> “If we don’t act like assholes — or have someone on our team who will on our behalf — we will not survive!” This is the funnel of capitalism at scale. You ha

> “If we don’t act like assholes — or have someone on our team who will on our behalf — we will not survive!” This is the funnel of capitalism at scale. You have to be an asshole, because if you're not, the real assholes will undercut you and outperform you in every metric the capitalist assholes use to measure success. At that point, you're done. You're out of business unless you find a large enough niche that keeps you in enough revenue to continue operating, which is effectively looking for a needle in a haystack. Not impossible, but extremely difficult and honestly requiring healthy luck. If we want this to stop being the case, we must figure out a way to shackle the beast of unfettered capitalism. The free market is a sham. Even in the most peak moments of laissez-faire, there are still potent regulations that are often captured and used against new movers in relevant spaces.