3 ms·
Yeah, this is just capitalism in action. Almost every startup has stories like this, which appears to be why YC's startup school shies away from "goody two-shoe
by rhtgrg 4y ago
Yeah, this is just capitalism in action. Almost every startup has stories like this, which appears to be why YC's startup school shies away from "goody two-shoes" type people and has questions like "please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system".
For example, in the early days Amazon famously "leveraged" the purchase of out of print books from their wholesalers to obtain orders that would otherwise be too small to ship.
That's just how capitalism works. You have to be either too small to bother with or too big to fail -- the problem area is in the middle.
- shafyy 4y agoI hate that YC question. A "good" answer to that is almost always something that's borderline illegal or otherwise ethically bad.
- DC-3 4y agoIt's almost as if unethical behaviour is incentivized under capitalism...
- mahathu 4y agoI automated applying for apartments in my city's public housing program as they regularly get hundreds of applications within a few minutes and automatically take down the ads again, often before their email notifications even arrive. That way I at least got invited to some viewings without having to check it every few minutes throughout the day, as many people I know have been doing for months. I don't see how that can be considered ethically bad. This is in Berlin.
- shafyy 4y agoI wouldn't consider this "hacking a non-computer system" though. Or maybe I just misunderstand the question.
- JohnFen 4y agoI'm old enough that to me, "hack" doesn't imply anything nefarious. But I'd hope that people who answer this question with something unethical would be excluded from the program.
- shafyy 4y agoI don't mean hack as in "hack a system and leak the passwords". But "hack" here implies that you somehow skirted around the rules or did something that you're not supposed to do. You've exploited something to your own advantage. Often times (not always!), many people would consider this unethical behavior. For example, there's this widely told story about how Airbnb in the beginning exploited Craig's List to list their properties. This is not illegal, it's not that they hacked into Craig's List, but it's for sure not ok. It's ok to break the rules as long you are not caught. Imagine if everybody would start doing that. Therefore, I'm also not surprised that they don't give two shits about city regulations and so on.
- JohnFen 4y ago> I don't mean hack as in "hack a system and leak the passwords". But "hack" here implies that you somehow skirted around the rules or did something that you're not supposed to do Right, that's what "hack" doesn't imply to me. I mean, this is "Hacker News", but it is not about nefarious activities. That said, I do understand that's what it implies to the younger generations. > It's ok to break the rules as long you are not caught. This is an attitude that seems to be common in SV, and I'm disappointed if YC doesn't reject applicants who demonstrate it.
- xyzzyz 4y agoHow would the issue of intellectual property rights to published books be resolved in an alternative, non-capitalist system? In socialism, as far as I can tell, anyone would totally be able to ingest all these books, as there would be no concept of intellectual property rights. Thus, what you complain about with respect to capitalism, would be a totally normal and acceptable thing to do in socialism. Do you have some other, alternative system in mind, which would not allow a wholesale exploitation of private intellectual property?