I was inducted into Mu Alpha Theta (a college level math honor society) in 11th grade, the earliest you can be inducted. We did volunteer work tutoring math once or twice a week. I've spent a lot of time in online communities for folks with really smart kids -- the parents are typically also smart and it is an environment where many people come to terms with their own social and emotional problems through trying to do right by their kids. So I've thought a lot about this as well: Smart people are given a lot of messages to the effect that they have a moral obligation to give away what they know for the benefit of all humankind and if, instead, they use it to make big bucks, then they are evil incarnate. This mindset can be extremely hard to escape (at least for some people).

Universities are rife with such "idealism", a form of idealism that I increasingly think is misplaced. To try to put it in a nutshell: One requirement for sainthood is that you be persecuted. We seem to think that good people must suffer horribly as a means to prove their goodness. I'm increasingly disenchanted with the idea that one has to martyr oneself to be a good person, whether that means dying for the cause or just not getting paid adequately for your work. I think all that teaches people is that there are only two kinds of people: victims and victimizers and in order to be good you must be a victim because the other choice is intolerable. I have concluded that trying to be "good" by being a willing victim forces others into the role of victimizer even if they don't want to be there. So I believe that if one wants to genuinely do good in the world, one must pursue a paradigm of symbiotic exchange rather than letting people parasitically use you up and playing the role of martyr/victim.

Symbiotic exchange sounds rather like Capitalism. I don't think that means every thing one does has to be in pursuit of the almighty dollar. I haven't been here long, but I'm impressed with the quality of HN so far. I am struck by the fact that it was initially created as a means for people at Y-Combinator to get to know potential applicants -- ie although it's offered as a "free" service, it ultimately is part of their business strategy. It looks to me like this is why HN is a better run forum than many I have participated in which were all-volunteer. HN can't afford to cater to personal peccadilloes and personality quirks of a volunteer staff. It has to meet a certain professional standard. And to the degree that at least some of the members want to apply to Y-Combinator, the participants have motivation as well to remain professional and polite. It is not a good place to indulge in habits that promote flame-wars and the like because the purpose is not merely social. Not everyone here will have such a goal, but it still impacts group culture. An influential minority can go a long way towards shaping community behavior. For some members, there is potentially millions of dollars at stake (if they can get VC from Y-Combinator and launch a highly successful business). It's strong motivation to behave better than what you see in many online forums where everything is idealistically given away "free" and flame-wars and other problems are the rule, not the exception.