Startups and Morality

A discussion about moral calculus, infinites, and framing over a steaming bowl of pho

I’m sitting at a restaurant in the Outer Sunset with three friends blowing steam off the top of our pho. And one says, “I can’t believe people have kids and found companies at the same time… imagine not being there for the kids.”

Sometimes a stray comment wafts away on its own, but this one stuck with me. “What do you mean?”

“Well, they should do one or the other.”

“And what if they’re forced to do both at the same time?” Some are born into, some aspire to, and others have situations thrust upon them. You could easily paint a picture where a founder is thrust into having a kid.

“Ok. Let’s say they can wait.”

I chewed on my edamame husk for a good minute. Wasn’t my friend right? If there’s one thing we can all agree upon, it’s that parents should be there for their kids, that thou shalt sacrifice for your children. “So it’s a moral obligation to be there for kids?”

“Of course.” My friend said between slurps of pho.

“And does it matter if they’re yours or not.”

“To some extent, but I guess not.”

“Then why aren’t you fostering?” My Socratic trap was sprung.

We kind of laughed, because the argument seems irrefutable. But rather than admit the problem of thou shalt’s, the problem of judging for not taking positive moral actions, my friend said, “Look, I’m not perfect.”

Of course, no one’s even close to perfect, but we don’t even strive to act this type of perfect. So why uphold ourselves to this false standard?

My second friend, no longer content with listening, gave a wry smile and said, “I don’t foster because I’m saving money to raise my kids best. First, I need to pay down my mortgage. Then achieve passive income enough for FIRE. And then after I build my second bunker in New Zealand, I’ll think about fostering.”

And now we are at the crux of the problem. We’ve created a moral calculus. Good old John Stuart Mill would be proud. We line up all of our moral deeds on the right side of the equation, balance them with the immoral, and maximize. We look at the assessments of likelihood, of us driving in a safer way, therefore probabilistically saving lives. And then because we are astute economists, we factor discounting into present value. We read Pushkin and Trotsky. We prophesize our destined utopia, and we do the math.

If utopia gives us 10 billion utils, sacrificing 10 million souls is obviously worth it. Right? In any moral calculus, in any system where you assign a finite value to a human life, you lose.

I read a story about a woman in Soviet Russia whose lover is sick with TB. And she hustles, grifts and bribes her way into a meeting with the Commissar of Health. Tears in her eyes, she pleads her case. The Commissar drums his fingers along his knuckles, and tsk tsks our protagonist’s lack of PhD level effective altruism. “Do you think you’re the only one? There are thousands of Leos. Why is your Leo more important than the rest?”

And she responds simply, “Because he’s my Leo.”

The line always struck me. It felt like a tuning fork that thrummed my heart strings. I didn’t understand why, until I read another story about a Soviet political prisoner subjected to lies, libel, and only the most humane forms of torture. His litigator seeks a falsehood, an untruth, to violate that inviolable thou shalt not lie. Our protagonist resists.

He resists the torture. He resists the destruction of his fame and legacy. But he falls for the argument of a moral calculus. We had to kill. We had to lie. Because we shalt survive.

He confesses. His cerebral cortex succumbed to syllogism. And yet his body revolts. He feels a wrongness. He feels it like a deep ocean, a limitless infinite stirs in his soul.

The only way to run a moral calculus that works, that doesn’t invite evil, is playing with infinites. Instead of assigning a finite number to the value of life, a unit one, we assign infinity. We dwarf all the thou shalt’s by an infinite thou shalt not. The infinite via negativa. The silver rule. Thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not kill.

How can Leo stand up against the masses? Leo’s life is infinite.

Any philosophy of thou shalt falls for my Socratic trap. It unleashes hubris, judgment, and a form of bigotry I saw growing up with gay parents in the South.

As we sat eating pho in the Outer Sunset, I don’t think we were advocating for Stalinist levels of moral calculus. Rather, we were indoctrinated into a culture of judgment, of thou shalt’s, of assigning moral value to others, while Marcus Aurelius turned in his grave.

I shrugged my shoulders and tried to tweezer out the last noodle from my pho with my chopsticks, “Maybe what I’m trying to say is, ‘Thou shalt not judge’ is a pretty good commandment.”

“Alright, heard,” My friend leaned back in his chair, “But it’s not that helpful. Now, I have no idea what to think about having kids and startups at the same time. Let alone trying to make the decision myself.”

“Well, in startups you do need to judge...” If employees don’t follow your culture, if tasks aren’t done appropriately, if you build the wrong product for your customers, your company will fail. If you don’t make judgments, the market will.

“Didn’t we just say thou shalt not judge?” My friend gave a wry smile.

“Hear me out,” I leaned forward, “You’ve heard of the trolley problem, right?” In the trolley problem, two people are tied to a railway, and a trolley is barreling down the tracks. You’re standing at a lever which allows you to change the direction of the trolley, changing which individual is crushed. In what situations do you pull the lever, and in what situations is it moral?

“The trolley problem isn’t a moral quandary at all, If a trolley will hit somebody, regardless of what you do, you have negative infinity on both sides of the equation. Morality has nothing to do with it.” I held my hands up in mock celebration.

“So what you’re trying to say is there’s no right answer?”

“Exactly, well almost exactly. There’s not a right moral answer.” You don’t need to look at the world only through a moral framing. In fact, outside a few thou shalt nots, most quandaries need a different framing. Perhaps an economic one, perhaps a social stability one.

“When you work in a startup, most decisions don’t have anything to do with morality. Do you launch a product before it’s ready? Do you pay some people more and other people less? Do you have kids while founding a startup?” Whatever the choice may be, whatever the framing is, as long as you’ve consciously made that choice, then it’s up to you to make it the right one.

“Who are we to judge...” My friend said his hands resting on his full belly.

Whenever I hear these passing moral judgments in the realm of startups, I want other founders to cut the Gordian knot, to reject the comment’s premise. Not only is it not wrong, it’s got nothing to do with morality.

I want founders to do what they do best, to slay the dragon whose scales are thou shalt’s. And call out “Timshel” at the top of their lungs.