The real question is why HN is filled with people that have values completely orthogonal to the VC space, like people wanting to leverage the law to make other people do things.
And besides, VCs and their portfolio companies leverage the law to make other people do (or not do) things all of the time. IP law being an obvious example.
This whole idea that founders and capitalists contribute some special sauce to society and therefore shouldn't be regulated is some old fart libertarian Randian fantasy silliness and I'm glad it's being called out. That sort of thing just doesn't work in civilized society.
If someone made a competitor that had just-as-good tech discussion without the VC “value-add”, I’d never come here ever again.
I also like seeing so many of the ruling class get angry and post about requiring salary ranges, it’s been very entertaining this morning :)
Its mind-boggling that so many users come here to rant against capitalism, or advocate against startups, or have absolutely no relationship whatsoever with the space. It's not only crazy for me, its crazy for the makers of this site was well!
The whole salary transparency discussion IS something many hackers find interesting, especially since much of the actual "hacking" is on the labor side rather than the capital side.
I don't think it's hackers' fault that venture capitalism made a bad name for itself. The VCs did that well enough on their own. Hacking culture predates (and will hopefully outlast) tech opportunism.
And I also hope this forum/audience eventually moves to a FOSS, community-supported model instead of being a part of YC. But for now it's where we gather.
This is literally everyone in the world, including yourself unless you’re in favor of a lawless society.
However, this community has a lot of intelligent folks who both disagree with my understandings of the world and who have a lot of insight into domains I never want to touch (finance, bigco culture, small-l right libertarian politics).
There are plenty of sane, interesting, well-informed folks here who I vehemently disagree with, and that's a necessary condition of learning about the world.
Nowadays if you're in a professional organization, for example if you're a lawyer, people will make professional complaints against you for your first amendment speech, irrespective of your professional practice. Essentially filing fraudulent complaints to silence you. And they do so as an organized political activity.
And sadly it's been hilariously effective so far.
You don't give up your rights just because you practice a particular profession.
If you say something that some people don't like, the first step in response shouldn't be them coming after your livelihood.