Hacker News Reader

Comment by olivermarks | Hacker News Reader

The problem I have with the Economist these days - they've changed a lot recently as has the Financial Times - is that they are one of the big cheerleaders for creating bubbles out of tech they clearly don't understand. This starves the startups that have compelling and reachable business models and goals because the funding goes to (quite possibly financially scammy) moonshots with vague goals somewhere over the horizon.

Uber is a good example of this:

https://www.gobankingrates.com/money/business/famous-compani....

But because the scam worked and they managed to get publicly listed (how did that happen?! Publications like the Economist should have provided more cautions...) the gravy train rolls on.

The sooner we get back to a 'Web 2.0' era like 2008> on the sooner genuine innovation will be funded again.

View on HN

Searching for "uber" in the Economist archive, I would not classify their coverage as "cheerleading" or even positive. Most articles seem either neutral or negative, including headlines like "Can Uber ever make money?"

I would also be interested to see examples of the problem you're describing.

I don't think Uber qualifies as "tech they clearly don't understand". Uber is certainly a company with issues, but it's a clear problem they are solving, adding automation to an industry that's very old.

Uber only still exists because the Saudis dumped $5 billion into them.

Sure. I'm not arguing that it's a good business, but it's a simple business, no matter what tech they have backing them. Today's bubble is marked by a lot of Defi/Web 3.0 silliness.

Yeah problem is pretty clear. And they did provide something.

Real question just like with food delivery is that is there margin there for an big player to exist? Or an expensive player? Paying people to offer singular service is not cheap. And then you have cost of vehicles as well...

I'm a regular Economist reader and I really don't recall them cheerleading any tech bubbles. Got some examples?

> they are one of the big cheerleaders for creating bubbles

Can you share an example?

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/08/20/the-ipo-is-bein...

The E runs plenty of cautionary articles and they are good at hindsight

https://www.economist.com/business/uber-doordash-and-similar...

But aren't exactly leading the charge against financial corruption imo

So do you have examples of cheerleading or what?

The second article has the following subtitle:

> The mania over ride-sharing and delivery companies has at times been absurd

and closes with these words

> In the flywheel economy hope and hype spring eternal, at least as long as interest rates remain low and capital is essentially free.

Hardly an example of what you accused the newspaper of.

Can you explain to me why these two articles represent Economists being the big cheerleaders for creating bubbles? I read both articles and I'm not sure what I am missing.

> The sooner we get back to a 'Web 2.0' era like 2008> on the sooner genuine innovation will be funded again.

I'd argue it broke in the 90s and we need to go back much further.

90's was complete green fields, it's all been very overcrowded since the dot com recovery but I still agree

The Economist was of the few publications to investigate “what if” before Brexit while almost all others dismissed that scenario. They might not be perfect but they try and they investigate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com