YC: Requests for Startups

No it wouldn’t. That makes no sense. You have no idea what “excludable” and “rivalrous” mean. Please read a few Wikipedia articles.

Sorry, but I don't think this comparison really makes sense. Yes, duh, there's military research and a lot of things come out of it, especially because they have huge budgets for funding all sorts of research.

But the topic here is both about private companies, not some research fund and it's explicitly about creating products (not doing research) for military use.

Things like DARPA are even more complex, because in a way, intentionally or not it is used by the US to have essentially government funded research and infrastructure development while bypassing the whole "but that's communism!" discussion and also simply not having to publicly discuss it other than "let's raise military spending!".

So in other words what you say makes sense and I agree, but it might not necessarily apply here. Like your quote states this is about money for research coming from the US DoD, not about private capital investors wanting to make money by telling you to do R&D for the military.

Last time I checked this page was several years ago, given that, my main takes on this list are:

* Crypto currencies are clearly on a decline given their location and volume in the list. It seems that the hype is mostly gone.

* Naturally, AI dominates the list, but the focus is on various applications such as healthcare, robotics, enterprise, and the always-a-hit: traditional industries.

* YC lists three and a half requests with a strong geo-political aspects: army technologies (justified by current global wars), startups manufacturing in the US (the role of the US in the 21st century), space and climatech. Our zeitgeist (and as such YC’s justification) is that large changes occurring in the world and they aims to take part in it. This is both bold and on-point.

* Companies relying on open source as part of their core business. YC identifies such companies as having multiple advantages and would like to see more such companies in their portfolio. This is a valid statement that I truly believe in, but I also think that this is only a part of the criteria and not something that solely holds an investment thesis.

>It'll serve you well right up until the time you get put up against the wall and killed by someone who doesn't share your beliefs.

Better be killed by someone with your belief? Or being sent to war by someone with your belief?

Or is that the whole "defend our values" bullshit all over again? Personally I'd much prefer a whole country to surrender, than even one human being killed.

For thousands of years borders have moved, tyrants and light towers of freedoms have ruled, but what really brought misery was war, not who happens to be the country's leader in a certain point of time. Yes, there have been to occasional ethnic cleansing, but it rarely (ever?) was that another country instilled the hatred just by moving a border. Anti-semitism was widespread in Europe, if it wasn't it would have been much harder for the Nazis to have concentration camps even in Poland.

A government taking over a population needs to also take care of the population and rarely does it work out to just control by force. It didn't even work for East Germany.

And while speculation I wonder what would happen if a country like Nazi Germany was or Russia today would take over the large parts of the world without much resistance. I think the outcome would either be that the countries split up, or are reasonably independent (think special zones in China) or there would be reforms bringing values of the occupied country.

But regardless of all of that hypothetical stuff, that might as well be completely wrong, the idea that values are defended or spread by military means is ridiculous, as is the idea that any values or things like freedom depend on the existence of individual countries. The idea that it's worth to die for them is just as dumb as the idea to die for a god. It's just propaganda and romanticism. At the end of the day it always boils down to send a ton of young people to their death, and when they actually end up in a situation where they actually see eye to eye they oftentimes realize how ridiculous they is and actually for the most parts, for the part where values really matter they would be best friends in another world. That's why history is filled with lethal enemies having a good time together at the fronts until some form of governments comes along and tells people to kill each other again. Things like the Christmas truce of 1914 happen then. And while with drones, and such this becomes harder, look about how all the drone fighters get mental diseases, and all the still mentally sane veterans end up becoming anti-war.

In a non-war environment, and on surrender people rarely get put up against the wall.

Does that mean you have no right to defend yourself? No, of course not. But the reality is that the outcome of "the bad guys winning" momentarily, might be less bad than millions of dead people, an industry fueled by arms manufacturing, a situation where generations might grow up learning to hate another country, ethnicity, etc. Because even if you technically win the war, look what Iraq brought us. Racism against Arabs, White People, hate of countries, religions, curtailing of freedoms that were claimed to be defended (on both sides actually), huge amount of propaganda material on all sides, renewed hatred in the area, spread of radicalism on both sides.

And then there's people arguing that it is all okay, because it brought technological progress.

Yes, it's not a black and white thing, it depends on circumstances, etc., but the idea that somehow "beliefs", "values", etc. are being defended is just ridiculous and means you are gullible. I mean look at how much lying there is always from all sides, how the fronts always happens to be around areas where the rich and powerful want to get resources from, how people that actually live freedoms are the first criminalized. Any values that might be worth defending die with war.

And looking at the US in particular. The US has two major borders with Canada and Mexico. Also they speak the world's language, they make the world's movie. You really think that there's someone coming from outside, does something that has never been successfully done before and do a land invasion under such geographical conditions, probably doesn't even speak your language too well, but still magically take your beliefs? Yup, then you're very gullible.

It doesn't matter if you believe in a world without conflict here. The idea that your beliefs are being protected by a startup producing military products is just outrageously ridiculous, regardless how you twist and turn it.

If military was about beliefs, East Germany/fall of the Berlin wall and reunification, the current situation of Palestine, the IRA, the outcome of American Inexpedience, etc. would never happen, because of the involved strong military. And regarding "being put at the wall". That did happen in France, but while you might hold any opinion on France in WW2, I think whatever the outcome of more military defense I am pretty sure more people would have been "put at the wall". Oh and as we all know they all became Germans and only the US made them French again.

The only belief you might fight for in military conflict between two countries is that the border should be in a certain way for some amount of time. Most beliefs that people talk about you kill as soon as you kill someone, enemy or not. And what you create is hatred. So yeah, if you belief that's your goal and worth developing weapons for, go ahead and do so.