I'll also buy them pizza once a week, if that sweetens the pot.
But to your broader point -- conferring immigration status upon acceptance by an arbitrarily-designated institution makes me uncomfortable too. However, it's a ship that sailed a long time ago. (Colleges, for e.g.) Given that we effectively permit universities to pick hundreds of thousands of visa recipients every year, experimenting with 100 for entrepreneurship seems not insane.
* (So will Stripe!)
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The thrust of his argument is that YC is asking to be granted special privileges, in a circumstance in which they happen to directly benefit, in a way that only helps them unfairly cement their already privileged position.
It'd be hard for me to look at this privilege being granted as anything other than evidence of corporate/investor oligarchical corruption -- an outlook that isn't improved by your referencing their importance to success.
> The thrust of his argument is that YC is asking to be granted special privileges, in a circumstance in which they happen to directly benefit, in a way that only helps them unfairly cement their already privileged position.
I don't think Sam's argument is quite as self-serving, though I see how it could be interpreted this way. I think he'd agree that YC should not be a gatekeeper. (As in PG's original proposal.) But if the argument against the original proposal is that we somehow need more data before rolling it out everywhere, running a smaller experiment with YC would seem to be better than nothing at all.
I completely agree with you that a steady-state world of privileged visa-granters is not what we should be trying to bring about.
Wouldn't objective analysis be the right default, rather than trusting those that were successful within an organization that has incentives that are, in the majority, contrary if not in outright competition, to your own?
YC isn't a charity, as I'm sure you're aware, and success is not guaranteed. They're in the business of throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
Nobody wants to be the spaghetti that doesn't stick, but the vast majority will be, and it's in YC's interests to keep convincing new people to jump in the pot.
So no, I don't trust them, or their motives, or think that it's to the benefit of anyone other than YC to grant them special immigration privileges. I certainly don't think outlier examples justify or prove YC's value to the American people, or to foreign citizens who might wish to pursue their interests here.
If we assume only YC & some of the other incubators it starts to drive more traffic to them and raises the barrier to entry for a new incubator as they probably won't be on this program (allocating visas).
why not just charge $10k or 10% additional tax and just let all the people that want to work come in. Then when the startup fails they can leave.