Society will eventually adapt and people will learn if you give them the chance, just like they learnt not to put money in random ICOs after the bubble popped, or click random phishing emails, ...
Instead of patent medicine pitched by traveling salesmen, we have essential oils pitched by MLM recruits. People know not to buy magical cure-all patent medicine from an old-times salesman with a handlebar mustache, but they don’t know to avoid miracle essential oils pitched by their cousin who just joined an MLM. Same story, different minor details, larger scale than ever.
I think people tend to forget how rampant these frauds can be only because we have relatively decent enforcement and limits around them now. Remove the guard rails and they will proliferate like never before.
The lesser talked about issue with public investing is they the genuine entrepreneurs don’t actually need to raise money from general public. There is already more investment money out there than genuine deals available to take it up. Most of the investment opportunities that make their way to the general public have already been reviewed by and declined by many skilled, professional investors. Anything left for the public is inherently biased toward being a very bad investment.
Very, very true. Human nature at it's bare essential has hardly changed. We're essentially cavemen and women with (slightly better) manners posturing in ill-fitting suits.
I think the big problem though is that for every scam investor, there is at least one visionary who might actually pull it off, and its not always easy to tell the difference between the two...although sometimes its really easy
The mistake is to think that the public investor has equal access to both the visionary entrepreneur and the scam investors.
They don’t. Professional investors have already evaluated and sorted these investors very effectively. It’s literally their job. The good entrepreneurs can collect all the money they need from investment firms. They’d rather take VC from 5 firms than public money from 500 unsophisticated investors who require handholding, so that’s what they do.
That leaves a very adverse selection of remaining entrepreneurs to pitch the public. There might be a legitimate misunderstood entrepreneur in there, but they’re mixed in with 100 completely unqualified or scammy entrepreneurs who were already vetted and passed on by professional investors.
That’s why by the time an investment gets shipped to the public, it’s usually confirmed to be a bad deal.
Since the startup world isn’t quite as meritocratic as it pretends to be, and is arguably less so than it was 20 years ago, I’d say that yes, there are investment bargains like this to be had.
Tell us: did HN ever get a dark mode?