking isn't a phenomena that is unique to capitalism. It is something present in many different (all?) economic systems. So while it is completely fair to be critical of rent-seeking that isn't by itself a criticism of capitalism.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

goodpoint 5y ago

Capitalism should be defined by free markets, among other things. What we are seeing is an unprecedented combination of quasi-monopolies, rent-seeking, and an economy disconnected from real production of goods and services. It has been called neofeudalism.

WitCanStain 5y ago
But all that is the natural and inevitable consequence of capitalism. It's baked into the structure of the system.
- maedla 5y ago
  Exactly. People want to go back to the thing that got us here
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- goodpoint 5y ago
  Indeed.
- gwright 5y ago
  >rent-seeking, Unfortunately "capitalism" is a pretty ill-defined term. I wouldn't include "rent-seeking" as a characteristic of "capitalism" but apparently you do. This makes it very difficult to have coherent discussions. For what it is worth, I think "rent-seeking" is probably a characteristic of all economic systems and therefore isn't something peculiar to "capitalism" and so shouldn't be used as a criticism of "capitalism".
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    > I wouldn't include "rent-seeking" as a characteristic of "capitalism" According to what theory? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking fits squarely into capitalism.
    - gwright 5y ago
      Rent-seeking isn't a phenomena that is unique to capitalism. It is something present in many different (all?) economic systems. So while it is completely fair to be critical of rent-seeking that isn't by itself a criticism of capitalism.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]