HN user
I meet a lot of people whose idea of "getting better" is wealth being more evenly diffused across humanity. If that really is our aim the easiest way to achieve it would be to halt, or even reverse, quality of life improvements for the top x percent of people.
If "getting better" means raising the maximum possible quality of life inequality seems unavoidable, since people need an incentive to pursue and propagate technological advances.
Every time I read something like this I think about all my rich friends in Silicon Valley who engage in armchair socialism. Gives me a good chuckle. ^.^
Germans and Italians were also interned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_German_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Italian_American...
Your summarization of Marxism as an appeal to jealousy is a reductionist joke.
It's common sense. At best, people will support a system where wealth is distributed without regard to individual productivity if they think that they will get more out of it than they put in.
At worst, it's crab mentality: https://fee.org/articles/crabs-and-communists-how-envy-polit...
I'm no Marxist scholar but looking at Marxism's core ideals, particularly the idea of a "dictatorship of the proletariat," I can see that attempts to implement them will always result in atrocity.
Even Marx admitted that his new society would be born in blood and terror.
"The purposeless massacres perpetrated since the June and October events, the tedious offering of sacrifices since February and March, the very cannibalism of the counterrevolution will convince the nations that there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror."
Every leftist revolutionary thinks that they'll be the one to finally achieve "real communism" and create an egalitarian paradise. It always seems to end up in pogroms though. I think it's because, at its base, Marxism is an appeal to jealousy -- "you have three mules and I only have one, you're an opppressor who must be punished!"[1] :{
Here's some fine reading for anyone on the fence about Marxist doctrine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago
I took a look at their sub. I couldn't find any hate speech (though I ignored heavily downvoted comments). I'm also suspicious of "coded hate speech" since that concept grants license to attach racist connotations to just about any sentence.
Is there a post on r/The_Donald that stands out to you as being hate speech?
Not long friend. Our campuses reflect a growing antipathy toward free speech.[1] Whatever starts there usually ends up in the courts.
I've become convinced that the American left is now totally post liberal, in the sense that they consider classical liberalism -- à la John Stuart Mill -- highly offensive.
Good trolling sir. You had me going for a moment. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zT09Dy13slc/T3CInkRWjRI/AAAAAAAABI...
Our culture is unique. Mass relocation will probably destroy it. My own dream is to invest some of my earnings back home to prevent that from happening.
Our people will probably never become well off, but I still hold out hope that we might be able to get by without deracinating.
I'm from Kentucky as well. An earmark by Mitch McConnell secured funding for my first job out of university (WKU). He did good work for us in Bowling Green at least.
That said, I don't have any illusion that the future isn't bleak in coal country. My extended family has become substantially poorer over the last two decades -- from middle class to poverty. Still, we're working with what we've got. Every job created changes a life. At the very least it can be a bridge toward more opportunity -- that McConnell funded job was for me.
So Facebook will be openly committed to censoring certain information for the public good. What could go wrong?
Being a distinguished engineer at Google is definitely elite. Only a tiny fraction of its 30k employees hold that title and it probably draws a salary in the 1-2% range.
America has a lot of pent up energy right now. It's a good time to rewatch Les Deplorables. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMYNfQlf1H8
It's enough to help tens of thousands of families and revitalize their communities (they'll be spending most of their earnings somewhere). In Appalachia that could make a huge impact on quality of life.
Seems like having the interior pay its own way by selling food and other resources would be quite a lot more efficient. It would also allow people to govern themselves how they see fit. It's a more humane solution IMO.
Stuff like this is happening more and more these days => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R6dzZdceT4 (protestors blocking only white and asian people from crossing a bridge).
I'm glad you haven't dealt with it personally, but there are definitely people in tech who view white and asian men as being guilty until proven innocent.
I was involved in an LGBT club for a bit, doing activism and such. Every person involved who wasn't LGBT was called an ally.
Some people saw allies in a positive light while other saw them as being merely neutral -- "it's the least they can do after oppressing us for so long!"
The "allies are merely neutral" attitude was painful to deal with since it 1.) implied that straight people are bad by default and must prove otherwise and 2.) that straight people can never do enough to gain equal moral footing with LGBT people.
I can see how allies who dealt with that sort of attitude might have felt used.
We've been headed toward one party statehood for awhile. The American project has failed.
"Democratic politicians are the ruling class’s prime legitimate representatives and that because Republican politicians are supported by only a fourth of their voters while the rest vote for them reluctantly, most are aspirants for a junior role in the ruling class. In short, the ruling class has a party, the Democrats. But some two-thirds of Americans — a few Democratic voters, most Republican voters, and all independents — lack a vehicle in electoral politics."
http://spectator.org/39326_americas-ruling-class-and-perils-...
/me Pulls some idle speculation from her behind
It seems like FBs censorship tends to reflect the dominant political force in each nation. It's sort of interesting to observe.
Islamic Republic => Ban(Atheists, Feminists, Gays)
US / Europe => Ban(Right wing political organizations)
Then again, the news only picks up stories it thinks will interest readers. That's a pretty huge bias.
I believe that Paul Fussell's "Class" makes the best accounting of the [American] class system. In it there are nine levels:
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Top Out of Sight:
Billionaires and multi-millionaires. The people so wealthy they can afford exclusive levels of privacy. We never hear about them because they don't want us to.
Upper Class:
Millionaires, inherited wealth. Those who don't have to work. They refer to tuxes as "dinner jackets."
Upper Middle:
Wealthy surgeons and lawyers, etc. Professionals who couldn't be described as middle class. I suspect this is the class to which I, an engineer, am supposed to aspire.
Middle Class:
The great American majority, sort of.
High Proletarian (or "prole"):
Skilled workers but manual labor. Electricians, plumbers, etc. Probably not familiar with the term "proletarian."
Middle Prole:
Unskilled manual labor. Waitresses, painters. (In other words, my mom and dad!)
Low Prole:
Non-skilled of a lower level than mid prole. I suspect these people ask "Would you like fries with that, sir?" as a career.
Destitute:
Working and non-working poor.
Bottom Out of Sight:
Street people, the most destitute in society. "Out of sight" because they have no voice, influence or voter impact. (They don't vote.)
I agree that it sounds ludicrous to claim that one can be 'lower class' at $200k/year, however, I think there's a charitable way to read this position.
Perhaps their point is that autonomy is a better indicator of class than salary. Just like 'stupid is as stupid does,' 'class is as class does.'
Being able to afford your own office means nothing if you can't actually use it because you spend 8-10 hours a day trapped in an environment that you find degrading.
The barrier to class mobility in this case is mental. The engineer has traded autonomy for cash.
My own opinion is that one becomes upper class when they can choose not to work. If your living expenses are $20k/year and you make that from returns on passive investments, congratulations, you're a part of the leisure class.
If your expenses are $190k/year and you earn a salary of $200k/year you're a part of the lower/precariat class.
You're spinning what he said. I'm not voting this election, but I'm 100% against outrage culture.
'When asked whether he would have supported Japanese internment camps, Trump told Time that he could not say for certain.
"I would have had to be there at the time to tell you, to give you a proper answer," he told the magazine. "I certainly hate the concept of it. But I would have had to be there at the time to give you a proper answer."'[1]
1). https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/12...
No one has called for Muslims to be shipped to concentration camps.
Frankly, the most intolerant voices I've been hearing this election cycle come from the left -- calling for conservatives to be purged and blacklisted at every turn.
Progressives seem to have whipped themselves up into a moral panic.
Sad times.
Can you back that up with anything specific: evidence, examples...?
"This is him funding smear campaigns for a fascist."
This sort of "Trump is literally Hitler" rhetoric is anything but constructive. I'm sad to see that so many in the tech community are willing to operate at this level.
Republicans are not Nazis. Good people support Trump. They are your neighbors and colleagues.
You're behaving like the fear-mongering oppressors you claim to despise.
In the industrial revolution we mostly automated blunt physical labor. In the AI revolution we will automate intellectual labor. Robots are also becoming more dexterous. I don't think history can guide us here.
Objectively valuable human endeavors could shrink to nothing, though we will probably at least buy ourselves time with genetic tampering and brain prostheses.
Perhaps humanity's salvation will come from selling hand-crafted goods? Maybe the AIs will keep us around like pets (see The Culture novels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_Banks#The_Culture_novels)?
No sense in not charging ahead though. The potential upside is too awesome to leave on the table. We face existential risk regardless.
I come from the heart of tea-party country. My impression is that people believe government handouts destroy any illusion that one might have of self-sufficiency and instill a sense of helplessness. There could be some merit to this idea. [1]
It's one reason I'm skeptical of basic income. Burying money and putting people to work "mining" it, as Keynes once suggested, might even be a better alternative. [2] :]
1.) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2202/1944-2858.1158/ab...
2.) http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote/john_maynard_keynes_quot...
"a racist, mysoginist[sic] demagogue"
"Hillary may have issues but she is also possibly the most experienced presidential candidate of the last couple of decades."
s/Trump/Clinton/ and your statement: "Essentially your response is repeating talking points of the Trump campaign."
serves as a valid critique of your own response.
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Qualified for not, Clinton's corruption has been confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt over the course of many leaks and scandals. Democrats who continue to support her are just as blindly partisan as Republicans.
The whole system is broken. I won't be voting for anyone.
They are building what you're asking for I think. See this bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1207696
The demo I saw of it -- I'm a former Mozilla employee -- was incredible. Indeed, you could step backward. It's RR for the web.