Why The 99% Should Protest Against Y Combinator
nickoneill.com
nickoneill.com
After all, you are directly giving money to a supermarket, which is giving it to a big agribusiness, which either is Monsanto or is a customer of Monsanto. All these evil things that Monsanto does? They're done with your money.
Contrast that with Paul Graham, who is a partial owner of an investment firm, which invested in a company, which has Monsanto as a customer. No YCombinator money is going to Monsanto. Indeed, it's the other way around: Monsanto money is going to a YCombinator company, in exchange for services. PG's criticism of the original comment was right on.
If Monsanto's business practices bother you, factor that into your purchasing decisions. There are dozens of local organic farmers that would love to have your business. They usually charge more, because evil is efficient. Monsanto is not the only beneficiary of their evil ways, though: because of their evilness, millions of Americans spend less on food than they otherwise would.
edit: my wife and I do in fact work at a local food coop and buy about 90% organic or at least locally grown; they sell a few products linked to companies like Monsanto but these are clearly labeled with things like "GMO" - we certainly don't go near them. But we're lucky enough to live in a place that actually has a non-profit food coop and the economic freedom to have the time to work in such a place.
It's not all or nothing. If everyone would just subscribe to a CSA and buy the rest of their stuff from the grocery store then that alone would completely shift the face of food production in this country.
I'm a CSA-eating locavore; I buy my protein from a whole-animal butcher who's on a first-name basis with the farmers who raise all his products.
It is a spectacular luxury, one I'm actually faintly guilty about.
Not everyone has access to a CSA, and that's okay, too--you can still find ways to get at least some of your food that isn't a product of Big Ag.
Are you old enough to remember supermarkets with no organic/free-range products? No recycled products? No vegetarian versions of products? These are all things commonly available now that have been introduced in my lifetime as a supermarket shopper.
Yes, it sure would be better if the consumer did not have to fight evil with every purchasing decision (it leads to decision fatigue, if nothing else). It would be better if representational democracy (especially in the US) worked better at looking after collective interests. But voting with your money? It does work, and I would be surprised if the Internet has not amplified its effect even further.
The cynic in me says, however, that much of the organic/free range food in supermarkets isn't what I consider organic/free range. Thanks to the lobbying of Big Ag, labeling claims for food don't necessarily match our own definitions.
That said, I'm not suggesting we stop--we just need to become better educated.
Tell that to RIM or Netflix.
If you truly consider those "multinational companies" to be so unethical and dastardly, then don't. Live outside of modern society. Many people do. You do not.
Your hypocrisy is telling.
I'd prefer dissent to be a little more structurally integrated into our society, thanks.
It isn't. If enough people leave, the old society disappears and a new one forms. If not enough people leave, then the people who left were morons and suffer for it. As simple as that.
The funny part is, everybody knows the above. It's a part of human nature. It's how new societies form and old ones disappear.
It's virtually impossible to survive as a start-up. When you get an opportunity to better your shots, you take it way more often than not.
* You're GIVING Monsanto the money.
* Cloudant is TAKING money from Monsanto.
So who's the Robin Hood here?
-I suppose as someone that gets the majority of my food from a local CSA, the farmer's market and a food co-op, I'm allowed to challenge your point in your reckoning. But I very fortunately live in a community where such alternatives are an option. The expense or total lack of viable alternatives to food produced by big agribusiness isn't the result of an unadulterated free market, it's in large part because of policy lobbying from these businesses for massive subsidies and anti-competitive intellectual property laws and enforcement (e.g. successfully suing farmers whose non-GMO plants were cross-pollinated by Monsanto varieties from neighboring farms). You can't use "take your business elsewhere" free-market logic when the company in question has systematically choked off competition so that there are no alternatives. You're right, what Monsanto does is with my money, in the sense that way too many of my tax dollars go to the company.
-"Evil is efficient" is a lazy and indefensible excuse for bad behavior. Green business has successfully shown that, actually, "good" can be more efficient, especially if you take a long-term view of your business.
-While I would find doing business with Monsanto personally distasteful, what Cloudant does with Monsanto is, I guess, Cloudant's business. However, trumpeting the fact in a press release makes a statement about the company's values at a level that invites public scrutiny. You can't put out a press release and then cry about the blowback you get from it.
-Finally, I think there's a larger point to be made here about the hustle that founding a startup requires and the temptations you face when things aren't going well and you're facing a quickly disappearing runway. Maybe things are moving too fast for you to really think about what you're doing but remember that the day you stop making decisions that you believe in for the sake of external pressure, your vision starts to slip away from you.
1. You seem to think that consuming a GMO is a riskless way to save money. Consider reading "Assessment of the food safety issues related to genetically modified foods" by Kuiper et al. or similar to understand how scientists currently asses risks for GMO food, and then the history of any substance later discovered to be harmful to humans (I recommend Gately's Tobacco book). We have a lot of evidence but it is far too soon to call the GMO race, as the potential benefit is something like $3/meal and the potential cost includes things like cancer.
2. You are forgetting that PG also consumes GMO food, and that OP also runs a business.
3. In transactions engaged in by intelligent people, both sides believe they are getting more value than they are giving up. Because of this, your distinction between OP giving money to Monsanto and PG getting money from Monsanto doesn't matter -- both sides are benefiting more than the cost incurred.
4. Your second to last point ("If Monsanto's business practices bother you, factor that into your purchasing decisions") is obviously true, and exactly the kind of thing OP seems to agree with -- he has even taken it further and used those morals in the design of his own business.
5. "Monsanto is not the only beneficiary of their evil ways, though: because of their evilness, millions of Americans spend less on food than they otherwise would" ... and have an increased risk for all sorts of disease. See #1. What odds do you give that GMOs do not cause an increase in disease? In light of that number being non-zero, would you like to take back this statement?
GMOs, herbicides, and pesticides have saved hundreds of millions of lives from death by famine. Current levels of food production are not possible with GMOs.
> GMO race, as the potential benefit is something like $3/meal and the potential cost includes things like cancer.
That's a lot of money. In America, where people make $7 / hour, its easy to say, we'd all be better off eating non GMOs, but in many parts of India, Africa, and China, when people make $7 / week, GMOs lower prices to sustainable levels. Note that when I say "sustainable", I mean "able to sustain currently levels of human population".
That's great. But, we need to look ahead. Monsanto's high-yield crops rely on herbicides/pesticides and monocultures. This negatively affects biodiversity[1], genetic diversity, pollinator populations[2] and increases risk of cancer[3] and land degradation[4]. High-yield crops are a quick fix. Patch work. What about in 25 or 50 years? What if we have severe colony collapse? What if we have severe soil contamination and degradation? How will we feed ourselves then? What if we have to increase our use of pesticides just to get the same yield?
[1] http://www.pesticides.gov.uk/environment.asp?id=1834
[2] http://www.epa.gov/pesp/pesp/members/strategies/north _america_pollinator_protection_campaign.pdf
[3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9498903
[4] http://news.mongabay.com/2006/1214-unu.html
I don't understand why you chose India and Africa as examples? Their food situation is vastly different from China. India especially, has not (on a whole) benefited from Monsanto's GMOs (http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/1087730/how_i...)
1. My $3/meal was for US eaters. Remember that locally grown crops in 3rd world countries cost much less, as the cost of human time and land is lower there.
2. Ignoring #1 (ie. if we're looking at the choice between dying and eating GMO food), then of course eating GMO is the lesser of all evils.
3. GMO isn't the only way to produce enough food for the world. Better storage and transport tech would go a long way. There is also the agri-skyscraper concepts, but I'm sure you've seen those.
4. Even using GMO food, and producing enough to feed the planet, we still have lots of hungry people for reasons other than production capacity. See http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20f...
That being said, the emergence of the organic food movement and such businesses such as Whole Foods goes to show that people are starting to adjust their spending habits.
In an effort to support this, I'm sure you'd agree that the end consumer should be supported in understanding what is in their food. Interestingly, Monsanto actively opposes the labeling of GMO foods, or the labeling of milk as being rBGH free.
(Quick hint if you care: buy your milk in Canada - or anywhere else in the western world - where rBGH has been determined to be too dangerous to add to milk).
If their competitors are trying to introduce what they consider an "artificial distinction" based on FUD, what should their reaction be?
By the way, I'm not saying they're correct. Who knows, in 30 years our entire society might become all "Children of Men" and lead to our species extinction. I'd bet not though.
If you looked in my apartment, you'd think I was a proponent of the organic food movement; but it's all an illusion. Left to my own devices, I would eat nothing but Capn' Crunch and Hungry Man dinners. What changed for me was when my girlfriend moved in with me. She's basically a walking allergy test. It's easier for her to describe what foods she isn't allergic to.
We had to start buying organic vegetables because they were the only ones we could find that aren't sprayed with sulfites (which she's allergic to). She couldn't eat the potatoes we had in the house (which broke my Irish heart...for people here, imagine if your significant other was allergic to parenthesis).
She's allergic to the hormones they inject into beef. Even buying free-range, organic beef where they read poetry to the cows and slaughter them by having them laugh to death was about 50/50 whether she'd break out in hives.
Our solution was to switch to ground bison as a ground beef replacement (for whatever reason they don't appear to give bison hormones, maybe that'd change if they were more popular).
But there's a cost to all of this. It costs us ridiculously more for food than it used to.
I don't know if the emergence of the organic food movement or the success of Whole Foods is really as indicative of people caring about these things as much as you think it is. There's been an enormous emergence of sales of Steampunk goggles too, but I'm not sure that's all that widespread. People tend to find ways to spend their money. If they think that paying $50 for a single bag of vegetables from Whole Foods results in them getting better quality food, there's a segment of the population that will do that.
Very insidious.
rBGH isn't added to milk; it's injected into cows. The misconception that the milk itself necessarily contains rBGH is precisely the justification that Monsanto claims for restraining "rBGH free" labels. I don't think that's an adequate justification, though, and I agree with the thrust of your point.
Of course the only industrialized nation to use rbgh is the USA. To be honest, I find it rather interesting that so much of the world seems to care so much about cows. My take is if the health of the animal is reduced, it probably stands to reason that the byproducts of said animal is probably worth avoiding.
I don't see however why I should not be told what is inside each particular product. If the cow was given antibiotics or chocolate to eat all day or allowed to run free for life, why shouldn't I be allowed to know this as a consumer?
Not efficient so much, as it externalizes costs away from the customer purchasing transaction and onto other actors in the system, like farmers and the environment.
Monsanto is not the only beneficiary of their evil ways, though: because of their evilness, millions of Americans spend less on food than they otherwise would.
Have you thought this through? Are you saying exploitation of some to the 'benefit' of others is okay?
That's the philosophy of utilitarianism in a nutshell. This is not a debate that can, or will, be resolved on HN. You might want to read up on 'Kaldor-Hicks efficiency' and 'Pareto optimality' which explores this concept in greater detail. 'Efficiency' here means net economic utility, as opposed to Company X just saving a few $.
Evil can be quite efficient for the entity being evil and inefficient for the world at large. It's the epitome of selfishness, ergo: evil.
Cheaper food is a benefit. That doesn't imply that this gain is worth the consequences.
You've hit the nail on the head and that's exactly what I say at the end of the post. I have a feeling most people didn't make it down that far.
As for my own purchasing behavior (which isn't relevant to the post), I do try to purchase organic as often as possible ;) It's still debatable whether or not it's worth while.
I'd agree more with your second phrasing, as it's more nuanced, but they seem to be getting the same general idea across.
However, raving and swearing at people is not persuasive, it's bullying. We'll never find out what pg really thinks of Monsanto or the idea of doing business with them, because all we've got is his understandably snippy reaction to what sounds like the aggressive ranting of an insane person.
Its unfortunate though that my comments distracted from the real issue.
But then again, perhaps all of this discussion wouldn't have happened without my comments. Controversy can be fickle.
This is real life, we're adults, and it is possible to communicate and deliver an astute/sophisticated/poignant perspective using expletives (just as much as it isn't). If you're offended by someone writing 'fuck' then you need to grow some testicular fortitude.
swearing is not equal to the 'aggressive ranting of an insane person' - that's ridiculous.
Step back from the swearing and look at the context in which it cropped up. When an unfamiliar someone's entry to a conversation consists of blowing his/her top, it's usually because they're drunk or crazy. As William Burroughs used to say, 'I am not paid to listen to this drivel.'
"The reason this comment thread is a worrying sign for HN is that you didn't use to have to think like a PR person here."
He raved and sweared at a gigantic corporation. Let's not get sloppy.
While the “99 percent” don’t yet have a clear outline for how they’re going to change things, one thing is clear: they’re frustrated. No, you're frustrated. The 99% have no idea how this even affects them. But that's how it goes, right? Sanctimonious preachers denouncing practices they don't care to understand, and don't have a solution to, while the 99% follow along blindly for "the cause".
Additionally, if YCombinator is promoting a world where values don’t matter and economic transactions are the only thing that do, then they are truly part of the old guard.
I'm missing the logical link between Y Combinator promoting such, and pg's comment. I've had the opportunity to speak to some YC founders, and the two stunning things I remember is "make things that people want", and "try and make peoples' lives suck less".
As for the 99% being frustrated, that's all it's about, no? It's a bunch of people that started posting photos of themselves voicing their frustrations about not having a job, and other issues that they have.
I want companies to be more ethical too. I want honesty and transparency - just like I want a government that works.
Register your concerns through constructive comments.. save your protest for Monsanto, DC and Wall Street. And, if you really want to make a difference build your own company and lead by example.
Edit: I'd also like to note its impressive this thread is still on the front-page of HN when it could have easily been removed.
I don’t fully understand the business of Cloudant to be honest...
Cloudant deals in hosting lots of data. They just got a client that trusts them with huge amounts of data. That is why the press release and story are reasonable. Everything else is knee-jerk politics.
It proved idiotic. To talk about Y Combinator as the old guard betrays such a deep lack of understanding about the way startups impact society that the entire point (99% should boycott or something) is meaningless. Also, this post is by someone who built a business talking about Facebook, essentially uncritically, making it in a unique position of deeply incorrect and also hypocritical.
This must be a fundamental, deeply ingrained, clear-cut difference in the way people think.
I think O'Neill believes Monsanto to be a far worse company than pg (or I, for that matter) do. It's an agrochemical company that does engage in strong-arm legal tactics, but at the same time, it's not on the level of IBM working with the Germans in the 1930's. O'Neill does have a point in that in a free society, consumers have a right to choose which products to purchase and which companies to support, and if they want to politicize that decision it is entirely their right to do so. pg would likely agree with statement. So the only real disagreement between the two would probably come down to how "bad" a company Monsanto is, in their view. pg obviously views it in a far more benign light than O'Neill does.
the "99%" talk is irrelevant. The 99'ers focus seems to be (or should be) on the parasitic nature of Wall Street and their close relationship to the Treasury Dept. and the Federal Reserve, and not on corporate ethics in general.
If Goldman Sacs can be described as a "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity", for the way they are intertwined and tangled up with the regulatory frameworks in the US financial system, surely the same holds true for the way that Monsanto and Cargill have such monumental sway over the Department of Agriculture and the way that farmers do business.
That said, i agree with PG that the original post was content-free. I'd actually go further and say that even within gigantic evil corporations, good can be done. That's not to say that it will offset the awful things that Monsanto does, but i don't know that the Cloudant guys are (necessarily) being assimilated into the Borg. On the other hand, there is clearly a gap between the author's ethical judgements and PGs. So if he doesn't trust PG or the Cloudant guys, i can see why he'd be pissed.
They are trying to associate themselves with a well-known brand in order to gain some kind of status or legitimacy.
But when you do that, you are also at risk of people associating you with things like Jersey Shore and sweatshops, employment discrimination, superficiality, and so on.
(A&F was so concerned that it has offered to pay Jersey Shore cast members to STOP wearing their brand.)
Large corporations tend to avoid issues seen as "controversial". It's not necessarily about right or wrong, it's about anything divisive enough to possibly be a significant detriment to their brand image.
When the NUMBER ONE Google result for "world's most evil company" has your name on it, you are PR kyrptonite.
The only person to blame is the flabbergastingly unaware CEO of Cloudant.
This is on par with "YC robotics startup chosen as #1 supplier of automated puppy-gassing chambers by animal control!"
PR is a fuzzy science at best, and I'm no expert, so I won't claim to know how wise the press release is. I'm sure that Cloudant was excited to acquire a large customer (rightfully so), and that issuing a press release can impress investors, other potential customers, and the start-up community.
It's the second argument that I vehemently disagree with. If some corporation feels that it would be unethical to do business with Monsanto, then by all means refuse to do so. But to argue for an embargo against Monsanto, and imply that any company that does business with Monsanto is in the wrong, is wildly inappropriate and unfair. No doubt countless other corporations do business with Monsanto: PC manufacturers, construction teams, office suppliers, not to mention utility companies that keep Monsanto running, shipping companies that deliver to and from Monsanto, etc. I agree with pg that to argue for an embargo against Monsanto is quite extreme, and it's unfair to hold Cloudant to such a standard.
First, if this applies to any company partnering with Monsanto, they are receiving equal treatment.
Secondly, your value judgment of it being "wildly inappropriate" rings hollow. Who determines what's "appropriate"? Usually that terminology is employed when referring to social convention, and social convention is determined by majority opinion.
Quoting PG:
But the best thing of all is when people call what you're doing inappropriate. I've been hearing this word all my life and I only recently realized that it is, in fact, the sound of the homing beacon. "Inappropriate" is the null criticism. It's merely the adjective form of "I don't like it."
http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html
Ironically, majority opinion here is clearly on the opposing side from where you stand, which seems to inform your "wildly" modifier, being revealing of being upset that your view isn't the prevailing one.
As for "unfair", if you read Monsanto's Wikipedia page you'll find out that what it has done to the planet and people fits that description better by ORDERS of magnitude than people deciding not to use some web service or other.
Perspective, please.
I should also say that it's pretty impressive that this made it on hackernews. I wasn't expecting this to hit the front page. It's nice to see they are open.
So this Cloudant news just show that their values don't match world view of majority developers / hackers / libertarians and as result of that they should not expect to be very popular on hacker news.
The observation from different blogs and posts is that business practices of company in question is not well received by hackers community. Now the key question here is what is modern definition of "hacker".
I claim that our society (at least online society) seems to define hacker as a person who has values which are not compatible with business practices of certain companies.
If you make some research about Monsanto you will find that the last thing you want is to have any association with that company. Those who know this fact is reacting, and probably reacting improperly. However I can't blame, but HN is not the place to express it. My sole purpose of hanging out at HN is finding inspiration, technical insight for building stuff, feel the excitement of people who achieved it, expand my understanding of business etc. I am upset that such commentary was even posted on HN.
PG should know that I did and will up-vote anything that speak against Monsanto, even if it is expressed at the wrong place and with wrong argument. On the other hand I am deeply saddened by being called dumb by someone I admire. Aren't we tired of binary logic? I expected more from him, he should not have said "you are either with us (smart) or against us (dumb)."
That's really the issue for me. Most of the analogies with Apple/Microsoft/Chevy/etc. are flawed because anyone can buy those products. In this case, Cloudant not only accepted a partnership with Monsanto (and thus, obviously had communication with them for some time) but touted it as as the greatest thing since sliced bread.
And I can understand their enthusiasm since it's a big deal with regards to their business.
But, Monsanto's track record within the last forty years is deplorable. Read their Wikipedia page, about Bovine somatotropin, or watch documentaries about them. Goodness, it's hard to like them.
First of all, the article is suggesting that simply dealing with companies with a certain amount of moral ambiguity makes you yourself somewhat inferior. By this logic, one cannot deal with any large company, because as soon as a company becomes multinational, it becomes so diverse that it is inevitable that it will step on someone's toes.
If we look at any large company, Apple with its manufacturing practices, Microsoft with its antitrust case, Intel with it's widespread claims of environmental damage from its manufacturing process, then we must conclude from what this article suggests, that no start-ups should deal with large firms. No firm can claim to be on a moral highground. Even organizations such as green peace, WWF or Sea Shephard, have caused damage to a certain amount of people but our own internal biases (such as a fear of GM or whatever else), and how the company position's themselves reflects how 'good' we think they are.
If anything, Monsanto was better at managing its disastrous PR, then we may have a better opinion of them. We need only look at companies like Apple and Intel to see how effective distraction can be in hiding a companies moral ambiguity. Therefore, I reject the premise of the article that small business should pick and choose its clients based on their 'image'.
Secondly, I think that the suggestion that Cloudant should not have publicized their contact is way off. What gaining a contract like this shows is that you are competent enough to deal with a huge infrastructure. That you are trusted with millions of dollars worth of equipment, whose malfunction may cause huge losses to a large number of people.
As far as I am aware, for cloudant at lease, they have a big win on their hands, gaining an image of reliability as well as a huge revenue stream, something which start-ups are hard-pressed to find.
We can only hold cloudant responsible for it's own actions. In no way is Cloudant supporting the actions of Monsanto. Farmers will not buy seed because cloudant manages their cloud. But other companies, ones we classify as 'good' may use cloudant because of their affiliation with Monsanto.
The original opening statement went "Fuck Monsanto, and by association, fuck Cloudant". This an emotional statement, a matter of moral outrage. What is the outrage directed toward? Well, to Monsanto and companies that deal with them? Nope. Because if that were the true outrage should be proportional to how much a company benefits Monsanto. In the big scheme of things Cloudant is not going to make that big a difference, moral outrage should instead be directed to the companies and institutions that Monsanto depends on. But those companies don't advertise their dealings with Monsanto, for reasons that should be obvious by now.
But wait a second... what is Cloudant guilty of? Poor PR judgement. Nothing more. Does that justify moral outrage? I don't think so. Moral outrage is a useful emotion, but it should always be followed up by some rational analysis. The cause of the outrage is the PR statement, not the fact that Cloudant and Monsanto are in business together.
pg hinted also hinted at this by saying that Cloudant is held to a different standard than all the other companies that deal with Monsanto. Nick O'Neill argues that pg therefore supports the PR statement and that this all reflects badly on YC and the moral fiber of the YC people. That's just taking it all way out of proportion.
I probably would have taken the moral high ground and refused to do business with Monsanto. But always taking the moral high ground is a huge handicap. If you want to have a shot at building a billion dollar company you can't afford to play with too large a handicap. The game is difficult enough as is. And if you succeed the world is going to much better off because of your business.
We read today that Jeff Bezos is a tyrant and micro-manager. So was Steve Jobs. Books have been written about the ruthlessness of Bill Gates. Larry Elison? Check. Even Richard Branson (who is a stand-up guy) committed $100k of tax fraud when he was young. Alan Sugar? Ruthless. Would we be better off without these guys? Hell no. Should we shun and shame them? Again, nope. It's better to take 10 steps forward and a half step back than to refuse to move at all.
Doesn't there seem to be hypocrisy? So YC companies have their values rise and more recognition because of the name and affirmation from the YC core but if users expect them to abide by a higher set of standards, it's all... "hold on a second, we're like any other company and shouldn't be held to a different standard?"
For the record, I don't think I would've care as much about this had the company not released such an enthusiastic PR post.
"Cloudant drawing heat from tech community over Monsanto deal"
or in the futre
"DOJ investigating possible Cloudant deal with (insert rogue nation) ..."
Of course a startup is excited to get a big client, as they should be. If Apple was a small company and signed a deal with Monsanto they'd probably make a big deal about it too.
For a startup a big client can be the difference between success and failure in the early days. Apple has no such excuse, they could refuse to sell to Monsanto if they wanted to. Why don't you do something that requires real sacrifice, like boycott your favorite company, instead of harassing a little startup?
Go downtown and grab 20 random people. Ask them "what are your opinions on Monsanto?" I'd be willing to wager the most common response would be sone form of "who?" or "I don't know"
An HN user is neither a customer or a supporter. In fact, they may even directly inhibit PG's goals.
From a business perspective, HN exists to draw the attention of smart hackers likely to build businesses which will make lots of money (for example, by making deals with companies like Monsanto).
I think in the past PG has actively tried to dissuade people from participating in HN when those people are dumb (e.g. Erlang). Although it's a losing battle, maintaining the focus and quality of an online community is a worthy task. Doing so certainly does not preclude expressing that people are dumb.
The only part of the post I needed to read.
What makes his response disappointing is that this is a great, old debate. Cloudant is developing potentially breakthrough technology ("Our founders first devised our open-source platform BigCouch while at MIT, working on Large Hadron Collider experiments generating millions of data points per second from the collision of atomic particles") to perform complex tasks ("the analysis & identification of new traits & genomic combinations in agricultural crops"). When have important technologies been developed for less than warm and fuzzy purposes? Without the Manhattan Project and the development of the atomic bomb, we wouldn't have modern forms of cancer treatment. GPS was developed to give more precision to submarine-launched ballistic missiles. There are other examples of equal importance. Is it right? Is it worth it? Whatever the answer - it deserves a thoughtful response.
What makes his response misleading is that he conflates the levels of involvement in the client/customer's work.
Apple computers, Chevy cars and Clorox cleaning supplies - are all mass produced goods. They are not custom products for specific clients for a specific purpose. It appears Cloudant is doing this for Monsanto... therefore, the purpose matters. The press release states that Cloudant has been "working with" Monsanto "for a few weeks" on "the partnership". Furthermore, Cloudant's custom work is mission-critical to Monsanto's business: "We’re not powering the CMS of some administrative division or a minor part of their website. Cloudant’s BigCouch will be the core, for both storage and analysis of a new, company-wide platform powering a fundamental aspect of a Fortune 500 business: the analysis & identification of new traits & genomic combinations in agricultural crops". This isn't the same company/customer relationship as buying Clorox. The purpose of developing genetically modified agricultural crops and hormones is central to the relationship between Cloudant and Monsanto. Again, the purpose matters.
Paul Graham says: "If the rule is, if x sells something to Monsanto, fuck x, then what you’re saying is fuck the entire corporate world". Maybe that's right. When the American people decided they didn't agree with the Apartheid regime of the South African government, the Congress and Republican-controlled Senate passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 and they stopped selling to them. I'm not saying what Monsanto is doing is apartheid - I'm saying that if you disagree with somebody, not selling to them has been an effective responsive.
Unfortunately for those that disagree with the development of genetically modified agricultural crops and hormones, there's not much that can really be done beyond not buying these goods unless there's government action that limits interactions with these companies. But if you disagree, then you can do as Paul Graham suggests in his essay "The Patent Pledge": "Now there's something any individual can do about this problem, without waiting for the government: ask companies where they stand."
If the original post had been of the form "It's a shame they're working with Monsanto because", then I expect he would either not have replied, or would have made a more measured response, but with a similar substance: when you have a startup that you're serious about growing, you sell to whoever you have to in order to keep the business moving forward. I'm not sure whether I entirely agree with that sentiment, but it's not that surprising for a pragmatic, fairly apolitical libertarian.
There are only two things that are disappointing at all: that he seemed like he was trying to slam the door on the debate, and that he disagrees with you. The former happened because he made a cranky response, while the latter can only be disappointing if you naturally expect someone as smart and likable as pg to agree with you on things like that.
I would say that this warrants taking a deep breath and relaxing first, then responding calmly and carefully.
I come to HN to avoid reading anything about "the 99%"
The problem was that over time almost every company in the S&P500 made it into the indices. The example I remember off the top of my head was a company with a terrible environmental record getting on the list of 'good' companies due to their generous maternity leave policy.
Gigantic companies are so gigantic that they have many examples of good and evil inside them, just like every other organization full of humans.
If there wasn't an advantage of using their product nobody would be buying from them.
You seem to be proposing that the government should ban farmers from buying from Monsanto. Or maybe you want the government to let some people buy from them but not everyone? Or maybe you only want farmers to be allowed to purchase a product approved by some FDA bureaucrat instead of letting the farmer decide for themselves whether a product is worth their money.
Perhaps, like many of the protesters sleeping on the street recently, you have not thought through the consequences of what you propose, and really you don't know what you want.
If you agree with them, you will do business with them. If you don’t, you won’t purchase their products.
Which is certainly how I and most of my friends live life. Sure it costs a little bit more to eat healthy local options, but to me it is worth it.
I was actually frequenting the taste of DC with my wife and kid this weekend and found that the protest was just half a block away. It was pretty awesome listening to them drop F bombs left and right out of their loud speakers with hundreds and thousands of kids right there. Great example....
But seriously, this is a fairly well laid out argument. The buck has to stop somewhere and it may as well be here.
The world is dirty, and there's no perfect company (or perfect people), but most people have red lines some place that they will not cross. Monsanto lies on the far side of the line for many.
Find another way to lobby against causes you believe in, don't expect random businesses to boycott a cause just because you believe in it. Others may not.