Pure Investors in the Rot Economy
Ed Zitron’s piece The Rot Economy should be mandatory reading for anyone curious about the environment in which tech companies exist today.
Venture pumps millions or billions of dollars into ideas that might sell a product or a service, but ultimately resemble things that can be sold to other companies or put on the public market for a profit higher than what was paid on a per-share basis. I once suggested that Silicon Valley conflated “making great ideas work” with “making ideas I like work,” but on consideration, many of these companies aren’t even things venture capitalists like - they are things that resemble things that they can sell. Do I genuinely believe that everyone who invested into the Web3 grift was a strident believer in the brave new decentralized economy? Hell no. They just went where the winds blew — or where they seemed to be blowing.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-rot-economy/
The Rot Economy
This opinion piece rings true to me. I have acquaintances who are “pure investors”—they will buy anything from crypto to Gamestop to copper billets as long as they think they can double their money in short order, and they are eternally searching for the next tech IPO to buy into. They do not care what these companies even do, nor whether they are sustainable, nor their net effect on employees, society, or the environment. There is a single axis on which they place all possible investments: money go up—yes/no.