I think in real life, cheaters win.
replyWithout proper punishment, groups who "play fair" are at a strict disadvantage against those willing to break the rules.
At least in the US, we seem to be rapidly moving away from punishing groups for breaking the rules. All the mega successful companies (and people) seem to break a lot of rules to get there.
Conversely, the honest "play by the rules" groups can't be mega successful. Without punishment, the cheater always wins.
The U.S. has always idolized charismatic grifters. Tech revolutionized charisma, by showing that interpersonal charisma isn’t the correct filter: asociability, or perhaps the more familiar amorality, is. The ability of someone to extract and upstream value without engaging in ethics is correctly labeled as more important than being warm and friendly.
replyThe words for this is "regulatory capture" and "deregulation". And yes, its been happening for a long time.
replyAnd now that right-wing groups are buying up all the media, we wont be hearing about it for much longer.
Actually building something useful and fun and spending your time convincing investors to give you enough money to maybe turn it into a profitable business some day are not really complimentary personality traits.
replySteve Wozniak alone could've maybe built Apple without Steve Jobs, but his time would be wasted by doing something he (presumably) didn't enjoy very much and it would've been a much bumpier road.
Basically YC + MIT background is a license to raise infinite capital. So they just needed to check some revenue boxes etc.
replyEven if the prospective investors smell a rat, they might decide that it's likely that a greater fool will arrive on the scene later - justifying investing in a known scam
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