I really wonder sometimes if it is actually possible to fail in some of these situations. If you don't have to follow the same laws as everyone else and know there won't be consequences, you're going to crush your competition of not rich people who actually applied for permits and stuff. Because your competition knew if they didn't get them, they would pretty much be shut down, while these other companies basically said "lol laws" and like most companies who do, reaped massive rewards.
Then there are other people who see unethical behavior and, for whatever reason, can't "just get over it" like normal people. They end up taking some immensely energy-consuming moral stands that often aren't in their individual interests.
Such people are immensely beneficial to society, but it's not fun to be one.
Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela fall in that category to name a few. It is no coincidence all three suffered similar injustices to the extent they did including subjugation by the Government (Powers that be)not limited to incarceration, but when most would give up their spirit prevailed and they never waivered in their sense of justice.
When you live in a world where the highest levels of society are literally "above the law", torture as policy is considered acceptable, might makes right, and democracy has been for sale for so long that it's newsworthy when a politician refuses sponsorship; it is very hard to make an argument that anyone who pays attention to the news does not have a very clear idea of the moral status of our ruling elites.
We do have, though, concrete empirical evidence of the eventual consequences of casually thinking of and referring to others, any others at all, as 'human garbage'.
The moral status of that line of thought is much more clear - it's noxious and if there's some sort of moral thing we ought to agree on is that it's to be rejected and opposed, wherever it pops up.
[Edit: and to completely Godwin up this thread - if there's a day to take 30 seconds to think about the implications of such rhetoric, today, V-E day, is a good one].
Calling VC 'human garbage' is, at the end of the day, just nerd message-board hyperventilating. And it's still completely repugnant and talking about other repugnant things doesn't make it any less so.
My direct experience (which is not with VCs) is that the VC-darling startups are mostly run by human garbage, which raises questions about who funds them. Does this mean there are probably some horrible VCs? Yes, absolutely. Does it mean that all VCs are that way? Of course not. There are plenty of good ones out there, too.
My feelings about this suit are complicated. Look, Al Capone was nabbed on tax fraud, rather than the harder-to-prove but more vicious shit he did. If the Greenspan suit starts a process that puts an end to VC note-sharing and co-funding and social-proof calls-- against the spirit of the law, but hard to prove on an individual basis-- then I'm all for it.
It is when you win.
Do you have a shred of evidence to support any of these accusations? Not that I think the VC industry is devoid of problems, but in my experience it is neither rigged nor corrupt, and the people with the most power actually tend to be the most morally conscious people I've ever met.
What? A banker? Morally conscious? You believe that I got a bridge to sell you.
This is also anecdotal too. The people you've met.
I greatly appreciate the fact that someone is trying to innovate in this space and I wish him success. I don't know or care if he self identifies as a victim like you describe. I just appreciate him for his actions and tenacity.
Not sure if this potshot was called for.
Rebels eventually wish to be kings. Some actually get there. Then the cycle repeats.
My worry here is that individuals are paying more attention to specific actors who as powerful as they appear to be are not as formidable as systems they represent.
Its almost rare to see such wounded attitudes from an equally matched adversary.
The other direction is full scale martyr which was also displayed recently .. I'd rather not take the name to avoid pain for those close to the kid.
Consider all the co-funding and note-sharing that goes on among supposedly competing investors. That's clearly anti-competitive activity, but it's never enforced because of the power of the people who do it.
It sounds like his particular lawsuit is without legal ground and will fail, but he deserves major props for bringing public attention to VC-istan's collusion problem.
As I wrote, he's already morally entitled to an EIR position (at the very least, if not a real VC job) from VC-istan for his courage, intellect, and ethical above-board-ness, which are well into the top 5% by VC-istan standards (although that's not saying much).