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Comment by allendoerfer | Hacker News Reader

I generally agree that flooding the market might lead to stupid investments. Two points:

> That forces institutional investors to pour their money into risky investments like venture capital firms.

Are there statistics about this? Is this really the case? What is the percentage of VC compared to the rest? I only have a vague feeling that VC is tiny compared to private equitiy and even tinier compared to Wallstreet.

> their money ends up subsidising a 10 minute taxi ride and being lost forever

That actually seems like a good thing. People with capital subsidising basic services for the general population. Wealth generally has the tendency to move in the other direction.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-23/are-public...

People with capital subsidising basic services is not a good thing because pensions are so widespread - the subsidy is essentially coming from the same people taking the ride in the first place, just via an incredibly high overhead and roundabout trip!

This bloomberg article says that something like 30% of VC money came from pensions in 2014, 2/3 of that from public pensions. Perhaps a couple percent more, because funds of funds were a large contributor.

It makes a very convincing argument that VC is a bad investment vehicle for pensions, but I can't draw the line from this article to pensions are subsidizing basic services.

Certainly with Uber, it's largely Saudi Arabia right now that's subsidizing riders. That is a very circuitous path for the Saudis to benefit or enrich their subjects, but everyone else in the uber world is benefiting.

> Are there statistics about this?

It's actually fundamental to Portfolio management theory. [0]

> That actually seems like a good thing.

Maybe, I don't know. Uber engages in some aggressively competitive business practices, it's possible that because of their investor subsidies they've been able to undermine a number more possibly sustainable new business models around ride sharing. It's impossible to bootstrap in a market where Uber's a competitor.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_frontier

"Aggressively competitive" feels awfully euphemistic given some of their tactics.

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