Would I be correct in thinking that most participation in HN is driven by the desire to enter inner rings as the ones described in this text? (e.g. access to VC money)
First of all, my interpretation of Lewis' essay is very different from what you're implying: money, power, and material things are tangential to his point. The rings are a form of social interaction, that in itself motivates you to "do very bad things". Your desire to form part of the elite-like group is what coerces you, not your desire for potential rewards. So monopoly money is more than enough to create such a situation, and I'd even say that's one of the main points of the text.
That being said, I don't think that dreams of higher rings motivate participation here. Some, perhaps. But most comments I see, even those I don't like, appear to be driven by curiosity, shared interests, and simple desire to express one's generally incorrect opinion. There is definitely a rampant sense of smug elitism, but that's more of a dead end than the entrance to a rabbit hole.
Good answer, although I would argue that rings in the sense that the author describes confer money and status. Rings that only give you monopoly money, such as HN points, are not really going to lead you to compromise your integrity. They are not really rings in the author's sense, they are just silly games or pastimes.
VC money, on the other hand, is real money... And you need "introductions" to get it. They almost outright admit that the entire thing is an inner ring.
> I would argue that rings in the sense that the author describes confer money and status.
I strongly disagree!
First, while those are his early examples, he later discusses how even the rejection of money and public status is another form of wanting-to-belong:
>> People who believe themselves to be free, and indeed are free, from snobbery, and who read satires on snobbery with tranquil superiority, may be devoured by the desire in another form. It may be the very intensity of their desire to enter some quite different Ring which renders them immune from all the allurements of high life.
>> An invitation from a duchess would be very cold comfort to a man smarting under the sense of exclusion from some artistic or communistic côterie. Poor man—it is not large, lighted rooms, or champagne, or even scandals about peers and Cabinet Ministers that he wants: it is the sacred little attic or studio, the heads bent together, the fog of tobacco smoke, and the delicious knowledge that we—we four or five all huddled beside this stove—are the people who know.
Secondly, he explicitly states that money and status are _not_ the desire that tempts people over the line:
>> And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world.
TLDR: It's a cautionary speech about people idolizing a group and the corruptive desire to belong to that group, totally regardless of how the group is defined.
