4 ms·

Why is Ycombinator involved in politics now? This didn't used to be the case.

• int_19h 10y ago
  I think it's more of a case of politics affecting the industry significantly. You can't really fully isolate business from politics, because politics, by definition, affects business. Businesses can tolerate that to some degree, but when the disruption becomes too severe, straightforward pragmatic business decisions start being inherently political.
  • blablabla123 10y ago
    Yeah but there's kind of the idea to keep both as separate as possible. When Hitler came to power he was very well connected with the big industrialists at that time. The years before Germany was a really chaotic and highly polarized nation. Reading the US news daily (CNN and Fox) I also see large polarization. I wonder if this move is bridging the gap between left and right or widening it.
    • int_19h 10y ago
      Keeping them separate in this sense can actually encourage cooperation, like the infamous case of IBM. They didn't collaborate with the government of the Third Reich because they were ideologically in lockstep - no, they kept their business separate from their politics, and collaborated because it was profitable.
      • blablabla123 10y ago
        ...because they had no ethics. Ethics is surely a thing that should be omnipresent.
        • int_19h 10y ago
          A lot of politics - in fact, I would argue that it's all politics, ultimately - is about ethics. This ranges from obviously related stuff like "it's unethical to abort babies", to more indirect like "it's unethical to let people starve or die from diseases when they can be helped, so we need taxes to maintain a welfare system preventing that".