That quote above is a bit pessimistic, I agree with you there, but maybe you're replying to an individual quote that doesn't reflect the values of anyone else here at all? Is it really necessary or justified to project this negativity on the greater community based on one comment and a few up-votes? Are you certain you know why the up-votes were given?
The empirical benefits quote you shared is talking directly about YC and it's employees, not founders, and it's ultimately (and intentionally) a bit paradoxical. When YC is talking about the benefits of benevolence, they're implicitly talking about the long term private financial return of their own investments.
Their attitude here seems like healthy and forward business thinking to me, but maybe we should be careful about equating for-profit business benevolence with selfless humanitarian benevolence. Strong arguments have been made in both directions whether human good is served by business returns. I just wanted to emphasize that starting a company is almost always inherently partially selfish, and that it's hard to name many billionaires who's primary adjective is benevolent. Many are benevolent to varying degrees, but most are first and foremost good at profit-seeking.
HN is about denominators. We all want to get rich. Some of us are willing to work, some of us are willing to hustle, etc.
The ideals of YC don't correspond to Internet commenters. Hell, half of the comments here probably don't even correspond to the true intent of the author's opinion.
Disclaimer: I'm just some moron on the Internet. No need to wax philosophical over Internet comments.
I sold out, took a high paying job. I pay interns to write articles and finance a charity.
I spend my evenings writing an app(that I hope makes billions). I can only imagine how many people my charity will teach healthy, low cost food skills if I had millions at my disposal.
Its kinda awful, but if I dont do it, I dont think anyone is going to teach kids how to cook low cost foods.
Personally, I found that having a lot of money myself brought more problems than solutions. Perhaps I'm just not good at whatever skills it takes to be rich and an effective altruist. But I'm pretty good at helping people with money decide how to spend it solving problems I care about. Now I make enough to pay other people to handle things I'm bad at, while enabling me to pursue my goals. But not more.
I don't have anything against people who pursue personal wealth in order to do social good. That's admirable. But to suggest that it's the only way to so social good (which you didn't do, but grandparent did) is just wrong.
Can you explain this further? I'm in my 20s, have over 6 figure income, and I'm curious what problems you ran into.
No, that's why I commented about how it was possible the community has diverged greatly from the incubator. I don't know what the overall principles of the majority of commenters/founders are, but I think the fact that the quote is (still) the first/most upvoted response in this thread hints that it's probably not an abnormal view of the community.
This is a prime example of the holier-than-thou sentiment that's part and parcel of the crypto community.
This is a fantastic art project that showcases exactly what value cryptocurrency brings to the fore. That you're acting this way towards someone looking to make a side-hustle work on a website about side-hustles is incredible self-delusion.
If not exploiting your users is considered "holier than thou", then yeah I guess that's an accurate description of me.
Those wanting to be "exploiting them for fun and profit" will probably be launching multi million dollar ICOs, not joking about crapcoin generators.
They are and have been stealing the future from the public and giving it to the 1%(accredited investors).
Benevolence is a good idea. I think it can be done through coin distribution.
They can make a fair business out of it where they add a few optional addons and value adds.
Just because we think they are crap and arrogantly feel confident that no non-technical get-rich-minded joe smoe will derive any value (or perhaps "deserves" to) from it doesn’t mean that he/she won’t in fact benefit from it. One man’s trash...
And besides, there are lots of purposes for small independent coins/currencies: reward your kids for doing dishes as someone else pointed out, arcades, company rewards, etc. We may very well end up in a world with infinite currencies that interoperate with each other, thereby giving individual control back of our closest surroundings.
As far as YN’s principles, it’s PR rhetoric. It’s far from representative of the ultimate truth of the intentions and actions of all those involved. In practice, it exploits goodwill to make money for a few. I'm also not all that sure that's a bad thing either.
The devil is always in the details, and as programmers, we must look at them.
Obviously I’m someone who thinks it would be more beneficial if profiting wasn’t demonized. It leads to more disengenuity, which is worse.
There’s nothing wrong with putting your own survival first and desiring to make so much money you never have to worry about it again. The hamster cage is a waste of our lifetimes and very hard to permanently get out of. And if we are so capable to escape, we will surely be able to give back a whole lot. ..you know, like on how airplanes you put on your oxygen mask first before your child’s.
But yes, there’s a flip side: people get obsessed with making money, doing deals, creating things that new jacks would create anyway. It becomes an unhealthy addiction, and the giving back never really happens. I don't think a lot of people see this for what it is as it takes over their lives. Apps and technology become far overvalued.
I think demonizing making money will continue to create the rift that obscures the balanced middle path here. I also think a lot of people who promote how they aren't money-obsessed are obsessed with something else: how good and noble they APPEAR (which I'm not sure is as "real" as BEING good and noble). Likely, it was just too hard for them to get out of the hamster cage (reads: they're lazy), and gave up. Now they work medium energy days for some employer that drives the ship. I know this much: I refuse to spend the majority of my life hustling for survival, or even worse: being someone else's tool waiting for the clock to strike 5pm each day.
The path to me is clear: grind your ass off, get yours, then give back; be conscious and don’t get addicted to anything in your life. The world doesn't need our saving (it's going to continue spinning as an infinitesimal part of a far larger universe); question your intentions, focus on yourself, as they say.
If you look at ycombinator's about or principles page, it's filled with words like helping, teaching, advise, benevolence. I for one, disagree wholeheartedly with the spirit of that quote, and find it disappointing to see it here.
I'll finish with a couple quotes found on other pages on this site that I hope still reflect the the purpose of this community/incubator:
"The most successful founders are motivated less by money than by a consuming interest in what they’re building."
"...empirically the benefits of benevolence are greater than the costs"
http://www.ycombinator.com/principles/