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Why The 99% Should Protest Against Y Combinator

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Re: Why The 99% Should Protest Against Y Combinator

#101

Post by tptacek »

Alex3917 wrote: post #24
zzzeek wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this "voting with your dollars" thing is a bunch of bullshit. It's virtually impossible to live in modern society, engaging in commerce with any number of vendors that are invariably linked to multinational companies which are themselves highly interlinked, without money going to many companies we'd prefer it didn't, any more than it's feasible to live in a town governed by a government you vehemently disagree with,…

"This 'voting with your dollars' thing is a bunch of bullshit." It's not all or nothing. If everyone would just subscribe to a CSA and buy the rest of their stuff from the grocery store then that alone would completely shift the face of food production in this country.

Yes, everyone subscribing to a CSA would shift the face of food production in the country, by instantly jacking up the price of food for everyone, drastically reducing the efficiency of the food supply system (local farms being for many obvious reasons far less efficient), plunging whole regions of the company into seasonal food "droughts" (as Northern families throw away bushels of beets and sweet potatoes and go to McDonalds instead), and increasing energy consumption.

I'm a CSA-eating locavore; I buy my protein from a whole-animal butcher who's on a first-name basis with the farmers who raise all his products.

It is a spectacular luxury, one I'm actually faintly guilty about.

Re: Why The 99% Should Protest Against Y Combinator

#102

Post by tptacek »

run4yourlives wrote: post #32
nostrademons wrote: post #7

Do you buy any food at all that is not grown by local organic farmers? If you do, chances are you have a much stronger business relationship with Monsanto than Paul Graham does. After all, you are directly giving money to a supermarket, which is giving it to a big agribusiness, which either is Monsanto or is a customer of Monsanto. All these evil things that Monsanto does? They're done with your money. Contrast that…

I'm not a Monsanto fan at all, and actually called out pg on his comment, but you are 100% correct in your analysis of where the real source of "evil" comes from. That being said, the emergence of the organic food movement and such businesses such as Whole Foods goes to show that people are starting to adjust their spending habits. In an effort to support this, I'm sure you'd agree that the end consumer should be sup…

Why are you opposed to rBGH? Please be as specific as you can.

Re: Why The 99% Should Protest Against Y Combinator

#103

Post by larrys »

natrius wrote: post #88
msredmond wrote: post #60

Unless I'm mistaken, the root of this entire thing is the PRESS RELEASE -- very basic rule is that you don't promote something regarding your company if it's going to be received negatively by a significant # of people. So this was a really bad PR decision compounded by another PR error in the company commenting on the effect of original bad decision. They should just accept that there was a mistake made (by either t…

You're assuming it's bad PR. The people who are complaining about this aren't particularly likely to be potential Cloudant customers. On the other hand, the rest of the Fortune 500 is probably more likely to become a Cloudant customer as a result of the press release. In fact, the firestorm the press release caused only exposed it to more potential customers who are unlikely to share the same negative feelings.

Agree every young internet company needs their "dead bodies parts selling on ebay" moment. A corporate CEO scanning the WSJ seeing a headline like this is ultimately a good thing:

"Cloudant drawing heat from tech community over Monsanto deal"

or in the futre

"DOJ investigating possible Cloudant deal with (insert rogue nation) ..."

Re: Why The 99% Should Protest Against Y Combinator

#104

Post by larrys »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #85
zzzeek wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this "voting with your dollars" thing is a bunch of bullshit. It's virtually impossible to live in modern society, engaging in commerce with any number of vendors that are invariably linked to multinational companies which are themselves highly interlinked, without money going to many companies we'd prefer it didn't, any more than it's feasible to live in a town governed by a government you vehemently disagree with,…

"This 'voting with your dollars' thing is a bunch of bullshit." At the risk of sounding overly stereotypical, the Jewish community seems to be pretty good at it, and they have built a very good community of support for themselves. Heck, I know people who still wont let anyone in their family buy German cars.

Other examples? My family consisting of holocaust camp survivors and their friends own multiple german autos and machinery.

Re: Why The 99% Should Protest Against Y Combinator

#105

Post by m0nastic »

run4yourlives wrote: post #32
nostrademons wrote: post #7

Do you buy any food at all that is not grown by local organic farmers? If you do, chances are you have a much stronger business relationship with Monsanto than Paul Graham does. After all, you are directly giving money to a supermarket, which is giving it to a big agribusiness, which either is Monsanto or is a customer of Monsanto. All these evil things that Monsanto does? They're done with your money. Contrast that…

I'm not a Monsanto fan at all, and actually called out pg on his comment, but you are 100% correct in your analysis of where the real source of "evil" comes from. That being said, the emergence of the organic food movement and such businesses such as Whole Foods goes to show that people are starting to adjust their spending habits. In an effort to support this, I'm sure you'd agree that the end consumer should be sup…

I don't think it's all that crazy to postulate why Monsanto opposes labeling milk as rBGH free. Their position is that there are absolutely zero health effects for rBGH on humans (which as far as I know isn't disputed by any study). There is research that shows that it's harmful to the animals, but that doesn't seem to bother us here as much.

If their competitors are trying to introduce what they consider an "artificial distinction" based on FUD, what should their reaction be?

By the way, I'm not saying they're correct. Who knows, in 30 years our entire society might become all "Children of Men" and lead to our species extinction. I'd bet not though.

If you looked in my apartment, you'd think I was a proponent of the organic food movement; but it's all an illusion. Left to my own devices, I would eat nothing but Capn' Crunch and Hungry Man dinners. What changed for me was when my girlfriend moved in with me. She's basically a walking allergy test. It's easier for her to describe what foods she isn't allergic to.

We had to start buying organic vegetables because they were the only ones we could find that aren't sprayed with sulfites (which she's allergic to). She couldn't eat the potatoes we had in the house (which broke my Irish heart...for people here, imagine if your significant other was allergic to parenthesis).

She's allergic to the hormones they inject into beef. Even buying free-range, organic beef where they read poetry to the cows and slaughter them by having them laugh to death was about 50/50 whether she'd break out in hives.

Our solution was to switch to ground bison as a ground beef replacement (for whatever reason they don't appear to give bison hormones, maybe that'd change if they were more popular).

But there's a cost to all of this. It costs us ridiculously more for food than it used to.

I don't know if the emergence of the organic food movement or the success of Whole Foods is really as indicative of people caring about these things as much as you think it is. There's been an enormous emergence of sales of Steampunk goggles too, but I'm not sure that's all that widespread. People tend to find ways to spend their money. If they think that paying $50 for a single bag of vegetables from Whole Foods results in them getting better quality food, there's a segment of the population that will do that.

Re: Why The 99% Should Protest Against Y Combinator

#106

Post by run4yourlives »

tptacek wrote: post #102
run4yourlives wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a Monsanto fan at all, and actually called out pg on his comment, but you are 100% correct in your analysis of where the real source of "evil" comes from. That being said, the emergence of the organic food movement and such businesses such as Whole Foods goes to show that people are starting to adjust their spending habits. In an effort to support this, I'm sure you'd agree that the end consumer should be sup…

Why are you opposed to rBGH? Please be as specific as you can.

I'm not necessarily opposed at all, in the same way I'm not necessarily opposed to smoking, or chocolate or potatoes.

I don't see however why I should not be told what is inside each particular product. If the cow was given antibiotics or chocolate to eat all day or allowed to run free for life, why shouldn't I be allowed to know this as a consumer?

Re: Why The 99% Should Protest Against Y Combinator

#107

Post by run4yourlives »

teaspoon wrote: post #93
run4yourlives wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a Monsanto fan at all, and actually called out pg on his comment, but you are 100% correct in your analysis of where the real source of "evil" comes from. That being said, the emergence of the organic food movement and such businesses such as Whole Foods goes to show that people are starting to adjust their spending habits. In an effort to support this, I'm sure you'd agree that the end consumer should be sup…

buy your milk in Canada - or anywhere else in the western world - where rBGH has been determined to be too dangerous to add to milk rBGH isn't added to milk; it's injected into cows. The misconception that the milk itself necessarily contains rBGH is precisely the justification that Monsanto claims for restraining "rBGH free" labels. I don't think that's an adequate justification, though, and I agree with the thrust…

You are of course correct. Countries that have banned it cite the welfare of the animal rather than human health as well.

Of course the only industrialized nation to use rbgh is the USA. To be honest, I find it rather interesting that so much of the world seems to care so much about cows. My take is if the health of the animal is reduced, it probably stands to reason that the byproducts of said animal is probably worth avoiding.

Re: Why The 99% Should Protest Against Y Combinator

#108

Post by cickpass_broken »

andylei wrote: post #69
dlss wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post being at the top worries me more than the post PG replied to :-/ 1. You seem to think that consuming a GMO is a riskless way to save money. Consider reading "Assessment of the food safety issues related to genetically modified foods" by Kuiper et al. or similar to understand how scientists currently asses risks for GMO food, and then the history of any substance later discovered to be harmful to humans (I r…

> ... and have an increased risk for all sorts of disease. See #1. What odds do you give that GMOs do not cause an increase in disease? In light of that number being non-zero, would you like to take back this statement? GMOs, herbicides, and pesticides have saved hundreds of millions of lives from death by famine. Current levels of food production are not possible with GMOs. > GMO race, as the potential benefit is so…

> GMOs, herbicides, and pesticides have saved hundreds of millions of lives from death by famine. Current levels of food production are not possible with GMOs.

That's great. But, we need to look ahead. Monsanto's high-yield crops rely on herbicides/pesticides and monocultures. This negatively affects biodiversity[1], genetic diversity, pollinator populations[2] and increases risk of cancer[3] and land degradation[4]. High-yield crops are a quick fix. Patch work. What about in 25 or 50 years? What if we have severe colony collapse? What if we have severe soil contamination and degradation? How will we feed ourselves then? What if we have to increase our use of pesticides just to get the same yield?

[1] http://www.pesticides.gov.uk/environment.asp?id=1834

[2] http://www.epa.gov/pesp/pesp/members/strategies/north _america_pollinator_protection_campaign.pdf

[3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9498903

[4] http://news.mongabay.com/2006/1214-unu.html

I don't understand why you chose India and Africa as examples? Their food situation is vastly different from China. India especially, has not (on a whole) benefited from Monsanto's GMOs (http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/1087730/how_i...)

Re: Why The 99% Should Protest Against Y Combinator

#109

Post by bmj »

frossie wrote: post #92
bmj wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Yes, consumers taking down Monsanto would be a rather large task, but that doesn't mean you can't do your best to support the other players (particularly those that might better fit your ethical framework). Money does very much talk in the U.S. (note how our political system works--donors and lobbyists)--it's just a matter of having enough of it (or, in the case of Monsanto, taking it away) to make a differen…

I think it is also difficult to remember all the victories of "voting with your money" because so many have been normalised. Hormones in meat? Dolphin-killing tuna fishing? Formula better than breast advertising? There are myriad examples where a minority voted with their dollars and shifted corporate practice. Are you old enough to remember supermarkets with no organic/free-range products? No recycled products? No v…

Agreed.

The cynic in me says, however, that much of the organic/free range food in supermarkets isn't what I consider organic/free range. Thanks to the lobbying of Big Ag, labeling claims for food don't necessarily match our own definitions.

That said, I'm not suggesting we stop--we just need to become better educated.

Re: Why The 99% Should Protest Against Y Combinator

#110

Post by kongqiu »

mthreat wrote: post #18

I started thinking this through and here's a problem I see. If companies decide to only do business with other "good" companies, then they have to decide whether every potential customer is "good" or not. How do you define it - where do you draw the line? Do you hire another person to make this decision? Outsource it? Or maybe there's a y-combinator startup that provides an API call - isCompanyEvil(company_name).

It's a judgment call. And many, many of the free market-loving, pro-innovation people on HN judge partnering with Monsanto (and bragging about it) to be the wrong move.

The world is dirty, and there's no perfect company (or perfect people), but most people have red lines some place that they will not cross. Monsanto lies on the far side of the line for many.

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