

Ask HN: Is Y Combinator basically just communism? - citizenkeys

Take this post with a grain of salt...  I'm reviewing my YC start-ups list at http://ycuniverse.com/startups.php along with other YC-related news.  It would seem that YCombinator, with over 200 start-ups in various niche markets, has all the essential elements of communism.  The notion of a rising working-class of networked start-up founders almost sounds like some sort of political movement.  And if you read Paul Graham's essays (I've read them all at least twice), some of those "essays" border on being propaganda.<p>Theoretically, if you fund that many start-ups and they largely prefer goods and services from each other rather than outside sources, and with YC itself providing new resources to the entire group, there's definately some communist undertones there.  An entire city block of YC-funded startups?  Hmm...<p>So is Paul Graham a modern Lenin-esque architect of communism or what?
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pg
The only similarity I can see is a network of people who help one another. But
that idea is orthogonal to communism. And very old: that's what a tribe is.

~~~
citizenkeys
A tribe would be synonymous to an individual start-up. "A network of people
that help one another" would be an entirely self-forming group or collective
of groups. What makes communism distinct is that there's a central
organization directing the economics.

To use the old "steak and potatoes" analogy, if one person specializes in
steak and the other in potatoes, there's capitalist efficiency there. But if
there's a third-party saying "you with the steaks: you'll get those from this
particular guy with potatoes. and you with the potatoes: vice versa.", that's
when there's potential communist undertones.

Not that I have a problem with communism:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1926047>

~~~
mlinsey
Advice and a little bit of seed capital does not constitute "a central
organization directing the economics." I think your conception of what YC does
for accepted companies is pretty far from reality.

