asdfgasd

If I'm allowed to ask "What should we do about the Jewish Question" in a manner that appears civil, it's still not a civil discussion, regardless of the tone. If someone responds "don't you dare ask the Jewish Question," they aren't at fault for the lack of civility; the premise of the question was deeply uncivil.

Contextually, if someone on HN is asking "what should we do about the prisoners?" about people detained by ICE, the premise of the comment is uncivil. They are not prisoners, they have committed no crime (even by the standards of US law), and they are being held in deeply inhumane conditions. By any reasonable moral standard, the question is not "what should we do about the prisoners", but "how should we free people who are inhumanely detained." Allowing such an uncivil premise while banning emotional responses only reinforces the view that these people have committed some crime, and that they somehow 'deserve' the abhorrent treatment.

Furthermore, "concentration camp" has never meant "death camp", as many people seem to assume. I don't understand how it is incendiary to state they are concentration camps, when they largely meet the standards of a concentration camp.

I don't expect my posts to help these people, but I also refuse to remain silent about their inhumane treatment. If you still think this is inappropriate, I accept my ban, but I ask that you consider banning posts with such uncivil premises as well, even if they are written in an inoffensive tone.

It's not intentionally incendiary when it's largely true.

Sure, but if that is your position you should go out and advocate for this better thing instead of bemoaning the efforts other people are making as misplaced.

This shows up anytime people try to make some sort of progressive improvement to society, people come out of the woodwork to complain that it's not the right solution, without doing anything (other than complaining I guess) to motivate a better solution.

Right, but you're questioning a position that doesn't really exist. Pretty much everyone that is a strong advocate for labour protections would also like universal healthcare, it's just much more likely we can achieve labour protection in the short term than universal healthcare.

I'm an anarchist. The license plate on my Jeep is literally "ANARCHY." I'm actually not sure I could name a political position that's more strongly opposed by more people.

You're not an anarchist and you should stop try to adopt an identity with a vivid anti-capitalist history to represent your desire for corporate feudalism with guns. Anarchists are socialists and anything otherwise is misusing the word.

You aren't harassed for your beliefs because people with your economic beliefs literally hold every branch of government.

I'm sure you'll come back with something about republicans wanting big government to police morality, but those differences mean almost nothing when your economic incentives are aligned.

Sure, they might have ill-gotten capital in the form of a deed (ignoring the likelihood that there's a lien on that deed) on a tiny parcel of stolen/colonized land or vested stock in the monopolist they work for, but that's a pittance in the scheme of things. They still need to sell their labor in order to meet their needs for food, shelter, community participation, etc.

I agree with you in spirit, that most people in SV and the tech industry in general are truly workers. However, I think the monopolists have been quite clever in offering just enough capital to those workers that they feel like an integral part of the system. Especially as they gain additional seniority, or work long enough to pay off their house, that mindset engrains itself. Add to this the democrats willingness to go after the middle/upper-middle class rather than the true elites to fund social programs, and you end up with an individualistic and anti-democratic mindset.

In a way, 'startup culture' and YC contribute to that perception, giving the workers the idea they can make it big as an entrepreneur, no matter how unlikely that really is. It's manufacturing the consent of the average wage-worker in SV for a system only truly benefits elite VC firms and a very very small number of very very lucky or very very well connected entrepreneurs.

We need to find a way to reach these folks. Because this thread is evidence that they think they're significantly different from the people without housing they see on the street here every day.

There are a ton of tech workers ripe for class consciousness in the gaming industry, so I think that's a good place to start. I've also had a lot of luck encouraging collective action on individual teams that suffer under incompetent management. Combining a discussion of bad management with the trap of mortgage payments and immigration law has netted me a lot of progress with encouraging a more leftist worldview.

How about a complete abolition of capital?

I don’t like taxes being used to take away property from people just because you want what they have.

This is just a variant of "the left is just jealous of rich people" argument. That's not an argument and I'm not jealous, I'm actually quite rich by most standards, I just don't think it's earned or justified, especially in a country with a vivid history of genocide.

It's not so much that HN isn't 'open', but there is a wide double-standard in the evidence required for libertarian-right arguments vs leftist arguments.

See this thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20780064

Lots of right-wing arguments upvoted with almost no evidence:

[The city] grant[s] de facto immunity to homeless people committing petty crime, stop all police enforcement of drug laws, and shame everyone who dares to complain.

This isn't an argument, and has no sources other than a vague 'feeling' by the poster. It even includes a bit of a cut at the left ("shame anyone who dares to complain").

I'm not really complaining about that individual comment, but it's also upvoted and contains no argument or substantive discussion. Similar comments I've made are always deeply downvoted.

This has a chilling effect on discourse from leftists, where it feels like it's not worthwhile to write a substantive comment only to have it downvoted with nothing other than pithy right-libertarian ideological comments in return.

So I haven't really bothered with this account, hence spewing ideology.

Of course, everything is ideological. I'm a socialist so I'm plenty familiar with going against the status-quo and my HN karma reflects that.

I'm arguing against hiding your ideological motive (lower taxes) under the guise of 'logical deduction' or 'obviousness'.

Because there are a thousand other practical solutions people have presented that you're ignoring in deference to your ideological motive that you don't like taxes.

When you put it that way, the solution is obvious

When it's put in an ideologically biased way that ignores practical solutions to paying taxes on an increasing property value, it implies another ideologically biased solution that favours the material interests of the rich...

Sure.

The contract breech: Property taxes going up so fast that the only possible solution was to sell your home. Now, of course the value of the home was going up, which was what was driving the taxes. But forcing pensioners to sell their homes, disrupting/destroying a life-time of plans and work was never going to be a smooth ride -- who could have thought that it would be?

Financial instruments that prevent that already exist. If your home is worth millions of dollars it's not that hard to find a way to pay the property tax. "Having more money" is rarely a real problem.

a sufficient number of desperate people saw it as a solution to get it enacted.

No, people who's material interests are in direct conflict with a functional society pushed for it. It passed through a combination of "think of the elders" concern-trolling and libertarian dark money.

I fully agree with you. This insane attitude of "my ill-gotten capital is worth more than your existence" is pathetic and sad.

Maybe you can try using your giant 'logical' brain to postulate why that isn't a good idea?

You're suggesting making a fucking ghetto for homeless people? Are you serious?

This thread has confirmed my suspicion that HN cares way more about money and their material interests than any sense of morality or ethics.

Why don't you offer an alternative solution then? Throwing the homeless people in jail is ineffective and immoral.

If your solution is drug treatment programs, great, but then don't argue against raising taxes to pay for them.

There are many, it's a very old, very well thought-out tradition. Try reading Kropotkin, or from a more modern perspective, Richard Wolff.

However, it doesn't align with the current vision of orthodox Western capitalism, so it isn't particularly popular in mainstream media or culture.

Your claim this isn't whataboutism is interesting based on a quick reading of your comment history. It sure doesn't appear that you actually care about these other issues or you're just trying to provide 'perspective'. Think about the ideals you associate yourself with before complaining that people are putting words in your mouth.

Whitewashing the proud boys:

The proud boys are a strange white power group when they have prominent black members.

Claiming UKIP aren't racist because they are 'normal' people:

Have you actually talked to many UKIP supporters? I've spoken to UKIP when they knocked on the door and they seemed like pretty normal people.

(I'm sure they're normal, but they're also racists)

Claiming apparent race-baiting:

As for the the actual article you linked, the author herself has nice race-bait titles of work

Comparing criticisms of historic oppression in science to Nazi Germany:

There is also ideas of "Colonial Science" or "White Science" which reminds me of movement of removing "Jewish" Science and Mathematics in preference to "Aryan Science" before World War II.'

I might not call you a racist, but you're sure carrying a lot of water for them.

Yes, thinking of funds like this as cash flow is absolutely a mistake. Strong democratic ownership of capital will be necessary for true democratization of society, and this is an important step (although too centralized in my uninformed opinion :D).

Mongolia's dominance was far before the industrial revolution. That argument is so devoid of context it's not worth addressing. They did achieve huge gains in wealth through imperialism anyway...

The USSR was imperialist, and did achieve massive increases to the standard of living of the elite through imperialism. It's much easier to feed Russia when you can starve Ukraine.

Colonial Britain and the Dutch East India company both achieved massive gains in wealth through imperialism.

The only argument you've made is that strong property and contract rights with rule of law and low corruption can prevent squandering the spoils of imperialism. I'm not sure if I agree with that, we're too early into the US's age of dominance to tell, but it's adjacent to my point.

Slightly less than half of all Americans have any investment in the stock market. Pension funds were largely replaced with 401k's, but salaries were not increased to compensate.

While you're technically correct, the stock market primarily benefits those with enough disposable income to generate large investments where they do not need to draw down the principle, and that certainly isn't the majority of Americans.

Venezuela has less public ownership of resources than even the US. To say that they are 'communist' is an ideological farce.

People are opposed to regime change because the US government has a long history of destabilizing foreign governments in deference to US capital interests. It's unlikely their motivations are just, especially as the people involved were responsible for some of the worst atrocities in Southern American governments in the 50's-90's.

Furthermore, applying economic sanctions hurts the material conditions of poor Venezuelans without significantly affecting the corrupt government. This is evidence the US does not have a strong interest in helping poor Venezuelans, but primarily forcing regime change to a government more amenable to the interests of US oil companies.

If the US was truly a force for good, wouldn't we see the same pressure on the Bolsonaro regime in Brazil? The story is similar, a corrupt rise to power achieve through unjustly jailing political opponents. If you doubt this, read Glenn Greenwald's reporting in The Intercept.

when in many ways it's a shining example of how to do things right

US prosperity is largely a function of imperialism and military might, not some magical economic formula.

For instance, in South America:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

The US government overthrew a democratically elected government for the prosperity of a _fruit company_.

all it seems anyone talks about is how to fundamentally change the systems that made it that way.

Many of the people are fighting the systems that have heavily exploited poor countries around the world for the last ~100 years because they see it as fundamentally immoral. The US doesn't _deserve_ the standard of living it has achieved, and it's built on the blood of dead South Americans and Middle Eastern people.

It's honestly pathetic that poor Americans aren't provided for given the absolute spoils of war the elite have enjoyed.

Maybe you should actually spend some time in China before making silly assumptions.

The Chinese government is not overly concerned with individual citizens sharing anti-government sentiment. It's not a problem for most people that aren't activists. Most people are concerned with much more basic aspects of life... supporting their families, getting good jobs, time for leisure...

It doesn't mean it's acceptable, but assuming that every Chinese citizen lives in fear of the government cracking down on their political complaints is totally unfounded. The exchange student you know could just as well have been sick of westerners thinking they know more about the CCP than someone raised in China.

established-leftist-media such as the NYT

The NYT is decidedly _not_ leftist. Slightly-liberal leaning maybe, but in no way leftist. They supported the Iraq war of all things.

I honestly can't think of a paper that leftists are more critical of... Maybe the Washington Post?

/r/news is not left-leaning by any reasonable metric (there is frequently blatant racism heavily upvoted).

/r/politics is only left-leaning because of how heavily skewed right american politics is. Most of their opinions are centrist at best. Their obsession with trump is a bit annoying, but it's only annoying, not actively harmful.

Of course I am not referring to the worst stuff on that subreddit, there is shit there, and much more than average, but if a sizeable part of the population has views like this is banning it really fair?

That's the problem though. The mods were repeatedly hostile to any attempts by the admins to handle the more egregious rule violations. The admins have treated them with kid gloves for years now. They were historically one of the worst sources of brigading of other (much smaller) subs. For instance, /r/legaladvice had huge problems with them in the past.

Even the chapo mods complied with the admins when they were asked to crack down on calls for violence... Even though those calls for violence were about _dead_ slave owners... Hard to kill someone already dead.

Not necessarily. The Soviet government was engaged in significant censorship and was not fascist. Same with the CCP currently.

Fascism implies censorship, but censorship does not imply fascism.