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I'm disappointed to know that YC has drank the cool-aid on China. Once you invest significantly in China, you quickly find yourselves beholden to the whims of t

I'm disappointed to know that YC has drank the cool-aid on China. Once you invest significantly in China, you quickly find yourselves beholden to the whims of the CCP. And for what? Such privileges as building their dystopian techno-autocracy for them? I don't see any signs in this statement that you are going into this with your eyes open to either the difficulties this will cause down the line, nor the morally "questionable" things you will all be a part of building now. Of course, none of that will be in there, because you all already know that to say anything untoward on the matter would break the ice right out from under your feet. And of course, that's all if you're actually "successful", unlikely given the CCP will prefer something more malleable than even the likes of Zuckerberg are willing to be. I foresee a rapid demise to this project, indeed, I pray for it, as the alternative, you guys actually succeeding, would be painful to watch given what it will involve.

opportune 9y ago
Agreed, investing in China is the "invading Russia" of the tech world. Yes, China is a huge market and a rapidly growing economy, which makes investing there an extremely appetizing prospect. However, it seems very difficult for non-chinese to be able to hold onto their investments in China without their business being ripped off (e.g. having the business model copied by a more Chinese company that gets favorable government treatment and takes over the nascent market), not to mention the political uncertainty of having to deal with / win the favor of arbitrary officials in the Chinese government that may have interests conflicting with your own. And even if you are successful, you have to consider the ethics of what you're enabling - suppose you create a wildly successful and helpful service for Chinese people that involves users' geographic data, private messages between individuals, or financial transactions. You won't get a say in turning over that data to authorities for any and every reason that they have for wanting it. Are you willing to actively participate in corruption and the quashing of political dissent for money?
- DanielBMarkham 9y ago
  "And even if you are successful, you have to consider the ethics of what you're enabling..." This is the thing I don't understand. Ten years ago, you could make a case that simply by making stuff people want, the world would become more connected, all sorts of goodness will happen. You can no longer make that case. People are not idiots. They see both the good and bad that tech has brought. Technology companies are ethically responsible for what their tools end up doing. And if they can't be bothered to develop their own ethics, the rest of us are going to have to develop some for them. I must be missing something. YC is a really smart bunch of guys. Certainly they know what the hell they're getting into.
  - d4rti 9y ago
    > The most amazing thing about Silicon Valley is that they all think they are on the left side of the political spectrum, while it is totally unquestioned that the venture capital firms should make every single decision on how human activity is organized. Existentialist Comics https://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/988877507611967489 https://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/98887750761196748...
    - chillacy 9y ago
      The political spectrum is more like a political plane, with one axis being economic and the other being social, and with a 2 party system we've conveniently collapsed it into a line. It's probably more accurate to say that silicon valley runs libertarian, especially those in the startup game, and especially YC and folks. http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html
  - goseeastarwar 9y ago
    Cash Rules Everything Around Me So says Wu-Tang Clan and apparently YC.
    - zappo2938 9y ago
      I think the song was about rising out poverty and that the Wu-tang did it music instead of gangbanging, killing, and drug dealing. They use their own experiences to show young men living in poverty that the can find other means to obtain respect and lots of money that is healthy for themselves and their communities.
      - polmoya 9y ago
        I don't think so
      - aoner 9y ago
        Quite the opposite. The songs is about them selling drugs: “Catchin' keys from 'cross seas, Rollin' in MPV's, Every week we made forty G's” The basic premise is money rules everything so if I want power/influence/success I have to either play the game or accept defeat. “Method Man is not glorifying money and excess; rather, he’s saying that money holds power, and is a factor of major decisions made in the world he lives in. Those who have it, have power and those who don’t, won’t get up anywhere; sort of a way of saying “Money is the root of all evil”, if you will.”
- TAForObvReasons 9y ago
  > you have to consider the ethics of what you're enabling Keep in mind, YC took money from Yuri Milner in 2011 even though people knew at the time that there were connections to Russian oligarchs [1] and funded startups that promulgated junkware installers [2] among other things. On the "doing the right thing" vs "making more money" spectrum, YC is firmly on the side of "making more money", ethics be damned. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143894 the PG comment and the first few responses contextualize this well. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711 a discussion about InstallMonetizer
- mistermann 9y ago
  > Agreed, investing in China is the "invading Russia" of the tech world. I'd go even one step further, it is more like partnering with Germany, except in this version of the story Germany might be successful in its quest to take over the world, because make no mistake, China is coming for your market, it's only a matter of time. It is encouraging that more and more people are finally starting to put the pieces of this puzzle together, shame it is far too little and far too late.
  - dnomad 9y ago
    The vast fear and ignorance in this thread is amusing but the comparison of China to Nazi Germany is perhaps a new low, even for Hacker News? It's interesting though how people develop such warped perceptions of the world. It's exactly how the greatest disaster of the 21st century, the absolutely unprovoked and absolutely senseless American invasion of Iraq which killed a million people and directly led to the rise of Isis and even more extreme suffering, come to pass. And so what you have here is a bunch of silly people, few of which have likely even been to China let alone done any serious investigation of Chinese culture or politics, utterly trapped in a paranoid fantasy in which -- believe it or not -- China is the aggressor coming for their markets. Nevermind the US's military bases all over the world or the TPP, an initiative started by the US with the explicit goal of denying and containing Chinese expansion. This sort of delusion is just breath taking. I guess all one can do is hope it doesn't lead to war but I strongly suspect it is. Americans will never face reality as this thread shows. They will gladly and firmly embrace the delusion and blame all their problems on somebody else even if it leads to absolute catastrophe. Absolutely nothing has changed since the Iraq War.
    - ng12 9y ago
      I'd love to see a defense of Chinese policy that doesn't fall back upon whataboutism. America's shortcomings have nothing to do with my ability to criticism China's human rights abuses and appalling lack of individual liberty.
      - dnomad 9y ago
throw2016 9y ago
This is jingoism masquerading as concern for autocracy. If people really cared about things like surveillance or dystopias in any serious way they would be on the streets about the extensively documented activities of the NSA, rubber stamp courts, secret orders, searching through personal effects at borders and campaigning for Snowden and other whistle blowers to be brought back with honors. But on the ground these laws are renewed without protest, whistle blowers are hounded and demonized with little to no push back and dissenters like Snowden and Assange continue to be stranded for years on end. If no one seems to care enough about these issues in our own countries or our own dissenters how can concern for others countries be authentic. Don't use fabricated concerns to demonize others.
- api 9y ago
  I think this is "whataboutism." America's respect for individual liberty and the rule of law has eroded over the years, but it is still considerably stronger than what's found in China. You see some of the same corruption and autocratic tendencies on both sides of the Pacific but there is a substantial difference in degree and pervasiveness. We are not the best in the world (several EU countries are better) but claiming the USA is equivalent to the PRC just lowers the bar. In China many of the kinds of open anti-state discussions that happen regularly here would get people arrested, not to mention criticism of leadership. Try talking openly about Xi Jinpeng the way lots of Americans talk about Donald Trump (or talked about Barack Obama). I was driving around Irvine, CA the other day and saw an anti-anti-immigration protest with signs comparing Trump to a chimpanzee and Hitler. Do that in China in an affluent section of Beijing. Dare you. Edit: you can also buy Donald Trump Piñatas in Santa Ana, a heavily Hispanic area of LA/OC metro. Try selling a Xi Jinpeng piñata in Beijing.
  - throw2016 9y ago
    China and the US have different histories. World affairs are not simplistic binaries of good and bad. Political systems take time to evolve. Western Europe evolved from feudalism over 300 years. China has 1.3 billion people to take care of. This is not a joke. Let them manage and make the transition their way without sanctimonious judgement from others. The USA is effectively two party state with both parties propping up oligarchies and special interests with a media who have long ceased to function as a free and independent press and have reduced themselves to mouthpieces for entrenched interests. The ability to stand on a street and criticize your leader is not the only sign of democracy, the ability to effect change and have a government responsive to peoples needs is. Studies have shown and people can see how the US political establishment are far more responsive to special interests and the rich than the general public. So what is democracy? Perhaps things are not simplistic or black and white, and continuing to affect a moral high ground inspite of alarming deterioration betrays not only a lack of fundamental concern for any articulated values but also its abuse as a mere political tool to beat others with without any context of global history and world affairs.
api 9y ago
I've become rather disturbed by the amount of pro-autocratic sentiment I've encountered in tech circles. It comes in both the "right" (and "alt-right") and "left" varieties, as well as a few other weirder forms, but it's there. I guess hackers are no different from anyone else. Dangle money in front of people and they do tend to toss their morals out the window more often than not. I am not claiming that I am superior either. If someone offered me a shitload of money to do something I considered unethical, I can't say with 100% certainty that I'd never take it... to claim so would be the fallacy of self-exclusion. "I might be a coward I've just never been tested." - The Mighty Mighty Bosstones / The Impression That I Get I've also anecdotally observed that people with high IQs are often autocrats. They're prone to imagining that there are straightforward solutions to all the worlds problems and that all these problems could be solved if only things were run by smart people like them. They haven't yet been humbled by attempting to solve a really brutal multi-objective optimization problem or tame a complex system full of paradoxical effects and feedback loops. Attempting to govern a complex society is both of these things.
eksemplar 9y ago
China is the future though. As scary as that is, it’s still reasonable to invest in Chinese tech, at least if your plan is to make money. I don’t think westerners in general realize how advanced China is becoming. Being from Europe, visiting China is like stepping into a sci-fI novel. Not a happy one, mind you, but it’s becoming impossible to ignore.
- realusername 9y ago
  > China is the future though. As scary as that is, it’s still reasonable to invest in Chinese tech, at least if your plan is to make money. I don't have a lot of examples of successful western companies operating in China, they all seems to be blocked of at some point because of ""regulations"".
  - derEitel 9y ago
    Many car manufacturers (incl. Mercedes, BMW) and fashion brands (incl. H&M, Nike)
  - matz1 9y ago
    Just name a few: GM, Apple, Intel, Microsoft, McDonald, Coca Cola, Pizza Hut, Hershey, Nestle, Prada, Coach, Ikea, Starbucks, LinkedIn, Airbnb.
- mtgx 9y ago
  I'm curious what will happen to China's economy after another major economic crisis. Especially if it happens in say 10 years, by then robot manufacturing should be much more advanced and many western companies may opt to quit China and go the robot route.
FLUX-YOU 9y ago
What if this is just a way for American companies to acquire Chinese tech or talent?
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  It would be extremely stupid. Judging by the number of Chinese working tech in the USA, they have already acquired that.
mtgx 9y ago
Here's to the next-generation YC-backed censorship tools!
whatyoucantsay 9y ago
Make no mistake. YC will slowly but surely come under pressure to give the CCP influence over content as well as access to private user data, first their own and then that they wield influence over. Don't forget the malware-ridden Chinese Skype client, LinkedIn's willingness to censor global content on China's behalf, or Yahoo's capitulation of dissident information that lead to executions. HN will likely start suppressing any factual discussion on Taiwan or the nine dash line as "flamewar bait" while allowing increasingly nationalistic Chinese propaganda to pass unchecked. It won't be today or tomorrow but money and influence wear down almost any organization eventually. This is a sad day, and it only marks the beginning what is to come.
- burger_moon 9y ago
  I noticed that Airbnb operates in China currently. Perhaps there are other YC investments as well, but it seems this isn't the beginning of YC's investment into China. I had begun writing up a tin-foil hat theory on why YC would open this Startup School there, until I realized Airbnb, one of YC's flagship investments is already there.
  - whatyoucantsay 9y ago
    I don't think they're sharing too much user data yet. E.g., a user's visits outside of China are likely still private for a while longer.

opportune 9y ago

Agreed, investing in China is the "invading Russia" of the tech world. Yes, China is a huge market and a rapidly growing economy, which makes investing there an extremely appetizing prospect. However, it seems very difficult for non-chinese to be able to hold onto their investments in China without their business being ripped off (e.g. having the business model copied by a more Chinese company that gets favorable government treatment and takes over the nascent market), not to mention the political uncertainty of having to deal with / win the favor of arbitrary officials in the Chinese government that may have interests conflicting with your own. And even if you are successful, you have to consider the ethics of what you're enabling - suppose you create a wildly successful and helpful service for Chinese people that involves users' geographic data, private messages between individuals, or financial transactions. You won't get a say in turning over that data to authorities for any and every reason that they have for wanting it. Are you willing to actively participate in corruption and the quashing of political dissent for money?

DanielBMarkham 9y ago
"And even if you are successful, you have to consider the ethics of what you're enabling..." This is the thing I don't understand. Ten years ago, you could make a case that simply by making stuff people want, the world would become more connected, all sorts of goodness will happen. You can no longer make that case. People are not idiots. They see both the good and bad that tech has brought. Technology companies are ethically responsible for what their tools end up doing. And if they can't be bothered to develop their own ethics, the rest of us are going to have to develop some for them. I must be missing something. YC is a really smart bunch of guys. Certainly they know what the hell they're getting into.
- d4rti 9y ago
  > The most amazing thing about Silicon Valley is that they all think they are on the left side of the political spectrum, while it is totally unquestioned that the venture capital firms should make every single decision on how human activity is organized. Existentialist Comics https://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/988877507611967489 https://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/98887750761196748...
  - chillacy 9y ago
    The political spectrum is more like a political plane, with one axis being economic and the other being social, and with a 2 party system we've conveniently collapsed it into a line. It's probably more accurate to say that silicon valley runs libertarian, especially those in the startup game, and especially YC and folks. http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html
- goseeastarwar 9y ago
  Cash Rules Everything Around Me So says Wu-Tang Clan and apparently YC.
  - zappo2938 9y ago
    I think the song was about rising out poverty and that the Wu-tang did it music instead of gangbanging, killing, and drug dealing. They use their own experiences to show young men living in poverty that the can find other means to obtain respect and lots of money that is healthy for themselves and their communities.
    - polmoya 9y ago
      I don't think so
    - aoner 9y ago
      Quite the opposite. The songs is about them selling drugs: “Catchin' keys from 'cross seas, Rollin' in MPV's, Every week we made forty G's” The basic premise is money rules everything so if I want power/influence/success I have to either play the game or accept defeat. “Method Man is not glorifying money and excess; rather, he’s saying that money holds power, and is a factor of major decisions made in the world he lives in. Those who have it, have power and those who don’t, won’t get up anywhere; sort of a way of saying “Money is the root of all evil”, if you will.”
TAForObvReasons 9y ago
> you have to consider the ethics of what you're enabling Keep in mind, YC took money from Yuri Milner in 2011 even though people knew at the time that there were connections to Russian oligarchs [1] and funded startups that promulgated junkware installers [2] among other things. On the "doing the right thing" vs "making more money" spectrum, YC is firmly on the side of "making more money", ethics be damned. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143894 the PG comment and the first few responses contextualize this well. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711 a discussion about InstallMonetizer
mistermann 9y ago
> Agreed, investing in China is the "invading Russia" of the tech world. I'd go even one step further, it is more like partnering with Germany, except in this version of the story Germany might be successful in its quest to take over the world, because make no mistake, China is coming for your market, it's only a matter of time. It is encouraging that more and more people are finally starting to put the pieces of this puzzle together, shame it is far too little and far too late.
- dnomad 9y ago
  The vast fear and ignorance in this thread is amusing but the comparison of China to Nazi Germany is perhaps a new low, even for Hacker News? It's interesting though how people develop such warped perceptions of the world. It's exactly how the greatest disaster of the 21st century, the absolutely unprovoked and absolutely senseless American invasion of Iraq which killed a million people and directly led to the rise of Isis and even more extreme suffering, come to pass. And so what you have here is a bunch of silly people, few of which have likely even been to China let alone done any serious investigation of Chinese culture or politics, utterly trapped in a paranoid fantasy in which -- believe it or not -- China is the aggressor coming for their markets. Nevermind the US's military bases all over the world or the TPP, an initiative started by the US with the explicit goal of denying and containing Chinese expansion. This sort of delusion is just breath taking. I guess all one can do is hope it doesn't lead to war but I strongly suspect it is. Americans will never face reality as this thread shows. They will gladly and firmly embrace the delusion and blame all their problems on somebody else even if it leads to absolute catastrophe. Absolutely nothing has changed since the Iraq War.
  - ng12 9y ago
    I'd love to see a defense of Chinese policy that doesn't fall back upon whataboutism. America's shortcomings have nothing to do with my ability to criticism China's human rights abuses and appalling lack of individual liberty.
    - dnomad 9y ago

throw2016 9y ago

This is jingoism masquerading as concern for autocracy. If people really cared about things like surveillance or dystopias in any serious way they would be on the streets about the extensively documented activities of the NSA, rubber stamp courts, secret orders, searching through personal effects at borders and campaigning for Snowden and other whistle blowers to be brought back with honors. But on the ground these laws are renewed without protest, whistle blowers are hounded and demonized with little to no push back and dissenters like Snowden and Assange continue to be stranded for years on end. If no one seems to care enough about these issues in our own countries or our own dissenters how can concern for others countries be authentic. Don't use fabricated concerns to demonize others.

api 9y ago
I think this is "whataboutism." America's respect for individual liberty and the rule of law has eroded over the years, but it is still considerably stronger than what's found in China. You see some of the same corruption and autocratic tendencies on both sides of the Pacific but there is a substantial difference in degree and pervasiveness. We are not the best in the world (several EU countries are better) but claiming the USA is equivalent to the PRC just lowers the bar. In China many of the kinds of open anti-state discussions that happen regularly here would get people arrested, not to mention criticism of leadership. Try talking openly about Xi Jinpeng the way lots of Americans talk about Donald Trump (or talked about Barack Obama). I was driving around Irvine, CA the other day and saw an anti-anti-immigration protest with signs comparing Trump to a chimpanzee and Hitler. Do that in China in an affluent section of Beijing. Dare you. Edit: you can also buy Donald Trump Piñatas in Santa Ana, a heavily Hispanic area of LA/OC metro. Try selling a Xi Jinpeng piñata in Beijing.
- throw2016 9y ago
  China and the US have different histories. World affairs are not simplistic binaries of good and bad. Political systems take time to evolve. Western Europe evolved from feudalism over 300 years. China has 1.3 billion people to take care of. This is not a joke. Let them manage and make the transition their way without sanctimonious judgement from others. The USA is effectively two party state with both parties propping up oligarchies and special interests with a media who have long ceased to function as a free and independent press and have reduced themselves to mouthpieces for entrenched interests. The ability to stand on a street and criticize your leader is not the only sign of democracy, the ability to effect change and have a government responsive to peoples needs is. Studies have shown and people can see how the US political establishment are far more responsive to special interests and the rich than the general public. So what is democracy? Perhaps things are not simplistic or black and white, and continuing to affect a moral high ground inspite of alarming deterioration betrays not only a lack of fundamental concern for any articulated values but also its abuse as a mere political tool to beat others with without any context of global history and world affairs.

api 9y ago

I've become rather disturbed by the amount of pro-autocratic sentiment I've encountered in tech circles. It comes in both the "right" (and "alt-right") and "left" varieties, as well as a few other weirder forms, but it's there. I guess hackers are no different from anyone else. Dangle money in front of people and they do tend to toss their morals out the window more often than not. I am not claiming that I am superior either. If someone offered me a shitload of money to do something I considered unethical, I can't say with 100% certainty that I'd never take it... to claim so would be the fallacy of self-exclusion. "I might be a coward I've just never been tested." - The Mighty Mighty Bosstones / The Impression That I Get I've also anecdotally observed that people with high IQs are often autocrats. They're prone to imagining that there are straightforward solutions to all the worlds problems and that all these problems could be solved if only things were run by smart people like them. They haven't yet been humbled by attempting to solve a really brutal multi-objective optimization problem or tame a complex system full of paradoxical effects and feedback loops. Attempting to govern a complex society is both of these things.

eksemplar 9y ago

China is the future though. As scary as that is, it’s still reasonable to invest in Chinese tech, at least if your plan is to make money. I don’t think westerners in general realize how advanced China is becoming. Being from Europe, visiting China is like stepping into a sci-fI novel. Not a happy one, mind you, but it’s becoming impossible to ignore.

realusername 9y ago
> China is the future though. As scary as that is, it’s still reasonable to invest in Chinese tech, at least if your plan is to make money. I don't have a lot of examples of successful western companies operating in China, they all seems to be blocked of at some point because of ""regulations"".
- derEitel 9y ago
  Many car manufacturers (incl. Mercedes, BMW) and fashion brands (incl. H&M, Nike)
- matz1 9y ago
  Just name a few: GM, Apple, Intel, Microsoft, McDonald, Coca Cola, Pizza Hut, Hershey, Nestle, Prada, Coach, Ikea, Starbucks, LinkedIn, Airbnb.
mtgx 9y ago
I'm curious what will happen to China's economy after another major economic crisis. Especially if it happens in say 10 years, by then robot manufacturing should be much more advanced and many western companies may opt to quit China and go the robot route.

FLUX-YOU 9y ago

What if this is just a way for American companies to acquire Chinese tech or talent?

seanmcdirmid 9y ago
It would be extremely stupid. Judging by the number of Chinese working tech in the USA, they have already acquired that.

mtgx 9y ago

Here's to the next-generation YC-backed censorship tools!

whatyoucantsay 9y ago

Make no mistake. YC will slowly but surely come under pressure to give the CCP influence over content as well as access to private user data, first their own and then that they wield influence over. Don't forget the malware-ridden Chinese Skype client, LinkedIn's willingness to censor global content on China's behalf, or Yahoo's capitulation of dissident information that lead to executions. HN will likely start suppressing any factual discussion on Taiwan or the nine dash line as "flamewar bait" while allowing increasingly nationalistic Chinese propaganda to pass unchecked. It won't be today or tomorrow but money and influence wear down almost any organization eventually. This is a sad day, and it only marks the beginning what is to come.

burger_moon 9y ago
I noticed that Airbnb operates in China currently. Perhaps there are other YC investments as well, but it seems this isn't the beginning of YC's investment into China. I had begun writing up a tin-foil hat theory on why YC would open this Startup School there, until I realized Airbnb, one of YC's flagship investments is already there.
- whatyoucantsay 9y ago
  I don't think they're sharing too much user data yet. E.g., a user's visits outside of China are likely still private for a while longer.