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Comment by spaceguillotine | Hacker News Reader

I see the growth of VC backed companies leading to the downfall of stable 20 year career path and loyalty to employee quality of life with everyone chasing this lottery model of hitting it big using VC money and selling out the company with an idea and exploiting more and more people to get it done.

How much of this innovation is baed on tech that was created and funded with public money and gov grants and then privatized when it became commercial and profitable. Sure seems like we stopped advancing the science of the commons when VCs started growing in the 80s along with bank deregulation.

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I think this has only been the case for the dark ages after the Great Recession where we were stuck at zero percent interest. Zero percent interest breaks a lot of the economy because it means there is basically nothing prudent you can do with your cash, it either wastes away to inflation or you have to gamble with it. So everyone started gambling, and one manifestation of this was a surge of very questionable VC-backed companies with no real business model.

If the US will use fiscal policy to err on the side of over-stimulating rather than under-stimulating going forward, as it has in the COVID aftermath, we can keep the natural rate of interest positive and the whole economy (including VC) will be a lot healthier.

> questionable VC-backed companies with no real business model

The gig economy is the poster child for this new style of VC.

> How much of this innovation is baed on tech that was created and funded with public money and gov grants and then privatized when it became commercial and profitable

Or built on top of open source that then was never contributed/donated back to

Stable 20 year career paths are only possible with stable and large rent seeking companies under some form of govt. protection or crony capitalism.

> How much of this innovation is baed on tech that was created and funded with public money and gov grants and then privatized when it became commercial and profitable

Very little compared to the amount that goes in after privatization. Also look at the alternative, if the govt prevents commercialization even if a single cent of public money is invested, there will be lesser businesses, lesser jobs, etc.

> > How much of this innovation is baed on tech that was created and funded with public money and gov grants and then privatized when it became commercial and profitable

It is strange to take this stance. Because it can be asked the other way too.

How much of that govt money initially came from taxes from those that businesses paid?

https://www.businessroundtable.org/archive/media/news-releas...

Always think of second-order effects (e.g. Canada now asking Meta to allow news back on its site).

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