HN user
Drugs are great. You are entitled to your opinion, and so am I. There's nothing morally wrong with not wanting to participate in a society based on suffering and exploitation of poor people in far away places.
Capitalism is just a system based around the belief that capital appreciation is the ultimate end goal, and the ends justify the means. Everything is fine so long as the GDP keeps going up.
I guess we can all believe what we want to believe. But Y Combinator (who sponsors this website) is a venture capital firm, which seeks to generate returns on capital by investing in companies. This website, therefore, is designed to reflect and encourage the interests of capital. You can pretend Y Combinator is something other than a venture capital firm if you want, but one day you'll realize that they too only care about getting money.
You're trying to add layers of complexity that don't exist. The universe is remarkably uncomplicated, much like biology (which, you correctly assert, only exists to replicate itself). Humans like to anthropomorphize and we have a tendency to see things that aren't there, and we're also highly suggestible and easily manipulated by marketing tactics.
I don't think capitalism is inherently bad, but the system we have is bad. Adam Smith wrote a lot about this, in particular he loathed landlords and entities that suck value out of the system while offering little in return. Apple is a weird case, because arguably they do create a lot of value, but currently we have a problem where that value isn't returned to the broader society, instead it goes into the hands of a small minority of people and groups.
Asymmetries need to be balanced, such as the balance between labour and capital. Unions help labour, but thanks to a decades-long propaganda campaign against unions, we no longer have that push back against capital.
Personally I think the problem will only get worse, so I'd suggest buying the S&P 500 with as much cheap leverage as you can afford.
Apple is simply playing by the rules of capitalism, which are as follows: extract as much value as possible from your customers, employees, etc, for the purpose of enriching capital (shareholders). Apple will follow the law to the letter, but they will do so in whatever way will be maximally best for their own interests. Way she goes.
People keep falling for the just-world fallacy[1], and companies exploit this through the use of propaganda (ads, marketing, yadda yadda) and most people eat it up. No company (not Spotify, not Apple, not the woke-est, most DEI company out there) cares about anything other than profits at the end of the day under capitalism, because capital rules everything and politicians are not exempt from the rules of capital.
This is a really bad take that ignores a variety of things, such as the cost of going out and the general enshittification of everything (i.e., decline in quality of goods and services).
It also ignores the growing cultural divide of our clickbait ad-based economy that preys on fear and outrage in order to profit from everyone's misery by trying to sell them the latest plastic junk from China that eventually goes into a recycling bin and then shipped back to Asia where it's dumped into the rivers and ocean.
So long as we keep polluting unchecked, we are in big trouble. Staying below 1.5C is a pipe dream at this point, and we've already (briefly) hit 2C[1]. We're also producing and consuming more fossil fuels than ever before, and the pollution rate is increasing exponentially[2].
Exponential growth has a tendency to creep up on you, and then all of a sudden things are out of control. Plus, there are the significant lag effects, where we don't feel the effect of today's pollution until much later (which is usually decades later, depending on the nature of it).
People should be panicking about this, but most prefer to just pretend everything is fine or we'll somehow invent some magic technology that will defy the laws of physics.
[1] https://climate.copernicus.eu/global-temperature-exceeds-2de...
If you use a pencil to stab someone, yes it's a weapon. If I use a shovel to kill someone, it's a weapon. If I use a pillow to suffocate someone, it's a weapon. If I drive a car into a person and kill them because I don't feel like following the rules, yes it's a weapon.
Cars not only have the direct immediate effect as weapons (i.e., using them to drive into/over people), but they also have significant second and third order effects such as the pollution from emissions, tires, production and supply chains, destruction of the environment from road construction, cement production emissions, and so on and so forth. There are also the health effects of people forgetting how to use their bodies to move themselves, being isolated inside an insulated box such that nobody interacts with those around them, which leads people to be hostile, aggressive, violent, and so on.
Cars are weapons and they're killing us.
90% of the people who salivate over these giant death machines aren't using them for hauling goods or farm work. Where I grew up, people get very excited about owning pickup trucks because they view them as status symbols (bigger is better mentality). Thankfully I escaped that terrible culture, but NYC still has too many unnecessary cars.
If economics took externalities into account then our entire economic order would break down. Thus, it won't happen...until eventually the whole thing stops working.
Eh, that's a pretty big vehicle. Does that still actually count as a _car_?
The 2 best selling vehicle models in the USA are the Ford F-series and Chevy equivalent (Silverado), according to some sources[1][2]. I agree they're absurd for what are effectively overpowered wheelchairs that make you fat and reduce your IQ[3], but it is what it is.
[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g43553191/bestselling-cars...
[2] https://www.edmunds.com/most-popular-cars/
[3] https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/air-pollution-li...
If you took the average American and airdropped them into Amsterdam with an F-150, they would probably think it's very anti-car :)
Humans are weird, and they don't behave how you might expect. But once you've lived for a while and seen it first hand many times, it starts to make sense in a weird way.
I agree with you, for example, traffic calming devices (speed bumps, roundabouts, chicanes) are incredibly effective. However I think enforcement needs to be rethought, cars are essentially just computers now and they know what the speed limit is, so why don't they automatically limit the speed of cars?
If you want to race, that's fine, but don't do it on public roads. Go to a race track that's designed for that.
And also agree on drugs, we should just legalize everything IMO. Prohibition has never worked, anyone who wants to do drugs are going to do them, and we're better off helping than harming people by filling up the prisons.
Do you also believe the laws of physics are just an opinion? If physics is an opinion, then I believe that F = ma, which means that more of m and a means more F, which means more injuries and death.
Phones are easy to blame here, but nobody wants to talk about speeding and dangerous driving, which seems to have become totally normalized. People treat speed limits as a minimum speed suggestion. There's also close to no enforcement of traffic laws from what I've seen, yet lots of people are outraged about too many bicycles (even though the number of people killed by bicycles is a tiny fraction of those killed by cars).
Recruiting is so, so important. I generally agree with the idea that the most important attribute for startup founders is to be great at hiring/recruiting.
Sadly, this is not something that the big tech cos focus on these days. Employees are viewed more as cattle than pets these days.
Incredibly smart people are unlikely to get hired by most big tech cos these days because the truth is that they don't want very smart people, they want pliable drones who will push the buttons per their boss's demands.
People generally don't want to hire those who are smarter than them, because they need subjects below them in the pecking order in order to make themselves look better. There are occasional exceptions, but the people who filter the resumes generally operate under these principles. It's unusual for exceptionally smart or talented people to work as recruiters.
This is one of those tough life lessons that I have also suffered. First, the vast majority of startups failed, and unless you have something to fall back on (like rich parents), you should _not_ take on the risk of starting a company unless you have adequate funding.
The truth about starting a business is that the vast majority fail, and those who succeed typically come from privileged backgrounds. It's very rare for legitimately poor people to succeed because you cannot take the same risks if you have nothing to fall back on.
My suggestion to you would be to get a big tech job and collect as much money as you can. Once you're self-sufficient, you can go full YOLO.
NYC is the greatest place to raise children IMO. The best of everything: you can live car-free, high density of opportunities, educational services, activities, art, culture, etc.
EDIT: Okay, arguably some places like maybe the Netherlands (which has excellent anti-car infra) are better, but I've seen it all at this point and I am convinced NYC is still the best, even though there are too many cars and too much surface area is dedicated to cars.
I live in New York City where it's not unusual to see cars going places they're not allowed, including parks. The problem is not the ruleset, it's the fact that automobile operators don't comply with the rules and nobody enforces them. Every day I see an automobile on a sidewalk or driving through the blocked off sections of the park I live next to in order to bypass traffic.
Cars are weapons and should be severely limited on public roads, especially in terms of speed (all cars should have speed governors).