[jeffreymcmanus]

Interesting thought, but there's a difference between an "elite" (who may or may not have earned what they have) and a meritocracy (who worked for what they have). Most people (except maybe the talentless children of billionaires) would probably agree that meritocracies are better.

[Apocryphon]

I'm not saying that acolytes of YC do not deserve to be there. I'm just building on to the previous commenter's points about the creation of new Silicon Valley in-crowd communities. Now, I think this whole point is debatable- certainly incubated or otherwise guided (like YC alumni) startups are a minority of startups. And unoriginal, make-a-quick-buck startups can come from anywhere. I just think that maybe there is a point to be made that the road of startups is getting more and more structured and unofficially regimented, whether it is through an incubator, or just by a culture that promotes certain patterns to success. And with the guidance of groups such as YC or incubators, it's made more and more easy. But then perhaps that is about as valid a point as complaining that Stack Overflow (not to mention Google!) makes it quicker to solve programming problems these days, or that memory managed languages make developers lazy, or that not walking to school in 8-foot snow distorts the soul, and so on.