Fwd: Re: [iDC] Will you delete your Feedburner account?

[Dmytri Kleiner]

On Tue, 12 Jun 2007 11:50:55 +0100, Simon Biggs <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk> wrote:

> but we have to be realistic about how
> these technologies came into being and seek to debunk the myths that are
> obscuring the facts.

As well as the idea that Acquisition Capital "pays dearly" for the
creativity of entrepreneurs. It is the mostly the employees and "users" of
the firm that pay dearly, because they do not capture the full value of
their labour product.

The goal of finance capital is to increase its own wealth. It uses its
position of having wealth to exploit the creators. The _fact_ that 10% of
the Adult Population own 85% of the planet's wealth illustrates, while the
bottom 50% own 1% illustrates clearly who is paying dearly and who is
accumulating.

In a start-up wealth disparity allows each tier to exploit the lower tier,
the "Entrepreneur" exploits wage labour to build value because he is in a
financial position to offer wages, and thus can retaining ownership. Those
that actually create the majority of the value end up with little or no
ownership, and often have to overcome meddling, mismanagement and terrorism
from the "Entrprenuers" to succeed at all.

Then, the Entrepreneur himself "sells-out", not for _more_ money, but for
_less_ than the fully capitalized value of his company, because he himself,
although he may have better access to finance than his employees, does not
have access to major finance capital directly to fully capitalize it, that
is why he must condescend to do vulgar things like start companies in the
first place, the _real_ rich have no need to do this, they are happy to
have useful idiots like the "Entrepreneurs" and the exploited employees to
do the work and simply use their wealth to acquire everything in the end
anyway.

This "sell-out" generally happens in several stages, with the Entrepreneur
and his employees retaining less ownership at each stage, but never
receiving enough money to fully capitalize, thus always needing to
negotiate further funding rounds or an outright acquisition.

Because the Entrepreneur himself is not a member of the _real_ rich, this
all seems like a pretty good deal to him, but in the end he is just a
junior partner, nothing more that a exceptionally highly paid employee of
Capital himself. And the more ownership he retains for himself in the early
stages, in other words, the less he shares with his employees, early
"angel" financiers, and other partners, the better he makes out in the end,
but it is important to understand that whatever his take is, it is from his
employees and "users" that he takes it, it is the value they created (along
with him) that he is capturing, not from finance capital, which in the end
capture the fully capitalized value in return for nothing more than being
rich in the first place.

And finance capital sacrifices nothing by paying money, they create money
at the stroke of a pen, when their investments go badly, this simply washes
away in the interaction of monetary inflation and Sate austerity programs,
and the consumer, as always, gets stuck with the bill.

I do not imagine the "Entrepreneurs" on this list will bother trying to
understand any of this, as it is unflattering to the narcissism that
sustains them.