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The Rot Economy
[20]Ed Zitron Feb 9, 2023 13 min read
At the center of everything Ive written for the last few months (if not the
last few years), sits a cancerous problem with the fabric of how capital is
deployed in modern business. Public and private investors, along with the
markets themselves, have become entirely decoupled from the concept of what
“good” business truly is, focusing on one metric — one truly noxious metric —
over all else: growth.
“Growth” in this case is not necessarily about being “bigger” or “better,” it
is simply “more.” It means that the company is generating more revenue, higher
valuations, gaining more market share, and then finding more ways to generate
these things. Businesses are expected to be - and rewarded for being - eternal
burning engines of capital that create more and more shareholder value while,
hopefully, providing a service to a customer in the process. In the public
markets, that means that[21] companies like Google, Meta, and Microsoft were
rewarded for [22]having unfocused, capital-intensive businesses that required
mass layoffs when times got tough, because the market loved the idea that
theyd found a way to save money. They werent punished for their poor
planning,[23] their stagnating products, their mismanagement of human capital,
or their general lack of any real innovation because the numbers kept going up.
[24]Subscribe
[25]When I wrote in October that Mark Zuckerberg was going to kill his company,
the street responded in kind, savaging Metas stock for burning cash building a
metaverse that was never going to exist. Yet once Zuckerberg fired 11,000
people and claimed that 2023 would be the “[26]year of efficiency,” the market
responded with double-digit increases in the price of Metas shares, despite
the fact that Facebooks active user growth declined and they[27] lost $13.7
billion on the same metaverse department that caused the stock to drop the last
time.
The markets[28] seemed to ignore the $410 million fine that Meta received for
GDPR violations, along with the fact that European users will now have to
deliberately opt-in to sharing their data - which is bad, considering only
about[29] 25% of iOS users choose to opt-in to app tracking, and their business
model is intrinsically linked to the repurposing of customer data into ad
targeting telemetry.
Lets be abundantly clear: Metas core advertising models depend heavily on
things that likely become impossible to do legally (or even technically, given
Apples App Tracking Transparency, Alphabets retirement of the third-party
tracking cookie, and the Chromium Projects planned blocking of non-cookie
fingerprinting technologies) in the next decade. Their other products simply do
not make that much money. Their CEOs big idea to make more money has lost them
billions of dollars, and likely wont make them any for quite some time. Yet
Meta remains beloved, because the numbers are going up.
Killing Innovation
Google has a similar yet slightly different story, where their core product -
search - has gone from a place where you find information to an
increasingly-manipulated labyrinth of SEO-optimized garbage shipped straight
from the content factories.[30] As Charlie Warzel put it last year: “Google
Search, what many consider an indispensable tool of modern life, is dead or
dying.”  Users have to effectively find cheat codes - adding things like “
[whatever youre searching]+Reddit” to get reliable answers. Despite its
decades-long efforts to improve the quality of organic results, Google remains
easily-gamed by anyone who knows how to craft an algorithm-friendly headline.
Without finding a way to negotiate with Google Search, youre offered a
fragmented buffet of content provided by Googles algorithm, either based on
how much theyve been paid to prioritize said content or by how companies have
engineered content to rank higher on search. Google no longer provides the
“best” result or answer to your query - it provides the answer that it believes
is most beneficial or profitable to Google. Google Search provides a “free”
service, but the cost is a source of information corrupted by a profit-seeking
entity looking to manipulate you into giving money to the profit-seeking
entities that pay them.
The net result is a product that completely sucks. “Googling” something is now
an exercise in pain, regularly leading you to generic Search Engine Optimized
content that doesnt actually answer your question. Googles push to
hyper-optimization has also led it to serve results based on what it *thinks*
people mean, rather than what they actually said. Its frustrating, upsetting
and annoying. A problem that likely hits hundreds of millions of people a day,
yet Google doesnt have to change a thing, because the street likes that they
have found more innovative ways to get blood from a stone. These moves are
unquestionably hurting Google, to the point that Microsofts Bing (paired with
OpenAIs ChatGPT), has gained major[31] headlines for providing the service
that everybody wished Google would.
Thats because Google has, like every major tech company, focused entirely on
what will make revenues increase, even if the cost of doing so is destroying
its entire legacy.[32] Google has announced their own “Bard AI” to compete with
Bings ChatGPT integration, and Ill be honest - I feel a little crazy that
nobody is saying the truth, which is that Google broke the product that made
them famous and is now productizing fixing their own problem as innovation.
Thats because the markets do not prioritize innovation, or sustainable growth,
or stable, profitable enterprises. As a result, companies regularly do not
function with the intent of making “good” businesses - they want businesses
that semiotically align with what investors - private and public - believe to
be “good.”
Despite its ubiquity, companies like Uber should not exist. Uber has not made a
profit from its businesses. They had a net loss of 1.21 billion last quarter,
yet the street fell over itself to praise the company because “[33]gross
bookings grew 19% year-over-year” for their unprofitable businesses that
largely hinge upon the government failing to impose sensible labor laws,[34] a
con that will eventually come to an end, and indeed, has ended in some
territories like the UK, where Uber drivers are now recognized as employees,
and are therefore entitled to pensions, paid vacation time, and a minimum wage.
London, I note, is one of Ubers most important markets.
Yet as of writing, Ubers stock is up 5%.
The media itself somewhat fuels this economy of growth-mongering. CNBC reports
earnings like many other media entities, but their[35] reports on, say, Uber
fail to acknowledge the fact that Uber has spent nearly 15 years burning money.
It has never turned a profit. Even with its push into freight and food
delivery, it  may never turn a profit,[36] no matter how much it contorts its
financials to pretend otherwise. Yet acknowledging the truth is that much worse
because Uber will not be killed, because people keep buying the stock, because
it is a “valuable company” in the eyes of markets that have fucking cataracts.
This is why we see such vast oscillations of hiring and firing - because these
companies are never, ever punished for failing to operate their businesses in a
sustainable way, or even with a view for the future, particularly when it comes
to macroeconomic trends that literally everyone else saw coming.
Their business models were predicated on an endless supply of cheap money, even
though the Fed steadily ratcheted interest rates in the years leading up to the
Covid pandemic, only slashing them to mitigate the pain of Covid and (to a
lesser extent) the US-China trade war.. The specter of inflation reared its
ugly head as early as 2020, first driven by the lockdown-induced chaos on
supply chains, and then exacerbated further by the war in Ukraine, the
collateral damage of Chinas Zero Covid policy, and a chronic labor shortage in
most industrialized countries.
The markets do not react when they are mass-hiring people to capture consumer
demand. They do not react to the fact that Microsoft, for example,[37] seems to
be[38] laying[39] off[40] people[41] almost every year. In 2020, CEO Satya
Nadella called for a “[42]referendum on capitalism,” telling businesses to
start to grade themselves on the “wider economic benefits they bring to
society, rather than profits.” To be clear,[43] this was four months after
Microsoft laid off 1000 people,[44] one year before they hired 23,000 people,
and a few months after which they laid off 10,000 people to “[45]deliver
results on an ongoing basis, while investing in [their] long-term opportunity.”
Wheres Your Ed At is a free newsletter, but if you like my work and want to
kick me a few dollars, [46]you can do so here. I really appreciate your
support.
Everything Ventured, Nothing Gained
Before these companies reach the public markets, they are fueled by an even
more violently reckless form of funding - venture capital. Venture capitalists
are regularly incentivized to create businesses that look valuable but arent
necessarily of value.[47] When I wrote about the Liches of Silicon Valley last
year, I remarked upon how many valley companies experience volatile, erosive
cycles of growth with the goal of being acquired or going public, burning as
much venture capital as it takes to find an outcome:
They repeat a very specific cycle - company is[48] the next big thing,
company is[49] now worth over a billion dollars,[50] company is
experiencing “unheard of growth” (with no question as to whether they are
sustainable or profitable),[51] company is now challenging the big dogs
of industry,[52] a little M&A,[53] an absolutely insane valuation, and then
a sudden realization that actually,[54] perhaps this wasnt a good business
at all? I am hammering on TechCrunch links here because I am being lazy -
they are far from the only outlet to assume that a company like Brex would
not simply run itself into the ground through virtue of existing - but the
path is always the same - growth, growth, growth, legitimization, growth,
growth, acquisition, and then an eventual reckoning with real life.
Venture pumps millions or billions of dollars into ideas that might sell a
product or a service, but ultimately resemble things that can be sold to other
companies or put on the public market for a profit higher than what was paid on
a per-share basis. I once suggested that Silicon Valley conflated “making great
ideas work” with “making ideas I like work,” but on consideration, many of
these companies arent even things venture capitalists like - they are things
that resemble things that they can sell. Do I genuinely believe that everyone
who invested into the Web3 grift was a strident believer in the brave new
decentralized economy? Hell no. They just went where the winds blew — or where
they seemed to be blowing.
Andreessen Horowitz was the lead participant in arguably the biggest con in
venture capital, pumping billions into Web3 companies that didnt have any real
product, but[55] stapled together enough buzzwords and websites to resemble
actual entities. A16Z found a way to vastly accelerate the
idea-to-business-to-profit cycle of venture. Despite claiming it was “[56]Time
To Build” in 2020, Andreessen Horowitz realized that there wasnt ever really
much of a need to build at all - you could create things that semiotically
aligned with what “valuable” looked like and profit off of that. While the
public markets may (at least, before the rise of the SPAC) have required some
sort of business - even if said business wasnt graded on being a “good” one -
the cryptocurrency markets allowed the vaguest of ideas to get even vaguer
valuations.
This same insipid thought process applies to the rest of their portfolio too.
Adam Neumann,[57] a guy who is most famous for running WeWork into the ground,
got a second at-bat with his new startup “Flow,” a company that Neumann is
still not able to fully describe, but that may involve you renting to own an
apartment that Flow owns somewhere at some point. Just like Silicon Valley
cant help itself from reinventing the bus, Neuman is seemingly attempting to
reinvent the rental market — a diseased, exploitative industry in its own right
— in his own image. Hes replacing one cancer with another, only even more
aggressive and metastatic.
Neumann was, is, and will always be full of shit. Appropriately, in[58] a video
A16Z released yesterday, Neumann used the following analogy to describe Flow:
The founder turned to a toilet metaphor to explain one aspect of his idea
of ownership. “If youre in an apartment building, and youre a renter, and
your toilet gets clogged, you call the super,” he said. In contrast, “if
youre in your own apartment, and you bought it and you own it and your
toilet gets clogged, you take the plunger.” For Neumann, fixing up your own
apartment means shifting from “being transactional to actually being part
of a community” and “feeling like you own something.”
In a functioning society, Adam Neumann would not be given a single dollar. This
quote proves that he has never unclogged a toilet, because in the event that
you could unclog your toilet in an apartment you rented, youd probably do it.
If the clog was so severe it required the super, you would probably still call
a plumber if you owned the place, because your nasty business has created a
problem you cannot solve.
What I am suggesting is that Adam Neumann doesnt know anything about home
ownership, or unclogging toilets, or toilets, or the regular experience of
being a human. Yet he is given unfathomable amounts of capital to address
problems related to these things, because he has the resemblance of the kind of
messianic white guy that is able to take a product and sell it,[59] even if he
is quite literally the guy who failed to do this before.
Neumann turned a (nominally) $47bn company into a $2.9bn company. In a sane and
just world, he wouldnt see a dollar of funding for the rest of his life.
There are tons of other examples of colossally stupid assholes and stupid ideas
getting money.[60] As I wrote about on Monday, the largest investment rounds of
the last few years have gone to companies that got obscene valuations based on
nothing other than a vague sense of them “looking like a winner.” There is no
reason[61] a weight loss app should need $540 million to operate - that is not
a sustainable enterprise considering[62] the entire weight loss industry is
worth about $3.8 billion. Clubhouse was never worth the billions of dollars
pumped into it,[63] considering the [64]entire radio industry only makes about
$12 billion a year combined. While capital is required to get a company off the
ground, the only way to justify these massive surges of capital is that venture
capitalists are putting companies on life support in the hopes that they can
flog them for a profit.
And this corrosive capital system gets continually rewarded. Companies like
Uber are taken public,[65] making massive windfalls for venture capitalists
without[66] ever having to run a profitable business.[67] Venture capitalists
crammed $41 billion into crypto in the space of 18 months, despite there being
no real use cases for crypto.[68] Metaverse companies raised $120 billion in
2022 for a concept that has yet to really exist, and perhaps never will. Yet
these concepts get vast amounts of money because venture capitalists are
incentivized to pump cash into “good companies to invest in” over “good
companies.”
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
As my friend [69]Kasey put it in a recent conversation, growth is a fire. If
you build a nice, sustainable fire, itll keep you warm, cook food and sustain
life. And if the only thing you care about is how big your fire is, then itll
set fire to everything around it, and the more you throw into it, the more
itll burn. Eventually, youll have nothing left, but if you desperately desire
that fire, you will constantly have to find new things to burn at any cost.
And we, societally, have turned our markets and businesses - private and public
- over to arsonists. We have created conditions where we celebrate people for
making “big” companies but not “good” companies.
Venture capital and the public markets dont actually reward or respect “good”
businesses or “good” CEOs - they reward people that can steer the kind of
growth that raises the value of an asset. Elon Musks success with Tesla didnt
come from the inarguable point that he ended the monopoly of the internal
combustion engine - it came from his[70] canny manipulation of the symbolic
value of a stock through lies and half-truths, meaning that there was always a
perpetual reason that Tesla was a “growth” company and a “good stock to buy.”
[71] Sundar Pichai isnt paid $280 million a year because hes a “good CEO.”
 After all, Google has all but destroyed its search product. Hes paid because
he finds ways to increase the overall growth of the company [72](even while
their cloud division still loses money), and thus the stock goes up.
The consequences are that these companies will continue to invest in things
that grow the overall revenue of the company over all else. They will mass-hire
and mass-fire, because there are no consequences when the markets dont really
care as long as the company itself stays valuable. Venture capitalists
certainly dont mind - after all, its “less burn” to “get you through” tough
climates that were arguably created by the poor hiring decisions of a company
that was never incentivized to hire sustainably or operate profitably.
Until we see a seismic shift in how major investors treat the companies they
invest in, this cycle will continue. I guarantee that we will see each and
every one of the companies doing mass layoffs do mass-hirings in the next few
years, and then do another mass layoff not long after, because they are simply
treating human capital as assets to be manipulated to increase the value of a
stock. They are not structured to evaluate whether the business is
“sustainable,” because their only interest is seeing their current profits grow
by multiples that please Wall Street.
“Good companies” should not have to repeatedly lay people off. They should not
be mass-hiring for fear that the demand they are capturing is temporary, and
those new employees will soon find themselves at the receiving end of a pink
slip.
The lens through which we evaluate businesses is cracked, and until we fix it,
we will continue to experience these punishing cycles of binging and purging on
human capital.
This is the problem at the center of almost everything Ive written. Why are
bosses mad they cant bring people back to the office? Because their alignment
of business success isnt really tied to profit or “success,” but rather the
sense that they are “big” and “successful,” which requires a bustling workplace
and “ideas.”
Why did billions of dollars get pumped into cryptos countless non-companies?
Because “success” as defined by capital has been reframed to mean “number go
up.” As a notion, it is divorced from any long-term thinking, fiscal probity,
or even what you and I would call “morality.”
Why did these companies never seem to get blamed for hiring and then quickly
firing tens of thousands of people? Because at the heart of the business media
and the markets, workers were necessary casualties of the eternal struggle for
growth. Layoffs are inevitably reported as a large number (“10,000 employees at
Microsoft”), which makes it all too easy to remove the human element. When
confronted with numbers of this scale, its easy to ignore the individual human
agony that comes with losing a job. The uncertainty and shame that follows a
firing.
The truth is that nothing lasts forever. Companies can (and should) die — or,
at the very least, understand that there is an inevitable limit to growth, and
eventually they must reconcile with being a stable, albeit plateaued, business.
A product may be profitable for a while, but there is a line at which
profitability comes at the cost of functionality, and your company may simply
not be able to grow more. A business that cannot generate profit is not a good
business, and a business that can never generate a profit deserves to die.
And the net result of all of this is that it kills innovation. If capital is
not invested in providing a good service via a profitable business, it will
never sustain things that are societally useful. Companies are not incentivized
to provide better services or improve lives outside of ways in which they can
drain more blood from consumers. And the street doesnt care either - just look
at Facebook and Instagram, two products that have grown endlessly profitable
and utterly useless in the process.
If capital wishes to call labor entitled, capital must acknowledge that it is
the most entitled creature in society, craving eternal growth at the cost of
the true value of any given service or entity.
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[58] https://fortune.com/2023/02/08/adam-neumann-flow-real-estate-andreesen-horowitz-startup/?ref=wheresyoured.at
[59] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/dec/20/why-wework-went-wrong?ref=wheresyoured.at#:~:text=The%20failed%20IPO%20and%20the,optimistic%20(it%20counted%20anyone%20who
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[62] https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/market-size/weight-loss-services-united-states/?ref=wheresyoured.at#:~:text=The%20market%20size%2C%20measured%20by,to%20increase%200.5%25%20in%202023.
[63] https://www.insideradio.com/free/kagan-forecasts-5-revenue-growth-for-radio-in-2022/article_0a0190fa-2901-11ed-8b2c-c30b0f3e8b79.html?ref=wheresyoured.at
[64] https://www.insideradio.com/free/kagan-forecasts-5-revenue-growth-for-radio-in-2022/article_0a0190fa-2901-11ed-8b2c-c30b0f3e8b79.html?ref=wheresyoured.at
[65] https://observer.com/2019/05/uber-ipo-nyse-7-investor-winners/?ref=wheresyoured.at
[66] http://cnbc.com/2019/05/09/how-uber-is-losing-money-as-it-goes-public.html?ref=wheresyoured.at
[67] https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b20qb0dsfp3m4l/VCs-Poured-41-Billion-Into-Crypto-in-the-Past-18-Months-Is-There-Any-Hope-for-a-Profit?ref=wheresyoured.at
[68] https://mpost.io/metaverse-industry-has-raised-120-billion-in-2022-cryptomeria-capital-reports/?ref=wheresyoured.at
[69] http://www.twitter.com/punkey0?ref=wheresyoured.at
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[72] https://www.lightreading.com/service-provider-cloud/google-still-losing-money-on-cloud-and-talent-war-wont-help/d/d-id/779292?ref=wheresyoured.at
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