The whole idea that it's a good thing for someone to get millions of dollars just dropped on their heads, when they have barely even started, is California Capitalism.
I think it leads to feverish boom/bust cycles, rather than more steady, organic growth.
And there's no evidence that the end result is better. Maybe being built a bit slower, by people with a small budget might actually have a positive effect on the product development. 🤔
Or maybe I'm just trying to HFSP. 😂
Who knows.
Just seems to feed a gold rush atmosphere and reduces the future-orientation of the product design, devops, and architecture.
Everything tends quick-n-dirty because you're performing for only one customer and it's a customer that doesn't even really use the product. They just want to see the returns on *their* investment, and they want to see them fast.
It also reduces the incentive to interact and communicate with other developers.
Interoperability lowers the development costs and effort dramatically because you can just use and reuse each others' stuff. It also gives you an incentive to actively promote *other people's* products and actively seek out interaction with them.
If money is no option, why bother? And why bother caring about interoperating with the wider network? The two or three biggest projects can just drive everything.
And that's how you quickly recreate corporatism in FOSS. FOSS has its own sort of money printer.
We also seems to have much more appreciation of cost.
Instead of renting a bigger remote server, we choose more efficient software to install or revamp our code.
Instead of getting a snazzy new gaming notebook every year, we're digging old Linux machines out.
We don't all have top-of-the-line Internet or mobile plans, so the stuff we built will work as well in the Bavarian backwoods as in Dallas, Texas.
Instead of hiring a bunch of staff to do tedious labour, we automate it and ask for volunteers.
I think this improves the overall design and lowers running costs. It's actually hard to beat the low product prices resulting from relative poverty, in software development, as digital products don't have the sort of economies of scale that analog products do.
This is only being hidden by Big Money, initially. In the end, they're pushing this additional cost onto the consumer, and the costs will compound over time.
The VC model only works because there's been easy money for so long. Slow, steady growth leads to longer-lasting businesses; most Silicon Valley successes are solely attributed to getting bailed out at the right time by an injection of capital, either by dumping on the public or positioning themselves as close to the money printer as possible.
Agree except that calling it California Capitalism I think is inaccurate. Capitalism is actually based on free markets, we have. Nothing of the sort, not even slightly.
What you describe is a consequence of the fiat debt system, which is based on the communist tenant of central banking and money as a tool of political authority. Thats what causes this. Money is literally issued out of thin air as debt. The results are what you describe.
Well, yes. Suppose I needed to write it
California "Capitalism"
A variant of corporatism, I suppose, where the quick accumulation of large sums of money without commensurate effort leads to the problem of how to spend it effectively. Bitcoin had a similar effect as fiat, while the price was very low, and differs mainly in the fact that the effect has slowed and will eventually stop or even reverse.
The best way to spend it is to give it to a group of people to have them building something. Then it can be spent productively. But giving them too much money, at once, or giving them money for too long, creates distortions in their behavior and in the market. Giving too little means you can barely spend anything, or you need to find a gazillion groups to spend it on, which is too much work and might lead to price inflation (stimmy check effect).
