Why The 99% Should Protest Against Y Combinator

Post by ivankirigin » Fri, Oct 14, 2011, 7:55 PM UTC

rokhayakebe wrote: post #72

ivankirigin wrote: post #63

I don’t fully understand the business of Cloudant to be honest... Why would anyone read past this point? Why is this on hacker news? The reaction to Cloudant's post is shocking. Cloudant deals in hosting lots of data. They just got a client that trusts them with huge amounts of data. That is why the press release and story are reasonable. Everything else is knee-jerk politics.

Did you read past that point? If yes, than you answered your own question. If not then you cannot properly add value to the conversation.

When the point is that we're not having a meaningful conversation, it's not a big loss. It's actually the first responsibility of the original article to be competent, but I digress because yes I did read the post.

It proved idiotic. To talk about Y Combinator as the old guard betrays such a deep lack of understanding about the way startups impact society that the entire point (99% should boycott or something) is meaningless. Also, this post is by someone who built a business talking about Facebook, essentially uncritically, making it in a unique position of deeply incorrect and also hypocritical.

Post by seven_stones » Sun, Oct 16, 2011, 12:53 AM UTC

baddox wrote: post #68

seven_stones wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By analogy, imagine someone wearing an Abercrombie & Fitch shirt. They are trying to associate themselves with a well-known brand in order to gain some kind of status or legitimacy. But when you do that, you are also at risk of people associating you with things like Jersey Shore and sweatshops, employment discrimination, superficiality, and so on. (A&F was so concerned that it has offered to pay Jersey Shore cast me…

There seems to be two similar but fundamentally different arguments here. The first is that this press release was unwise, because many people will be upset that Cloudant would do business with Monsanto. The second is that actually doing business with Monsanto is unwise/immoral/unethical. PR is a fuzzy science at best, and I'm no expert, so I won't claim to know how wise the press release is. I'm sure that Cloudant w…

> and imply that any company that does business with Monsanto is in the wrong, is wildly inappropriate and unfair.

First, if this applies to any company partnering with Monsanto, they are receiving equal treatment.

Secondly, your value judgment of it being "wildly inappropriate" rings hollow. Who determines what's "appropriate"? Usually that terminology is employed when referring to social convention, and social convention is determined by majority opinion.

Quoting PG:

But the best thing of all is when people call what you're doing inappropriate. I've been hearing this word all my life and I only recently realized that it is, in fact, the sound of the homing beacon. "Inappropriate" is the null criticism. It's merely the adjective form of "I don't like it."

http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html

Ironically, majority opinion here is clearly on the opposing side from where you stand, which seems to inform your "wildly" modifier, being revealing of being upset that your view isn't the prevailing one.

As for "unfair", if you read Monsanto's Wikipedia page you'll find out that what it has done to the planet and people fits that description better by ORDERS of magnitude than people deciding not to use some web service or other.

Perspective, please.

Re: Why The 99% Should Protest Against Y Combinator

Re: Why The 99% Should Protest Against Y Combinator