I think the letter V should be removed from VC to better reflect your point that these are barely ventures - they're more like a rigged casino spin for those that don't have the talent to do the building themselves.

That's what the letter V was historically understood to mean. As the article says, venture capital used to be a small segment of the capital markets for the uncommon set of companies who can't prove their idea is any good until they get more capital than their friends and family have to offer. The idea that venture funding is supposed to be anything more than a rigged casino spin is upstream of quite a lot of the problems people have with modern VC.

I learned to pronounce the V in VC as 'vulture' back in the 1980's.

VC is also exercising incredible power over media and politics. That's part of the article's point: VC isn't just about VC anymore.

You should add that they use pension funds to do this too. Easy to make stupid bets when it's not your money.

I don't think they are that squeamish about hiding it. VC's talk all the time about investing in people and understanding that their ideas May shift over time.

Tyler Cowen is a big proponent of pre-selecting talented people and not even requiring an idea. I think this is the model of Emergent Ventures (EV), launched in 2018, and is getting replicated in many places.

I think it is regarded as highly successful

"Looking for motivated people willing to do anything for money"

I'll say it directly, as _they have_: they are attempting to recreate fuedalism.

Those folks are in these comments. They'll get their pitchforks and torches eventually.