> The amount of privilege built into this "painful failure" is disquieting.

The word "privilege" is one of those politically correct Newspeak words that always stops me dead in my tracks. It's a shibboleth of a whole bunch of broken thinking, and worse than that, it's a term that tries to bake in conclusions to the assumptions of an argument, so that once one engages with the argument, unaware of the land mine that's been laid there, there's no way to win.

privilege - n - a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor

When someone uses the word "privilege" we're supposed to immediately agree that "They" - the great unspecified "they" - gave one person special keys to the system (and we're usually supposed to believe that these keys were handed over because someone lucked into the right skin color or gender).

So tptacek is baking into his argument the default assumption that someone HANDED chernevik the unearned right and power to start a company - a right and power that was denied to the vast majority of other people - because of the family he was born into or the color of his skin or something.

I find this argument deeply arrogant and condescending. ANYONE can start a company, whether their skin is white, brown, blue or green, and whether their genitals are male, female, mixed or missing, and whether their ancestry and culture is European, Indian, Zulu or Russian.

The deconstructionist / academic / relativist / social justice world view that travels with the word "privileged" wants us to believe that we should care less about any one individual who comes from the "privileged class", because this person was already "given" so much by dint of accident of birth.

Every heart break is unique. I care about the poor bastard unionized welder who made $70/hr for something that a robot now does. And I care about the entrepreneur who shuts down his business and loses his house. They're both human beings.

The word "privilege" and the world-view that generates the term is snark and arrogant and status posturing. If a white sorority girl breaks a nail and is upset, then the social critic who points and yells the p-word reveals himself to be so much BETTER. HE is the one who REALLY cares, who REALLY appreciates the moral subtley of the universe and has the deep vision to see the TRUE VICTIMS.

> Shit that is too boring to be the topic of a news story at the top of HN.

And yet, the actual inhabitants of HN thought quite a lot of it and voted it to the top position. So you're opinions are out of touch with what the people here think.

> Shit that happens to people who aren't lucky enough to be in the middle of the startup economy, and that happens approximately all the time.

Do you think you're the only one here who appreciates that it sucks to be born into a slum in South America, or to lose your house in a hurricane, or to be laid off from a manufacturing job at age 59?

We all get it.

Don't arrogate to yourself the belief that you're the only one here who has compassion - that we're all autistics.

> Please: I'm not saying that startup people are so lucky that they're not allowed to be unhappy when their companies fail. I am saying something else that is more subtle than that.

I'm not convinced of that.