We're auctioning off a chance for your kid to come to a YC dinner

I still think Silicon Valley is meritocracy since it's actually very difficult to succeed without any kind of value/merit, but meritocracy does not imply it's always going to be a fair playground for everyone.

The fact of the matter is that connections, luck, etc. rule pretty much everywhere. It's useless and unproductive to cast this blame to specific, ultimately small entities. If I had been born about 5 miles north of where I was born -- in the ghettos, vs. to a household that valued education, I would have been living a very different life. And I'm grateful that didn't happen, I'm grateful for all the opportunities I got, that my dad had friends in high places and were willing to hire me as an intern. I'm grateful that I had the social support to seek therapy when I had depression, a place to live when I was unemployed and penniless, friends that respected me, etc. I would not have had a lot of this if I was living in the third world, where opportunity is scarce.

That is the way it is. You could chide YC and all the VC world, and I'm not sure if you'd get anywhere. As far as VC firms and incubators go, it's clear to see YC is something else: they're funding nonprofits like Watsi, their partners seem to have some sense of social good, so I think snark here is misplaced.

I do think that Silicon Valley's arrogance and general out-of-touch attitude-- and unashamedly handing out VC connections to children who already benefit from a massive private welfare system is pretty damn out of touch-- poses a threat to the reputation of technologists in general (including people like me) and I'm going to fight the tide by making fun of this sort of shit. When the country stops liking "the techies" I would at least hope that some of them would recognize that we're not all the same, and that lifelong engineers are of a different (and better) character than the reigning VC-halo/TechCrunch leadership.