[yummyfajitas]

Do you want to hire someone at this age? What's the difference, they've got the same goals, one is pregnant, one isn't yet.

The only difference is that with a hiring decision, the law demands the hiring manager should ignore the risks to the business. In aggregate, this is a transfer of wealth from shareholders to pregnant women (in practice, childless women are also harmed [1]).

What right do you have to judge?

The VC has not only the right to determine how his fund's money is spent, but also the responsibility to do so in order to maximize returns.

As long as P(big success | funds preggo) < P(big success | funds slightly less awesome non-preggo), it is the VC's responsibility to choose the non-pregnant person. He would be throwing away his client's money otherwise.

[1] In practice the biggest losers seem to be childless women since the market for hiring women becomes a lemon market. Employers are not able to differentiate lemons from cherries and wind up paying all sellers less. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

[feral]

>As long as P(big success | funds preggo) < P(big success | funds slightly less awesome non-preggo), it is the VC's responsibility to choose the non-pregnant person. He would be throwing away his client's money otherwise.

With that line of logic, where do you stop? Is there any variable on which its not OK to condition?

I actually think its fair enough to say that there are certain factors that we all agree, as a society, that we should ignore, when it comes to decisions like this.

Sometimes we might codify that agreement to ignore into law, like the hiring law you mention which prevents discrimination on certain grounds. But the reason it has been so codified, is because we agree that type of discrimination is globally bad, right?

Would you really argue that VCs are supposed to absolutely anything to maximise returns, within the law, even something we all know is bad?

[yummyfajitas]

I don't see any compelling reason why the choices of an entrepreneur are a variable that the VC should ignore. Could you explain why you believe this?

(As a side note, I also see no reason why shareholders of corporations should have any special obligation to subsidize parents. But that's a separate debate.)

[rwallace]

> I don't see any compelling reason why the choices of an entrepreneur are a variable that the VC should ignore.

Many people agree that e.g. the entrepreneur's religion and sexual preferences are variables the VC should ignore, even if they were statistically correlated to success. Do you disagree with that position?

> I also see no reason why shareholders of corporations should have any special obligation to subsidize parents.

I do: the parents are subsidizing the future. The shareholders' money is going to be pretty worthless to them in the long run if there is no next generation of workforce from whom to purchase goods and services.

[yummyfajitas]

Do you disagree with that position?

Yes.

But lets ignore my position, I'd like to extend your logic. You want VCs to make suboptimal investments for political reasons. Should you also be obligated to invest some fraction of your 401k in businesses you think are a suboptimal investment? If not, why not?

I do: the parents are subsidizing the future. The shareholders' money is going to be pretty worthless to them in the long run if there is no next generation of workforce from whom to purchase goods and services.

This argument is far more broad than you realize.

For example: "parents are subsidizing the future. The childless career woman's money is going to be pretty worthless to her in the long run if there is no next generation of workforce...".

Therefore, we should force childless career women to subsidize parents.

Do you believe the latter as well? If not, why not? What distinguishes childless career women from shareholders?

[rwallace]

I believe childless people of both sexes should have to pay their share of the cost of raising the next generation, yes.

[yummyfajitas]

Do you believe all investors (including Joe 401k) should be forced to make bad bets for political purposes, or only some? If so, which ones?

[rwallace]

> The VC has not only the right to determine how his fund's money is spent, but also the responsibility to do so in order to maximize returns.

That's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that societies that tolerate an ethos that maximizes return on financial capital at the cost of burning human capital, are going to end up in evolution's recycle bin, to be replaced by societies that don't. And part of the point of ethics is to find solutions less cruel and drastic than waiting for evolution to solve problems for us.

[yummyfajitas]

How is human capital burned by funding the person most likely to succeed?

[rwallace]

It's burned by creating an atmosphere in which people get to thinking they need to start a company instead of having children. (Or thinking they'll have children "later" which typically amounts to the same thing - "life is what happens when you're busy making other plans".)

[mattmanser]

A right to discriminate? What you're advocating is a right to discriminate based on your unfounded feelings that a pregnant woman can't handle it.

You're basically a sexist but you don't want to admit it. That's what all this boils down to. Let's tell the women they're not good enough because popping out a sprog makes their brains go mushy.

Sounds harsh? Take a good look in the mirror.

What is your real problem with the women founder?

EDIT: I get angry at this shit as my sister, one of the most driven and talented people I know is at nearing this stage in life and I would bet on her a thousand times over other people. She's an amazing woman and I would happily bet on her founding a successful company in a heartbeat regardless of whether she was having a child or not.