Invitation for DNC reception with Obama at YC

I'd love to think you're serious, but there were three fucking posts---almost all identical---about Syrian chemical weapons on the front page this morning. All of a sudden, now that it's about YC, you're saying, "oh, we usually penalise this."

I at least have respect for the fact you didn't remove this thread, but still, I'd prefer it if you got off your political high horse when it makes YC look bad.

From what I gathered, raising money for is the simplest form of lobbying, and Y-Combinator feel they need that access to smooth transition from its alumni proving a business makes money to making it squarely legal. I’m not sure why the DNC rather than RNC or another party; I believe you can’t have both. It might be because it seems unlikely the RNC to win the next election either in San Francisco city-hall, or in California, or even at the Federal level.

In either case, I wouldn’t expect Y Combinator not to have appreciated the sensitivity of their decision off the bat.

The Republicans have been actively, intentionally sabotaging the economy that sustains YC's growth for years now, since the very beginning of Obama's term. YC's success is tied to the success of the American economy in general, as well as other big-picture things that are easy to forget (like having a planet to keep a headquarters on, for example, or not having that headquarters engulfed by nuclear bombs). Republicans do stuff every day to make terrible outcomes for the country and the world more likely.

Democrats have lots of problems and make lots of mistakes. But American politics is zero-sum. Take power away from Democrats and it will be given to Republicans. We should all be doing whatever we can to prevent that from happening, while also advocating for positive changes within the democratic party.

Until the Republican party loses all real power, ceases to exist or radically changes, Y Combinator (like all American enterprises) is more at risk than it should be.

If you're skeptical that this stuff really matters, think about how different the economy, and thus the start up world, could have been if Bush had never been president, or if Obama had had bad-faith-filibuster-proof majorities throughout his terms.

YC is a private business. Their management is entitled to participate in the political process in any way they choose. If YC's voting interest is OK with an in-kind contribution, that's their right too.

The idea that you'd find this kind of thing shocking is a little surprising, since it's very much the norm across all political parties.

If you'd like to pivot to a discussion of libertarian politics, I'd observe that there are companies that not only play host to libertarian political activist organizations, but also directly and aggressively lobby in favor of their favored policy objectives.

I don't understand why politics can't be a tool to achieving those ends. Especially when the DNC is aligned with the startup community on many of the key political issues, like founder immigration reform, that can affect all of us.

This is one of those distinctions that are likely to be lost on a lot of people.

That said, like others have written, this kind of thing is probably what it takes to have some influence, unless Obama has taken to reading snark-filled threads about the NSA on reddit.

So we have what happened.

How about this scenario instead? An announcement that due to all the serious issues in technology affecting startups, YC is going to donate its facilities to both political parties to hold fundraisers and get to know the people their policies are influencing. The first one is upcoming on yadda yadda yadda Then add some small print about how one of the corporate officers has to endorse any proposed event.*

Then you can all get together and give money to one bunch, never let the other bunch show up, and still get to look like heroes. Instead, we get this brouhaha.

Doesn't look too optimal from a PR standpoint.

*Note that this would only work for one or two election cycles until the gig was up. But still, it'd look a heckuva lot better than what we have now.

So to be clear, you would have rather had this at your apartment and are declaring yourself to be a supporter of the DNC?

YC is not obligated to be non-partisan of course. The only way to take the non-partisan line would be to allow Republicans the chance to do the same, libertards, etc. You could do so, and they probably wouldn't raise any money, or have much impact - throw a party and no one comes, kind of problem. 90% of employee donations for major tech firms are to democrats, and my read is that you'd have to be almost willfully clueless about the bay area to not realize how heavily democratic SV is.

Question - is this the first time YC has hosted a political event at its offices?

If so, I wonder if this is one of the early signs of change now that PG is letting go of the reins. I always suspected that a guy who could write something like "What You Can't Say" wasn't a kool-aid drinking, party-line kind of guy.

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

Sam Altman, you need not pay close attention because you'd need to be blind to miss the impending shitstorm on social media. I hope you remembered to bring lube.

The idea is we need to get past crap like this, not play along with it.

That's not an argument to play politics. That's an argument as to why the system is fundamentally flawed.

Heinlein once said something to the effect that politics was like digestion. The end-product is as unpleasant, but it's no less vital to your continued well being.

It's especially odd that geeks have a hard time understanding "the deeply political nature of the world." Because they're constantly playing tribal politics around languages/environments/static-vs-dynamic typing...

This is terribly condescending, similar to saying that vegetarians have a hard time understanding food. The status quo is not the system, it's just one implementation of it.

This is a political fundraising visit. If it were a visit by the President of the United States in an official capacity to talk about issues, I would be ecstatic that it was happening at YC, regardless of the President's party. The difference is the trip is being paid by the DNC, from political funds; an official visit is paid by the taxpayer.

Maybe I've been influenced by working in government facilities where any political lobbying or support is completely banned, but this seems exceedingly inappropriate.

The following will probably mark me as persona non grata with some people at YC.

I find American politics abhorrent, including both parties. The president's policies have been and are abhorrent, too. Further, the notion that one would pay tens of thousands of dollars for such an event is profoundly disgusting. Part of what is wrong with politics in this country is that kind of money.

As for those who claim that it's politics as usual, that one must play along -- when did conformity become justification?

Imagine if the feds had a nice small social network of the elite in tech and those who aspire or like to become techies, and if they had access to all their clicks, comments affiliations etc.

Better investment than that huge data centre in Mormon-land.

Do you actually think the DNC or the President's staff would allow that to happen? This isn't a dig at the Democrats, either--I can't imagine the RNC allowing a fundraiser dinner to become a town hall meeting to grill the President on a controversial issue.