And once that happens, that legitimizes DHH firing Basecamp employees who vote for Trump. I understand that Thiel's involvement with YC is not "employment," but the point is that 1) yes, people are suggesting excluding Trump supporters from employment and 2) high visibility people doing so would have a massive ripple effect on everybody else. It's just another thing that goes from "that's insane and you can't do that" to "these other companies have done it, so it's no big deal."

You can construct a slippery slope out of any argument. I can get you to "DHH fires Basecamp employees" from "refusal to donate to Donald Trump" in just a few more steps. So that argument is not compelling.

It's more productive for us to concentrate on the arguments that are actually being made. You don't have to, of course, but I don't think you'll get very far otherwise.

> that legitimizes DHH firing Basecamp employees who vote for Trump

Except that democratic voting systems are set up to make to make it impossible to prove who you voted for.

Yes, of course. I should have said "support" instead of "vote for."

How would that make you feel if you were a YC-funded founder who happened to support Trump? The semantics of Thiel's relationship with YC doesn't change anything.

You think the idea that Altman disavowing Thiel would make Trump supporters uncomfortable will persuade me to stop asking Altman to disavow Thiel?

This feels like exactly the thing that's been dismissed as an unrealistic slippery slope elsewhere in the thread.

When the narrative was "Thiel's connection to YC is about prestige, so YC should sever that connection to preserve its reputation", I found it basically reasonable.

But if the narrative is "Disavowing Thiel will make Trump-supporting founders uncomfortable with coming to YC, or uncomfortable admitting their support?" Then we've jumped to punishing people professionally for being in a group comprising 40%+ of the country.

Hounding founders who support Trump (who, perhaps, don't even donate or like many of his views) seems to go straight into the awful kind of patronage/exclusion politics that's being condemned here.

I do not support "hounding founders who support Trump". In fact, I don't support hounding most Trump supporters. I am content with hounding key members of the Trump campaign itself.

This seems reasonable - becoming a key member of a political campaign means signing on for that sort of thing - but I'm struggling to reconcile it with the earlier statement. If making Trump supporters uncomfortable about entering a business arrangement is a good thing, surely that's about trying to put economic pressure on Trump supporters in general?

I'm not trying to be uncharitable here - I honestly don't follow. One possibility is that since YC founders often end up quite wealthy, you're talking about discouraging the next Thiel rather than discouraging business with Trump supporters in general?

There's a line there. If Altman wants to express support for another candidate or express disagreement with Thiel's views -- great! The political process at work. What is not okay is him using his position of power to seek retribution against Thiel for his views. YC is not a political organization. It's not about making Trump supporters uncomfortable, it's about making them afraid to exercise their right to free speech.

To be clear, I am not a Trump supporter, but dehumanizing Trump supporters is not a productive approach.

It should. It's extremely bad to exclude people for disagreeing with their political positions. We need to learn how to disagree politely and civilly, and how to keep our disagreements from bleeding over into our total personal evaluation of the opposing person. That's applicable to both sides. Our civilization and democracy depends on mutual toleration and an ability to separate the personal from the partisan.

Cutting people off only further isolates them. If you really want to convert Trump supporters, you have to show them the error of their ways gradually, just like with everything else. Writing them off as irredeemable based on their political preferences is not only inadvisable, but fundamentally destructive of the binding social fabric of the republic.