Both you and PG are missing the mark here.
PG made the error thinking that this is just people misunderstanding math and exponential growth, which created a convoluted math section that could have simply been explained as - if you start with a million dollar and double every month, you'll be a Billionaire in less than a year. He also didn't really touch well on why many people hate large companies / billionaires.
You are making the mistake of using a moralization framework that equivocate being accused of something to being bad for society + not looking at the alternative (i.e. even if it's true that every Billion dollar company is "bad/exploitative/etc.", that doesn't mean that the (realistic) alternative is better for society or people.
The reality is that companies like Google, Amazon, NVidia, etc. have create an immense amount of wealth for their founders and investors, but also created an immense amount of value in society. There is a real problem of incentives when you prioritize growth endlessly, as it leads to perverse incentives such as that ones these companies are accused of - leading you to progressively take more and more less positive actions in order to achieve this growth. So I don't disagree with the general premise that growth leads to moral problems, but I do disagree with saying that building big companies is bad for society.
It's not even like unbounded exponential growth is a new or "startup" thing either. PGs story is just the grains of rice on the chessboard legend. (or depending on the culture telling the story, perhaps wheat on a chessboard, according to google)
Like poet/warrior/advisor that convinces the King to give them one grain of rice on the first square of the chessboard, two grains of rice on the second square, four grains of on the third square, eight on the fourth - and so on, doubling the number of grains each square until the 64th square. The King can no more deliver 2^64 grains of rice that PG's founder keep her 93% growth rate consistent for 64 months (or even the calculated 9.5 months to make her a billionaire).
Yes, it's true that a very few tech startup founders create billion dollar wealth by "making what the people want" - but anybody trying to tell you the naive compound interest math makes it inevitable, is trying to sell you something (like perhaps their companies startup accelerator program or venture capital investment opportunities).
"Corn" is the general word for the most common cereal crop of a region, and the word for an individual grain of such a plant, in case you wish to use the corn-on-a-chessboard story without the qualification.
That seems to be true only in British English. In other dialects (USA, Canada, Australia), corn refers only to maize. (I'd never heard corn used as a general term, though Miriam-Webster does affirm this British usage.)
> There is a real problem of incentives when you prioritize growth endlessly, as it leads to perverse incentives such as that ones these companies are accused of - leading you to progressively take more and more less positive actions in order to achieve this growth.
What negative actions has Google Amazon and Nvidia done due to them prioritizing growth endlessly?
For Google, they didn't prioritize growth or they would have moved on AI a decade ago, but they were afraid of having tech journalists who hate them already write mean articles about how their AI is harmful.
Amazon just .. I don't know, keeps squeezing out operational efficiencies that get me next day delivery? Or developing AWS to enable other people to build apps?
Nvidia sells GPUs. Maybe you're a gamer and the push into AI means higher GPU prices?
I'm at a loss here. I don't think anyone is mad at these companies outside of a tiny vocal terminally online minority.
All of the companies you mention are at minimum engaged in monopolization and anti-competitive mergers as well as exploiting tax loopholes.
More specific criticisms:
Amazon
- They exploit factory workers that have to piss in bottles to keep up with productivity quotas and have high workplace injury rates. When they take time off to recover they are fired.
- They commit intellectual property theft, by copying top selling products and putting their hands on the scales to divert traffic to their clones.
NVidia
- Used software lock-in of CUDA to gain advantage in hardware sales.
Google
- Steals your information. Uses its browser to compete unfairly in other markets (mobile phone OS, etc).
Elon Musk / Tesla / SpaceX
- Bought Twitter and used it to influence elections and voters, promote racism / nazi sympathizers.
One of those is not like the others
>- Used software lock-in of CUDA to gain advantage in hardware sales.
>Amazon just .. I don't know, keeps squeezing out operational efficiencies
There's a human cost to this. Amazon warehouses are famous for their bad working conditions.
>but also created an immense amount of value in society
I would say value is subjective. For example, some people might consider a successful game as having created value. Others might view it as too addictive and see the negative value on society as a whole.
It could be very true that in the long arc of history, most of the "value" these companies have created is seen as a net negative. Take smartphones for example. They have created "value" but it's very possible that in 100 years when we better can evaluate what they have done to kids who grew up with them, we well conclude that they were a net negative until their usage was rained in. The only opposing force is government regulation and that's exactly what is wrong with these types of companies (and billionaires in general). They are the ones that stop reasonable legislation from happening because they have too much power because they are so large/rich.