Bill comes due for money-losing tech companies that borrowed billions | Hacker News Reader

Bill comes due for money-losing tech companies that borrowed billions

semafor.com

What irks me about the fad investment bubbles of the last few years - crypto/nft, defi, metaverse, now AI - isn't just how much money they've wasted on nonsense. It's that it was wasted with complete assuredness bordering on Messianic belief that this fad was the thing to end all things.

You know what's worse? The fact that the morons spearheading these companies essentially got rich off of the backs of the common man. The Cantillon effect in action...

Fixing imaginary problems that nobody wanted nor needed. We need more meaningful fixing beyond questionable apps and speculative lotteries.

Maybe the wider problem is the belief as tech as a messianic device, as you mention. Technology is great, but like anything it needs more warmth rather than more money grabbing.

I see it as positive when people have too much money and time to dedicate to rubbish. As an African (Nigerian), I wish my country had such first-world problems instead of most people scraping for the bare minimum.

In fairness, the wasteful levels of wealth in the US come from exploiting the global south.

No it doesn’t. The Global South is poor because they keep electing stupid leaders to run their economies.

But I guess it’s more convenient for us to blame external parties instead of admit we keep voting for fools.

I don't think history supports this conclusion, and I don't think the effects of colonialism and neo-colonialism can be dismissed with 'voting for fools'.

I live here. I’m talking about what I see everyday…a culture that celebrates corruption and buffoonery over long-term thinking and good leadership.

But foreigners always want to tell me the problem is colonialism. Thanks for their patronage, but that doesn’t make it true.

The complexities of societal issues are not really parsable at the level of day to day observation. I could say the same about my culture being one that celebrates corruption and buffoonery, but I don't base my my assumptions about society on my daily experience, I base it on sociology and history.

“Sociology and history,” the usual copout for third worlders that never want to admit their own failings but pin the blame on others, while elected politicians pillage and ruin the countries with their incompetence.

The math just plain doesn't work out. Raw resources just plain aren't that lucrative and can be found pretty much everywhere. Of course "exploitation" basically operates off of the syllogism of thieves: you have it, I want it, therefore you stole it from me.

Assuming all resources can be found everywhere is simply false. Beyond that, those that are common have externalities in extraction and processing, as well as huge labor costs. These are complex issues, and claiming simple math can dismiss the history of colonialism that built the current context, is flawed.

I don't follow your point with the second sentence.

What’s disappointing is that there won’t be many useful leftovers (AI may be the exception). Blockchain has been around for a decade and still has no use, etc. last bubbles at least we had lots of cheap houses, dark fiber, web infrastructure, and railroad investments to use

Quick way to get 'right'sized. Call out the fad in no mean terms. Now I just nod my head and try to get through my day to more meaningful pursuits.

Meanwhile the bigwigs are all pursuing golden parachute retirement packages, getting on the boards of the next crop of companies, and continuing the giant wash of a machine.

the real problem for these loss-leaders is they all too often wind up on city ledgers, retirement and pension funds. these companies treat water and burn money, generate enormous value for the shareholder short-term, but eventually die and take an enormous amount of wealth with them.

More than the loans, publicly traded companies must be regulated when they are loosing money. A lot of promises about future monetization are made with zero accountability

Reply on news.ycombinator.com