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by _xnmw 697 days ago
Sometimes I think about the billions of dollars invested in stupid marginal tech like voice assistants, or boilerplate spreadsheet replacement SaaS and wonder if capitalism has failed. Why is this money not being invested in something that is obviously more desperately needed, like building more housing? As this article pointed out, some of this stupid marginal tech like Alexa isn't even making a profit, Amazon is *loosing* billions on it. Then why do this? We have real crises facing us, like climate change and the housing crisis and war, and meanwhile YC is funding "developer tooling". As if what society needs most right now is that developers with 6-figure salaries need to make their already cushy jobs slightly easier with some IDE widget.