And when did VCs rail against “bailouts” in the past?
There is a pretty big difference between being a mainstream capitalist and being a libertarian.
And lest you think he's the only libertarian VC: https://www.newstatesman.com/quickfire/2023/03/silicon-valle...
And to them railing against bailouts while asking for them now (from the above article):
“Where is [the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jay] Powell? Where is [the Treasury secretary, Janet] Yellen? Stop this crisis NOW,” tweeted the venture capitalist David Sacks – the same David Sacks who is a friend of Thiel and Musk, and who has previously heavily criticised “special-interest corruption” and bank bailouts. Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager and Donald Trump supporter that has in the past complained about attempts by the government’s Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate one of his investment funds, performed some spectacular mental gymnastics over the weekend, calling on the FDIC to “guarantee all bank deposits”.
You seem to: 1. presume those two categories are mutually exclusive. They aren't. 2. Many of the libertarian values on the economic side, held by many in the VC/PE space regardless of political affiliation, means that just like Rand herself, they espouse -by action if not by word- "privatize gain, socialize risk" pretty much by rote.
Anyone shocked by this either isn't looking, hasn't been in this business very long, or is the person mentioned in the Steinbeck quote (paraphrased here for contextual re-appropriation) "the rubes see themselves not as an exploited set of growth-hackers and disruption-monkeys, but as temporarily embarrassed billionaires."