Comment by alwa

I mean

Marketing budgets can fund stuff whose authenticity is independent of who’s writing the check, right? Especially when their audience is extra-contrarian and sensitive to authenticity. Xerox can be an evil megacorp and also be sugar daddy to the PARC.

If the fun maze is taking YC’s money and using it to start a company, sure, I see your point. I’d say (right here on YC’s digital estate!) probably don’t do that.

If the fun maze is the community that’s emerged on this site, which is indeed something the VC firm sponsors (surprisingly cheaply)…

Then in my case, it’s different because I frequently walk through the fun maze for as long as the maze is fun, then I wander back out to my fields. If the maze stopped being fun, or started requiring me to set aside my values, I would stop coming, and the farmer knows that.

The farmer doesn’t prod me, much less sneak up on me with a captive bolt. He doesn’t try to milk me while I’m walking through his maze. If I’m ever considering selling my steak, I’ll probably apply commercial reasoning to my choice of abattoir, regardless of how fun the maze was.

I contribute voluntarily, I enjoy the voluntary contributions of others. It’s a maze where people want to come.

I’d like this to be true, so I contribute to it being true, and I observe others contributing to sustaining its truth too. Intersubjective belief creates reality!