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Comment by erikb | Hacker News Reader

5-star cook says: "Cows are much more successful in life when cut in slices and being in a pan."

The truth is that you not just need to be cunning, you need to be routine at it, so you can act nice while doing selfish things like removing founders without paying them out, putting competitors out of business, and telling guys who just spent the first three years of their child in your office instead of with their families that they need to clean out their desks. Without that ability what you can do is to sizzle nicely while being turned around in the pan.

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It used to take around 20 farmers to support a single non farmers, such as a noble or black smith. We now have many people supported by each farmer in the modern world.

If people are too "nice," we can totally go back to a hunter-gatherer way of life instead of keeping modern institutions alive. I imagine billions would die to get there from here. But, at least we would no longer need to make hard decisions like which poor sucker to fire.

I'm not entirely sure I understand your metaphor in this case. I appreciate that it had something to do with efficiency but then I got lost because a 20:1 farmer-to-other feeding ratio seems incredibly unrealistic and made it hard to understand whether the ratio was relevant to the metaphor's point or was just an off the cuff sort of detail.

It isn't a metaphor. Without modern farming technology and techniques, the world cannot support 7 billion people. We deal with that fact or we die in droves. Those are our options.

Not sure why you think PG or anyone at YC has any incentive to fuck people over; they have gob loads of cash and are still trying to help people to build successful businesses. It's not even necessary to be ruthless; pretty much all of the billion dollar YC founders seem like decent people who built the right thing at the right time (and were very very good at marketing).

> Not sure why you think PG or anyone at YC has any incentive to fuck people over

This is a question that can be answered without even agreeing with me a bit.

If I believe that one can only make millions with fking people over then of course I think pg having millions already and making millions with YC means that he has been and still is fking people over.

Btw, have you considered that some people may think and evaluate without moral<->immoral evaluations?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCZ4xk8Xojc

I sort of agree with this but we’ve always loved and looked after eachother as well as murdered eachother. It’s up to all of us what we cultivate and what we see in others.

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains ... an unuprooted small corner of evil.” - Alexander Solzhenitzen

I agree. However to tame the aggressive nature in ourselves and others we need to be more powerful than the corresponding selves. In the end most people can be happy if they can tame themselves. But the problem is that there are untamed people stronger, smarter and more powerful than most of us.

And as far as I know you can't overwrite violence with togetherness, but the other way around is easy.

Took me a while to read it: YC is the chef; founders are the cows.

Great quote about the cook. But you don't need to be a sociopath to be successful in business, quite the opposite.

At which of your millions did you realize that?

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