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Comment by lyndonjohnsonbe | Hacker News Reader

> The business model of giving free service until people are hooked, and then monetizing the service by selling data has been a big part of the problem.

The way this was phased made me realize that by offering a free service funded by VC money, it squeezes the competition forcing them to reduce quality or go out of business. The monopolistic behavior to eliminate competition then increasing prices is not something that I saw before in many tech companies.

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> offering a free service funded by VC money, it squeezes the competition forcing them to reduce quality or go out of business.

This is very similar to the anti-competitive strategy of "dumping", where you sell something at a loss to undercut a competitor. Again, the primary thing being disrupted here is "laws".

And in EU we have government grants - free money for all kinds of tech-scams , created just for the purpose of consuming these funds. Of course destroying any legit businesses that suddenly have to compete against these state-funded parasites. Thanks, socialists

Nice bait and nice misuse of the word "socialist". Capitalists are taking advantage of state funds, duh it's socialism fault.

If they're relying on government handouts, are they really capitalists?

Why would a capitalist care about where the capital comes from? If the terms are favorable, all is good.

The capitalist has enough to do just taking care of his own business. But now he has to deal with all these who just took government money for nothing and can compete without any costs on their side. Even offer same service for free because govt pays for it - what kind of business could beat that? And what kind of government strangles legit businesses and replaces them with state-funded zombies?

Being a capitalist is not defined as a love of obtaining capital. It's more than that: it includes a belief in markets and a dislike of government intervention, which can of course be intervention to prop up his competitors.

no, it's rather socialism trying very hard to imitate capitalism, but missing the main point

Could you elaborate? Which grant programs are you referring to?

central Europe. Variety of funds to pick from, but there is national fund for R&D projects, financing private companies and cooperation between academy & business. The main problem: goals. The goal is not to develop anything, instead both sides focus on getting rid of the money. The administration clerks make sure they spend all budget (to show they do a great job) and the beneficiaries make sure every penny is utilised and there is a paper for that. And that's it, millions of EUR just to fund paperwork and fictional research. Plus a generous amount of corruption, but this is just a side effect of this fiction pyramid.

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