• RememberTheApollo@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      And they’ll still overpay themselves while making consumers and lower employees suffer. Consumers get shittier service and employees get shitty pay, longer hours, more demands…If they don’t get laid off.

      • sadreality@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        Consumer used to be treated decently but now, both labor and consumers are treated like shit… Only one parry wins lol and it aint never the plebs

    • Kerfuffle@sh.itjust.works
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      2 years ago

      More like:

      Predatory pricing

      exists.

      Don’t hold your breath waiting for anything to catch up to the 1%. To be honest, I don’t know the average person even really want it to. I mean, suppose I use Uber. Am I really going to be out there writing letters to my congresscritter pressuring them to force Uber to stop selling their product below cost and consequently make my Uber rides significantly more expensive? “Oh man, I sure wish Amazon would stop selling me such cheap products with next day shipping. This problem needs to be fixed, they’re hurting the free market!”

      Eventually the frog might get boiled, but that’s some time in the future. The frog is feeling comfy now.

  • fubo@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Venture investing is the answer to the question of what would happen if you staffed a bank’s loan department with adrenaline junkies.

    Well, no. When a bank extends a loan, it knows the upper limit on how much money it can make from that loan. It might make less, if the debtor ends up defaulting on the loan; but it can’t make more.

    In venture investing, the upside is unbounded. The company might go to zero, but it might become the next Google; and the venture investor gets to own a fraction of that.

    • propaganja@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      “Information known for half a century that nevertheless didn’t mean jack squat because it couldn’t be legally explained in such a way that would convince a layman court to break past precedent; but that we’ve now reframed into a compelling interpretation that much more obviously meets the standards required for a court to rule something as ‘predatory pricing’'; thus, any future cases brought are much more likely to succeed.”

      tldr: We think we’ve found a way around the technicality VCs have been hiding behind all these years.

  • ParkingPsychology@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    Where Wansley and Weinstein break important new ground is on the other legal standard set by the Supreme Court: recoupment of losses. If Uber and WeWork and the rest of the unicorns are perpetual money losers, it sounds like the standard isn’t met. But Wansley and Weinstein point out that it can be — even if the companies never earn a dime and even if everyone who invests in the companies, post-IPO, loses their bets. That’s because the venture capitalists who seeded the company do profit from the predatory pricing. They get in, get a hefty return on their investment, and get out before the whole scheme collapses.

    Yep. The venture capitalists found a loophole.

  • style99@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    This article’s blow-off strikes me as a little too Pollyanna to be believed:

    The same kind of aha! light that went off for Wansley during his interview with the Lyft executive could start to go off for other people as well. Some of them will be investors who decide not to park their money in predatory tech companies. And some of them, perhaps, will be government regulators who are looking for ways to bust our modern-day trusts.