Ask HN: Is Y Combinator basically just communism? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is Y Combinator basically just communism?

8 pointscitizenkeys5 comments

Take this post with a grain of salt... I'm reviewing my YC start-ups list at http://ycuniverse.com/startups.php along with other YC-related news. It would seem that YCombinator, with over 200 start-ups in various niche markets, has all the essential elements of communism. The notion of a rising working-class of networked start-up founders almost sounds like some sort of political movement. And if you read Paul Graham's essays (I've read them all at least twice), some of those "essays" border on being propaganda.

Theoretically, if you fund that many start-ups and they largely prefer goods and services from each other rather than outside sources, and with YC itself providing new resources to the entire group, there's definately some communist undertones there. An entire city block of YC-funded startups? Hmm...

So is Paul Graham a modern Lenin-esque architect of communism or what?

The only similarity I can see is a network of people who help one another. But that idea is orthogonal to communism. And very old: that's what a tribe is.

A tribe would be synonymous to an individual start-up. "A network of people that help one another" would be an entirely self-forming group or collective of groups. What makes communism distinct is that there's a central organization directing the economics.

To use the old "steak and potatoes" analogy, if one person specializes in steak and the other in potatoes, there's capitalist efficiency there. But if there's a third-party saying "you with the steaks: you'll get those from this particular guy with potatoes. and you with the potatoes: vice versa.", that's when there's potential communist undertones.

Not that I have a problem with communism: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1926047

Advice and a little bit of seed capital does not constitute "a central organization directing the economics." I think your conception of what YC does for accepted companies is pretty far from reality.

>>But if there's a third-party saying "you with the steaks: you'll get those from this particular guy with potatoes. and you with the potatoes: vice versa."

That doesn't happen.

YC is more like a university alumni association. They foster communication between companies through events, mailing lists, introductions, etc. But, each company makes decisions independent of the larger group.

I really meant the original posting to be light-hearted.

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