[dahart]

> Interesting to see this comment here, and upvoted. I think it shows just how divergent the news.ycombinator community has diverged from ycombinator (the incubator). Or maybe the community is simply a reflection of what the incubator has become.

That quote above is a bit pessimistic, I agree with you there, but maybe you're replying to an individual quote that doesn't reflect the values of anyone else here at all? Is it really necessary or justified to project this negativity on the greater community based on one comment and a few up-votes? Are you certain you know why the up-votes were given?

The empirical benefits quote you shared is talking directly about YC and it's employees, not founders, and it's ultimately (and intentionally) a bit paradoxical. When YC is talking about the benefits of benevolence, they're implicitly talking about the long term private financial return of their own investments.

Their attitude here seems like healthy and forward business thinking to me, but maybe we should be careful about equating for-profit business benevolence with selfless humanitarian benevolence. Strong arguments have been made in both directions whether human good is served by business returns. I just wanted to emphasize that starting a company is almost always inherently partially selfish, and that it's hard to name many billionaires who's primary adjective is benevolent. Many are benevolent to varying degrees, but most are first and foremost good at profit-seeking.