The ACLU, in the past week, received as much $ in online donation as it has over the past six years.
Cash talks and bullshit walks. Tell me, if you're a free-market conservative, why YC or the ACLU should disregard such a resonating and clear message from the market.
one opinion: there's nothing wrong with YC supporting the ACLU or even openly opposing Trump, but consider any Trump supporters (either public or private) that they currently work with. How can they be sure that they won't be discriminated against if YC has taken a stance against their political beliefs? And for those supporters who were planning on applying to YC, how can they know that YC will treat them neutrally?
If YC wants to be politically oriented, they can and should, but it strikes me as something they should be open about.
I don't think there's any neutrality in the process and we shouldn't pretend there is.
Participating in YC is assenting to American capitalism and working to enrich YC investors, which is a political act. Cooperating with Peter Thiel is a political act. Expanding the labor supply in markets with unions is a political act. Disrupting healthcare is a political act. Employment under H1B visas is political.
YC can admit [your candidate here] supporters and say 'we won't discriminate based upon your political affiliations or your vote' but they will absolutely discriminate against each other's political aims because of the political ramifications of the any work done by technologists.
> Participating in YC is assenting to American capitalism and working to enrich YC investors, which is a political act.
With a number of layers of indirection, maybe. Capitalism is a system of economic organisation and is not inherently political. The wide variety of both left-leaning and right-leaning capitalist countries speaks to that.
what I mean when I say political is overt politics. You can argue that "the personal is political" or "everything is political" but there's a considerable difference in granularity between agreeing to work with a libertarian or trying to improve the healthcare industry, and donating money to an anti-Trump cause. Donating to the ACLU is an act of political affiliation given their recent spotlight, whereas simply agreeing to work with Thiel or employing a H1B worker is an economic act in the frame of capitalism.
If capitalism is not political because it's just a system of economic organization, then it's not political to dismantle capitalism and institute a socialist economy.
Economic systems are SO radically political that people used 'socialist' as a slur against Obama. McCarthyism. CIA overthrow of democratically-elected socialist governments. Not political?
Not to pick on Peter Thiel, but he's a convenient and recent example. He donated $1.25M to Trump. He wouldn't have had $1.25M to donate to Trump if people didn't earn that money for him. You can cast it as wishy-washy, indirect, etc. but at the end of the day that check cleared.
socialism is a political system that demands a particular economic system - a planned economy. A planned economy in itself is not political, in that it's a specific way of organising labour. A barter or gift economy are also economic models, neither of which are inherently tied to a political system.
"Socialist" as a slur for Obama was in reference to the political act of taxation and wealth redistribution. Neither of these things are capitalist, and the term "socialist" has a somewhat different meaning to the original political system, when it comes to American politics. American "socialism" is more akin to social democracy i.e. a capitalism-driven welfare state. At least, that's my understanding.
McCarthyism was political, nothing to do with economics. The CIA interfered with other countries' political process (i.e. staging a coup).
The whole idea of capitalism is that people join together in free association to trade for mutual benefit. The responsibility ends there. If I buy your goods and then somewhere down the line you decide to use that cash to buy a weapon and kill someone, I am in no way responsible for that because it is a separate transaction that I did not enter into. Ergo, trading with Thiel is not a political act that can somehow be ratified retrospectively. It is an economic act. If your agreement was "I'll trade with you on the condition that you donate the profits to Trump", then it becomes political. From my perspective, the distinction is pretty clear to be honest.
> If I buy your goods and then somewhere down the line you decide to use that cash to buy a weapon and kill someone, I am in no way responsible for that because it is a separate transaction that I did not enter into.
That argument might work until you try to convince any other person. If you're buying cocaine from FARC, what did you expect them to do?
Similarly all the profound libertarian arguments on this thread will last up until they need $500k for cancer treatment and end up an indentured servant to a future billionaire hedge-fund AI.
> That argument might work until you try to convince any other person. If you're buying cocaine from FARC, what did you expect them to do?
even throwing FARC or cocaine into that equation muddies the water because cocaine is illegal (and thus inherently a political purchase) and FARC are known for their violent tactics and thus when you purchase from them you are wilfully accepting that your money may be used for violence (unless you aren't aware of what FARC does when you enter the transaction).
If you want to get into the ambiguities of terrorism and drugs, then what about your average joe buying some weed from their local dealer? If you know that dealer works with a cartel then by buying from him you are knowingly funding the cartel. If you have no idea whether he works with a cartel or not, then you can't be said to be knowingly funding the cartel - you are just participating in a transaction. The alternative as I see it is to suggest that everyone who smokes marijuana illegally is pro-cartel or pro-terror, or at least is OK with the idea that their money may be used for violence.
> Similarly all the profound libertarian arguments on this thread will last up until they need $500k for cancer treatment and end up an indentured servant to a future billionaire hedge-fund AI.
this is literally the entire point of the insurance industry - to absorb black swan risks. Do you think that insurance would not exist in a libertarian society? Plus, by reintroducing supply and demand into the medical industry you would likely see those obscene costs fall drastically when no-one can afford $500k for treatment, especially with reduced government bureaucracy and regulation increasing costs.
> McCarthy hunted down communists (supposed and actual).
yes, and communism is a political belief. Political persecution is a political action, not an economic one.
> It appears to me that you are conflating 'socialism' with 'planned economy' and 'capitalism' with 'free market'.
I don't believe I am. The premise of capitalism is mutually beneficial trade of privately owned and produced goods. I think you are confusing capitalism and social democracy, in that social democracy adds burdens onto the capitalist economy (for example, taxes and regulations) for the benefit of society at large and to counteract the problems that free-market capitalism can create (exploitation, the tragedy of the commons, etc).
Cash talks and bullshit walks. Tell me, if you're a free-market conservative, why YC or the ACLU should disregard such a resonating and clear message from the market.