I'm suggesting that self owned companies are allowed to and often do spend absurd amounts of their spare money on pointless things like marketing or internal transformations.

The difference they don't tell you about their internal accounting so you don't join the dots.

Start ups burn money on silly things like offices way too nice for what they need all the time. That's much closer to unethical than a company with no real duty to outsiders throwing away money.

I don’t see any claims that they are unethical. “Losing faith” seems to be being used more like losing hope or something. People are worried that they are doing things that seem a bit wasteful because they don’t want them to fail.

> I'm suggesting that self owned companies are allowed to and often do spend absurd amounts of their spare money on pointless things like marketing or internal transformations.

Bradford Shellhammer (fab.com) wanting to speed run getting his United Global Services (invite only, elite tier, qualification criteria believed to be $50K annual base fare spend or 150K miles/year) so would fly back and forth between New York and Frankfurt every week, first class, while laying off employees left right and center.

No one is saying self-owned companies aren't allowed to do things like that.

But we are still allowed to criticize moves that we think are counter-productive or a waste.

I think the difference being that the niche customer based with Kagi is what will keep the lights on going forward. People share these feelings because they love the product and want to see it continue. Instead of taking it as hostile, it really comes from a place of love and wanting to see success. Very little to do with how you see it.

Maybe they wanted to make T shirts. Who knows. I don't get why people are up in arms about it.