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Comment by yrahmed | Hacker News Reader

I love Sam and just wish they would have used a different metaphor than "Manifest Destiny". Isn't manifest destiny what led to the genocide of native american populations?

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I think the author was likely aware of that. YC wants, and will probably get, great power. But with great power comes great responsibility, and the potential to do harm as well as good. YC may succeed in "settling the West" (metaphorically), but at what price? That's one question it has to ask itself.

I think it's definitely intentional. This profile isn't meant to be purely congratulatory--the undercurrent that some of this is creepy and undeserved that other commentors have picked up on is deliberate.

That's iteresting. I was not aware of such a connotation - to me the term manifest destiny just meant "a destiny that can be clearly seen and that cannot be changed" [1]. Maybe the article's sub-editor was equally ignorant of 19th century US history.

[1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/manifest%20destiny

No way. That's a deliberate choice of words and the parallel is actually pretty striking. From Wikipedia:

> In the 19th century, manifest destiny was a widely held belief in the United States that its settlers were destined to expand across North America. There are three basic themes to manifest destiny:

The special virtues of the American people and their institutions

The mission of the United States to redeem and remake the west in the image of agrarian America

An irresistible destiny to accomplish this essential duty

Pretty much the template to justify colonialism i.e "The current inhabitants are savages. They would do well with our civilisation and rule of law. We are the exceptional people to do that. If they don't want it... Well we can't have that sort of thing, can we?"

Sometimes it is blatant. See Congo Free State. The nominal justification was to bring civilisation and thus improve lives. Instead the people were enslaved in a state owned and controlled by private enterprise.

And just to add to this, Manifest Destiny had some very concrete related beliefs. Such as "the rain follows the plow", the belief that if you settle and farm somewhere, the climate will magically change to make this workable

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_follows_the_plow

This led to people settling in unwise places. And you know what, even though the Wikipedia page says that climatologists now regard this as mere superstition, these areas of the US are now well-populated: A critical mass did settle, so in a way it's all worked out.

> This led to people settling in unwise places. And you know what, even though the Wikipedia page says that climatologists now regard this as mere superstition, these areas of the US are now well-populated: A critical mass did settle, so in a way it's all worked out.

Sounds like a classic case of survivor bias though? Where would Chicago be today if it wasn't for the trains? What would be the state of Phoenix Arizona if not for things like CAP? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Arizona_Project

You mentioned this but I wanted to spell it out.

This is the New Yorker. They mean exactly what they're implying, at least to a couple levels down.

Don't Sam and other YC folks thinks that technological innovation will put most people out of a job, necessitating a "basic income" which makes them permanent government dependents?

Aren't we all government dependents? You can't live without the government.

It's either an unfortunate or unflattering choice of words indeed.

It is about the American outlook where the perception is warped to the extent that all that is seen and wanted is only meant for them.

Or in another sense; because it exists, then it exists only for them. It ties into their earlier religion where they warped the belief that an entity called God created the world for mankind and humans, where they only reason and believe that only they themselves to be human and man.

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