Freudian slip?
They do if you cherry-pick your economies, starting points, definitions of "capital" and "growth", and cutoff points, yes.
Plotting it vs time makes this clear because you can clearly see what caused what.
To be less glib, that amount of time is more than ample to see a generational change in a sector as fast-moving as technology. Perhaps some robust push-back on his ideas better represents the a zeitgeist of people being less happy with a maximalist winner-takes-all attitude to business or personal success.
It is quite possible for someone to have thought about their views before they formed them and maintain stable opinions over 15 years because they are aligned with objective reality. That is good. Then there is the opposite where they've got ridiculous views that don't make sense and they stick with them despite all evidence out of stubbornness. That's bad. But again, the exact view and the nature of the evidence is what matters.
The world is about as stable as it always has been. World War II isn't even 100 years ago. If someone's view 15 years ago was 'the world is stable' then yes they are going to be facing a lot of contrary evidence. But that is because it is a wildly optimistic view with no foundation in evidence or argument.
I think their point was more - attitudes to pg's posts have changed over the last 15 years - pg's views are pretty consistent about good/bad over the last 15 years - a lot of the public's (and hn's) attitudes to tech have changed for the worse, people trust tech less - pg doesn't seem to have noticed/internalised these changes
Some of these things are nuanced, complicated things to think about and explain. Nobody thinks that pg doesn't know smartphones have been invented.
Ironically:
1. The term you're searching for with "anger/condescension/whateverthisis" is "curiosity". Typically when I feel curious I ask write a response asking a question.
2. If you're tempted to write "Maybe try to approach other people's comments that you're not sure about with a bit more curiosity" and then "less anger/condescension/whateverthisis" you should pause and consider the utility of asking someone to clarify their intention before making assumptions. I know you don't understand, you know you don't understand. Great time for a "hey, do you mean ...?" style post. I have to admit that sentence got a smile out of me.
This is the exact problem. Anyone who thinks they’ve found objective reality isn’t looking hard enough.
I blame the pandemic and social media.
* There were far fewer tech billionaries.
* The tech billionaries were not publicly associating with far-right figures or cryptofascist belives, or at least were doing so quietly while promoting ideas of technology as social progress
* A lot of the tech startups were seen as fighting entrenched interests grounded in regulatory capture and people had the illusion that the next generation of companies supplanting these wouldn't succumb to the same factors.
* Donald Trump as a phenomenon of current politics did not quite exist yet, so we didn't have to witness these people sucking up to him
That's just for starters.
This should not come as a surprise when they are forced to live with roommates because they can't afford a house or even an apartment to themselves because every cent is being analyzed for optimal extraction from them.
Just so you know, the new generation is investing earlier than the previous generation.
Gen Z is also outpacing millenials on home ownership https://www.npr.org/2026/05/15/nx-s1-5791499/gen-z-homeowner...
The idea that the latest generation is not benefiting from the current situation is in your head, not reality.
A has 97% of the wealth.
B has 1% of the wealth.
C has 2% of the wealth.
Your argument is that because C > B, C is benefitting from the status quo.
In the US, the median age for first time homeownership increased from 29 to 40 since the 1980s when the stat began being tracked. That is reality, not an exceptional anecdote that is so out of the statistical ordinary it warrants being paraded as a puff piece in a newspaper.
So that's going to impact any professional class community, whether it's tech or not.
I'd say HN is slowly catching up with traditional SV startup culture dying, and seeing more non-VC-funded people flowing in as sites like Reddit enshittify. Those people identify more as tech workers than as early startup employees who aren't a billionaire yet.
Combine that with recent economic and political developments, and it isn't exactly surprising that a growing part of HN isn't a big fan of the über-wealthy tech elite trying to make their life worse.
These days, most people's experience at a big tech company is a political dystopia where everyone is optimizing for their promo packet.
That's going to get you 2 different audiences.
Yes, big corps suck. Always have, always existed, 20 and 40 years ago. Startups of 20 years ago have become big corps of today; now, new ones are in this "youthuful vigor" stage.
The current boom in AI and the cloud/social media boom in the recent decade have required ungodly amounts of capital for their resident companies to get off the ground. It's no longer a creative endeavour that basement hackers can participate in. In many ways it is toxic to the original nerd/hacker ethos by shutting out newcomers to the field and increasing wealth inequality, hence the hostility you now see on HN.
The good vibes and optimism have left the industry.
From the mid '00s through early '10s, pg was a much more grounded, down-to-earth person. Sure, he'd sold Viaweb and was doing quite well financially, but he was still working hard and was very close to the startups he was advising and was funding. I attended Startup School back in 2006 and thoroughly enjoyed it and thought it was a genuinely useful experience, even though I never went on to start a startup.
Fast forward to today: pg's net worth has gone up a ton, and he's moved on to bigger and different things than his old roles at YC. He's not the same person he was 20 years ago (who is!), and his writing reflects that over time.
Much of his old work still resonates with me (I go back and re-read my favorites from time to time), even though I'm a bit more cynical (or perhaps just more realistic) about startups these days, but most of the new stuff he writes feels out of touch. Plus he sometimes tries to write about things well outside his wheelhouse, and gets much of it trivially wrong, which tends to turn me off.
The thing that really made me shake my head at this particular essay was that he used Facebook and Airbnb as examples in an article about how it's possible to make heaps of money without cheating. Just... wow.
I think it's mostly demographics. Most people my age (I'm 38) have to come to terms with the fact that their most energetic age and most of their opportunities are already behind them. When faced with uncomfortable reality, many start looking for something or somebody else to blame for this. Not only billionaires, but tens of thousands of millionaires have played their cards better than I and others like me. They had the same opportunities, sometimes even less, but they have shown better judgement, strength of character and pure talent. Admitting this is not pleasant.
Things are measurably darker. Hell, we went from “do no evil” being a motto for Google to being removed entirely. Early Tech had a genuine claim on trying to be better than firms that had come before.
Why would it be an unpleasant realization that you are less successful than 0.00012% of the world’s population? There is arguably something sick about a system that can make a significant number of people feel this way.
I'm always curious as to why something that happens to 100% of humans remains 'uncomfortable.' Like there's nothing in genetic code making aging (or death, I suppose) less uncomfortable. It's kind of fascinating.
I still really like some PG essays, but PG used to be a much better writer.
It used to be if you criticized anything in his blogs you’d get downvoted to oblivion. Now criticism is the norm.
As far as I can tell it’s less a change in pg’s viewpoints (though the topics have evolved, and he has gotten more transparent perhaps), but a change in the public reaction to them.
I’m not sure if it’s the same people though, might just be the new generation.