[jondubois]

I would say that almost all VC money goes towards executing various predatory strategies.

VCs have a monopoly over user attention through their connections to industry influencers. They essentially control all the tech blogs and media channels and they use them to drive traffic to companies that they have invested in.

Bloggers are rewarded for doing writeups on VC-backed startups and they are punished for doing writeups on bootstrapped startups.

VCs also drive up online advertising prices to make it not viable for small players to compete based on CPC.

Finally, VCs have a monopoly over acquisition channels within most large corporations so they can make sure that your startup will never be acquired by a large corporation unless you accept VC funding.

For the last decade, the tech industry has been ripe with corruption and injustice. That's why we have cryptocurrencies now, it's a desperate solution to allow people to sidestep the entirety of the existing system.

[amelius]

> I would say that almost all VC money goes towards executing various predatory strategies.

It's not just VC money.

For example, YouTube has been financed by Google search, operating at a loss for many years, driving competitors out of business and raising barriers to entry.

[jondubois]

True, what's particularly unfair about it is that the companies tend to use proceeds from an industry in which they have a monopoly to fund their price war in other industries where they don't yet have a monopoly. The strategy seems to be to monopolise each industry one after another, using the proceeds of the previously captured monopoly to capture the next one.

If this keeps going, eventually we're going to end up with one giant mega-corporation which owns everything. There will be no more government to protect citizens; everyone will work for that company and it will be the most unfair class system imaginable.

[DrPsyker]

This is bang on.