I'd like to know if this is something you HNers spend time thinking about when thinking in which direction you want to take your startup company, your career and your overall impact on the world we live in.

I absolutely value individual liberty more highly. But I disagree that "you can't have one without violating the other". In fact, I'll argue that individual liberty is the basis that social justice is built on. I see no way to have social justice without acknowledging the primacy of individual liberty as a principle. And that is because to deny us our individual liberty is to deny us agency, which is the root of our very humanity. And how can we have social justice in a world were we don't even treat people as human?

That said, our mission statement at Fogbeam makes it clear what things we want to do, as a company, to try and make the world a better place:

http://www.fogbeam.com/company.html

These are the things we try to do at Fogbeam Labs:

→ Build software and provide services that enable organizations to display greater “organizational intelligence;” sense, respond and react to their environment in a more agile manner, and support more adaptive and effective organizational structures.

→ Democratize access to advanced information processing software by participating in the development of F/OSS software which can be used freely by organizations of any size or nature.

→ Give back to the world by participating as an ethical member of the world-side free-software / open-source software community.

→ Create an organization where people dedicated to the advancement of technology will want to work, will be rewarded for doing well, and will receive nurture, guidance, and encouragement.

→ Promote entrepreneurship as the best tool available for raising the standards of living for people worldwide, by sponsoring educational initiatives and supporting charitable organizations which promote: STEM ( “Science / Technology / Engineering / Math”) education and education on Economics, Business, and Entrepreneurship.

We favor. . .

→ Transparency and openness... over secrecy and information hiding … in our relationships with each other, our partners, the F/OSS community, and our local communities.

→ Critical thinking, logic and reason … over … superstition, blind adherence to dogma, and groupthink.

→ Respect for the individual and their freedom of choice … over … herd mentality, conformance for the sake of conformance, and fear of what we consider different.

→ Courage and the willingness to commit to our principles … over … knee-jerk reactions, conformance to peer pressure, and compromise of our fundamental values.

→ The long view and building for the future, while not sacrificing the present … over … short-sighted compromise of our vision and values in order to achieve a tactical objective today.

→ Being Good … over … Being Evil.

On a personal level, I'm moderately politically active in terms of supporting the principles I believe in. I donate money to political parties (mainly the Libertarian Party) and various advocacy groups: EFF, ACLU, NRA, 2nd Amendment Foundation, Gun Owners of America, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Citizens Committee for the Right To Keep and Bear Arms, Grassroots NC, etc.) and I ran for Lieutenant Governor of NC in 2008 as the Libertarian nominee. I wasn't elected, for better or for worse.