I full agree, with your entire post. But does that mean that one should not look into alternative business models? There are alternatives, even though they are squeezed, or have a hard ramp up to go through. I know you don’t mean it like that, but the above sounds so defeatist to me. I’d say alternatives, more regulation and any kind of protest we can muster are all valuable routes.
In the broader tech scene the role of VC is I think indeed not well understood. But on e.g. Hacker News they understand very well. And I can feel a tiredness, dissatisfaction, and disillusionment even, growing against startup culture. The fact that there are so many failures is helping maybe, but these people are also at heart normal human beings and see quite well all the problems ahead, both in tech, for society and the environment.
Regarding your examples, I think @AndrewMackie’s aggregator analysis fits this bill well (see also the Technokleptocracy thread, or this page directly), and I love the way he removed the emotions involved that one usually hears when people speak about the subject on the web, and provided a clear-headed analysis of how the value extraction works. Quite refreshing.