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Re: undefined

#641

Peter Thiel is a YCombinator partner, yet YC has steadfastly refused to disavow him. In a Twitter exchange with David Heinemeier Hansson, Paul Graham suggested that to do so would somehow be the equivalent of firing an employee for having a distateful political opinion. YC's silence on a partner's outspoken support of Trump is disgraceful, and sends the most shameful message about our industry.

I think Graham's point is sound. How is making a donation not an instance of political expression?

It's a public political act. I'm asking Graham to do the same thing—publicly express an opinion.

Re: undefined

#642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a way, because this election has come down to a dichotomy between Hilary and an actual cartoon villain, it'll be bad for the democratic party. It'll ensure the entrenchment of the conservative "think of the children" "just say no" wing of the party for another decade or more.

you mean the decline of the republican party and the entrenchment of angry white uneducated men for the next 10 years? It's already in the cards.

Stupid racist white males!

Re: undefined

#643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is it then that Socialist governments which are supposedly subordinated to the individual all seem to end up in having re education camps, Gulags, forced labour or concentration camps to crack down on dissenters. The don't actually, since Socialism does not discuss anything of that sort - it's an economic theory, not a political one. What you're describing is authoritarianism, which is a mechanism for quickly a…

So in the first part you argue that they acted this way only because other powers tried to subvert them. I'm not going to argue against the fact that others try to subvert them because this is a fact, but the thing is that other Ideologies also face the same issue. Yet we consistently always see the same thing in Socialism. The last one where this happened is Venezuela, which has enacted a forced labour law recently.…

> So in the first part you argue that they acted this way only because other powers tried to subvert them. I'm not going to argue against the fact that others try to subvert them because this is a fact, but the thing is that other Ideologies also face the same issue.

Others face it too, true, but there's no denying that the country with the largest military in human history does have much more bullying power and if that country is opposed to your country's ideology you better be prepared to be bullied into submission.

> Regarding education: I wouldn't teach my children Creationism but I also fail to see how this can in any way negatively impact a child in 99,99% of all existing professions. If my child wanted to work in Biology it's a problem, if it wants to work in any other profession - not so much.

Except you're making the decision as to what he/she will be able to do for them, years before they themselves can decide - what if they want to go into Biology? Now they're years behind their peers, which is in opposition to the "free will" libertarianism you seem to advocate.

> To me it is a matter of freedom. I'm not here on this earth to further some agenda that someone in an ivory tower has thought up. I'm here for myself and the people around me and I want to be free to act in a way that I see fit. Socialism negates this

What Socialism does is prevent you from "being free to act in a way that you see fit" once you start to infringe on the freedoms of others. It, believe it or not, is there to protect you as well, or do you really want somebody with more muscle than you to come by, rob your house, beat you up and abuse your family just because that was his free will and you couldn't stop him?

> Regarding wealth distribution: Why shouldn't you be able to have 1 trillion dollars, provided it wasn't accumulated through use of force or other criminal means.

Because it was accumulated via criminal means; i.e. there's a limited amount of wealth on Earth - if you have a significant percentage of that wealth as a single person, there's just no way you worked harder than 1/3 or so of the entire population COMBINED, unless you're God that is.

I'm not saying that YOU did something that wasn't already in place, you mostly just took advantage of the framework provided by others like you, but that doesn't make it fair.

Just to make sure we understand each other; I am not against you living very comfortably if you're successful, but $1 trillion is just such an amount that it goes WAY WAY beyond just living comfortably and again, you'd have a hard case convincing me that you worked harder than millions of people COMBINED, even if what you're created is desirable.

And let's be honest, we both know that the person with $80 billion I was talking about got there using questionable ethics at best.

> Socialism is against successful people. Why? Because they have options to ignore what the government wants them to do

They don't actually, because the government has a monopoly on the use of force, what they have power to do is corrupt the government enough with their money to ignore them.

> As it happens Jewish culture has shown again and again that it is a highly successful one at raising children that prove to be highly productive and successful in societies.

Sure, admirable and again, nothing that Socialism itself has a problem with. Also, if you look at Israel, it's a very socialist country, free healthcare, centralised education, gun control laws etc. so I don't think Jews themselves think that Socialism is against them, it isn't.

> You yourself made a statement one sentence before that arguing that the successful person with lots of money is somehow criminal, which means you despise success at some level.

No, what I said was that it is unreasonable for one person to have more wealth than the 80% of the planet COMBINED, I am not against success or against living in luxury - this goes way beyond that however.

> It's not a big step to move from that belief to outright Anti-Semitism.

Oh, this trick, I see - for one, I would say it's insulting to other successful ethnicities, say the Chinese, to suggest that the only people that are, and have for a very long time been successful are the Jews and for the Anti-Semitism comment, I see that you constructed your own narrative to reach your own conclusions, but be aware that such comments only undermine actual cases of anti-semitism.

Re: undefined

#644

Peter Thiel is a YCombinator partner, yet YC has steadfastly refused to disavow him. In a Twitter exchange with David Heinemeier Hansson, Paul Graham suggested that to do so would somehow be the equivalent of firing an employee for having a distateful political opinion. YC's silence on a partner's outspoken support of Trump is disgraceful, and sends the most shameful message about our industry.

It's disgraceful that you're trying to bully an organization based on the political opinions of one of their partners. You should be ashamed of yourself and of the damage you're doing to your country.

He can dry his tears with the $25 I pay for Pinboard.

Re: undefined

#645

I agree with Thiel about Trump. On the surface, individually, I think that Trump probably looks like a worse person than Hillary, but if you look at each candidate as the sum of their social connections - I think Hillary turns out to be much, much worse. Hillary Clinton is heavily influenced by big finance. That's where the bulk of her friends and her connections come from. Even her son in law is an investment banker…

you're letting big finance cloud your judgement. you don't think trump is influenced by 'big finance'? how about the real estate? Russia? republican 1%ers?

The real difference is that Trump doesn't owe big finance any favors - Trump is fueled by his own (relatively petty) business interests. On the other hand, Hillary gets her fuel from by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Citygroup, Morgan Stanley... Hillary owes these people favours and she knows how to slowly change things in their favor without anyone noticing - If this election has taught us anything it's that Hillary partially owns the media. If Trump tries to pull anything, the media won't let him get away with it.

Ideally, I would have picked Bernie Sanders, but the elites wouldn't allow it.

Re: undefined

#646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work at a bank, which regularly required pre-clearance for employee donations to political parties and candidates to avoid conflict of interest issues. If YC is saying Thiel can't be managed on that basis, he is a partner. And if he is a partner, YC can choose not to partner with him.

But is there a conflict of interest here? YC isn't exactly a bank, you realize. It wouldn't make sense for them to have to manage CoIs, as far as I can tell. And firing Thiel like dhh is describing in his tweets seems fairly illegal to me (tho IANAL).

"We deploy our own and other peoples' money to make broad spectrum investments in the technology industry."

I could see both Goldman Sachs and YC operating under this mission statement.

As much as PG wants him to be, Thiel isn't an employee. He's a partner in a partnership, and partnerships have been dissolved for worse reasons than "offending partner is an opportunistic bigot".

Re: undefined

#647
post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>" I've lived in America my whole life, but I was born in Austria, and German is my first language. It pains me to see a fellow German-speaking immigrant support a right-wing populist who appeals pretty explicitly to white identity politics. We of all people should know better. " As opposed to black identity politics? Or female identity politics? Would you feel better if the context was a place like South Africa wher…

I'm, too, not an American but a libertarian. And I don't support either candidate. Tbh. I find it horribly sad how much time and energy people invest in this election where the both possible outcomes are equally bad. "Voting for the lesser evil" is still voting for evil. So why not take all that time wasted on internet arguments about which evil is the lesser one and do something fun instead?

You saying they're the same doesn't make them the same, you're aware of that right?

Re: undefined

#648

Peter Thiel is a YCombinator partner, yet YC has steadfastly refused to disavow him. In a Twitter exchange with David Heinemeier Hansson, Paul Graham suggested that to do so would somehow be the equivalent of firing an employee for having a distateful political opinion. YC's silence on a partner's outspoken support of Trump is disgraceful, and sends the most shameful message about our industry.

It's disgraceful that you're trying to bully an organization based on the political opinions of one of their partners. You should be ashamed of yourself and of the damage you're doing to your country.

bully : (verb) use superior strength or influence to intimidate (someone), typically to force him or her to do what one wants.

i.e. you're completely wrong about what it means to "bully". You should be ashamed of yourself for your abuse of the English language.

Re: undefined

#649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thiels philosophy is actually deeply technocratic authoritarian. in a lot of ways he is a technocrat and not a true libertarian. hes said on multiple occasions that politics has failed libertarians and that they should try 'alternatives.'

Libertarianism has bifurcated in recent years. Many people including myself have given up on democracy. It just no longer makes sense to be keep playing a game we can never win. For a libertarian in a democracy, the system is perpetually rigged. It is clear that war is coming and it is time to stop playing games. The truth is that democracy has nothing to offer us. It has bought nothing to the table. The new libertar…

Wew lad

Re: undefined

#650
post #634
post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I had pretty major family problems for saying that I thought he was a lot of hot air and not actually that dangerous--with a disclaimer that I would never vote for him. Although my perspective on him has changed, it seems to me that the American left has turned into the authoritarian controlling power they so often claim to fight against.

In your view, individual people exercising their personal social power is authoritatian ?

>authoritatian?[sic]

Yep, that's what xe said.

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