shrug This is just the culture that evolved here. Not every hacker is a capitalist. And HN's own guidelines welcome "Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

The whole salary transparency discussion IS something many hackers find interesting, especially since much of the actual "hacking" is on the labor side rather than the capital side.

I don't think it's hackers' fault that venture capitalism made a bad name for itself. The VCs did that well enough on their own. Hacking culture predates (and will hopefully outlast) tech opportunism.

And I also hope this forum/audience eventually moves to a FOSS, community-supported model instead of being a part of YC. But for now it's where we gather.