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Comment by alexnewman | Hacker News Reader

Easy dumb money like SoftBank is the greatest enemy of innovation and progress. Just take a look at the first deck. Companies like Uber, Softbank, WeWork all having trouble with funding is an important step in our economy

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Dumb money makes you complacent and lazy. Every problem looks like a nail. Just add more money and stir, with a splash of arrogance.

Some hardship and tight money leads to innovation and creative thinking.

Dear commenters on HN. Don't bite or spite the hand that is feeding you. The recession will come soon enough.

I'd claim that most folks here aren't directly in this area and couldn't care much. The mostly quiet majority I would call us. And recession? It won't be started by this but bigger forces. A correction might be even healthy for most in long term.

I respectfully disagree, I think there is a massive trickle down economics affect going on even if it’s just local. The auxiliary companies selling into startups is HUGE from recruiting agencies, design firms, the gig economy, local tax revenues, commercial real estate, law and accounting services, one medical offices, and much much more. When VC funding slows down a lot of these places will shutter (because few people in management ever prepare for a downturn).

I don't think a smaller number of dumb startups will have much negative impact, considering the huge numbers of highly paid employees the giant "fang companies" have.

Except when the FAANG company revenue turns out to be driven by the same fake money faucet.

What fake money faucet? The big tech companies have tons of paying customers, and tons of net income increasing at tremendous rates with tremendous moats.

Huge portions of advertisements are being shown to bots without detection. I'd guess google's ad sales are 25% overblown given my analysis of it's bot detection products.

I don't spite or hurt SoftBank. I'm just pointing out the emperor has no clothes and is investing poorly. Bad investments by those with wealth hurt those without the most.

Why? If it is easy to take it, let clever people take it to have the resources for real innovations.

On the other hand, you can think of dumb money like SoftBank as desparate money and the jobs it creates as workfare in everything but name. Lots of people who would otherwise not get the chance, are getting paid and stuffing their resumes working for these places. These doomed companies are essentially allowing investors to pay for the training of employees who will be adding value to the not-doomed companies that will come after.

Workfare. I agree it provides employment but it also bids up salaries. Moreover, anti-unicorns like WeWork make it more difficult for real startups motivated by survival and profit.

Considering past conspiracies to restrain information workers salaries, this may just be restoring some of the missed natural growth. The FAANG companies aren't having any problems keeping up with the Softbank funded companies.

>allowing investors to pay for the training of employees who will be adding value

Putting on my most cynical hat, what value is there in flashy web frameworks and marketing hacks?

Then it would be better to put the dumb money to work fixing/improving infrastructure or doing something else useful. As it stands, some of this looks like one great, big broken window parable[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

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