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Marc Andreessen Pro-Colonialism Tweet Riles India Tech World

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Re: Marc Andreessen Pro-Colonialism Tweet Riles India Tech World

#151

Post by douche »

rayiner wrote: post #126
JackFr wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> though obviously, the occupation of India was far more brutal The 'Americans' were the occupiers. Native Americans have quite a tale to tell about brutality.

European, and later American, treatment of Native Americans was not colonization, just straight-up genocide. It's not really relevant to the question of the long-term impact of British institutions in former colonies.

The biggest part of that genocide was accidental, and accomplished before the first permanent European settlements were ever established in North America. The story of Amherst's "smallpox blankets" is widely known, and deplorable, but the worst of the epidemics had raged through and decimated native populations in the 250 years prior since first contact.

It seems to be conveniently forgotten that many tribes were complicit in aiding and abetting Europeans in exterminating their rivals as well. Cortez conquered the Aztecs with 600 Spaniards... and 200,000 Tlaxcalans. The Iroquois confederation did most of the work of exterminating other native populations throughout the Great Lakes region.

Re: Marc Andreessen Pro-Colonialism Tweet Riles India Tech World

#152

Post by shripadk »

Brakenshire wrote: post #134
dharmach wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opinion is that the West fueled industrialization with the looted wealth from colonies.

I think that's almost certainly true, but again I'd go back to the example of Russia, where the elite continued to put their wealth principally into competitive status symbols rather than industrialization for almost two centuries after the industrial revolution started. Elites siphoning off wealth for their luxury, rather than investing in society or the economy, has been the rule, not the exception, for the majorit…

India had a more vibrant scientific society than the West. While the West was still figuring out if the Earth was flat or not, Indian scholars had already established that the Earth was not only a spheroid but also determined the age of the Universe (See: https://www.quora.com/What-does-Hinduism-say-about-the-shape... and this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_units_of_time). We even had Metallurgy working way before Britain learnt about working metals. I can go on and on about Indian intellectual life way before Britain came to colonize India but it makes no sense in today's context because most of these facts are either unknown or is of little interest to the West. See what Professor Dean Brown (a scientist from the United States) says about India, Sanskrit and India's Scientific heritage in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Brv2FaOluU

Re: Marc Andreessen Pro-Colonialism Tweet Riles India Tech World

#153

Post by vram22 »

mikeash wrote: post #94
fwn wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone not sensitized by the net-neutrality debate would probably call a slow, spotty or censored internet connection still internet. But as frontiers are already pretty straight, qualitative differences in internet access already constitute a difference to what the net-neutrality side would be willing to accept as part of what can be called "internet". This makes it funny that you name his wording "Orwellian" while…

Fair, I accept that slow, spotty, and maybe even censored internet connections might qualify as "partial Internet connectivity." But that's not at all what we're talking about here, right? The service in question allows connecting to just two sites or something?

No, IIRC, not just two sites. But just a few sites, may be in the range of 10, which is not at all the same as all Internet sites, and letting the users decide which (of the many other useful sites) they can access.

Re: Marc Andreessen Pro-Colonialism Tweet Riles India Tech World

#154

Post by vram22 »

chvid wrote: post #114

I guess you need to pick your words with care; and not to be too direct if you want to say: 1. The "ruling" really is just protecting existing telcos' businesses. 2. Something about India being held back by corruption and bad politics. (Not that I agree with the above.) What would happen in USA if a big Chinese company set up free over mobile network access to select websites?

Good question. Interested to see if there is any answer.

Re: Marc Andreessen Pro-Colonialism Tweet Riles India Tech World

#155

Post by temp »

jccc wrote: post #131
sangnoir wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any other (more sane) interpretation might be a really, really profoundly stupid statement, as well Agreed. The exercise in measuring charitability is merely academic in this instance. The bottom line is a VC has said a really stupid thing which goes against his earlier pronouncements on NN, because he literally has money on the line as an FB investor. Which ever way you look at it, he sounds like an out-of-touch c…

Then criticize him on that basis: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11073021 The exercise in measuring charitability is merely academic in this instance. If we value having any kind of meaningful discussion then does it really not matter that we criticize on the grounds you mention and not just seize on the opportunity to mischaracterize a statement as pro-colonialist?

>just seize on the opportunity to mischaracterize a statement as pro-colonialist?

It's not a mischaracterization. Just because he now regrets calling his opponents "anti-colonialists" (or rather because the internet made him regret it) does not mean I have to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Did he explicitly state that he thinks India would be better off under colonial rule? No.

Did he call opponents of Free Basics "anti-colonialist"?

If he's uninformed about what colonialism did to India, then he should shut his mouth about it. But that would be too hard seeing as he has personal interest in Facebook getting a monopoly there and offering a second-class internet experience without having to invest anything into bandwidth (which would be paid for by the state).

Besides, the so-called "explanation" of his views in further tweets makes it look even worse because "anti-colonialism" is apparently very close to "nationalism". So those filthy Indians are actually being nationalists for telling poor little Mark to go fuck himself and his idea of a cheaply done monopoly.

Re: Marc Andreessen Pro-Colonialism Tweet Riles India Tech World

#156

Post by danans »

The best reply to such simplistic pro-colonialist comments about India is this graph compiled by British economist Angus Maddison:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Maddison#/media/File:1_A...

Basically, India and China together represented the largest percentages of the world's GDP, until they were colonized, after which their contribution plunged. Of course, the decline was multifactorial - colonialism wasn't just one specific thing, and there were seeds of instability that colonists took advantage of - but the larger historical trend seems pretty clear.

Re: Marc Andreessen Pro-Colonialism Tweet Riles India Tech World

#157

Post by CPLX »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #102
rayiner wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I never see mentioned in this debate is the fact that America was a British colony as well, and colonial status definitely drained American wealth for centuries (though obviously, the occupation of India was far more brutal). But I think it's highly unlikely that America ever would've become a superpower without the benefit of British culture, institutions, and law.

How about German culture, institutions and law? How about Bohemian? Austrian? Italian? Czech? Polish? America was last a British colony, but it was far from a uniform culture of expat British. And it reinvented itself violently upon rebellion. Into something quite new in the world. Or at least not seen in a long time. And definitely not British.

Indeed. Often overlooked is that those of German descent did and still do comprise the largest percentage of the American population of any source.

Re: Marc Andreessen Pro-Colonialism Tweet Riles India Tech World

#158

Post by manish_gill »

xiaoma wrote: post #83
geofft wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, that document was written by another VC who likes to run his mouth on Twitter. So there's a legitimate discussion to be had about whether that document is poisoning the well of criticism. Marc Andreessen is an extraordinarily influential person in tech, and that influence is based on his reputation. If a nobody like me tweeted something dumb, everyone would just ignore me. Nobody ignores Andreessen, though…

> Of course, that document was written by another VC who likes to run his mouth on Twitter. So there's a legitimate discussion to be had about whether that document is poisoning the well of criticism. This comment itself is further argument that more people here could stand to read it. You've literally ignored the ideas within and just made an ad hominem argument based on the author instead.

He's questioned the judgment of the person writing the document based on his position which can introduce the bias similar to what we see in Andreessen. Not using the ideas described by said document would be the first step when discussing/critiquing it. Otherwise it would circular, no?

Re: Marc Andreessen Pro-Colonialism Tweet Riles India Tech World

#160

Post by intended »

douche wrote: post #151
rayiner wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European, and later American, treatment of Native Americans was not colonization, just straight-up genocide. It's not really relevant to the question of the long-term impact of British institutions in former colonies.

The biggest part of that genocide was accidental, and accomplished before the first permanent European settlements were ever established in North America. The story of Amherst's "smallpox blankets" is widely known, and deplorable, but the worst of the epidemics had raged through and decimated native populations in the 250 years prior since first contact. It seems to be conveniently forgotten that many tribes were com…

The British were famous for divide and rule policies in India - that's how a little company like the east India company eventually swallowed up the various kingdoms and princely states of the subcontinent.
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