4 ms·

The author, arrogant and verbose though he may be, takes issue with Graham's casual assertion that the best hackers are libertarians, and attempts to deconstrus

by czep 10y ago

The author, arrogant and verbose though he may be, takes issue with Graham's casual assertion that the best hackers are libertarians, and attempts to deconstrust the psychology underlying this connection. What's so illustrative is how Graham inspires his followers to believe the way he does in order to justify and perpetuate his own wealth. The money quote in my mind is: > It is amazing how well this piece serves as marketing fodder for Graham’s venture capital arm, Y Combinator. His business model relies on convincing hordes of eager young hackers to sign over their surplus labor to his investors. With logic crafted to appeal directly to the introverted minds of recent computer science graduates, he has no shortage of cannon fodder lining up on his doorstep willing to eat Ramen and gleefully line the coffers of his investor’s portfolios.

jstanley 10y ago
But many of the best programmers are libertarians. At a much higher proportion than in the general population, from my (admittedly not well-recorded) observations.
- czep 10y ago
  I looked at this very question with the help of the General Social Survey. I found that software engineers tend to hold more extreme political views than the average for the population, but it was equally split leaning to the far right as to the far left. It was a significant effect, but not terribly strong (i.e. just a few percentage points in either direction). Of course, the GSS can't tell you who are the "best" programmers.
  - jstanley 10y ago
    Do you think libertarians are far right or far left? Because I subscribe to something more like this: http://www.littlecamels.com/files/PoliticalCross.jpg http://www.littlecamels.com/files/PoliticalCross.jpg Where libertarianism is on a separate axis to the usual left/right.
    - passiveincomelg 10y ago
      I also think this left/right thing is total bullshit. But fashists are gonna fashist and we need to fight them with all we got, regardless of whether they are the rulers of China or Donald Trump.
anondon 10y ago
> in order to justify and perpetuate his own wealth. Where does he try to do this?
Normal_gaussian 10y ago
> The author ... [text in support of the author] You. You wrote the article, posted it on your blog, used your HN account to submit it here, and it is you that is posting a comment in support of yourself. Writing in a way that implies you aren't the author is disingenuous.
- czep 10y ago
  I wrote the piece, yes, but I didn't submit it to HN. Get your facts straight. I'm not interested in self promotion. I'm only commenting here to address some misleading interpretations of my original intent. I wrote this 5 years ago, someone else posted it to HN today. It's Sunday morning so I have some time. Calling me disingenuous is not fair. My 3rd person reference calling out the parent's use of arrogant and verbose to refer to me, was firmly tongue in cheek. I do have a sense of humor, despite my flowery rhetoric and dog-eared thesaurus :)
- jstanley 10y ago
  I noticed the username immediately and took "arrogant and verbose though he may be" to be tongue in cheek, which I think is how it was intended. I don't think he was trying to deceive anyone.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
garry 10y ago
You are willfully ignorant of the founders who are out there trying to make things. Have you even met a YC founder before?
dongslol 10y ago
I'm actually interested in this "cannon fodder lining up on his doorstep willing to eat Ramen and gleefully line the coffers of his investor’s portfolios" characterization, which I've read a good twenty times now. How does this make sense, when generally speaking, if an investor gets rich, it means the company succeeded, and thus the founders get rich too?
- 60654 10y ago
  The situation is not very rosy. Wasserman did a great longitudinal study of startups, and in a chapter about exits and rewards, he says that in 75% of cases founders don't get a financial reward for their years of hard work. The reason being that VCs structure their ownership such that only huge exists reward everybody, and in smaller exits VCs will get their payoff first. Also, not to speak for the author, but the "cannon fodder" is not just the founders, but also people who are joining startups as employees, with the idea that they will trade years of below market pay and years of unpaid overtime for a shot at the moon. The startup ecosystem wouldn't be able to exist without a steady supply of them.
  - dongslol 10y ago
    I didn't know that. Thanks.
    - 60654 10y ago
      Sure thing. And for anyone else who is interested in this topic, Wasserman's "The Founder's Dilemmas" is a fantastic study of the issues of money and control in VC-funded startups. (EDIT: fixed title)
60654 10y ago
Hey, you're the author! Just wanted to say that was an awesome essay! Having been through the SV startup wringer several times I totally agree - (hidden) power structures matter much more than people would like to admit, and neither work nor rewards get distributed fairly. And the whole startup hype machine (which includes pg) serves to attract more naive programmers to contribute years of unpaid overtime work in exchange for vague promises of future riches. (But I'm not bitter, just realistic.) Also your observations about hacker politics are right on. Watching political discussions here is painful. Sorry to see you're getting crucified here for your dissenting essay, though. People who claim to be rational end up just as susceptible to groupthink :(
- czep 10y ago
  > Just wanted to say that was an awesome essay! Thanks! Honestly, that makes it all worth it. However, I don't feel crucified or a victim of groupthink, I put this on the web and anyone can feel free to agree or disagree. I think there are many people in the HN community that agree with me. I find there are some very valid criticisms here and more than anything I simply want to inspire and encourage debate on these issues. I'm not the best writer, and I certainly added a lot of rhetorical fluorish to this essay, but in my mind it was necessary to underscore how casual off-hand assertions like "the best programmers are libertarians" are also rhetorical tactics meant to align people on what their political beliefs should be.
shawnee_ 10y ago
It's a really good analysis. Even moreso through the postmortem lens of where we are today (relative to where we were when Paul Graham originally published his essay ~2004). As you noted, the section about "Wealth and Power" seemed to have been tacked on almost as an afterthought. So it isn't until the end of your piece that you get to this point: Graham concludes: “The same recipe that makes individuals rich makes countries powerful. Let the nerds keep their lunch money, and you rule the world.” Sadly, the bottom line is that unless you are among a tiny handful of the elite, a laissez-faire economic system would enslave you, not liberate you. The only people who will enjoy the fruits of a truly free society are those with the power to keep you in line. Given more freedom, those in power will first cut off the access to power, to prevent anyone from challenging them. They will immediately go for the jugular. There is no compromise with power and no means to share it. Thus, the power elite will readily command vast armies of people and resources to ensure that you stay down. This will be their first priority. Their second priority will be to extract labor from you in the manner that serves them best. In a perfectly libertarian society, the bullies would not only take your lunch money, they would murder your family, burn your house, and leave you for dead by the side of the road. If you were to re-write / edit your piece today, my recommendation would be to start off with this as your premise. We have sooooooo much evidence today from many, many people who followed this path recommended by Graham thirteen years ago. Sure, maybe a few of the nerds got to keep their lunch money. However: catapulting a reserve of lunch money into the kind of wealth that matters (the kind of wealth that buys power) just doesn't happen for your average nerd. There's one more layer needed on the recipe. Graham rightly points out that wealth is not a zero-sum game. Power, on the other hand, is most definitely a zero-sum proposition, and those who have it will stop at nothing to retain it and quash any perceptible threat. Power is a black hole—it consumes everything and yet remains a perpetual void. We see instances of this even with the meager controls in place in our society today. Loosen or remove those controls and power, unchecked, will accumulate until nothing remains. Anyone or anything in its path will be destroyed. It's hard not to think about the political implications of how this relates to just about everything these days.
- passiveincomelg 10y ago
  Thiel & Musk, two nerds who have "the kind of wealth that buys power" are advising (i.e. believing they can manipulate) Trump. One helluva void they got going there...

by czep 10y ago

jstanley 10y ago

But many of the best programmers are libertarians. At a much higher proportion than in the general population, from my (admittedly not well-recorded) observations.

czep 10y ago
I looked at this very question with the help of the General Social Survey. I found that software engineers tend to hold more extreme political views than the average for the population, but it was equally split leaning to the far right as to the far left. It was a significant effect, but not terribly strong (i.e. just a few percentage points in either direction). Of course, the GSS can't tell you who are the "best" programmers.
- jstanley 10y ago
  Do you think libertarians are far right or far left? Because I subscribe to something more like this: http://www.littlecamels.com/files/PoliticalCross.jpg http://www.littlecamels.com/files/PoliticalCross.jpg Where libertarianism is on a separate axis to the usual left/right.
  - passiveincomelg 10y ago
    I also think this left/right thing is total bullshit. But fashists are gonna fashist and we need to fight them with all we got, regardless of whether they are the rulers of China or Donald Trump.

anondon 10y ago

> in order to justify and perpetuate his own wealth. Where does he try to do this?

Normal_gaussian 10y ago

> The author ... [text in support of the author] You. You wrote the article, posted it on your blog, used your HN account to submit it here, and it is you that is posting a comment in support of yourself. Writing in a way that implies you aren't the author is disingenuous.

czep 10y ago
I wrote the piece, yes, but I didn't submit it to HN. Get your facts straight. I'm not interested in self promotion. I'm only commenting here to address some misleading interpretations of my original intent. I wrote this 5 years ago, someone else posted it to HN today. It's Sunday morning so I have some time. Calling me disingenuous is not fair. My 3rd person reference calling out the parent's use of arrogant and verbose to refer to me, was firmly tongue in cheek. I do have a sense of humor, despite my flowery rhetoric and dog-eared thesaurus :)
jstanley 10y ago
I noticed the username immediately and took "arrogant and verbose though he may be" to be tongue in cheek, which I think is how it was intended. I don't think he was trying to deceive anyone.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

garry 10y ago

You are willfully ignorant of the founders who are out there trying to make things. Have you even met a YC founder before?

dongslol 10y ago

I'm actually interested in this "cannon fodder lining up on his doorstep willing to eat Ramen and gleefully line the coffers of his investor’s portfolios" characterization, which I've read a good twenty times now. How does this make sense, when generally speaking, if an investor gets rich, it means the company succeeded, and thus the founders get rich too?

60654 10y ago
The situation is not very rosy. Wasserman did a great longitudinal study of startups, and in a chapter about exits and rewards, he says that in 75% of cases founders don't get a financial reward for their years of hard work. The reason being that VCs structure their ownership such that only huge exists reward everybody, and in smaller exits VCs will get their payoff first. Also, not to speak for the author, but the "cannon fodder" is not just the founders, but also people who are joining startups as employees, with the idea that they will trade years of below market pay and years of unpaid overtime for a shot at the moon. The startup ecosystem wouldn't be able to exist without a steady supply of them.
- dongslol 10y ago
  I didn't know that. Thanks.
  - 60654 10y ago
    Sure thing. And for anyone else who is interested in this topic, Wasserman's "The Founder's Dilemmas" is a fantastic study of the issues of money and control in VC-funded startups. (EDIT: fixed title)

60654 10y ago

Hey, you're the author! Just wanted to say that was an awesome essay! Having been through the SV startup wringer several times I totally agree - (hidden) power structures matter much more than people would like to admit, and neither work nor rewards get distributed fairly. And the whole startup hype machine (which includes pg) serves to attract more naive programmers to contribute years of unpaid overtime work in exchange for vague promises of future riches. (But I'm not bitter, just realistic.) Also your observations about hacker politics are right on. Watching political discussions here is painful. Sorry to see you're getting crucified here for your dissenting essay, though. People who claim to be rational end up just as susceptible to groupthink :(

czep 10y ago
> Just wanted to say that was an awesome essay! Thanks! Honestly, that makes it all worth it. However, I don't feel crucified or a victim of groupthink, I put this on the web and anyone can feel free to agree or disagree. I think there are many people in the HN community that agree with me. I find there are some very valid criticisms here and more than anything I simply want to inspire and encourage debate on these issues. I'm not the best writer, and I certainly added a lot of rhetorical fluorish to this essay, but in my mind it was necessary to underscore how casual off-hand assertions like "the best programmers are libertarians" are also rhetorical tactics meant to align people on what their political beliefs should be.

shawnee_ 10y ago

It's a really good analysis. Even moreso through the postmortem lens of where we are today (relative to where we were when Paul Graham originally published his essay ~2004). As you noted, the section about "Wealth and Power" seemed to have been tacked on almost as an afterthought. So it isn't until the end of your piece that you get to this point: Graham concludes: “The same recipe that makes individuals rich makes countries powerful. Let the nerds keep their lunch money, and you rule the world.” Sadly, the bottom line is that unless you are among a tiny handful of the elite, a laissez-faire economic system would enslave you, not liberate you. The only people who will enjoy the fruits of a truly free society are those with the power to keep you in line. Given more freedom, those in power will first cut off the access to power, to prevent anyone from challenging them. They will immediately go for the jugular. There is no compromise with power and no means to share it. Thus, the power elite will readily command vast armies of people and resources to ensure that you stay down. This will be their first priority. Their second priority will be to extract labor from you in the manner that serves them best. In a perfectly libertarian society, the bullies would not only take your lunch money, they would murder your family, burn your house, and leave you for dead by the side of the road. If you were to re-write / edit your piece today, my recommendation would be to start off with this as your premise. We have sooooooo much evidence today from many, many people who followed this path recommended by Graham thirteen years ago. Sure, maybe a few of the nerds got to keep their lunch money. However: catapulting a reserve of lunch money into the kind of wealth that matters (the kind of wealth that buys power) just doesn't happen for your average nerd. There's one more layer needed on the recipe. Graham rightly points out that wealth is not a zero-sum game. Power, on the other hand, is most definitely a zero-sum proposition, and those who have it will stop at nothing to retain it and quash any perceptible threat. Power is a black hole—it consumes everything and yet remains a perpetual void. We see instances of this even with the meager controls in place in our society today. Loosen or remove those controls and power, unchecked, will accumulate until nothing remains. Anyone or anything in its path will be destroyed. It's hard not to think about the political implications of how this relates to just about everything these days.

passiveincomelg 10y ago
Thiel & Musk, two nerds who have "the kind of wealth that buys power" are advising (i.e. believing they can manipulate) Trump. One helluva void they got going there...