bravohippo

Wow, I DO NOT envy that Sisyphean task you have undertaken!

Still, bravo!

Sorry for the fawning adoration.

But you see I've been reading HN since the beginning and the endless neoliberal bullshit has made me despair for hacker culture--to the point where I'm now embarrassed to tell educated people that I work in the software startup scene. I'm ashamed to call myself a hacker because of the people the word is associated with.

The smartest people I know see only bad things coming from Silicon Valley. I try to convince them that there are a few good hackers out there who can make positive contributions to civilization...

But even the hero Aaron Swartz has a blighted track record because he created reddit--a shitheap that is destroying culture and causing a resurgence in "White Nationalism" aka Nazism.

If you recognize that memes don't matter, reddit's most notable cultural achievement is that it has become the biggest white pride recruiting site on the planet. And this is the legacy of our BEST hacker activist... this is pg's big hack of society.

So your existence on HN has been meaningful. There are other hackers with similar thoughts, but they rarely speak up publicly. The ones that I know have learned to keep quiet or use pseudonyms so they can get by without conflict.

Anyway don't take my fanboyism too seriously.

Putting people that harm society in jail is one of the few ways to actually deal with these kinds of social issues.

Your kind of gutlessness is pretty much exactly why the world has been gifted to neoliberal extremists. Normal liberals lack the courage of their convictions. They're afraid to do anything beyond sending a stern letter.

Your pathetic sternly worded letters go straight to the paper shredder. The corporate state doesn't care. Capitalism doesn't care.

The only truth that capitalism recognizes is power. The only way to stop neofeudalism is through strength and power.

Putting people in jail as I said is really not an effective policy. There are far better policies. But I'm not actually making a specific policy recommendation, I'm arguing that normal modes of individual behavior that are condoned by American capitalist democracy are not effective at solving these issues. To solve these issues the only choice is to do things that your neoliberal masters would consider immoral. The point is that what they call a sin is actually virtue, and vice versa.

Using your muscles/strength/laws/guns/brains to ensure economic safety for everyone is a virtue

You're my favorite HN poster and I've read all your comments going back tens of pages.

Marry me?

It's called the class war. The ownership class has class consciousness, but the laboring class does not. The ownership class knows when to wink and nudge and how to run a subtle cartel, because they have class consciousness. But the laboring classes don't know how to do this; instead they fight against each other in a race to the bottom.

The market has always been broken. The "free market" is pretty much the biggest myth since Jesus.

In the old days of Unions, people willing to work for no money would get beat up, because fools like that ruin life for everyone else.

The types of people willing to destroy their health and have no family, no significant others, no interests outside of work should be thrown in jail because all they do is drive down the quality of life of everyone else.

The more that these kinds of myths spread, the worse our lives will be. As software people, it's essential that we counteract this romanticization of economic exploitation, or we will be dragged down with all the clueless fools who buy it into.

Oh, eli, you never disappoint.

This guy has Protestant work ethic brain damage. He enjoys the aesthetic of self-flagellation, the pain and suffering.

He's sado-masochistic and loves pain, both his own pain and the pain of others.

People who talk like this are the worst people in the world because they always end up taking out their bloodlust on others. They advocate for low wages, for harsher punishments, for more terror at every opportunity. It is the most blatant expression of thanatos and the fact that people like this hold significant positions of power pretty much sums up why the majority of the world's population has their head held underwater by a tiny, brutal elite.

The elites are sadists. They morally justify their sadism with their own masochism--"I love to suffer, so you should too!"

Horrific.

Like you said, it's just complete bullshit. Rapidly assembling CRUD apps to discover a market is somehow gaining technical skills?

If you want to develop technical skills, the way to do it is by reading and then trying to solve the challenging perennial problems. This generally is not profitable activity which is why it is funded by research grants.

This guy is confusing technical skills with something else, something that sounds like a hypermasculine myth about the value of self-flagellation. It is Protestant work ethic bullshit, the kind of bullshit that, when it permeates a society, makes that society utterly anti-pleasure and impossible for any sane person to enjoy.

>Since I own the business I work at, does that automatically qualify me to be a sociopath?

No. The sociopaths are the ones who control the economic system and the bulk of the capital, who, if your company becomes worth anything, will make you an offer you can't refuse and you will no longer be an owner.

If you refuse to be bought out due to some kind of lifestyle ideology, then you're clueless and suffering from Protestant Work Ethic brain damage.

You're describing an instability. You are an instability. The laws of capitalism dictate that your situation as business owner should either set you up as a sociopath maximizing your outcome, or sell the company to a sociopath who can make more money using your company than you're able to make.

If you then could retire but choose not to, you're clueless, because you're enthusiastic about being a cog in a dehumanizing capitalist machine. Only clueless people and sociopaths feel good about that. Clueless people like it because they have no clue, and sociopaths like it because power and destruction is what turns them on.

Personally I just find that most people who willingly engage in commerce without a financial need to do so lack imagination. I do make exceptions for hacker types like pg who seem to believe they are subverting the system with their economic activity, but the line between being a subversive capitalist and being the most deluded sort of clueless person is very fuzzy.

That's despicable. The way we look at the inventors of mustard gas, lobotomies, and torture wheels is the way history will look at you.

You must be a terrible person to be willing to directly further evil in the name of money and "fun".

The "masses" also have bigger problems than being spied on. Namely, having shitty lives because they are poor, diseased, and overworked.

Meanwhile, the intelligentsia waits for the masses to fix the problems over which the masses have little understanding or control.

The intelligentsia can't protest--that would threaten their careers! Free speech--meaning political speech--doesn't apply if you're a Senior Vice President. Being publicly political is the fastest way to undermine your potential.

So those with power do nothing because they want to keep power and they have bigger things to worry about.

Those without power do nothing because they have no power and it will make no difference and they have bigger things to worry about.