Facebook didn't do anything wrong. Tipjoy was out
of money. They'd been talking to several potential
acquirers, including Facebook, but those deals all
fell through. So the Tipjoys were going to have to
get jobs somewhere. Since they were worried about
money and Ivan admired the hackers at Facebook, I
asked FB if they'd offer him a job, and they did.
It doesn't portend anything for the future of startups,
as this story seems to imply. If your startup tanks,
you have to get a job somewhere, and lots of hackers
get jobs at Facebook. There are several other YC
alumni working there.
Comparing this to voting, most people vote because they want to be seen in a good light by their friends and family (and some vote because they don't understand probability). Perhaps some sort of similar social pressure could have been employed with TipJoy.
Whether you should worry about your carbon footprint depends a lot on what your friends and/or family think of the issue. On a practical individual level, it's all about looking good in front of your friends and/or family.
Public-choice scholars have long argued that voting is
instrumentally irrational because the probability that a
single vote will change the outcome of an election is nearly
zero. Dennis Mueller made the point well when he noted
that "the probability of being run over by a car going to or
returning from the polls is similar to the probability of
casting the decisive vote. If being run over is worse than
having one’s preferred candidate lose, then this potential
cost of voting alone would exceed the potential gain"
(1989, 350).
By that logic no one should bother voting, in which case the entire system would fail to work at all, obviously a flawed outcome. Thus voting does matter, so you should vote. Worrying about the probability of your vote being the winning vote is pointless, there is no winning vote. If the election was decided by a single vote, then every single vote counted and as mattered just as much as the last vote.
While your individual vote might not statistically matter in choosing the winner, in aggregate, it most certainly does. Voting is not an individual thing, it's a collective thing and judging it by the individual is simply the wrong approach.
By that logic no one should bother voting, in which case the entire system would fail to work at all, obviously a flawed outcome.
An outcome you do not prefer is not automatically irrational. You just don't prefer it. The solution is not to wish everyone would act against their own interests to produce your preferred outcome, but to change the incentives so that your preferred outcome is the natural result of rational choices.
> An outcome you do not prefer is not automatically irrational.
It has nothing to do with my preference. An outcome that fails to result in anyone voting for a system intended to get people to vote, is a failed outcome, no matter how you look at it.
I've thought an unhealthy amount about this. My solution is for everyone to copy the vote of whichever one of their friends seems like the best voter (most intelligent, unaffiliated, conscientious, etc.) If someone thinks they are a better voter than all of their friends then they decide who to vote for themselves. The advantages of this system are twofold:
1. On average, better politicians get elected because the voting decisions of society's best-equipped voters are being amplified.
2. Only a small part of the population has to bother themselves with following political news. Since they're such great voters they'll probably do it in much greater depth (reading actual bills and scientific papers; carefully scouring campaign websites instead of believing rumors they hear on TV.)
That doesn't quite work, because if you've got an unusual situation then it'd be unreasonable to ask your friend to spend a lot of time thinking about it.
It doesn't portend anything for the future of startups, as this story seems to imply. If your startup tanks, you have to get a job somewhere, and lots of hackers get jobs at Facebook. There are several other YC alumni working there.