[dcolkitt]

> the way that humans tend to get things fixed, is called "a state"... But there actually isn't another way.

Sure there is. It's called "entrepreneurship". In fact, far more of the improvement in the human condition has come from it than the state.

It's astounding to me that we're on an Internet forum about startups, and people are saying that the only way to improve the world is through political activism.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Well, first of all "Hacker News" is not an internet forum about startups. You're thinking of the purpose of YCombinator, which hosts Hacker News but is not Hacker News.

Second, some of us have the experience of having been through, or been adjacent to, the social and political movements of the 1960s, which largely shunned actual political action in favor of personal change and the creation of new, non-state organizations. Despite the widespread availability of wholewheat bread in 2022, an honest retrospective analysis of this approach would have to conclude that it was largely a failure, at least in terms of the various goals involving widespread political and social change.

Thirdly, some of us have been a part of certain, ahem, startups that have gone on to be as much as part of "the problem" as anything that came before them, meaning that our expectation that entrepeneurial capitalism as the savior doesn't seem particularly promising either.