This is how a functioning talent market works. It isn't unfair to the startup that big companies pay more, it's unfair to the startup employees that the startup isn't paying more. I'd argue that if a startup can't pay market rate for the employees it wants (be it cash or equity) then it wasn't properly funded in the first place.
Uber and Lyft are allowed to run permanent losses because they have privileged access to cheap capital. If you have a better platform but you actually need to turn a profit, your ship is sunk before you leave the harbor.
And a lot of the people earning "10x" at the RAMJAC companies would almost certainly earn more in equity appreciation in a competitive market.
This era is bizarre. All the free market rhetoric from the 1980s is being recycled to defend central planning that is now totally cool because the central planner has a corporate charter.
Why wouldn't a VC fund this amazing platform?
> Uber and Lyft
Wait, why does Lyft exist if Uber's funding prevents any competitor from existing?
I find the "kill zone" theory plausible and supported by available evidence [1,2,3]. Others (a large consulting firm) disagree [4].
[1] https://www.aei.org/economics/incumbents-vs-startups-the-cas...
[2] https://www.dallasfed.org/-/media/Documents/research/events/...
[3] https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-destroy-modemyth-or-r...
[4] https://www.aei.org/economics/a-new-analysis-takes-a-shot-at...
In fact that there are many different companies in the transportation market: byrd, lyft, uber, taxis, spacex, tesla, nikola, cruise, boring company, etc... Shows it's not centrally planned.
Unless FAANG is unionized or something, the trust-busted alternative of the status quo is definitely better for labor.
The OP's proposal is that startups should be able to pay less and hire talent, if it wasn't for those pesky FAANGs driving everyone's wages up. If only they were able to pay less would VCs have been able to keep even more for themselves, I mean, would the market have been more equitable (?@!@)
Don't look at the market from the perspective of the one of the participants, look at it as a whole. And don't try to evaluate something like anti-trust in a marginal way, when the effects are so numerous. Better to take a more stateless / path-independent approach and just find the new equilibrium, for the first rough-cut analysis.
From those perspectives, higher Gini coefficient clearly means lower median, etc.
From your other comment it looks like you agree with my conclusions, at least.
If you want a functioning market, you don't want an oligopoly
Anyway, we all have our biases, and i do understand you work for a FAANG.
I took another look at your comment I replied to, I must have glossed over the "If they have not ties to the party, they shouldnt have tried to compete" part. I apologize. I want to be clear that I'm not suggesting these companies shouldn't compete, I'm glad for all of the employers we have in tech. What I am suggesting is that they pay the price the market for that talent is currently willing to bear and if that results in less concentrated ownership for the ones that eventually do come to dominate the industry I won't be losing any sleep. For those that think current giants are "unbeatable" -- current FAANG companies were tiny and irrelevant 20 years ago and the industry was dominated by a different set of "unbeatable" giants.
Concentrating tech in a few companies in a small area may have been good for that small ecosystem but a lot of people feel left out. A lot more also feel that tech has stagnated, largely because those companies have saturated the attention levels of users and are just regurgitating slightly modified versions of the same products. As for whether they are unbeatable -- they are less beatable today than they were 20 years ago, as the market has evolved and consolidated and the low hanging fruit have been reaped, as happens in all new industries. In my view the incumbents are as old and established as car brands or banks -- the internet grew so fast that it's already old.