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Comment by zbyte64 | Hacker News Reader

How dare they act in a self-interested manner with no other regards.

Actually yeah, parasitic selfishness should definitely be discouraged in a healthy society

By force, eventually. Those daring to have their own interest in mind instead of the greater good should receive a healthy struggle session and their wealth confiscated. For all mankind!

Yes, actually.

Good to know how the ones so worried with our welfare REALLY think.

Or its just a matter of not letting bad players to ruin all the game. Too many greedy blood suckers will drain and kill the cow eventually. The word here is balance to have a sustained long running system that can benefit the maximum number of people.

It doesn't need to be a false dichotomy between what it is now and stalinist Russia comunism.

Note: the blood suckers is not the whole of the capital market of course, they produce value. The problem is some players and some practices..

In the context of this article and conversation, you are saying that companies that give away their product, for too low of a price, and too cheaply, in which consumers benefit too much is.... parasitic?

Giving things way to people for less than they are worth may not be good idea, but I don't think I would call that parasitic.

Instead, that is closer to charity.

You make it sound like the companies who run this shit are penniless, they're not, they're making millions of dollars of actual cash. There's no charity going on here.

But specifically the issue being discussed is these companies selling their product for too cheap and low prices.

I would not use the word "parasitic" to describe a situation where good and services are very cheap and good.

I think we can all agree that the ends don't always justify the means. "Machiavellian" isn't a word of praise.

The article doesn't say that VCs shouldn't be self interested. Nowhere does it say that greed, for lack of a better word, is bad. The herd mentality of the VCs investing in WeWork wasn't about greed, or self interest. It was about Kool-Aid, a term the article does use.

The point of the article is that it is this Kool-Aid thinking which deforms actual capitalism.

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