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Comment by pictur | Hacker News Reader

We want to think that the people who run companies are very smart and would not do such things. but what we have to accept is that they are human too. So they're all essentially stupid.

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Yes, as opposed to rich investors like Marc Andreessen who really are very smart and certainly don't "work through a screen and are totally abstracted from tangible physical reality and the real-world consequences of their opinions and beliefs."

If you're drowning in money, people tend to spend it foolishly. I say this looking at my DJI drone sitting in the corner collecting dust.

that's exactly what i mean lol

I think avoiding smart people starting competitors by keeping them employed with high comps might be a good strategy for some of these cash rich and profitable companies. They might have been thinking of this as a good insurance.

It's good strategy for the company, but bad for society*. I regard this as an example of market failure, where productive folk (who presumably want to do things that are cool and noteworthy) are diverted into sinecures to limit corporate competitors. The market for talent is being cornered here, just as a commodity trader might seek to corner the market to drive prices upward (or occasionally downward, to the detriment of a weak competitor).

This seems like a prima facie case for regulatory intervention to require divestment or breakup.

* I know, I know, 'how can we say it's bad, what if the resultant competition created environmental destruction or led to the invention of a basilisk.'

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