I wish it were merely that. I think Y Combinator, and the culture it promotes, is part of a much deeper problem in the IT industry: digital colonisation (or astroturfing, if you will). Vast amounts of capital are used to blitzkrieg entire markets, not to build better services but to erase alternatives and own the only platform.

That's how companies like Uber Eats gained dominance. They didn't become market leaders by being better, they swung enormous capital at every problem, undercut local business until they were driven out, then jacked up prices and degraded service once competition was gone. Uber Eats is just one example of this pattern.

This astroturfing phenomenon has spread everywhere: business directories, event planning, community platforms, even the ways people in a local area connect and share prosperity. What looks like "innovation" is often just foreign investors capital overwhelming local ecosystems that were working just fine.

Google is the clearest case study. They gave us genuinely useful tools, Gmail, Maps, Android, and wrapped it all in "Don't be evil." Once everyone was locked in, the mask was removed. Surveillance, enclosure, rent-seeking, supporting a fascist government regime. The evil didn't suddenly appear, it was always there. That's where the initial capital came from in the first place!

Y Combinator didn't invent this, but it systematized it: scale first, destroy competition, extract later. The startup business model of tech bros seeking capital was exported overseas and countless idiots today try to ape it at fake tech conferences that are about seeking investor funding, not innovation or a brighter future. The damage isn't just economic, it's cultural and social, and it hollowed out entire local and digital communities in the process.