YC also says that they don't believe in the idea, but the founders ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But what is the connection to the parent comment? No matter how corrupt one part of government or a market becomes, it doesn’t excuse further corruption. If anything, more corruption makes additional corruption more likely to break the whole system.
That social contract is in the bin right now, so the question is moot.
Along with many, I think their collective actions point in a direction that (a) undermines democratic rule and (b) enables Trump’s corruption, but they seem to be relatively unaware or disagree with such effects.
Many of them think Trump will combat one some types of corruption (the “deep state”).
Overall, I’m more inclined to think many/most Trump supporters have reasonable core values, especially at the individual and family levels, but due to their information sources and mental processing, their overall choices don’t bode well for us, together. The biggest breakdown I think has to do with epistemic values: how does one find truth.
I don’t think most people, of any party, have the individual ability and discipline to make sense of a modern world in a rational, scientific manner. This isn’t something easily achieved, after all.
About me: I strive to not “blame” individuals in the traditional sense, because I reject free will as a meaningful concept. (Roll back the clock and a person will the behave the same in a deterministic universe. And if the universe has intrinsic randomness, we can’t ascribe free will to that randomness.)
So instead of blaming individuals, I focus on systems and their statistical effects.
I said it was in the bin — it has been thrown away, and not by recent Trump voters, but it started long before that, maybe when ethics became something you didn’t learn until or unless you went through a professional program.
Having talked with a few religious Trump voters that I consider intelligent, they have a larger picture of the world, whereas I think a lot of Harris voters (being vaguely irreligious/atheist) are implicitly making the USA their whole world. Trump voters do not see the risk the same way, and have faith elsewhere. For many Harris voters this was an existential issue. That all said, those Trump voters I spoke with still seemed apologetic.
However it came about, there clearly is a misalignment in the stated social values world, and that is why that social contract doesn’t exist anymore. Whether that is because family forces, or tribal forces, or identity forces, or something else carried the day instead, well, maybe the future historians can sort out.
The most basic idea of a social contract is the legitimacy of a government to exist and function. This might mean to carry out various agreed-upon roles. And/or it might mean to operate according to some defined procedures, like the rule of law. The vast majority of people either consciously accept this or live as though they do. Of course there is variation on the proper role of government: does it include national defense, maintaining order, creating fair markets, collecting taxes, protecting civil liberties, internalizing economic externalities, investing in R&D, providing a healthcare floor, fighting corruption, etc?
Answers to these questions are non-obvious. Attempts to simplify the set of relevant questions means imposing a worldview.
On the ethical question, a consequentialist would say it depends on the outcomes. Like many consequentialist analyses, this is complicated. Consider this: Investing in a similar company might validate the market and make it more likely for the company and/or its people to reach viability.
That's not necessarily bad though. People like to throw out these terms that sometimes have negative connotation as if they are inherently negative. If you think the conflict of interest is a bad thing, you need to elaborate on why you feel it's bad, not just pretend it's prima facia bad.
Anecdotally, people do get accepted after 2-4 failures. Maybe YC was on the fence about those founders and their willingness to slam themselves against a wall repeatedly tipped the scales, or maybe they invest in a certain kind of founder and when they run out of those they invest in "promising" ideas.
That still doesn't preclude them backing two founder groups that have similar ideas.