www-wheresyoured-at-7mfome.txt (31786B)
1 [2] Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At 2 3 • [3]Home 4 • [4]About 5 • [5]Better Offline 6 7 [7]Log In [8]Subscribe 8 [9] Sign up [10] Sign in 9 10 • [13]Home 11 • [14]About 12 • [15]Better Offline 13 14 • [16]Sign up 15 16 [17] Log in [18] Subscribe 17 [19]Newsletter 18 19 The Rot Economy 20 21 [20]Ed Zitron Feb 9, 2023 13 min read 22 23 At the center of everything I’ve written for the last few months (if not the 24 last few years), sits a cancerous problem with the fabric of how capital is 25 deployed in modern business. Public and private investors, along with the 26 markets themselves, have become entirely decoupled from the concept of what 27 “good” business truly is, focusing on one metric — one truly noxious metric — 28 over all else: growth. 29 30 “Growth” in this case is not necessarily about being “bigger” or “better,” it 31 is simply “more.” It means that the company is generating more revenue, higher 32 valuations, gaining more market share, and then finding more ways to generate 33 these things. Businesses are expected to be - and rewarded for being - eternal 34 burning engines of capital that create more and more shareholder value while, 35 hopefully, providing a service to a customer in the process. In the public 36 markets, that means that[21] companies like Google, Meta, and Microsoft were 37 rewarded for [22]having unfocused, capital-intensive businesses that required 38 mass layoffs when times got tough, because the market loved the idea that 39 they’d found a way to save money. They weren’t punished for their poor 40 planning,[23] their stagnating products, their mismanagement of human capital, 41 or their general lack of any real innovation because the numbers kept going up. 42 43 [24]Subscribe 44 45 [25]When I wrote in October that Mark Zuckerberg was going to kill his company, 46 the street responded in kind, savaging Meta’s stock for burning cash building a 47 metaverse that was never going to exist. Yet once Zuckerberg fired 11,000 48 people and claimed that 2023 would be the “[26]year of efficiency,” the market 49 responded with double-digit increases in the price of Meta’s shares, despite 50 the fact that Facebook’s active user growth declined and they[27] lost $13.7 51 billion on the same metaverse department that caused the stock to drop the last 52 time. 53 54 The markets[28] seemed to ignore the $410 million fine that Meta received for 55 GDPR violations, along with the fact that European users will now have to 56 deliberately opt-in to sharing their data - which is bad, considering only 57 about[29] 25% of iOS users choose to opt-in to app tracking, and their business 58 model is intrinsically linked to the repurposing of customer data into ad 59 targeting telemetry. 60 61 Let’s be abundantly clear: Meta’s core advertising models depend heavily on 62 things that likely become impossible to do legally (or even technically, given 63 Apple’s App Tracking Transparency, Alphabet’s retirement of the third-party 64 tracking cookie, and the Chromium Project’s planned blocking of non-cookie 65 fingerprinting technologies) in the next decade. Their other products simply do 66 not make that much money. Their CEO’s big idea to make more money has lost them 67 billions of dollars, and likely won’t make them any for quite some time. Yet 68 Meta remains beloved, because the numbers are going up. 69 70 Killing Innovation 71 72 Google has a similar yet slightly different story, where their core product - 73 search - has gone from a place where you find information to an 74 increasingly-manipulated labyrinth of SEO-optimized garbage shipped straight 75 from the content factories.[30] As Charlie Warzel put it last year: “Google 76 Search, what many consider an indispensable tool of modern life, is dead or 77 dying.” Users have to effectively find cheat codes - adding things like “ 78 [whatever you’re searching]+Reddit” to get reliable answers. Despite its 79 decades-long efforts to improve the quality of organic results, Google remains 80 easily-gamed by anyone who knows how to craft an algorithm-friendly headline. 81 82 Without finding a way to negotiate with Google Search, you’re offered a 83 fragmented buffet of content provided by Google’s algorithm, either based on 84 how much they’ve been paid to prioritize said content or by how companies have 85 engineered content to rank higher on search. Google no longer provides the 86 “best” result or answer to your query - it provides the answer that it believes 87 is most beneficial or profitable to Google. Google Search provides a “free” 88 service, but the cost is a source of information corrupted by a profit-seeking 89 entity looking to manipulate you into giving money to the profit-seeking 90 entities that pay them. 91 92 The net result is a product that completely sucks. “Googling” something is now 93 an exercise in pain, regularly leading you to generic Search Engine Optimized 94 content that doesn’t actually answer your question. Google’s push to 95 hyper-optimization has also led it to serve results based on what it *thinks* 96 people mean, rather than what they actually said. It’s frustrating, upsetting 97 and annoying. A problem that likely hits hundreds of millions of people a day, 98 yet Google doesn’t have to change a thing, because the street likes that they 99 have found more innovative ways to get blood from a stone. These moves are 100 unquestionably hurting Google, to the point that Microsoft’s Bing (paired with 101 OpenAI’s ChatGPT), has gained major[31] headlines for providing the service 102 that everybody wished Google would. 103 104 That’s because Google has, like every major tech company, focused entirely on 105 what will make revenues increase, even if the cost of doing so is destroying 106 its entire legacy.[32] Google has announced their own “Bard AI” to compete with 107 Bing’s ChatGPT integration, and I’ll be honest - I feel a little crazy that 108 nobody is saying the truth, which is that Google broke the product that made 109 them famous and is now productizing fixing their own problem as innovation. 110 111 That’s because the markets do not prioritize innovation, or sustainable growth, 112 or stable, profitable enterprises. As a result, companies regularly do not 113 function with the intent of making “good” businesses - they want businesses 114 that semiotically align with what investors - private and public - believe to 115 be “good.” 116 117 Despite its ubiquity, companies like Uber should not exist. Uber has not made a 118 profit from its businesses. They had a net loss of 1.21 billion last quarter, 119 yet the street fell over itself to praise the company because “[33]gross 120 bookings grew 19% year-over-year” for their unprofitable businesses that 121 largely hinge upon the government failing to impose sensible labor laws,[34] a 122 con that will eventually come to an end, and indeed, has ended in some 123 territories like the UK, where Uber drivers are now recognized as employees, 124 and are therefore entitled to pensions, paid vacation time, and a minimum wage. 125 London, I note, is one of Uber’s most important markets. 126 127 Yet as of writing, Uber’s stock is up 5%. 128 129 The media itself somewhat fuels this economy of growth-mongering. CNBC reports 130 earnings like many other media entities, but their[35] reports on, say, Uber 131 fail to acknowledge the fact that Uber has spent nearly 15 years burning money. 132 It has never turned a profit. Even with its push into freight and food 133 delivery, it may never turn a profit,[36] no matter how much it contorts its 134 financials to pretend otherwise. Yet acknowledging the truth is that much worse 135 because Uber will not be killed, because people keep buying the stock, because 136 it is a “valuable company” in the eyes of markets that have fucking cataracts. 137 138 This is why we see such vast oscillations of hiring and firing - because these 139 companies are never, ever punished for failing to operate their businesses in a 140 sustainable way, or even with a view for the future, particularly when it comes 141 to macroeconomic trends that literally everyone else saw coming. 142 143 Their business models were predicated on an endless supply of cheap money, even 144 though the Fed steadily ratcheted interest rates in the years leading up to the 145 Covid pandemic, only slashing them to mitigate the pain of Covid and (to a 146 lesser extent) the US-China trade war.. The specter of inflation reared its 147 ugly head as early as 2020, first driven by the lockdown-induced chaos on 148 supply chains, and then exacerbated further by the war in Ukraine, the 149 collateral damage of China’s Zero Covid policy, and a chronic labor shortage in 150 most industrialized countries. 151 152 The markets do not react when they are mass-hiring people to capture consumer 153 demand. They do not react to the fact that Microsoft, for example,[37] seems to 154 be[38] laying[39] off[40] people[41] almost every year. In 2020, CEO Satya 155 Nadella called for a “[42]referendum on capitalism,” telling businesses to 156 start to grade themselves on the “wider economic benefits they bring to 157 society, rather than profits.” To be clear,[43] this was four months after 158 Microsoft laid off 1000 people,[44] one year before they hired 23,000 people, 159 and a few months after which they laid off 10,000 people to “[45]deliver 160 results on an ongoing basis, while investing in [their] long-term opportunity.” 161 162 Where’s Your Ed At is a free newsletter, but if you like my work and want to 163 kick me a few dollars, [46]you can do so here. I really appreciate your 164 support. 165 166 Everything Ventured, Nothing Gained 167 168 Before these companies reach the public markets, they are fueled by an even 169 more violently reckless form of funding - venture capital. Venture capitalists 170 are regularly incentivized to create businesses that look valuable but aren’t 171 necessarily of value.[47] When I wrote about the Liches of Silicon Valley last 172 year, I remarked upon how many valley companies experience volatile, erosive 173 cycles of growth with the goal of being acquired or going public, burning as 174 much venture capital as it takes to find an outcome: 175 176 They repeat a very specific cycle - company is[48] the next big thing, 177 company is[49] now worth over a billion dollars,[50] company is 178 experiencing “unheard of growth” (with no question as to whether they are 179 sustainable or profitable),[51] company is now challenging ‘the big dogs’ 180 of industry,[52] a little M&A,[53] an absolutely insane valuation, and then 181 a sudden realization that actually,[54] perhaps this wasn’t a good business 182 at all? I am hammering on TechCrunch links here because I am being lazy - 183 they are far from the only outlet to assume that a company like Brex would 184 not simply run itself into the ground through virtue of existing - but the 185 path is always the same - growth, growth, growth, legitimization, growth, 186 growth, acquisition, and then an eventual reckoning with real life. 187 188 Venture pumps millions or billions of dollars into ideas that might sell a 189 product or a service, but ultimately resemble things that can be sold to other 190 companies or put on the public market for a profit higher than what was paid on 191 a per-share basis. I once suggested that Silicon Valley conflated “making great 192 ideas work” with “making ideas I like work,” but on consideration, many of 193 these companies aren’t even things venture capitalists like - they are things 194 that resemble things that they can sell. Do I genuinely believe that everyone 195 who invested into the Web3 grift was a strident believer in the brave new 196 decentralized economy? Hell no. They just went where the winds blew — or where 197 they seemed to be blowing. 198 199 Andreessen Horowitz was the lead participant in arguably the biggest con in 200 venture capital, pumping billions into Web3 companies that didn’t have any real 201 product, but[55] stapled together enough buzzwords and websites to resemble 202 actual entities. A16Z found a way to vastly accelerate the 203 idea-to-business-to-profit cycle of venture. Despite claiming it was “[56]Time 204 To Build” in 2020, Andreessen Horowitz realized that there wasn’t ever really 205 much of a need to build at all - you could create things that semiotically 206 aligned with what “valuable” looked like and profit off of that. While the 207 public markets may (at least, before the rise of the SPAC) have required some 208 sort of business - even if said business wasn’t graded on being a “good” one - 209 the cryptocurrency markets allowed the vaguest of ideas to get even vaguer 210 valuations. 211 212 This same insipid thought process applies to the rest of their portfolio too. 213 Adam Neumann,[57] a guy who is most famous for running WeWork into the ground, 214 got a second at-bat with his new startup “Flow,” a company that Neumann is 215 still not able to fully describe, but that may involve you renting to own an 216 apartment that Flow owns somewhere at some point. Just like Silicon Valley 217 can’t help itself from reinventing the bus, Neuman is seemingly attempting to 218 reinvent the rental market — a diseased, exploitative industry in its own right 219 — in his own image. He’s replacing one cancer with another, only even more 220 aggressive and metastatic. 221 222 Neumann was, is, and will always be full of shit. Appropriately, in[58] a video 223 A16Z released yesterday, Neumann used the following analogy to describe Flow: 224 225 The founder turned to a toilet metaphor to explain one aspect of his idea 226 of ownership. “If you’re in an apartment building, and you’re a renter, and 227 your toilet gets clogged, you call the super,” he said. In contrast, “if 228 you’re in your own apartment, and you bought it and you own it and your 229 toilet gets clogged, you take the plunger.” For Neumann, fixing up your own 230 apartment means shifting from “being transactional to actually being part 231 of a community” and “feeling like you own something.” 232 233 In a functioning society, Adam Neumann would not be given a single dollar. This 234 quote proves that he has never unclogged a toilet, because in the event that 235 you could unclog your toilet in an apartment you rented, you’d probably do it. 236 If the clog was so severe it required the super, you would probably still call 237 a plumber if you owned the place, because your nasty business has created a 238 problem you cannot solve. 239 240 What I am suggesting is that Adam Neumann doesn’t know anything about home 241 ownership, or unclogging toilets, or toilets, or the regular experience of 242 being a human. Yet he is given unfathomable amounts of capital to address 243 problems related to these things, because he has the resemblance of the kind of 244 messianic white guy that is able to take a product and sell it,[59] even if he 245 is quite literally the guy who failed to do this before. 246 247 Neumann turned a (nominally) $47bn company into a $2.9bn company. In a sane and 248 just world, he wouldn’t see a dollar of funding for the rest of his life. 249 250 There are tons of other examples of colossally stupid assholes and stupid ideas 251 getting money.[60] As I wrote about on Monday, the largest investment rounds of 252 the last few years have gone to companies that got obscene valuations based on 253 nothing other than a vague sense of them “looking like a winner.” There is no 254 reason[61] a weight loss app should need $540 million to operate - that is not 255 a sustainable enterprise considering[62] the entire weight loss industry is 256 worth about $3.8 billion. Clubhouse was never worth the billions of dollars 257 pumped into it,[63] considering the [64]entire radio industry only makes about 258 $12 billion a year combined. While capital is required to get a company off the 259 ground, the only way to justify these massive surges of capital is that venture 260 capitalists are putting companies on life support in the hopes that they can 261 flog them for a profit. 262 263 And this corrosive capital system gets continually rewarded. Companies like 264 Uber are taken public,[65] making massive windfalls for venture capitalists 265 without[66] ever having to run a profitable business.[67] Venture capitalists 266 crammed $41 billion into crypto in the space of 18 months, despite there being 267 no real use cases for crypto.[68] Metaverse companies raised $120 billion in 268 2022 for a concept that has yet to really exist, and perhaps never will. Yet 269 these concepts get vast amounts of money because venture capitalists are 270 incentivized to pump cash into “good companies to invest in” over “good 271 companies.” 272 273 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 274 275 As my friend [69]Kasey put it in a recent conversation, growth is a fire. If 276 you build a nice, sustainable fire, it’ll keep you warm, cook food and sustain 277 life. And if the only thing you care about is how big your fire is, then it’ll 278 set fire to everything around it, and the more you throw into it, the more 279 it’ll burn. Eventually, you’ll have nothing left, but if you desperately desire 280 that fire, you will constantly have to find new things to burn at any cost. 281 282 And we, societally, have turned our markets and businesses - private and public 283 - over to arsonists. We have created conditions where we celebrate people for 284 making “big” companies but not “good” companies. 285 286 Venture capital and the public markets don’t actually reward or respect “good” 287 businesses or “good” CEOs - they reward people that can steer the kind of 288 growth that raises the value of an asset. Elon Musk’s success with Tesla didn’t 289 come from the inarguable point that he ended the monopoly of the internal 290 combustion engine - it came from his[70] canny manipulation of the symbolic 291 value of a stock through lies and half-truths, meaning that there was always a 292 perpetual reason that Tesla was a “growth” company and a “good stock to buy.” 293 [71] Sundar Pichai isn’t paid $280 million a year because he’s a “good CEO.” 294 After all, Google has all but destroyed its search product. He’s paid because 295 he finds ways to increase the overall growth of the company [72](even while 296 their cloud division still loses money), and thus the stock goes up. 297 298 The consequences are that these companies will continue to invest in things 299 that grow the overall revenue of the company over all else. They will mass-hire 300 and mass-fire, because there are no consequences when the markets don’t really 301 care as long as the company itself stays valuable. Venture capitalists 302 certainly don’t mind - after all, it’s “less burn” to “get you through” tough 303 climates that were arguably created by the poor hiring decisions of a company 304 that was never incentivized to hire sustainably or operate profitably. 305 306 Until we see a seismic shift in how major investors treat the companies they 307 invest in, this cycle will continue. I guarantee that we will see each and 308 every one of the companies doing mass layoffs do mass-hirings in the next few 309 years, and then do another mass layoff not long after, because they are simply 310 treating human capital as assets to be manipulated to increase the value of a 311 stock. They are not structured to evaluate whether the business is 312 “sustainable,” because their only interest is seeing their current profits grow 313 by multiples that please Wall Street. 314 315 “Good companies” should not have to repeatedly lay people off. They should not 316 be mass-hiring for fear that the demand they are capturing is temporary, and 317 those new employees will soon find themselves at the receiving end of a pink 318 slip. 319 320 The lens through which we evaluate businesses is cracked, and until we fix it, 321 we will continue to experience these punishing cycles of binging and purging on 322 human capital. 323 324 This is the problem at the center of almost everything I’ve written. Why are 325 bosses mad they can’t bring people back to the office? Because their alignment 326 of business success isn’t really tied to profit or “success,” but rather the 327 sense that they are “big” and “successful,” which requires a bustling workplace 328 and “ideas.” 329 330 Why did billions of dollars get pumped into crypto’s countless non-companies? 331 Because “success” as defined by capital has been reframed to mean “number go 332 up.” As a notion, it is divorced from any long-term thinking, fiscal probity, 333 or even what you and I would call “morality.” 334 335 Why did these companies never seem to get blamed for hiring and then quickly 336 firing tens of thousands of people? Because at the heart of the business media 337 and the markets, workers were necessary casualties of the eternal struggle for 338 growth. Layoffs are inevitably reported as a large number (“10,000 employees at 339 Microsoft”), which makes it all too easy to remove the human element. When 340 confronted with numbers of this scale, it’s easy to ignore the individual human 341 agony that comes with losing a job. The uncertainty and shame that follows a 342 firing. 343 344 The truth is that nothing lasts forever. Companies can (and should) die — or, 345 at the very least, understand that there is an inevitable limit to growth, and 346 eventually they must reconcile with being a stable, albeit plateaued, business. 347 348 A product may be profitable for a while, but there is a line at which 349 profitability comes at the cost of functionality, and your company may simply 350 not be able to grow more. A business that cannot generate profit is not a good 351 business, and a business that can never generate a profit deserves to die. 352 353 And the net result of all of this is that it kills innovation. If capital is 354 not invested in providing a good service via a profitable business, it will 355 never sustain things that are societally useful. Companies are not incentivized 356 to provide better services or improve lives outside of ways in which they can 357 drain more blood from consumers. And the street doesn’t care either - just look 358 at Facebook and Instagram, two products that have grown endlessly profitable 359 and utterly useless in the process. 360 361 If capital wishes to call labor entitled, capital must acknowledge that it is 362 the most entitled creature in society, craving eternal growth at the cost of 363 the true value of any given service or entity. 364 365 [73]Subscribe 366 Share 367 [74] [75] [76] [77] 368 About the author 369 370 [79]Ed Zitron 371 372 [80]View all 373 Comments 374 More from Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At 375 [81]Newsletter 376 377 [82]Empty Laughter 378 379 Amongst the sludge of AI-powered everything at last week’s Consumer Electronics 380 Show, a robbery took place. “Dudesy —” allegedly a 381 [83]Ed Zitron Jan 16, 2024 15 min read 382 [84]Newsletter 383 384 [85]A Continual Christmas 385 386 Editor’s note: Platformer has announced it will leave Substack and be moving to 387 Ghost next week. Casey did the 388 [86]Ed Zitron Jan 10, 2024 9 min read 389 [87]Newsletter 390 391 [88]Software Is Beating The World 392 393 Editor’s Note: Due to the length of this piece, you may need to click a button 394 to read the 395 [89]Ed Zitron Dec 18, 2023 14 min read 396 397 Welcome to Where's Your Ed At! 398 399 Subscribe today. It's free. Please. 400 401 [90][ ] Subscribe 402 Great! Check your inbox and click the link. 403 Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again. 404 Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At 405 [92] [93] 406 407 • [94]Home 408 • [95]About 409 • [96]Better Offline 410 411 • [97]Sign up 412 413 ©2024 [98]Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At. Published with [99]Ghost & [100]Tuuli 414 . 415 [101][Light ] 416 417 Great! You’ve successfully signed up. 418 419 Welcome back! You've successfully signed in. 420 421 You've successfully subscribed to Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At. 422 423 Your link has expired. 424 425 Success! Check your email for magic link to sign-in. 426 427 Success! 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