> Y Combinator...Thirteen of them had an altruistic or international development focus
SSC mentions criticism, and then counters with the couple of hundred grand of "altruistic" money YC hands out every year. As puff statements like this are as easy to predict as anything, it seems analogous to several hundred grand to a PR department. As his very statement is a usage of it as PR.
Of all the most awful big organizations and groups in the world, I can't think of any that don't engage in such "altruism" PR.
Then he goes on to say that fault found in Silicon Valley is psychological projection, a "deeply good person crusading for a better world enters Silicon Valley, she'll find herself surrounded by deeply good people crusading for a better world" (Jesus, who swallows this?) and a narcissist will see narcissists.
He admits an "invasion of rent-seeking parasites and empty suits".
How about another tale - a naive young 21 year old MIT grad who wants to be a "deeply good person crusading for a better world". They are shown PR projects, maybe a "peer-to-peer lending service in India" (odd to hear the Christian and Islamic sin of usury being praised as altruism), or cool tech like 3d printers. Then they get put in a FAANG division, or dedicated startup, spying on people for better and targeting. Or generating flamebait headlines to get more clicks. Pulling the strings behind all this are the rent-seeking parasites and empty suits - "activist" investors and hedge funds, LPs, VCs, seeds and angels, executives and management etc.
A lot of talk about what is happening and not who controls it. And who controls work ain't the 21 year old MIT grad paying $2000 a month for a small apartment in Oakland. Who does all the work and creates all the wealth. Who gets the bulk of the fruits of his labors, and to a very large extent what he does is determined by said expropriating suits. That the grad has some choice, although not much, is the reason for the 3 card monte shill game of cool tech and altruism. The kid will be setting up the ad spying networks Kubernetes containers, not doing altruism and playing with cool tech.
Of the people working in Silicon Valley, the main victims of expropriation are the people working in Silicon Valley.