The moral bankruptcy of Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz
The moral bankruptcy of Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz
In venture capital, you are what you fund.
Two of Silicon Valley’s famous venture capitalists make the case for backing Trump: that their ability to make money is the only value that matters.
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IMO, Pete Buttigieg is the best political communicator of this time.
"I know there are a lot of folks who say, 'What's going on with these Silicon Valley folks veering into Trump world with JD Vance, and backing Trump?' . . . We've made it way too complicated. It's super simple. These are very rich men who have decided to back the Republican party that tends to do good things for very rich men."
Too bad he's also a huge hypocrite who helped those very rich men price fix all bread in Canada and was the only 2020 contender that competed with Biden when it came to billionaire donors.
He knows it so well because his job is to do good things (or, when the head of a regulatory agency, do nothing more than wag a finger after the fact) for very rich men while pretending to be a man of the people and devoted civil servant.
So the Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, fixed the price of bread in Canada? My, my. And who do you fix prices for?
He might be a shitty Doogie Howser knockoff, but he wasn't born as mayor. 🙄
Before that, he worked as a consultant for the profiteering maximization firm McKinsey for 3 years.
So, you're telling me he worked for an investment firm and played a market? I'm shocked. Next thing you'll be telling me is that as a DA, Harris put too many people in jail.
But, you know the story you won't tell? That they created several million dollar businesses and sent them into bankruptcy, leaving the little guy holding the bag.
Why? Because, they were actually good at their jobs.
When your job is extracting as much money as possible, including via unnecessary mass layoffs, being good at your job is a BAD thing.
His job was to help screw workers over to maximize the wealth of already rich people and to a certain degree, it still is.
Spoken like a guy who has never been in business. Maximizing profit is what you are paid to do. I've worked for large corporations and created small companies. Without the realization of that fact, you cannot be successful in either.
Maximizing profit is what you are paid to do
Which is a societal disease, not an immutable fact of life. Seeking profit maximizing at the expense of the workers and/or the quality of the product or service you offer is not virtuous or natural.
Without the realization of that fact, you cannot be successful in either.
That's just false. Many of us would consider providing a good product or service and providing gainful employment the end goals of commerce. Not maximizing profit at the expense of everything else like a goddamn parasite.
It's not a disease for anybody who believes in free enterprise. It's true for management and workers.
Building good product and services is a way to maximize profits. It really isn't an either/or situation.
believes in free enterprise
Like religion, that's a concept the powerful made up to control the market.
Truly "free" enterprise, IE unburdened by regulations, inevitably ends up with the powerful dominating the powerless.
As I'm sure you'd agree, being dominated by someone who's more powerful than you is nobody's idea of free. In fact, even if you're into it, it tends to be rather expensive.
Building good product and services is a way to maximize profits. It really isn't an either/or situation
That used to be the case, sure, but nowadays there's all sorts of ways to tweak profits that necessitates compromising on either quality (including treatment of workers) or profits.
So if you want to maximize (achieve the maximum of) profits, you literally have to compromise the quality, how you treat your workers, or both. Almost all companies do both.