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Comment by Ekaros | Hacker News Reader

When you really think about it, this also applies to very many publicly traded companies. Tech especially, always searching to present next growth area. And then often shortly abandoning it or wasting massive resources on it...

Really does make me cynical on investing...

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We make fun of the state run businesses of old communist regimes, how wasteful they were, how mismanaged they were, how they produced stuff nobody wanted and so on. I'm increasingly getting a similar feeling for VC fueled tech. It's all smoke and mirrors of hype (was blockchain or web3.0 yesterday, AI and quantum today). There is so much wasted money, especially after quantitative easing and negative interest rates of the past decade.

Publicly traded is no better. Lets not forget whole Meta and Metaverse and VR "investment". Google basically launching entire physical products and then killing them and refunding everyone (Stadia)...

One might question would we as society be better off if that money was spend on more efficient factories or say nuclear powerplants?

How about public education and healthcare?

The difference is that VC fueled startups is a very small part of the economy while communist regimes are the entire economy.

Imagine if every company was as wasteful as VC fueled startups and life would be hell, imagine going to the new smart grocery store where prices changes by the minute and now you have surge pricing since many wanted to buy toilet paper this minute...

They may be a small part of the economy as measured in imaginary numbers being shifted around but still have a significant negative effect on our lives that cannot be easily escaped. This is even more true when you also count publicly traded companies which have similar incentives to sell out their "customers" in order to benefit the real customers and are often just the final form of VC funded startups.

Most companies are wasteful. Perhaps not as wasteful as a startup, but still incredibly wasteful, and it scales non-linearly with size.

> state run businesses of old communist regimes, how wasteful they were, how mismanaged they were, how they produced stuff nobody wanted

I'm increasingly convinced that this is pure western capitalist propaganda. From what I observed in the 8 or so years I've been an adult, Western Capitalist economies (especially US) are much more bloated and wasteful. Nothing demonstrated this more clearly than Crypto/Web3 Hype-Bubble.

Companies do this because growth is often possible. failed investments are the cost of growth. Overall, the returns are positive.

Is it growth itself you are opposed to?

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