Your conclusion is well-founded. The micro side of economics is one part science and one part logic; the macro side is one part logic and one part hand-waving.
It's a judgment call. And many, many of the free market-loving, pro-innovation people on HN judge partnering with Monsanto (and bragging about it) to be the wrong move.
The world is dirty, and there's no perfect company (or perfect people), but most people have red lines some place that they will not cross. Monsanto lies on the far side of the line for many.
Monsanto is an extreme case, and therefore inspires a lot of passion. I'd say the vast majority of people on HN are pro-capitalism and pro-innovation, but have disparate views on business ethics and the efficacy of various regulations. In the eyes of many, Monsanto crosses the line between "good honest competition" and "dangerous and malevolent would-be monopolist."
Also: Way to paint people you disagree with on this issue as "very anti-capitalist, anti-innovation, pro-taxes..."
It's an unfortunate sign for everyone that you (and/or Cloudant) wouldn't anticipate this reaction from going into business with Monsanto.
As to the "content-free" claim, sometimes a rant is an appropriate reaction. If some YC company partnered with Al Qaida, would we really need to spell out all the heinous things AQ has done before writing, "F- that!"?!?
EDIT: And to your "If the rule is, if x sells something to Monsanto, fuck x, then what you're saying is fuck the entire corporate world, because I'm sure Monsanto buys Apple computers and Chevrolets and Clorox too. It's sort of ridiculous to hold Cloudant to a standard that essentially zero other companies meet."
-- It's one thing if Monsanto buys iPhones and Macs from Apple; that would represent ~.0001% of Apple's overall business. It's another thing if Monsanto is responsible for a significant % of your revenue.
(Of course, Cloudant's deal with Monsanto could represent only 2% of Cloudant's total revenue; but since it's a startup, the initial reaction people will have is that it's significantly higher than that.)
Yes, because Hacker News is for civilized, rational discussion. Not '+1 !'s, not analogies to the Nazi regime, not a litany of profanity to a hard-working young startup, and not more hivemind think from Reddit. The kind of hivemind that downvotes any contrary opinion and upvotes the tasteless, content-free posts you see at the top. We can discourse in more substantial words than "F- that!". Multiple '?!?' becoming more common aren't a good sign.
I was about to take your dismissal of my '+1' seriously until I noticed the vast majority your comments on HN are all contrarian and basically content free. Except of course when you're blasting others as 'hivemind'ed, or to complain about one of the seven words you can't say on HN. For the record I'm an Orange County Republican so I came to my opposition of Monsanto by my own volition.
There's a place in civilized, rational discussion for ranting.
Let's say you're out with two friends discussing the war on drugs, with all kinds of rational, civilized debate on the science, politics, economics, sociology, etc. Suddenly, one friend declares, "Ok, I understand the risks and potential rewards, and I've decided to start dealing coke." Sure, you can try to calmly talk them out of it, and/or you could do some "ranting." Both would be appropriate.
If we can quit the absurd analogies all over this thread for a minute, can you point me to why Monsanto is so evil in your eyes? Other than a Vanity piece, it seems everyone has come to a preconcluded fact that Monsanto is "evil" somehow.
Cloudant is a business, and this is great for their financials, as well as for furthering the research in their tech stack. From reading it, I'm sure many on Hacker News use similar tools that will benefit from the research done by Cloudant.
The documentary "Food Inc" describes Monsanto's behavior with respect to genetically modified seeds.
Example from my admittedly poor memory: A farmer's neighbor bought Monsanto's genetically modified seeds and some of the seeds blew into the farmers flield. Monsanto sued him and made him destroy all his seeds. When the farmer complained to the government he discover that the official responsible for representing his interests was on the board of Monsanto.
As far as "feeding the hungry". Monsantos seeds are genetically modified produce plants that don't have replantable seeds i.e. every year you have to buy your seeds from Monsanto. The 3rd world can't afford to use Monsanto's seeds and our subsidies of the corn industry make is hard for 3rd world farmers to make a living.
I read this years ago, but Monsanto's genetically modified corn seeds had something they referred to as a "terminator" gene, which is what made the genetically modified plants single generation. However, when natural plants were pollinated with pollen from genetically modified plants (my biology is probably wrong here), seeds the natural plants produced retained the terminator gene.
Extrapolate this out to the worst-case scenario and you've got the entire world buying corn seed from Monsanto because natural corn is extinct, through decades of unintentional pollination.
Really, Monsanto is evil, it has been proven way beyond any doubt. In cloudants position I'm not sure I would have taken the money but I would have never ever sent out this press release.
the difference is that right now, you or anyone else in the thread can convincingly list a bunch of bad things they have done.
so far, there is not a single convincing (and barely any substantive) comments about the bad things monsanto has done. if you disagree, please, let's discuss why monsanto is, as many here claim, "evil"
I don't have time to get into that discussion, but if you google "the most evil company in the world" you'll see they're fighting it out with De Beers and one or two others for the top spot. There's also plenty on Wikipedia:
They're basically 80s/90s Microsoft at its worst, but in agriculture of both the developed and developing world (the latter being particularly heinous).
You don't think you're maybe proving the wrong point when, after being asked to provide evidence for the argument that Monsanto is evil, you respond "just Google for most evil company in the world"?
If you really want to pursue that point, maybe you want to start by reconciling it with the fact that by that scale, Monsanto is competing with Activision, Ford Motor, and Coca Cola (all of which appear alongside it on the top half of the first Google SERP for "most evil company in the world").
i'm seeing literally dozens of comments saying that it monsanto is the most evil company that exists, and literally, not one comment giving a single concrete reason why it is.
why is hitler evil? i can tell you in 8 words. he ordered the deaths of millions of people.
why is monsanto evil? seriously, name ONE thing that makes them evil.
what are these activities? producing GMOs? high yield crops have enabled the feeding of hundreds of millions if not billions of people who would otherwise died of starvation.
This raises a real dilemma: at what point does a company or organization cross the line from "not my cup of tea" to "ethically ambiguous" to "pure evil"?
What if Cloudant were to power analytics for Trader Joe's?
You are right, although the billboard would only be used to thank everyone who downloaded the movie and not necessarily used for the movie promotion itself.
More information on the movie and the billboard options can be found at http://bit.ly/n4XQG0
Sometimes I think every child that's born should receive not only a Social Security Number, but a trust, a holding corporation, and a political action committee in his/her name.
The political and legal playing field has always been tilted in one way or another, but it keeps getting more and more extreme.
> Sometimes I think every child that's born should receive not only a Social Security Number, but a trust, a holding corporation, and a political action committee in his/her name.
This actually seems like a totally reasonable and intelligent suggestion. Or maybe people get it when they turn 18, or at least a course in high school about how to form entities and what the tradeoffs are in doing so.
Would be a hell of a lot more useful than a lot of the half-baked high school courses that kids are forced to go through now. Hmm... I'm thinking on this, I actually really like the idea.
For people who don't know, this is basically a single-purpose entity for the purpose of owning certain types of firearms (usually National Firearms Act regulated items, e.g. machine guns or sound suppressors) in a way which is exempt from certain aspects of purchasing them outright (e.g. needing the approval of local law enforcement if you're a natural person making the purchase, but not a corporate entity). Trusts are also better for survivorship/transfer, and provide some limited liability or asset protection. Individual registered machine guns appreciated overnight in 1986 from $5 (a small piece of metal) to >$10k, due to regulations which forbid making new ones transferable for civilian ownership.
It's pretty similar to setting up a corporation to own/manage a single rental property, for instance to protect from liability if you own a parking lot and someone damages a car, or meth addicts burn down a condo building.
