13 ms·

Sam Altman: “YC not going to fire someone over support of a candidate”

168 points by martgnz 10y ago

jkmcf 10y ago
As bad as Donald is, he just isn't bad enough to take this severe of an action against a supporter . It would be anti-American at its worst.
- Avshalom 10y ago
  I dunno, firing people for debatably legal reasons seems fairly american to me. Also I'm not sure that "firing" is an accurate word here. Theil isn't really an employee is he?
  - jkmcf 10y ago
    Firing the person making the comments isn't the same as firing someone who supports a party and the candidate regardless.
- arcanus 10y ago
  I agree. This is the candidate of a major political party. Calling for the elimination of positions of those you disagree with is only going to make the world a more polar place. We need more discussions and less calls for firing people or imprisoning them, from both sides.
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  Agreed. If someone is acting as a political surrogate, even if I think the candidate is awful, as long as it's not interfering with their work and they're not explicitly representing the company I don't see the problem. I also wonder if DHH has the same thoughts if someone is a Hillary candidate.
- drewrv 10y ago
  > He just isn't bad enough to take this severe of an action against a supporter. He's expressed just about every bigoted position there is (against races, religions, and women). He's expressed just about every fascist position there is (jailing political opponent, killing/torturing innocents, shutting down press outlets). What would Donald have to do?
- archagon 10y ago
  "He just isn't bad enough"? Have you listened to the garbage coming out of his mouth? At this point, I almost fear to ask: what would be bad enough? Someone outright advocating for genocide?
BinaryIdiot 10y ago
Honestly it might be best to flag this thread until Sam's post comes. Otherwise we're going to have people arguing about whatever side with an incomplete context. Edit: I see I'm being down voted but this tweet stream has about 4 different, intersecting contexts to deal with especially regarding people trying to pressure YC to drop their partnership with Peter and DHH saying he'd fire an employee for being a political surrogate for Trump. But fine. Let's argue about one specific, tiny piece here and then we can do this all over again when Sam's post comes out.
- Kadin 10y ago
  I would appreciate some context and background as to what's going on, certainly. Twitter makes it pretty hard to backtrack through multiple conversations to figure out what started a particular thread.
  - BinaryIdiot 10y ago
    Basically DHH (guy who basically created Ruby on Rails and Basecamp) complained to Sam about their partnership with Peter Thiel since he just donated over a $1 million to the Trump campaign. DHH, in his argument with Paul G, said that he would have fired an employee who was a Trump surrogate. Lots of people supporting each person and it's basically a political shit show after that with some people saying you can't fire someone just for their political beliefs and others say Trump is an edge cased monster that should be handled differently. That was my understanding of it but I missed some of the beginning. There were also big names that I can't find now that seemed to be retweeting each one in support. Seems messy.
- pyb 10y ago
  I think we pretty much have all the context we need on Trump, Thiel's views towards Trump, pg and sama's views of the Trump situation, Thiel's role at YC. It's all public information. Everybody should be able to express judgment on YC's way forward at this point.
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nostrademons 10y ago
FWIW, I'm glad YC is taking this stance. Firing someone over their personal political views is very icky. You would be up in arms if your boss fired you because of who you were supporting for president, so why would you wish that upon someone else?
- idlewords 10y ago
  We're not talking about firing, or employees, or personal political views. Otherwise your argument stands. At issue is the most public endorsement possible (a keynote speech, and then a 1.25M donation) by a YC partner, and YC's refusal to speak out about it, or distance itself from this extraordinary gesture of support.
  - nostrademons 10y ago
    YC does not (to my knowledge) have a corporate position on the presidential race - I'd welcome any citations where a YC partner, speaking in an official capacity, endorses one of the current presidential candidates. When they have taken corporate political positions, it's usually been narrowly defined, in support of specific legislation that affects the tech industry (eg. anti-SOPA, anti-software-patents, pro-immigration). The vast majority of YC partners' personal positions are strongly pro-Clinton. You can see that just by following sama, paulg, or paultoo on Twitter.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      It would suffice for me to see any public reluctance on the part of Paul Graham or Sam Altman to continue to associate professionally with Thiel so long as he is playing this role in American politics. I don't demand that Altman and Graham know exactly what to do about this. I don't demand that they "fire" Thiel (they can't, as Thiel isn't an employee). I don't even demand that they strike him from the roster of Partners to the Regional Partner of YC. I understand that this stuff is complicated and that there's more going on behind the scenes of these relationships than we know. Unfortunately, both Altman and Graham are being supportive of Thiel, despite the fact that he donated $1.25MM to Trump's campaign just days ago.
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zorpner 10y ago
Of course, Thiel is not a YC employee, so a statement about firing someone is irrelevant.
- Hydraulix989 10y ago
  I'm sure they have each other on speed dial though. Thiel definitely wants to continue to have a fast track towards investing into high-growth YC startups, and YC doesn't want to damage that relationship. This reminds me of Palmer Luckey getting "disappeared" by Facebook, which I didn't think was ethical. In a truly democratic society, taking a different (not to say, also completely mainstream) political stance shouldn't threaten one's livelihood.
  - eropple 10y ago
    > This reminds me of Palmer Luckey getting "disappeared" by Facebook, which I didn't think was ethical. In a truly democratic country, taking a different (not to say, completely mainstream) political stance shouldn't threaten one's livelihood. I would not buy a Rift because there is no way on God's green earth that I would reward Palmer Luckey monetarily for supporting "shitposting" even if it was not directly related to the kinds of people (/pol/ dross and others) who have issued death and rape threats to people I know and care about. That is, in a way (a small way), "threatening his livelihood". I also don't buy video games made by EA because I think they are a company that has some real bad practices. That is, in a way (a small way), "threatening the livelihoods" of everybody who works there. We live as political beings, and that goes beyond what you say to what you do. Buying a USB sound card (which I just did a few moments ago) on Amazon is an expression of multiple political beliefs: that I am okay with large retailers over small ones in some situations, that I am okay with purchasing imported items, particularly from China, given the price of the item (i.e. I'm not willing to pay more than X% for "Made in the USA"). Probably a few others that I don't consciously recognize, at the moment. You can't opt out of being a political creature because you live in a goddamned polity. You can only take responsibility for how your actions impact others, and you can suffer the slings and arrows of what those others believe in return. And there is nothing undemocratic about refusing to associate, monetarily or otherwise, with somebody you don't like. There is something undemocratic about attempting to levy laws saying that they can't participate in the political process. Conflating the private responses of private parties and the public actions of the government is at best misguided and at worst dishonest.
brhsiao 10y ago
I think people take symbolism too seriously. I won't argue that it never matters what message an organization sends, but people should stop apophenically inferring messages where there are none. This would include, for example, adopting the charitable explanation that Thiel was hired as a source of valuable advice to YC startups, not because YC supports Trump. I'd like a serious answer to this, actually: why does this matter?
- jacquesm 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia
  - brhsiao 10y ago
    Hm, I paused for a second before using that word. Did I use it wrong?
    - jacquesm 10y ago
      No, not at all, it's just that it's a word I'd never seen before and so I figured better to add a link for those who also haven't seen it used before. Google comes up with 400 results for it, and this is the first time it's used on HN.
carsongross 10y ago
It's time for the moderates to come out and say it: we won't be defoo'ing or firing people for supporting Hillary and we won't be defoo'ing or firing people for supporting Trump. Or Johnson or Stein or Harambe, for that matter.
- wincy 10y ago
  Sort of off topic, I agree with your sentiment. However, has the word defoo'ing come to have a broader or more generic meaning? I was under the impression that defoo stood for "departure from family of origin" specifically.
  - thisisparker 10y ago
    I think this is just the de- prefix with the generic placeholder "foo".
    - wincy 10y ago
      Well defoo means abandoning your family and cutting all ties. So it would fit here if you extended the meaning a little to mean cutting ties with any relation not specifically family.
  - adiabatty 10y ago
    Oh, I had no idea — where did this word come from? In what circles is this word popular?
    - wincy 10y ago
      Stefan Molyneux of Free Domain Radio coined the term. http://defoo.org/defoo/ http://defoo.org/defoo/ He's sort of an anarcho capitalist voluntaryist turned men's rights advocate who has some pretty extreme viewpoints, one of which is that if your family of origin doesn't agree with your beliefs you should completely detach and disengage from them. Stop all contact. I'm not saying I agree with it at all, but it was interesting to see the term used here.
3pt14159 10y ago
There is a difference between firing an employee and continuing to do business with someone that funnels millions of dollars into a racist, sexist, sexual predator that's backed by a foreign intelligence service. Don't lie with dogs. Don't take money from Andreessen if you think Snowden was a hero. Don't continue to partner with Thiel after he continues to support Trump after revelations of sexual predation put to rest that any of this is just folksy bluntness. Trump is the most dangerous candidate I've ever seen. MSNBC has reported that he's contemplated the use of nuclear weapons against ISIS. Continuing to prop up a billionaire that actively campaigns with Trump and continues to funnel money towards him is a grave mark against YC, and frankly surprising given how for most of YC's history they've prioritised helping first and money second.
- deleted 10y ago
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- Hydraulix989 10y ago
  Moral accusations aside (after all, no politician has a clean slate), I'm really curious why you think it's a good idea to mix politics and business? Personally, though, I think both candidates have their fair share of dirt. Here in California, we are pretty shielded from the other side. I've been home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (where pg is from) for the past month working remotely, and it has been a real eye-opener hearing the other side of the story. Full disclosure: I'm voting for Hillary. > "given how for most of YC's history they've prioritised helping first and money second" Can you elaborate? Not that I disagree with you, but I am curious what your thoughts are. > "Continuing to prop up a billionaire that actively campaigns with Trump and continues to funnel money towards him is a grave mark against YC" I strongly disagree ("BUT {mainstream political candidate} is, represents, or supports X" isn't a valid rebuttal either, no matter what X is -- supporting said candidate should never justify an employer jeopardizing one's livelihood in a _truly_ democratic society; McCarthyism is a great analogy).
  - DasIch 10y ago
    You're making a mistake that seems to be common in the US. You're assuming politics can just be excluded or ignored somehow. It's an idea that is utterly ridiculous. Politics is about designing how humans live together. Everything you do or say that somehow has an effect on another human being, whether it is direct or indirect, whether it changes or reaffirms the status quo is political. Continueing to do business with Thiel is just as political as to stop doing business with him. To pretend otherwise only shows both how privileged and ignorant of politics you are.
AvenueIngres 10y ago
The mere fact that it has to be said is concerning. Even more so when it is happening at an institution that is among the most meritocratic in SV. It speaks volume about the depth and toxicity of some self-reinforcing militant feedback loops. It is quite interesting that it is so dangerous for your career to hold "alternative" views (wrt. to mainstream ideologies there) in a place that has cultish adoration of diversity as an end in itself. Even more so interesting to see American progressives wear the clothes of puritanism and McCarthysm. The fascist menace is threatening American society! Quick! You must make sure that those two engineers who have said they would vote Trump lose their jobs! The fascists want to infiltrate every layer of society to bring down the glorious progress. Call this hotline and get them arrested and tried for treason against Progress. Otherwise, brace yourself to hear the drums of nationalism beat again and bring the world on the brinks of genocide. If you are not with us you are against us! Anyway, good on Sam for not taking part in that collective hysteria. I must say the hang-over from the current kool-aid binge drinking party is going to be harsh. So far this attitude of shaming people for not embracing the beautiful and unquestionable axiology of Progress has only been furthermore polarization and resentment. If you want to allow companies to fire their employees based on the political stance they take during a national election; you should, by the same logic, allow them to discriminate based on gender, age or ethnicity. Because yes, what you are essentially saying is that corporations are not politically neutral agents. They can hold and enforce ideologies when it comes to their human management practices. Which, of course, does not fly well when it starts impacting you negatively because you do not hold the "right" opinions.
- int_19h 10y ago
  > Because yes, what you are essentially saying is that corporations are not politically neutral agents. They can hold and enforce ideologies when it comes to their human management practices. If corporations are expected to be truly "politically neutral agents", then IBM providing services to the Nazis was nothing wrong (cries of "Godwin!" go here). I mean, money's money, right? They have a responsibility to their shareholders to be profitable, and genocide is just a political question, on which the German people have spoken (and even if they didn't, again, whether democracy is good or not is also a political question). But no, it doesn't work that way. We do actually expect corporations to be political to some extent. The only real question here is what that extent is. I don't really have a problem drawing the line at someone like Trump. If you do, that's fine, but all that pompous talk about puritanism and McCarthysm is misdirected. Unless, of course, you really do think that IBM was in the right.
idlewords 10y ago
Thiel is a YC partner, not an employee they can fire. And what people like me are calling for is for YC to disavow him. It's much easier to defend "we won't fire an employee for his beliefs", but it is also intellectually dishonest.
- sama 10y ago
  You seem to continue to try to deliberately misunderstand this, but he is not a YC partner. He is a part-time partner, which means he spends a small fraction of his time advising YC companies, but does not have equity in YC.
  - idlewords 10y ago
    The word partner is in his job title. From my perspective, this looks like the worst kind of weasely quibbling. The broader point is that Thiel does not come home from a hard day's work at the bit mines, counting on the YC paycheck to get him through the next payday. He's your business partner, however construed.
    - brhsiao 10y ago
      I'm not understanding what exactly you want. If you're saying Sam should come out and say he disagrees with Thiel, he's already said he finds Trump repugnant. Are you saying that in addition to this, he also has to say, "I now draw attention to the fact that by opposing Trump, I am hereby disagreeing with my partner who supports him"? Why? And could it possibly also be because YC has other people in it, and disavowing a partner of YC by himself would be acting irresponsibly toward his partners? If you're saying YC as an institution should disavow Thiel's actions, is every company expected to choose a political stance, then disavow any partners who act against it? For that matter, it's disingenuous of you to point to an individual's tweets denouncing Trump, then to the fact that his organization hasn't done the same, and call it a lack of moral courage. It's also disingenuous to suggest, as you do in your tweets where you warn women and Muslims against joining YC, that because one of their partners donated to Trump and spoke at his convention, YC as an institution is now somehow poisoned with the views typical of a Trump supporter. Presumably Thiel was added as a partner for the simple reason that he is a valuable source of advice for startups. He can still be one as a keynote speaker for Trump. Besides, most people who endorse candidates, even people who act as keynote speakers, don't agree completely with their candidate, which further weakens your argument. Finally, I sometimes read your tweets, and I noticed you tweeted https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/787756601281085440 https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/787756601281085440 to Paul Graham's wife. Your usual sense of humor becomes weirdly aggressive when you write about YC, like you really want to pick a fight. What's your problem with them?
lvs 10y ago
That wasn't really the issue that was raised, speaking of intellectual dishonesty. Plenty of companies withdrew advertising from the RNC over Trump. Business partnership is a contractual relationship between equals, not a hierarchical one with superiors and subordinates.
nodesocket 10y ago
Brendan Eich[1] was essentially fired for supporting Prop 8 and he only donated $1,000. What frustrates me the most is the pure hypocrisy of liberal activists. It is a dangerous precedent for left wing politics to adopt. What if right wing executives started calling for employees that support Hillary to be fired or publicly shaming them on Twitter? How it that any different? My argument is not with Trump, because I am not voting for him and personally think he is an orangutan. My argument is with the utter hypocrisy of liberal activists. [1] "Critics of Eich within Mozilla tweeted to gay activists that he had donated $1,000 to California Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California until 2013, when it was declared unconstitutional and marriages were allowed to resume. Eich stood by his decision to fund the campaign, but wrote on his blog that he was sorry for “causing pain” and pledged to promote equality at Mozilla. Gay activists created an online shaming campaign against Eich, with OkCupid declaring they would block access to the Firefox browser unless he stepped down."
- DougN7 10y ago
  Hypocrisy is the perfect word for it.
- wldcordeiro 10y ago
  Brendan Eich's "firing" was such bullshit, I would have loved to see Mozilla's path had he gotten to actually work the job. I don't think we would have seen Brave, but Firefox/Mozilla may have had a resurgence under him we aren't seeing under current leadership.
- Sniffnoy 10y ago
  Calling such people "liberal" is a betrayal of the basic meaning of the term, IMO. They're the illiberal left, nothing more.
  - jrapdx3 10y ago
    That's correct assuming you are referring to distinctions among "classical liberalism"[0], the more recent "social liberalism"[1], and related branches of liberalism. In fact the tenets of classic liberal principles is more or less congruent with the ideology of American conservatism[2] again as contrasted with "social" and related forms of conservatism[3]. The extremes of the "social" variants of liberal and conservative thought define the appearance of the virulent modern versions of "left" and "right" wing politically-polarized positions. Worth pointing out that other dichotomies of Republican/Democrat, populist/globalist construction are context-dependent and frequently orthogonal to a stance within the classic conservative/liberal political spectrum. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_Sta... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism
marze 10y ago
Say someone was fired for supporting Clinton in this election by a company run by a supported of Trump. Would it make news? Freedom of thought and speech was what America was founded on, so they say.
- nodesocket 10y ago
  Completely agree and my point, but my comment got downvoted immediately.
- DougN7 10y ago
  I doubt it. We're in a liberal echo chamber here...
  - DougN7 10y ago
    The down votes are sort of humorous. A comment in another thread "From my observations, the tech industry leans pretty heavily liberal/democrat" was upvoted on balance.
- tjalfi 10y ago
  Political affiliations are protected classes in some states. Source: http://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/discrimination-employment.aspx http://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/discrimina...
mayneack 10y ago
Not saying it's the same or that anyone should be fired for their beliefs etc, but YC has taken some political stances in the past. https://techcrunch.com/2011/12/22/paul-graham-sopa-supporting-companies-no-longer-allowed-at-yc-demo-day/ https://techcrunch.com/2011/12/22/paul-graham-sopa-supportin...
- Analemma_ 10y ago
  Well, of course that's not the same. Thiel just thinks giving women the right to vote was democracy's greatest mistake. That's just a small thing to be brushed aside. But SOPA was something that could actually damage the economic prospects of corporations! Obviously you must take a stand when it's something that's actually important! If the preceding barrage of sarcasm didn't make it clear enough, I'm quite disgusted with sama and Hacker News right now. Taking the high road like this is only possible when it's not your neck on the chopping block. Thiel thinks giving women the right to vote was a mistake; Trump thinks all Mexicans and Muslims are violent madmen who should be barred from entering the United States. Hacker News can gregariously see past these faults because they're not in the crosshairs, but if Shanley Kane were a YC partner and saying "all men support rape culture, even if indirectly", there's no friggin way this comment section would be so sanguine.
  - ScottBurson 10y ago
    > Thiel just thinks giving women the right to vote was democracy's greatest mistake. He's claimed not to actually think that [0]. Statistically, few women are Libertarians, and arguably, he was just referencing this point, which is apparently familiar to the Libertarian community, if not to the rest of us. [0] https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/05/01/peter-thiel/suffrage-isnt-danger-other-rights-are https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/05/01/peter-thiel/suffrage...
gkoberger 10y ago
Here's context for anyone having a hard time following on Twitter: https://storify.com/gkoberger/dhh-yc https://storify.com/gkoberger/dhh-yc Paul Graham (@paulg) = former head of YC David Heinemeier Hansson (@dhh) = creator of basecamp/rails Sam Altman (@sama) = current head of YC Peter Thiel (@peterthiel) = part-time parter at YC, well-known investor, current Trump surrogate who just donated $1.25MM
- outis 10y ago
  DHH: Although Thiel would already have been on a Performance Improvement Plan for his legal wars against the press. So easy move What the fuck.
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wenham 10y ago
So I'm I right in thinking that there is a call to 'punish' some people due to their (albeit unpopular with many) political views? That doesn't seem very progressive or civilised...undemocratic even.
Alupis 10y ago
Can we all cut the shit? I'm sorry to be so blunt, but you're all acting like idiots. Terminating someone over political ideology is the single most fascist, fear-mongering, and un-freedom idea one can possibly have! Half of you support someone who says mean things - the other half of you support someone who does mean things. You're both wrong, and right!!! Arguing otherwise is simply to be blind to one's own prejudices, rational or not! Supporting someone being terminated simply because of political ideology is incomprehensibly insane for a people who tout themselves as "free"!
dickman3000 10y ago
If Thiel were the CEO of a corporation he could be held to violate his fiduciary duty by giving the corporation bad press by supporting someone like Trump. Trump has made a lot of enemies in the United States: minorities, gays, women, people who don't want to see the democratic institutions of America taken apart. He has also willingly built a coalition of outspoken neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other individuals. It'd be like if a CEO threw his outspoken support behind David Duke, spoke at his rallies, and donated 1.25 million dollars to his campaign. That's what's happening here. You don't think shareholders wouldn't have a problem with that? "Yeah, stigmatize us in the eyes of society, that's great for business." People aren't being realistic when they say business people should just have carte blanche to say whatever they want. They owe their shareholders, partners, and employees a duty of care to not bring ridiculously bad press to their organization. If the people at YC don't care about this bad press, and the business it will likely lose, then that's their business. But to say that it never happens in the business world shows a lack of understanding how things work.
- tedunangst 10y ago
  I think that's a pretty novel legal theory, that CEOs have a fiduciary duty to not say things that might upset people.
  - dickman3000 10y ago
    It's not really that novel; it's the same underlying issue behind anything that would tarnish a brand.
    - Turing_Machine 10y ago
      Last time I looked, Trump's support and Clinton's support were pretty close to evenly split (Clinton slightly ahead in most polls, but not by that much). Why is supporting Trump more "tarnishing" than supporting Clinton? I understand that you don't like Trump (which is fine, I don't much like him either), but why do your opinions get to control? Do you think there aren't people who find Clinton equally repugnant, or even more so? I assure you that there are (I'm not voting for either, myself). But, you know, the money of Trump supporters is just as green as the money of Clinton supporters, if you want to cast it solely in terms of fiduciary duty. Probably even more so, since I would expect that the median Trump supporter is wealthier than the median Clinton supporter.
WalterBright 10y ago
This is why we have a secret ballot voting system in the US.
losteverything 10y ago
What justice Roberts said about forming opinions [0] holds true For me and anything "Trump" My gut is one thing but when i actually write (type) it out I get surprised how I change my opinion. I can't find a cspan interview where he was even more open about how the act of writing out opinions often makes one change your initial thoughts [0] http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=2661589&page=1 http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=2661589&page=1
shawnee_ 10y ago
Sometimes it's hard to follow the logic of conversations on Twitter. In this case, I'm pretty sure the original question posed by DHH was simply: has Thiel put more money into Trump's candidacy, or investing in promising YC startups[1]? Seems a fair and legitimate question. How it devolved into "at what point do you fire someone for their political activities?" is an interesting sidetrack; however, I think it's still ancillary to the original question. [1] https://twitter.com/dhh/status/787547255259758592
sama 10y ago
Also, a reminder of what I personally think about Trump from early this summer: http://blog.samaltman.com/trump http://blog.samaltman.com/trump
- idlewords 10y ago
  So why do you continue to do business with one of his greatest supporters? At some point, these are just empty words. It would be less galling if you weren't an alarmist about Trump.
  - Sniffnoy 10y ago
    EDIT: This comment has substantial problems, though I think the conclusion is still essentially correct; see discussion below Because that's liberalism. Separating concerns like this is the sort of thing that is fundamental to a liberal society. Trump is a serious problem. He is fundamentally illiberal. But what sort of victory is it if we defeat Trump and give up on liberalism anyway? Yeah, that whole Enlightenment project, let's just toss that right out, because we need to do so to preserve the Enlightenment. Destroying the village is a wonderful way of saving it. Instead of rule by reactionary tyrants who determine what you can and can't say, we'll have rule by leftist tyrants who determine what you can and can't say! Such an improvement. It does us no good to become the enemy in order to defeat it. And, what, are we to believe that this transformation is temporary? That oh sure maybe we'll fight dirty this time, but next time and in all the future times it will all be OK, liberal society will just come right back? No way. It is so much easier to destroy than to create. This sort of viciousness, of splitting everything into "us" and "them" and demanding that the "us" be in absolute control of everything... that's natural. That's human nature. To get people of different groups to live together without immediately going for each other's throats, to build the structures that allow that to occur, that takes work. We start down that road, we brush those supports aside, we're not coming back anytime soon. And again -- the Trumpers are very, very, wrong, but if we use dirty tricks to go after them, all they'll see is that we're using dirty tricks to go after them. It's a mistake to think that our behavior doesn't influence theirs. If we break the "no firing people for political reasons" rule, then so will they. The eventual endpoint of all this is a split society where Democrats can only buy from Democrats and Republicans can only buy from Republicans... or maybe it's another 30-years war. I think "don't start another 30-years war" is a good rule. (Which is another reason not to vote Trump, because he'll try to go after the Muslims and the Mexicans, and then... but you know that already.) In short, defeating Trump is important, but that's only part of what it's going to take to prevent a descent into illiberalism. ( Or maybe I'd be better off just linking to Scott Alexander: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-community-and-civilization/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-co... ) EDIT: Rereading, the final link is not actually appropriate in this case, given how much of a threat Donald Trump actually is. That said, I think my position is still basically correct due to the reasons I give in the grandchild comment.
andrewchambers 10y ago
The only difference between trump and Hillary is her corruption is complicated enough people like you can brush it under the rug and feel good about yourselves.
- dang 10y ago
  That crosses into personal attack, and that's not allowed on HN, so please don't do it. More precisely: please scrupulously avoid it. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12721084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12721084 and marked it off-topic.
  - andrewchambers 10y ago
    If I resubmit without the tail comment will it remain? Edit:Amended a new comment to stick to the point
return0 10y ago
Why don't people see Thiel as SV's insurance ? If (atheist-god forbid) trump wins, you have an enthusiastic supporter and firm SV believer by his side (who also happens to be gay) to contain the wild beast. Would you rather have some evangelical nutjob who would put fig leaves on your porn?
tocotuno 10y ago
I am sincerely happy to see most of HN is taking the stance of defending Thiel--by doing it, they are simply defending the freedom to back the candidate you like, and not the one that the industry wants you to like. I have a Twitter stream of hundreds of developers from different backgrounds and it was like 99% pro-Hillary--by defending Trump you would get spanked. Something was really wrong there, and this conversation we are having proves it. And I can't help but wonder if Thiel did this just so this conversation would spark. It simply is brilliant.
sitkack 10y ago
> I am confident that Peter joining will be great for YC.
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ryporter 10y ago
Political views are one aspect of a person, but they do not define that person. Thiel himself understands this. When he was a law school classmate with Alex Karp (now CEO of Palantir), they constantly argued bitterly over politics, because Karp held an extremely liberal point of view. They were also very good friends and have clearly maintained a very good business relationship. I personally despise Trump, but I agree with Sam -- other people's political views don't really matter to me. Hopefully after this election ends, everyone can calm down and keep things in context. Business and politics are separate.
dep_b 10y ago
> Trump is the most dangerous candidate I've ever seen. Five million dead in Iraq after George W. So what exactly are your predictions for Trump's presidency? Or a white American pussy is more valuable than a foreign brown life? I don't like the guy but it's not a mass murderer yet.
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- dang 10y ago
  > Or a white American pussy is more valuable than a foreign brown life? That takes this thread from beyond dreadful to beyond disgraceful. Please don't comment like this here. Without that sentence your comment would have been fine—at least relative to the thread. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12720961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12720961 and marked it off-topic.
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yladiz 10y ago
There are (at least) two views to this, I think. One view is that the personal and business aspects of a persons life are separate and one shouldn't necessarily affect the other, which is the argument that Sam Altman is making here. The second view is that they are definitely linked, and allowing someone to do something morally reprehensible (if you consider supporting Donald Trump that) means that they aren't with the vision of the company and it's fine to fire them. The reality is that it depends on the level of the person in the organization (as well as the organization itself, but that's not part of this argument). For example, if a janitor supports Donald Trump, that doesn't really affect the business because no one outside the organization thinks that the janitor is representative of the organization as a whole. However, if a C-level employee did something that's considered morally reprehensible, it can affect the business because people associate the business with the people that run it. In this case, I don't agree that Thiel should be "fired" because people wouldn't immediately associate Thiel with the company and he doesn't "work" full time with them (he's a part time partner). If Sam Altman had come out in support of Trump with a donation that would be a different story.
imh 10y ago
Am I missing something? What's this about?
memossy 10y ago
Something missing in the hundreds (thousands?) of comments on this is why Thiel supports Trump. The bottom line is that Thiel believes the 'positives' of a Trump presidency would outweigh the negatives. The expected value is positive versus a status quo Clinton administration so he should support Trump. He lays his priority set out quite clearly in his RNC speech: http://time.com/4417679/republican-convention-peter-thiel-transcript/ http://time.com/4417679/republican-convention-peter-thiel-tr... and if you agree with his central premises of a structurally broken economy, excessive foreign intervention etc then tbh Trump is the only viable candidate even after recent headlines, particularly if you believe in the strength of US institutions to curb any excesses. If Thiel's position were based on hatred then I think it would be another story, but as it is, again given acceptance of the possibility of his central premises being correct and Trump being a 'viable' (as in could win vs Stein or Johnson) major party candidate his support is rational. Across America Trump will win fifty million votes or more and while some of them may be deplorables voting for deplorable reasons, many will be voting based on implicit expected value metrics.
- nbouscal 10y ago
  You're right, Thiel's position isn't based on hatred – it's based on indifference. It's based on being privileged enough that Trump's hatefulness doesn't and won't personally affect him. I don't see how that's any better.
  - obstacle1 10y ago
    It isn't a given that Trump is objectively hateful or that Trump's expressed words will personally affect any given American. Your point of view, while a wonderful work of emotionally-charged rhetoric, is not legitimate.
    - drewrv 10y ago
      I don't get what you're trying to say. What does "objectively hateful" mean? You think the president's words don't affect Americans?
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ljw1001 10y ago
Is it me, or is making this about "firing" a bit of slight-of-hand. Thiel is a partner, not an employee. Choosing who to partner with isn't the same as firing an employee. If YC continues to partner with Thiel, everything they say about promoting women in tech is bullshit.
WalterBright 10y ago
Persecuting people who hold unpopular or incorrect ideas has a very, very long history. Pushing them out of jobs, imprisonment, torture, even killing them have all been tried, over and over. But all that did was drive the holders of those ideas underground. I don't know of anyone who actually changed their ideas due to persecution. Free expression in the marketplace of ideas is how to persuade people, not persecution.
archagon 10y ago
Given the blatantly fascist, racist, sexist, and anti-democratic rhetoric coming from the Trump camp in recent months — to the point where I'm genuinely, for the first time, fearing a violent and horrifying end to this election — powerful people like Thiel should be raked over the coals for their behavior. These people are willing to nuke the government just for the chance to grab a bit of power for themselves. I find it shameful and disgusting. Yes, chastising people for their political beliefs is a slippery slope. I understand that. But this rule can only hold in a moderate political environment. When a candidate stands before violent, cheering crowds and promises to tear up the constitution, the people propping him up need to be held fully and publicly accountable.
duval 10y ago
I don't know where I stand on this issue but to see people defending this as 'persecuting someone for their political views' seems a little odd. Thiel is openly supporting and funding a presidential candidate piping hate in to your country's population in the form of racism, misogyny etc etc - This is not a political view everyone, it is hate speech. This is not political to me. Thiel is funding a hate machine and helping him stay on the biggest platform in the world so he can continue. What is political about that? In the UK you could say you support the British National party because they want free school tuition but a large part of their platform is racist - and discredited because of it. I try and be fairly neutral and absolutely find 'justice warrior' type stances to be awful, unjust and discriminatory. I just don't see how this can be defended. Propaganda and hatred should not be called 'political' to make it OK that some rich guy gave him a ton of cash.
n72 10y ago
Sam believes Trump bears similarities to Hitler (http://blog.samaltman.com/trump http://blog.samaltman.com/trump). So: Trump:Hitler::Thiel:? When you write something like this: In the words of Edmund Burke, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." This would be a good time for us all—even Republicans, especially Republican politicians who previously endorsed Trump—to start speaking up. And then do nothing, it just comes off as sanctimonious and hypocritical.

168 points by martgnz 10y ago

jkmcf 10y ago

As bad as Donald is, he just isn't bad enough to take this severe of an action against a supporter . It would be anti-American at its worst.

Avshalom 10y ago
I dunno, firing people for debatably legal reasons seems fairly american to me. Also I'm not sure that "firing" is an accurate word here. Theil isn't really an employee is he?
- jkmcf 10y ago
  Firing the person making the comments isn't the same as firing someone who supports a party and the candidate regardless.
arcanus 10y ago
I agree. This is the candidate of a major political party. Calling for the elimination of positions of those you disagree with is only going to make the world a more polar place. We need more discussions and less calls for firing people or imprisoning them, from both sides.
BinaryIdiot 10y ago
Agreed. If someone is acting as a political surrogate, even if I think the candidate is awful, as long as it's not interfering with their work and they're not explicitly representing the company I don't see the problem. I also wonder if DHH has the same thoughts if someone is a Hillary candidate.
drewrv 10y ago
> He just isn't bad enough to take this severe of an action against a supporter. He's expressed just about every bigoted position there is (against races, religions, and women). He's expressed just about every fascist position there is (jailing political opponent, killing/torturing innocents, shutting down press outlets). What would Donald have to do?
archagon 10y ago
"He just isn't bad enough"? Have you listened to the garbage coming out of his mouth? At this point, I almost fear to ask: what would be bad enough? Someone outright advocating for genocide?

BinaryIdiot 10y ago

Honestly it might be best to flag this thread until Sam's post comes. Otherwise we're going to have people arguing about whatever side with an incomplete context. Edit: I see I'm being down voted but this tweet stream has about 4 different, intersecting contexts to deal with especially regarding people trying to pressure YC to drop their partnership with Peter and DHH saying he'd fire an employee for being a political surrogate for Trump. But fine. Let's argue about one specific, tiny piece here and then we can do this all over again when Sam's post comes out.

Kadin 10y ago
I would appreciate some context and background as to what's going on, certainly. Twitter makes it pretty hard to backtrack through multiple conversations to figure out what started a particular thread.
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  Basically DHH (guy who basically created Ruby on Rails and Basecamp) complained to Sam about their partnership with Peter Thiel since he just donated over a $1 million to the Trump campaign. DHH, in his argument with Paul G, said that he would have fired an employee who was a Trump surrogate. Lots of people supporting each person and it's basically a political shit show after that with some people saying you can't fire someone just for their political beliefs and others say Trump is an edge cased monster that should be handled differently. That was my understanding of it but I missed some of the beginning. There were also big names that I can't find now that seemed to be retweeting each one in support. Seems messy.
pyb 10y ago
I think we pretty much have all the context we need on Trump, Thiel's views towards Trump, pg and sama's views of the Trump situation, Thiel's role at YC. It's all public information. Everybody should be able to express judgment on YC's way forward at this point.

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nostrademons 10y ago

FWIW, I'm glad YC is taking this stance. Firing someone over their personal political views is very icky. You would be up in arms if your boss fired you because of who you were supporting for president, so why would you wish that upon someone else?

idlewords 10y ago
We're not talking about firing, or employees, or personal political views. Otherwise your argument stands. At issue is the most public endorsement possible (a keynote speech, and then a 1.25M donation) by a YC partner, and YC's refusal to speak out about it, or distance itself from this extraordinary gesture of support.
- nostrademons 10y ago
  YC does not (to my knowledge) have a corporate position on the presidential race - I'd welcome any citations where a YC partner, speaking in an official capacity, endorses one of the current presidential candidates. When they have taken corporate political positions, it's usually been narrowly defined, in support of specific legislation that affects the tech industry (eg. anti-SOPA, anti-software-patents, pro-immigration). The vast majority of YC partners' personal positions are strongly pro-Clinton. You can see that just by following sama, paulg, or paultoo on Twitter.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    It would suffice for me to see any public reluctance on the part of Paul Graham or Sam Altman to continue to associate professionally with Thiel so long as he is playing this role in American politics. I don't demand that Altman and Graham know exactly what to do about this. I don't demand that they "fire" Thiel (they can't, as Thiel isn't an employee). I don't even demand that they strike him from the roster of Partners to the Regional Partner of YC. I understand that this stuff is complicated and that there's more going on behind the scenes of these relationships than we know. Unfortunately, both Altman and Graham are being supportive of Thiel, despite the fact that he donated $1.25MM to Trump's campaign just days ago.

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zorpner 10y ago

Of course, Thiel is not a YC employee, so a statement about firing someone is irrelevant.

Hydraulix989 10y ago
I'm sure they have each other on speed dial though. Thiel definitely wants to continue to have a fast track towards investing into high-growth YC startups, and YC doesn't want to damage that relationship. This reminds me of Palmer Luckey getting "disappeared" by Facebook, which I didn't think was ethical. In a truly democratic society, taking a different (not to say, also completely mainstream) political stance shouldn't threaten one's livelihood.
- eropple 10y ago
  > This reminds me of Palmer Luckey getting "disappeared" by Facebook, which I didn't think was ethical. In a truly democratic country, taking a different (not to say, completely mainstream) political stance shouldn't threaten one's livelihood. I would not buy a Rift because there is no way on God's green earth that I would reward Palmer Luckey monetarily for supporting "shitposting" even if it was not directly related to the kinds of people (/pol/ dross and others) who have issued death and rape threats to people I know and care about. That is, in a way (a small way), "threatening his livelihood". I also don't buy video games made by EA because I think they are a company that has some real bad practices. That is, in a way (a small way), "threatening the livelihoods" of everybody who works there. We live as political beings, and that goes beyond what you say to what you do. Buying a USB sound card (which I just did a few moments ago) on Amazon is an expression of multiple political beliefs: that I am okay with large retailers over small ones in some situations, that I am okay with purchasing imported items, particularly from China, given the price of the item (i.e. I'm not willing to pay more than X% for "Made in the USA"). Probably a few others that I don't consciously recognize, at the moment. You can't opt out of being a political creature because you live in a goddamned polity. You can only take responsibility for how your actions impact others, and you can suffer the slings and arrows of what those others believe in return. And there is nothing undemocratic about refusing to associate, monetarily or otherwise, with somebody you don't like. There is something undemocratic about attempting to levy laws saying that they can't participate in the political process. Conflating the private responses of private parties and the public actions of the government is at best misguided and at worst dishonest.

brhsiao 10y ago

I think people take symbolism too seriously. I won't argue that it never matters what message an organization sends, but people should stop apophenically inferring messages where there are none. This would include, for example, adopting the charitable explanation that Thiel was hired as a source of valuable advice to YC startups, not because YC supports Trump. I'd like a serious answer to this, actually: why does this matter?

jacquesm 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia
- brhsiao 10y ago
  Hm, I paused for a second before using that word. Did I use it wrong?
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    No, not at all, it's just that it's a word I'd never seen before and so I figured better to add a link for those who also haven't seen it used before. Google comes up with 400 results for it, and this is the first time it's used on HN.

carsongross 10y ago

It's time for the moderates to come out and say it: we won't be defoo'ing or firing people for supporting Hillary and we won't be defoo'ing or firing people for supporting Trump. Or Johnson or Stein or Harambe, for that matter.

wincy 10y ago
Sort of off topic, I agree with your sentiment. However, has the word defoo'ing come to have a broader or more generic meaning? I was under the impression that defoo stood for "departure from family of origin" specifically.
- thisisparker 10y ago
  I think this is just the de- prefix with the generic placeholder "foo".
  - wincy 10y ago
    Well defoo means abandoning your family and cutting all ties. So it would fit here if you extended the meaning a little to mean cutting ties with any relation not specifically family.
- adiabatty 10y ago
  Oh, I had no idea — where did this word come from? In what circles is this word popular?
  - wincy 10y ago
    Stefan Molyneux of Free Domain Radio coined the term. http://defoo.org/defoo/ http://defoo.org/defoo/ He's sort of an anarcho capitalist voluntaryist turned men's rights advocate who has some pretty extreme viewpoints, one of which is that if your family of origin doesn't agree with your beliefs you should completely detach and disengage from them. Stop all contact. I'm not saying I agree with it at all, but it was interesting to see the term used here.

3pt14159 10y ago

There is a difference between firing an employee and continuing to do business with someone that funnels millions of dollars into a racist, sexist, sexual predator that's backed by a foreign intelligence service. Don't lie with dogs. Don't take money from Andreessen if you think Snowden was a hero. Don't continue to partner with Thiel after he continues to support Trump after revelations of sexual predation put to rest that any of this is just folksy bluntness. Trump is the most dangerous candidate I've ever seen. MSNBC has reported that he's contemplated the use of nuclear weapons against ISIS. Continuing to prop up a billionaire that actively campaigns with Trump and continues to funnel money towards him is a grave mark against YC, and frankly surprising given how for most of YC's history they've prioritised helping first and money second.

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Hydraulix989 10y ago
Moral accusations aside (after all, no politician has a clean slate), I'm really curious why you think it's a good idea to mix politics and business? Personally, though, I think both candidates have their fair share of dirt. Here in California, we are pretty shielded from the other side. I've been home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (where pg is from) for the past month working remotely, and it has been a real eye-opener hearing the other side of the story. Full disclosure: I'm voting for Hillary. > "given how for most of YC's history they've prioritised helping first and money second" Can you elaborate? Not that I disagree with you, but I am curious what your thoughts are. > "Continuing to prop up a billionaire that actively campaigns with Trump and continues to funnel money towards him is a grave mark against YC" I strongly disagree ("BUT {mainstream political candidate} is, represents, or supports X" isn't a valid rebuttal either, no matter what X is -- supporting said candidate should never justify an employer jeopardizing one's livelihood in a _truly_ democratic society; McCarthyism is a great analogy).
- DasIch 10y ago
  You're making a mistake that seems to be common in the US. You're assuming politics can just be excluded or ignored somehow. It's an idea that is utterly ridiculous. Politics is about designing how humans live together. Everything you do or say that somehow has an effect on another human being, whether it is direct or indirect, whether it changes or reaffirms the status quo is political. Continueing to do business with Thiel is just as political as to stop doing business with him. To pretend otherwise only shows both how privileged and ignorant of politics you are.

AvenueIngres 10y ago

The mere fact that it has to be said is concerning. Even more so when it is happening at an institution that is among the most meritocratic in SV. It speaks volume about the depth and toxicity of some self-reinforcing militant feedback loops. It is quite interesting that it is so dangerous for your career to hold "alternative" views (wrt. to mainstream ideologies there) in a place that has cultish adoration of diversity as an end in itself. Even more so interesting to see American progressives wear the clothes of puritanism and McCarthysm. The fascist menace is threatening American society! Quick! You must make sure that those two engineers who have said they would vote Trump lose their jobs! The fascists want to infiltrate every layer of society to bring down the glorious progress. Call this hotline and get them arrested and tried for treason against Progress. Otherwise, brace yourself to hear the drums of nationalism beat again and bring the world on the brinks of genocide. If you are not with us you are against us! Anyway, good on Sam for not taking part in that collective hysteria. I must say the hang-over from the current kool-aid binge drinking party is going to be harsh. So far this attitude of shaming people for not embracing the beautiful and unquestionable axiology of Progress has only been furthermore polarization and resentment. If you want to allow companies to fire their employees based on the political stance they take during a national election; you should, by the same logic, allow them to discriminate based on gender, age or ethnicity. Because yes, what you are essentially saying is that corporations are not politically neutral agents. They can hold and enforce ideologies when it comes to their human management practices. Which, of course, does not fly well when it starts impacting you negatively because you do not hold the "right" opinions.

int_19h 10y ago
> Because yes, what you are essentially saying is that corporations are not politically neutral agents. They can hold and enforce ideologies when it comes to their human management practices. If corporations are expected to be truly "politically neutral agents", then IBM providing services to the Nazis was nothing wrong (cries of "Godwin!" go here). I mean, money's money, right? They have a responsibility to their shareholders to be profitable, and genocide is just a political question, on which the German people have spoken (and even if they didn't, again, whether democracy is good or not is also a political question). But no, it doesn't work that way. We do actually expect corporations to be political to some extent. The only real question here is what that extent is. I don't really have a problem drawing the line at someone like Trump. If you do, that's fine, but all that pompous talk about puritanism and McCarthysm is misdirected. Unless, of course, you really do think that IBM was in the right.

idlewords 10y ago

Thiel is a YC partner, not an employee they can fire. And what people like me are calling for is for YC to disavow him. It's much easier to defend "we won't fire an employee for his beliefs", but it is also intellectually dishonest.

sama 10y ago
You seem to continue to try to deliberately misunderstand this, but he is not a YC partner. He is a part-time partner, which means he spends a small fraction of his time advising YC companies, but does not have equity in YC.
- idlewords 10y ago
  The word partner is in his job title. From my perspective, this looks like the worst kind of weasely quibbling. The broader point is that Thiel does not come home from a hard day's work at the bit mines, counting on the YC paycheck to get him through the next payday. He's your business partner, however construed.
  - brhsiao 10y ago
    I'm not understanding what exactly you want. If you're saying Sam should come out and say he disagrees with Thiel, he's already said he finds Trump repugnant. Are you saying that in addition to this, he also has to say, "I now draw attention to the fact that by opposing Trump, I am hereby disagreeing with my partner who supports him"? Why? And could it possibly also be because YC has other people in it, and disavowing a partner of YC by himself would be acting irresponsibly toward his partners? If you're saying YC as an institution should disavow Thiel's actions, is every company expected to choose a political stance, then disavow any partners who act against it? For that matter, it's disingenuous of you to point to an individual's tweets denouncing Trump, then to the fact that his organization hasn't done the same, and call it a lack of moral courage. It's also disingenuous to suggest, as you do in your tweets where you warn women and Muslims against joining YC, that because one of their partners donated to Trump and spoke at his convention, YC as an institution is now somehow poisoned with the views typical of a Trump supporter. Presumably Thiel was added as a partner for the simple reason that he is a valuable source of advice for startups. He can still be one as a keynote speaker for Trump. Besides, most people who endorse candidates, even people who act as keynote speakers, don't agree completely with their candidate, which further weakens your argument. Finally, I sometimes read your tweets, and I noticed you tweeted https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/787756601281085440 https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/787756601281085440 to Paul Graham's wife. Your usual sense of humor becomes weirdly aggressive when you write about YC, like you really want to pick a fight. What's your problem with them?

lvs 10y ago

That wasn't really the issue that was raised, speaking of intellectual dishonesty. Plenty of companies withdrew advertising from the RNC over Trump. Business partnership is a contractual relationship between equals, not a hierarchical one with superiors and subordinates.

nodesocket 10y ago

Brendan Eich[1] was essentially fired for supporting Prop 8 and he only donated $1,000. What frustrates me the most is the pure hypocrisy of liberal activists. It is a dangerous precedent for left wing politics to adopt. What if right wing executives started calling for employees that support Hillary to be fired or publicly shaming them on Twitter? How it that any different? My argument is not with Trump, because I am not voting for him and personally think he is an orangutan. My argument is with the utter hypocrisy of liberal activists. [1] "Critics of Eich within Mozilla tweeted to gay activists that he had donated $1,000 to California Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California until 2013, when it was declared unconstitutional and marriages were allowed to resume. Eich stood by his decision to fund the campaign, but wrote on his blog that he was sorry for “causing pain” and pledged to promote equality at Mozilla. Gay activists created an online shaming campaign against Eich, with OkCupid declaring they would block access to the Firefox browser unless he stepped down."

DougN7 10y ago
Hypocrisy is the perfect word for it.
wldcordeiro 10y ago
Brendan Eich's "firing" was such bullshit, I would have loved to see Mozilla's path had he gotten to actually work the job. I don't think we would have seen Brave, but Firefox/Mozilla may have had a resurgence under him we aren't seeing under current leadership.
Sniffnoy 10y ago
Calling such people "liberal" is a betrayal of the basic meaning of the term, IMO. They're the illiberal left, nothing more.
- jrapdx3 10y ago
  That's correct assuming you are referring to distinctions among "classical liberalism"[0], the more recent "social liberalism"[1], and related branches of liberalism. In fact the tenets of classic liberal principles is more or less congruent with the ideology of American conservatism[2] again as contrasted with "social" and related forms of conservatism[3]. The extremes of the "social" variants of liberal and conservative thought define the appearance of the virulent modern versions of "left" and "right" wing politically-polarized positions. Worth pointing out that other dichotomies of Republican/Democrat, populist/globalist construction are context-dependent and frequently orthogonal to a stance within the classic conservative/liberal political spectrum. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_Sta... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism

marze 10y ago

Say someone was fired for supporting Clinton in this election by a company run by a supported of Trump. Would it make news? Freedom of thought and speech was what America was founded on, so they say.

nodesocket 10y ago
Completely agree and my point, but my comment got downvoted immediately.
DougN7 10y ago
I doubt it. We're in a liberal echo chamber here...
- DougN7 10y ago
  The down votes are sort of humorous. A comment in another thread "From my observations, the tech industry leans pretty heavily liberal/democrat" was upvoted on balance.
tjalfi 10y ago
Political affiliations are protected classes in some states. Source: http://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/discrimination-employment.aspx http://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/discrimina...

mayneack 10y ago

Not saying it's the same or that anyone should be fired for their beliefs etc, but YC has taken some political stances in the past. https://techcrunch.com/2011/12/22/paul-graham-sopa-supporting-companies-no-longer-allowed-at-yc-demo-day/ https://techcrunch.com/2011/12/22/paul-graham-sopa-supportin...

Analemma_ 10y ago
Well, of course that's not the same. Thiel just thinks giving women the right to vote was democracy's greatest mistake. That's just a small thing to be brushed aside. But SOPA was something that could actually damage the economic prospects of corporations! Obviously you must take a stand when it's something that's actually important! If the preceding barrage of sarcasm didn't make it clear enough, I'm quite disgusted with sama and Hacker News right now. Taking the high road like this is only possible when it's not your neck on the chopping block. Thiel thinks giving women the right to vote was a mistake; Trump thinks all Mexicans and Muslims are violent madmen who should be barred from entering the United States. Hacker News can gregariously see past these faults because they're not in the crosshairs, but if Shanley Kane were a YC partner and saying "all men support rape culture, even if indirectly", there's no friggin way this comment section would be so sanguine.
- ScottBurson 10y ago
  > Thiel just thinks giving women the right to vote was democracy's greatest mistake. He's claimed not to actually think that [0]. Statistically, few women are Libertarians, and arguably, he was just referencing this point, which is apparently familiar to the Libertarian community, if not to the rest of us. [0] https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/05/01/peter-thiel/suffrage-isnt-danger-other-rights-are https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/05/01/peter-thiel/suffrage...

gkoberger 10y ago

Here's context for anyone having a hard time following on Twitter: https://storify.com/gkoberger/dhh-yc https://storify.com/gkoberger/dhh-yc Paul Graham (@paulg) = former head of YC David Heinemeier Hansson (@dhh) = creator of basecamp/rails Sam Altman (@sama) = current head of YC Peter Thiel (@peterthiel) = part-time parter at YC, well-known investor, current Trump surrogate who just donated $1.25MM

outis 10y ago
DHH: Although Thiel would already have been on a Performance Improvement Plan for his legal wars against the press. So easy move What the fuck.

deleted 10y ago

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wenham 10y ago

So I'm I right in thinking that there is a call to 'punish' some people due to their (albeit unpopular with many) political views? That doesn't seem very progressive or civilised...undemocratic even.

Alupis 10y ago

Can we all cut the shit? I'm sorry to be so blunt, but you're all acting like idiots. Terminating someone over political ideology is the single most fascist, fear-mongering, and un-freedom idea one can possibly have! Half of you support someone who says mean things - the other half of you support someone who does mean things. You're both wrong, and right!!! Arguing otherwise is simply to be blind to one's own prejudices, rational or not! Supporting someone being terminated simply because of political ideology is incomprehensibly insane for a people who tout themselves as "free"!

dickman3000 10y ago

If Thiel were the CEO of a corporation he could be held to violate his fiduciary duty by giving the corporation bad press by supporting someone like Trump. Trump has made a lot of enemies in the United States: minorities, gays, women, people who don't want to see the democratic institutions of America taken apart. He has also willingly built a coalition of outspoken neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other individuals. It'd be like if a CEO threw his outspoken support behind David Duke, spoke at his rallies, and donated 1.25 million dollars to his campaign. That's what's happening here. You don't think shareholders wouldn't have a problem with that? "Yeah, stigmatize us in the eyes of society, that's great for business." People aren't being realistic when they say business people should just have carte blanche to say whatever they want. They owe their shareholders, partners, and employees a duty of care to not bring ridiculously bad press to their organization. If the people at YC don't care about this bad press, and the business it will likely lose, then that's their business. But to say that it never happens in the business world shows a lack of understanding how things work.

tedunangst 10y ago
I think that's a pretty novel legal theory, that CEOs have a fiduciary duty to not say things that might upset people.
- dickman3000 10y ago
  It's not really that novel; it's the same underlying issue behind anything that would tarnish a brand.
  - Turing_Machine 10y ago
    Last time I looked, Trump's support and Clinton's support were pretty close to evenly split (Clinton slightly ahead in most polls, but not by that much). Why is supporting Trump more "tarnishing" than supporting Clinton? I understand that you don't like Trump (which is fine, I don't much like him either), but why do your opinions get to control? Do you think there aren't people who find Clinton equally repugnant, or even more so? I assure you that there are (I'm not voting for either, myself). But, you know, the money of Trump supporters is just as green as the money of Clinton supporters, if you want to cast it solely in terms of fiduciary duty. Probably even more so, since I would expect that the median Trump supporter is wealthier than the median Clinton supporter.

WalterBright 10y ago

This is why we have a secret ballot voting system in the US.

losteverything 10y ago

What justice Roberts said about forming opinions [0] holds true For me and anything "Trump" My gut is one thing but when i actually write (type) it out I get surprised how I change my opinion. I can't find a cspan interview where he was even more open about how the act of writing out opinions often makes one change your initial thoughts [0] http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=2661589&page=1 http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=2661589&page=1

shawnee_ 10y ago

Sometimes it's hard to follow the logic of conversations on Twitter. In this case, I'm pretty sure the original question posed by DHH was simply: has Thiel put more money into Trump's candidacy, or investing in promising YC startups[1]? Seems a fair and legitimate question. How it devolved into "at what point do you fire someone for their political activities?" is an interesting sidetrack; however, I think it's still ancillary to the original question. [1] https://twitter.com/dhh/status/787547255259758592

sama 10y ago

Also, a reminder of what I personally think about Trump from early this summer: http://blog.samaltman.com/trump http://blog.samaltman.com/trump

idlewords 10y ago
So why do you continue to do business with one of his greatest supporters? At some point, these are just empty words. It would be less galling if you weren't an alarmist about Trump.
- Sniffnoy 10y ago
  EDIT: This comment has substantial problems, though I think the conclusion is still essentially correct; see discussion below Because that's liberalism. Separating concerns like this is the sort of thing that is fundamental to a liberal society. Trump is a serious problem. He is fundamentally illiberal. But what sort of victory is it if we defeat Trump and give up on liberalism anyway? Yeah, that whole Enlightenment project, let's just toss that right out, because we need to do so to preserve the Enlightenment. Destroying the village is a wonderful way of saving it. Instead of rule by reactionary tyrants who determine what you can and can't say, we'll have rule by leftist tyrants who determine what you can and can't say! Such an improvement. It does us no good to become the enemy in order to defeat it. And, what, are we to believe that this transformation is temporary? That oh sure maybe we'll fight dirty this time, but next time and in all the future times it will all be OK, liberal society will just come right back? No way. It is so much easier to destroy than to create. This sort of viciousness, of splitting everything into "us" and "them" and demanding that the "us" be in absolute control of everything... that's natural. That's human nature. To get people of different groups to live together without immediately going for each other's throats, to build the structures that allow that to occur, that takes work. We start down that road, we brush those supports aside, we're not coming back anytime soon. And again -- the Trumpers are very, very, wrong, but if we use dirty tricks to go after them, all they'll see is that we're using dirty tricks to go after them. It's a mistake to think that our behavior doesn't influence theirs. If we break the "no firing people for political reasons" rule, then so will they. The eventual endpoint of all this is a split society where Democrats can only buy from Democrats and Republicans can only buy from Republicans... or maybe it's another 30-years war. I think "don't start another 30-years war" is a good rule. (Which is another reason not to vote Trump, because he'll try to go after the Muslims and the Mexicans, and then... but you know that already.) In short, defeating Trump is important, but that's only part of what it's going to take to prevent a descent into illiberalism. ( Or maybe I'd be better off just linking to Scott Alexander: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-community-and-civilization/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-co... ) EDIT: Rereading, the final link is not actually appropriate in this case, given how much of a threat Donald Trump actually is. That said, I think my position is still basically correct due to the reasons I give in the grandchild comment.

andrewchambers 10y ago

The only difference between trump and Hillary is her corruption is complicated enough people like you can brush it under the rug and feel good about yourselves.

dang 10y ago
That crosses into personal attack, and that's not allowed on HN, so please don't do it. More precisely: please scrupulously avoid it. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12721084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12721084 and marked it off-topic.
- andrewchambers 10y ago
  If I resubmit without the tail comment will it remain? Edit:Amended a new comment to stick to the point

return0 10y ago

Why don't people see Thiel as SV's insurance ? If (atheist-god forbid) trump wins, you have an enthusiastic supporter and firm SV believer by his side (who also happens to be gay) to contain the wild beast. Would you rather have some evangelical nutjob who would put fig leaves on your porn?

tocotuno 10y ago

I am sincerely happy to see most of HN is taking the stance of defending Thiel--by doing it, they are simply defending the freedom to back the candidate you like, and not the one that the industry wants you to like. I have a Twitter stream of hundreds of developers from different backgrounds and it was like 99% pro-Hillary--by defending Trump you would get spanked. Something was really wrong there, and this conversation we are having proves it. And I can't help but wonder if Thiel did this just so this conversation would spark. It simply is brilliant.

sitkack 10y ago

> I am confident that Peter joining will be great for YC.

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ryporter 10y ago

Political views are one aspect of a person, but they do not define that person. Thiel himself understands this. When he was a law school classmate with Alex Karp (now CEO of Palantir), they constantly argued bitterly over politics, because Karp held an extremely liberal point of view. They were also very good friends and have clearly maintained a very good business relationship. I personally despise Trump, but I agree with Sam -- other people's political views don't really matter to me. Hopefully after this election ends, everyone can calm down and keep things in context. Business and politics are separate.

dep_b 10y ago

> Trump is the most dangerous candidate I've ever seen. Five million dead in Iraq after George W. So what exactly are your predictions for Trump's presidency? Or a white American pussy is more valuable than a foreign brown life? I don't like the guy but it's not a mass murderer yet.

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dang 10y ago
> Or a white American pussy is more valuable than a foreign brown life? That takes this thread from beyond dreadful to beyond disgraceful. Please don't comment like this here. Without that sentence your comment would have been fine—at least relative to the thread. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12720961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12720961 and marked it off-topic.
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yladiz 10y ago

There are (at least) two views to this, I think. One view is that the personal and business aspects of a persons life are separate and one shouldn't necessarily affect the other, which is the argument that Sam Altman is making here. The second view is that they are definitely linked, and allowing someone to do something morally reprehensible (if you consider supporting Donald Trump that) means that they aren't with the vision of the company and it's fine to fire them. The reality is that it depends on the level of the person in the organization (as well as the organization itself, but that's not part of this argument). For example, if a janitor supports Donald Trump, that doesn't really affect the business because no one outside the organization thinks that the janitor is representative of the organization as a whole. However, if a C-level employee did something that's considered morally reprehensible, it can affect the business because people associate the business with the people that run it. In this case, I don't agree that Thiel should be "fired" because people wouldn't immediately associate Thiel with the company and he doesn't "work" full time with them (he's a part time partner). If Sam Altman had come out in support of Trump with a donation that would be a different story.

imh 10y ago

Am I missing something? What's this about?

memossy 10y ago

Something missing in the hundreds (thousands?) of comments on this is why Thiel supports Trump. The bottom line is that Thiel believes the 'positives' of a Trump presidency would outweigh the negatives. The expected value is positive versus a status quo Clinton administration so he should support Trump. He lays his priority set out quite clearly in his RNC speech: http://time.com/4417679/republican-convention-peter-thiel-transcript/ http://time.com/4417679/republican-convention-peter-thiel-tr... and if you agree with his central premises of a structurally broken economy, excessive foreign intervention etc then tbh Trump is the only viable candidate even after recent headlines, particularly if you believe in the strength of US institutions to curb any excesses. If Thiel's position were based on hatred then I think it would be another story, but as it is, again given acceptance of the possibility of his central premises being correct and Trump being a 'viable' (as in could win vs Stein or Johnson) major party candidate his support is rational. Across America Trump will win fifty million votes or more and while some of them may be deplorables voting for deplorable reasons, many will be voting based on implicit expected value metrics.

nbouscal 10y ago
You're right, Thiel's position isn't based on hatred – it's based on indifference. It's based on being privileged enough that Trump's hatefulness doesn't and won't personally affect him. I don't see how that's any better.
- obstacle1 10y ago
  It isn't a given that Trump is objectively hateful or that Trump's expressed words will personally affect any given American. Your point of view, while a wonderful work of emotionally-charged rhetoric, is not legitimate.
  - drewrv 10y ago
    I don't get what you're trying to say. What does "objectively hateful" mean? You think the president's words don't affect Americans?
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ljw1001 10y ago

Is it me, or is making this about "firing" a bit of slight-of-hand. Thiel is a partner, not an employee. Choosing who to partner with isn't the same as firing an employee. If YC continues to partner with Thiel, everything they say about promoting women in tech is bullshit.

WalterBright 10y ago

Persecuting people who hold unpopular or incorrect ideas has a very, very long history. Pushing them out of jobs, imprisonment, torture, even killing them have all been tried, over and over. But all that did was drive the holders of those ideas underground. I don't know of anyone who actually changed their ideas due to persecution. Free expression in the marketplace of ideas is how to persuade people, not persecution.

archagon 10y ago

Given the blatantly fascist, racist, sexist, and anti-democratic rhetoric coming from the Trump camp in recent months — to the point where I'm genuinely, for the first time, fearing a violent and horrifying end to this election — powerful people like Thiel should be raked over the coals for their behavior. These people are willing to nuke the government just for the chance to grab a bit of power for themselves. I find it shameful and disgusting. Yes, chastising people for their political beliefs is a slippery slope. I understand that. But this rule can only hold in a moderate political environment. When a candidate stands before violent, cheering crowds and promises to tear up the constitution, the people propping him up need to be held fully and publicly accountable.

duval 10y ago

I don't know where I stand on this issue but to see people defending this as 'persecuting someone for their political views' seems a little odd. Thiel is openly supporting and funding a presidential candidate piping hate in to your country's population in the form of racism, misogyny etc etc - This is not a political view everyone, it is hate speech. This is not political to me. Thiel is funding a hate machine and helping him stay on the biggest platform in the world so he can continue. What is political about that? In the UK you could say you support the British National party because they want free school tuition but a large part of their platform is racist - and discredited because of it. I try and be fairly neutral and absolutely find 'justice warrior' type stances to be awful, unjust and discriminatory. I just don't see how this can be defended. Propaganda and hatred should not be called 'political' to make it OK that some rich guy gave him a ton of cash.

n72 10y ago

Sam believes Trump bears similarities to Hitler (http://blog.samaltman.com/trump http://blog.samaltman.com/trump). So: Trump:Hitler::Thiel:? When you write something like this: In the words of Edmund Burke, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." This would be a good time for us all—even Republicans, especially Republican politicians who previously endorsed Trump—to start speaking up. And then do nothing, it just comes off as sanctimonious and hypocritical.