It's not a straightforward example of capitalism because it doesn't earn enough through its service to support itself, and must be propped up by an otherwise external entity.
The concept of "private ownership" is not definitionally identical to the concept of "capitalism", I hope you realize...
Private ownership and the protection of those property rights are exactly what capitalism is. As long as there is no coercive entity dictating what YC can and cannot do with it's capital then HN absolutely is a product of capitalism.
Capitalism doesn't mean "earn[ing] enough through its service to support itself". Why do you think that people are not free to finance sites that promote other branches of their business under capitalism?
For what it's worth, I Googled "Define: capitalism" and when I saw:
> an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.
I synthesized this to what I wrote above. If you disagree that's fine, but I think "for profit" is a critical aspect of capitalism, and while it's arguably true that HN provides YC with "a profit" it's an intangible and indirect one, which to me is not "straightforwardly capitalistic".
I'll admit I was a bit snarky but my thanks was genuine - I enjoy learning why people believe the things they do.
Anyways, my final argument is if an individual asset of a company doesn't directly generate revenue yet increases company profit, would it not be "un-capitalistic" if that company were to extinguish that asset? It seems to me that throwing away profit would be antithetical to that definition of capitalism.
The $30k espresso machine in the Google office does nothing to generate revenue, however it helps Google become more competitive in the labor market which (at least they think) increases profit. None of these situations are edge cases, they are just natural outcomes that exist when people are free to compete. If it is expected that a decision will lead to a profit, it seems straightforward that one would make that decision.
It was fun discussing this with you, I hope you have a good day.
That's an interesting question. It's true that HN doesn't earn revenue and that it could not stand on its own. But it's also true that YC is more valuable with HN than without it. I think you have to mark that in capitalism's column, even if it's a weird edge case.
Maybe more companies should be more open to more weird edge cases and maybe that would make them richer and therefore more capitalist? I don't know.
