🤔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.
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."
@[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.
🤔 Irrespective of profit?
The second bullet in NSF's mission statement is literally "Advance the national health, prosperity and welfare."
Key word being "prosperity."
And there's no rule saying that VCs have to make money that way.
I love how my cheeky little NSF vs VC comparison is causing folks to really think about what VC could be, if it weren't run by the Atlas Shrugged book club.
@mekkaokereke prosperity and profit aren’t the same thing, despite what the ancaps tell you. The NSF doesn’t (and in fact cannot) profit from its investments.
The fundamental issue I have is that you seem to be conflating“VC”—a specific style of investment with specific goals—while talking about a much broader range of investment types.
VC is by definition private (the NSF is not), growth-focused (rather than sustainability or innovation focused), and high-risk for chance of high investor profit (rather than high-risk for chance of high public good). If you think there’s a place for that, fine let’s talk about that. But don’t pretend that every kind of risky investment is the same as VC, that’s dishonest; and the idea that public investment focused on innovation and public good is the same as private investment focused on value growth and maximizing investor profit are equivalent is absurd
mekka okereke 
calcifer 🧯