
Lyft's IPO Is Making the Same Circle of Men Rich, Again - 40acres
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/29/opinion/sunday/lyft-ipo.html
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cabaalis
Article headline seems to imply this is somehow a bad thing? Perhaps "Group of
people who've invested in several apps people want (and therefore make those
things possible) are now making some more money for their good decisions to be
involved" doesn't trigger anyone?

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bluntfang
>...their good decisions...

I think saying this is disingenuous. It's not about good decisions. I bet if
we looked at these people's portfolios it would be diversified to cover pretty
much every bet. They are able to do this solely because they already have
money. There is no good decision that me or you could make that would have the
same outcome.

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cabaalis
"good decisions to be involved"

You can also make good decisions with your money, and bad ones. Those can pay
off, or not.

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jakelazaroff
The investors here didn't make "good" or "bad" decisions, though. They just
diversified their investments such that they can have an EV of millions of
dollars even if most of their investments fail. That's not a thing most of us
can do — not because we make decisions that don't pay off, but because we
don't have enough money to even get in the game.

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bifrost
Shocking that investors are... getting a return on their investment. Now that
they got some cash out of it, they'll go and invest in other stuff again,
thats how this works.

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omginternets
But these investors are _men_ , and they're doing it _again_!

This is pure rage-bait, and it's why I roll my eyes when tier I media like the
NYT act shocked and surprised that fewer and fewer people trust them. I hate
clickbait and fake news as much as everybody else, but the mainstream media
has made its own bed, here.

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ddavis
Seeing William Shockley in their graphic is a bit funny in my opinion. It's
definitely relevant, since he "brought silicon to Silicon Valley" [1], but he
seems like the _last_ person VCs would want to work with.

[1]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20050404102748/http://www.stanfo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20050404102748/http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/pr/02/shockley1023.html)

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dogma1138
To anyone who’s wondering he is one of the co—discoverers of the transistor
effect, for which he won a Nobel prize however he became an advocate for
Eugenics towards the end of his life, not necessarily a purely racial
superiority stance although there was enough of that too, he basically had a
lot of weird ideas including restricting the reproduction of people who don’t
meet the intelligence requirements.

That said how much different is it than taking money from China or Saudi
Arabia?

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omginternets
This is ... stating the obvious?

I'm not sure what the author's point is, here.

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jakelazaroff
That the tech industry is more than the same small group of dudes, and we
should try to spread the wealth it generates more equitably?

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wait_a_minute
The risk and effort are not spread "equitably" so neither should the profits.

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sdinsn
That's an ignorant view on economics. You need money to make money, so
obviously those with money (investors) are in a better place. Hard work
doesn't go far when you can't afford to pay anyone.

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tardo99
I don't really agree with the article's argument that it's so bad if this or
that group becomes wealthy. The government can easily solve that through
taxation if it so chooses.

I think the more important piece of information embedded in articles like
these is the truth of how venture capital (and capitalism generally) works.

I know a couple of the people listed in the web of connections here. In
general, I'd say they view their exceptional talents as responsible for their
investment success. They are undoubtedly smart and capable people, but the key
element in their success is that they get the first look at startup ideas and
venture investments because of their social status in silicon valley.

Top VCs can't really outperform the market if forced to invest in a level
playing field. They know this, so they focus more on the pedigree of deals
than on the actual ideas. That's how you wind up with big-name people
investing in frauds like Theranos and obvious con-jobs like U-Beam.

I don't see anything wrong with this necessarily, but it's worthwhile to point
out what's really going on. That way, young entrepreneurs and budding venture
capitalists know what they're getting into. The truth of the matter is, if you
want a sure way to make money, you should join a firm who has this kind of
access. Go work at Goldman Sachs or Kleiner Perkins.

If you eschew that path, realize that you are actually taking on far more risk
than averages might imply, since you are choosing not to have the first look
at ideas and deals. In fact, you'll likely do rather poorly.

Long history suggests the only way to consistently make money in a level
playing field such as public markets is the Buffett way -- essentially using
behavioral economics to bet against emotional mistakes made by market
participants at market highs and lows.

From a policy perspective, I've long thought you could argue for a much higher
capital-gains tax on any gains in excess of 20% per year on investments (more
or less what Buffett has returned). The rationale is that such gains must have
been generated by labor, luck, connections, or some combination of the three.
This is not to suggest there is anything unsavory about such returns -- it's
just that they are not broadly available.

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anth_anm
> The government can easily solve that through taxation if it so chooses.

Except the billionaires pay millions to ensure that doesn't happen. The system
is corrupt by design.

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testrun
Probably depending on country.

In the US the following shows how much tax is being paid by whom:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-14/top-3-of-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-14/top-3-of-
u-s-taxpayers-paid-majority-of-income-taxes-in-2016)

 _The top 1 percent paid a greater share of individual income taxes (37.3
percent) than the bottom 90 percent combined (30.5 percent)._

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randomacct3847
For those criticizing the article, I wish I could have invested in a lot of
companies but can’t because I like many can’t due to 1) not being an
accredited investor and 2) even if you are accredited you cannot easily buy
private shares (access issue)

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jondwillis
While I share similar frustrations with the system, your apprehension simply
because of lack of accreditation status may be overblown.
[https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/311/topics/366202-quest...](https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/311/topics/366202-questions-
about-accredited-investors)

~~~
randomacct3847
I didn’t say simply - a bigger issue outside of accredation is access. I.e.
for “popular” small companies even second/third tier VCs can’t even invest.

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jondwillis
Yes, agreed. It is overall frustrating to be someone without a lot of capital,
trying to get ahead.

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novaRom
Cannot read it because Firefox (Android) shows some garbage

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wait_a_minute
So...it sounds like the path to wealth is knowable and repeatable multiple
times in a single lifetime, if people will just make correct calculated
decisions?

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r_smart
Somebody should have tested that in Firefox. I don't know what's wrong with
it, but it's an unreadable mess.

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abc_lisper
It looks fine in mine and Im using the latest version.

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tomphoolery
It has to do with how wide your screen is. The responsiveness of this piss-
poor design was clearly not thought out.

But neither was anything else in this design, apparently. There's a 300px
square in the middle of the screen that the _entire_ article is contained in.
Everything else is just bullshit "interactive" chrome that's totally useless.

Sorry NYT, you're not worth the money you're constantly begging for. I _love_
ad blocking.

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sdinsn
Sounds like the rich women of silicon valley missed their opportunity. I don't
see how that is men's fault.

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gumby
Warning: interactive graphic that doesn't work under Safari on Mac.

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anth_anm
This is a bad thing. It's the rich getting even richer off the labour of
workers. It's an increasing small circle.

They aren't some visionary geniuses who went and founded lyft. They are just
guys with money who know the right people.

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alehul
> It's the rich getting even richer off the labour of workers

We could also view it as the people who paid for all of their labor for years
getting even richer, considering Lyft being unprofitable.

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astazangasta
Since they're the ones with the money, they're the ones who have to end up
paying. If you give someone else the money, they'll pay people, and you can
celebrate them instead. Or, we could not have an economic system based on the
bizarre idea that certain people always get money whenever someone else does
work.

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alehul
> certain people always get money whenever someone else does work

The people who did work were paid by the investors for almost 7 years now
(Lyft was founded in June 2012 and is unprofitable to this day), along with
some equity.

If Lyft were to fail this year rather than IPO, the employees would walk away
with 7 years of great salary and 7 years less of their working life. The
investors would walk away with their money gone and wasted.

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anth_anm
Right, and a small number of people grow ever more absurdly rich.

While others starve.

Society should not allow billionaires.

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inawarminister
Even when they use their wealth to do good society couldn't organise itself
around for decades?

(e.g. SpaceX of course)

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brm
What percentage of billionaires actually use their wealth this way?

