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It's not really. Communism is just the super monopoly on everything by one firm (plus a bunch of kooky religious like beliefs). This subset of VC funding uses i

It's not really. Communism is just the super monopoly on everything by one firm (plus a bunch of kooky religious like beliefs). This subset of VC funding uses is basically abusing external funding to gain market dominance so that one can abuse your customers with product changes that make the product more profitable for you. It's very equivalent to how an oligopolist/monopolist enters new markets using money from the rest of the business to undercut everyone in the new market and push them out. It's bad for society, just like communism. This doesn't mean there's no place for VC funding, there's lots of legitimate uses for it (i.e. handling mismatched cost/revenue flows from expansion where there are a lot of upfront costs and cash flows come over the following years). Just that it's usually more profitable to be a monopolist/oligopolist and so that has been where the money has been flowing, at great detriment to society.

hellojesus 3y ago
In every single example up to the parent comment, the end result is a market inequlabrium. Left unchanged, the market can have new entrants that undercut the major player. In this case, any new video playform that has fewer ads could steal market share from youtube. Rumble has entered the market to do just that. Network effects do make this challenging, but that is for the market to decide. The more creators that dual upload and then see number shifts over to a YouTube competitor, the better,as it will force YouTube back into competition. The market will solve this.
- sweeter 3y ago
  I'm sorry to tell you this, but this is a complete fantasy that completely ignores the point that was made a couple of comments above. No one is undercutting Google. Period.and that is the point. They have a death grip on the user base. Just look at Twitter, it completely spit in everyone's faces and even still people cannot get out of its grips on them. The only platforms that have even remotely survived are platforms that also own an ad network, or some other secondary source of income (like Kick and their Crypto gambling site or Twitch with their ad stock) as a way to shovel users into that fire. The market cannot solve this and has no incentive to do so. Again, it's a complete fantasy that has not once proven true.
  - hellojesus 3y ago
    > Just look at Twitter, it completely spit in everyone's faces and even still people cannot get out of its grips on them. People can get out of them. People refuse to get out of them. Likely this is because YouTube and Twitter are still the most efficient platforms regardless of their regressions. I used to have FB. Now I don't. I used to have Twitter. Now I don't. I used to have Android. Now I have Grapheneos. I used to use gmail. Now I use Fastmail, Mailcow, and shared hosting. I used to have Instagram. Now I don't. You can decide to not be a user of a service. You can build your own! Or more easily, you can migrate to a competitor. All of this clamoring for more regulation is nonsense. We have a market that can solve these problems. But markets work by votes. The path is harder if you take the road less traveled.
    - sweeter 3y ago
      I didn't even mention regulation. You're circle jerking with yourself with a fantasy idea of the "free market" that doesn't exist in reality. You can't consume your way out of large corporations having market dominance, idk where that insane notion even is born.
      - hellojesus 3y ago
        You can entirely consume your way out of it, and you can also build your way out of it. It's not fantasy. This is how markets work; how economies work. Let's look at something like FB. At one point they were absolutely the social company. But other competitors have entered the market. In some instances, new markets were created, like Tiktok. Those new products took users away from FB. In some instances, the users will never return. This has happened precisely because someone somewhere decided to make something and challenge the existing market. > I didn't even mention regulation My bad. I was getting this thread confused with the one about AI regulation.
    - intended 3y ago
      “You” a market does not make. People refuse to get out of them is the market. That is the point of their growth and dominance model.
jampekka 3y ago
Private VCs using their money to control the economy doesn't really sound much like a "system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs". Private capitalists controlling the economy is practically the definition of capitalism. And it's bad for society indeed.
- snapplebobapple 3y ago
  Yah, so you are really buying into the kooky religious like beliefs I see. Communism says what you have in quotations above, but it has never, ever worked that way for any serious amount of time. It always devolves into a system where the government owns everything or nearly everything and apportions things base don how it sees fit and that is a monopoly and a monopsony since the government is the sole provider of goods and services and the sole employer. It's a monopoly and it exercises power for the benefit of the bureaucracy that controls said monopoly with lip service to some idealized utopian BS. That is not the definition of capitalism. The definition of capitalism is a system in which owners of capital control their capital in accord with their interests, which translates into competition because everyone else is also controlling their own capital and labor for their own interests. The natural outcome of this system is monopoly, which does closely resemble all the harms and dead weight loss of communism but, unlike under communism, the government is supposed to be there to stop total control, bust up the monopolies, and restore competition. It did a passable job of this until the Rehnquist supreme court in the 70s and it's time to start back in that pre-rehnquist direction. It's never time for communism.

hellojesus 3y ago

In every single example up to the parent comment, the end result is a market inequlabrium. Left unchanged, the market can have new entrants that undercut the major player. In this case, any new video playform that has fewer ads could steal market share from youtube. Rumble has entered the market to do just that. Network effects do make this challenging, but that is for the market to decide. The more creators that dual upload and then see number shifts over to a YouTube competitor, the better,as it will force YouTube back into competition. The market will solve this.

sweeter 3y ago
I'm sorry to tell you this, but this is a complete fantasy that completely ignores the point that was made a couple of comments above. No one is undercutting Google. Period.and that is the point. They have a death grip on the user base. Just look at Twitter, it completely spit in everyone's faces and even still people cannot get out of its grips on them. The only platforms that have even remotely survived are platforms that also own an ad network, or some other secondary source of income (like Kick and their Crypto gambling site or Twitch with their ad stock) as a way to shovel users into that fire. The market cannot solve this and has no incentive to do so. Again, it's a complete fantasy that has not once proven true.
- hellojesus 3y ago
  > Just look at Twitter, it completely spit in everyone's faces and even still people cannot get out of its grips on them. People can get out of them. People refuse to get out of them. Likely this is because YouTube and Twitter are still the most efficient platforms regardless of their regressions. I used to have FB. Now I don't. I used to have Twitter. Now I don't. I used to have Android. Now I have Grapheneos. I used to use gmail. Now I use Fastmail, Mailcow, and shared hosting. I used to have Instagram. Now I don't. You can decide to not be a user of a service. You can build your own! Or more easily, you can migrate to a competitor. All of this clamoring for more regulation is nonsense. We have a market that can solve these problems. But markets work by votes. The path is harder if you take the road less traveled.
  - sweeter 3y ago
    I didn't even mention regulation. You're circle jerking with yourself with a fantasy idea of the "free market" that doesn't exist in reality. You can't consume your way out of large corporations having market dominance, idk where that insane notion even is born.
    - hellojesus 3y ago
      You can entirely consume your way out of it, and you can also build your way out of it. It's not fantasy. This is how markets work; how economies work. Let's look at something like FB. At one point they were absolutely the social company. But other competitors have entered the market. In some instances, new markets were created, like Tiktok. Those new products took users away from FB. In some instances, the users will never return. This has happened precisely because someone somewhere decided to make something and challenge the existing market. > I didn't even mention regulation My bad. I was getting this thread confused with the one about AI regulation.
  - intended 3y ago
    “You” a market does not make. People refuse to get out of them is the market. That is the point of their growth and dominance model.

jampekka 3y ago

Private VCs using their money to control the economy doesn't really sound much like a "system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs". Private capitalists controlling the economy is practically the definition of capitalism. And it's bad for society indeed.

snapplebobapple 3y ago
Yah, so you are really buying into the kooky religious like beliefs I see. Communism says what you have in quotations above, but it has never, ever worked that way for any serious amount of time. It always devolves into a system where the government owns everything or nearly everything and apportions things base don how it sees fit and that is a monopoly and a monopsony since the government is the sole provider of goods and services and the sole employer. It's a monopoly and it exercises power for the benefit of the bureaucracy that controls said monopoly with lip service to some idealized utopian BS. That is not the definition of capitalism. The definition of capitalism is a system in which owners of capital control their capital in accord with their interests, which translates into competition because everyone else is also controlling their own capital and labor for their own interests. The natural outcome of this system is monopoly, which does closely resemble all the harms and dead weight loss of communism but, unlike under communism, the government is supposed to be there to stop total control, bust up the monopolies, and restore competition. It did a passable job of this until the Rehnquist supreme court in the 70s and it's time to start back in that pre-rehnquist direction. It's never time for communism.