Mastodawn

Oct 18, 2023

🤔I have friends that absolutely hate Venture Capital. Hate the very concept. They believe that VC ruins everything, and that the setup is evil, and prioritizes hyper growth above everything. Some of these friends will drive over to my house just to sit me down and yell at me in unhinged rants about how evil VC is, scaring my kids.

If I think of the most unhinged, hyperbolic, doom and gloom rants about VC that I've ever heard? None of them paint VCs in worse light than Marc's manifesto.

Show thread

mekka okereke

Oct 18, 2023

I don't think that VC is necessarily bad. I think most of the problem is who gets to be a VC, and what they prioritize.

The National Science Foundation is effectively a VC firm. A crypto DAO is a co-op. NSF is decent. Crypto DAOs are fashy trash. For me, the issue is not "Co-op or VC."

https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109982115166606787

mekka okereke :verified: (@[email protected])

@[email protected] Again, I question the assumption that "VC" is bad, because by assets under management, the vast majority of VC money is controlled by Alt-Right, openly anti-democratic, anti-social, hyper capitalist, fascist adjacent men. These dudes make horrific, near genocidal decisions in everything they do. The bad part of "nazi bank" is nazi, not bank. We need banks. So I won't know if VC is bad until Eg, Black women get more than *checks notes* half of 1% of all VC assets to manage.

Hachyderm.io

Show thread

Océane Oct 18, 2023

@mekkaokereke Oh yes, there are definitely evil coops, just like there's evil free association (NPOs etc.), but then, as you say, it depends who (according to demographic data like your parents' and your job title, income, cultural capital, gender, race, location, disability, etc.)'s freely associating.

I think however that there's an overall consensus on the leftist aspect of free association; for example the law Le Chapelier has been used against unions in France (workers would get around this by organizing banquets to talk about their work conditions). And likewise, VC is generally bad – economic investments are generally meant to get other people to work for you, with a few exceptions, like Logseq or Lavabit. I bet republic.com makes this world a worse place overall, but investors themselves try to make this world a better place (for example by investing in greenwashing startups) and mission-driven companies can totally raise funds there.

A privacy-first, open-source knowledge base

A privacy-first, open-source platform for knowledge management and collaboration.

logseq

Show thread

Océane

@mekkaokereke Here I'd compare republic.com to the homogeneous kind of social media rewarding you for maintaining a picture-perfect digital persona, Mastodon included, but whatever.