61–70 of 114 posts
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> on the wrong side of history Nikita Sergeyevich, is that you?
Point awarded. Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_will_bury_you "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!"
As an attorney and someone in tech, I used to strongly admire Thiel. He left biglaw and took a gamble, and it paid off. But between his support for Trump and the Gawker nonsense, I no longer have any respect for the man. Anyone on record supporting trump is on the wrong side of history.
There's an irony to using the marxist derived "side of history" construct to support something you believe in. If there really is such a thing as history taking sides, Marx and his followers very clearly ended up on the wrong side. I imagine those co-opting the phrase now will suffer the same fate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness#Early-to...
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I was visiting my home town recently and ran into a former neighbor that is a Trump supporter. His answer for "great again" was that when he was younger his entire family had middle class incomes and nobody that he recalled received direct government assistance. Now, he says about a third of his family can't get by without help from the government and he sees the increasing dependence as bad for the family and for th…
Exactly, but Trump has made no proposal that would actually accomplish that kind of "great again." He (and Thiel) are actually examples of the ultra-rich who are taking extreme profits at the expense of workers, so why would putting him in charge of the country make it any better? Also see my sibling comment here [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12150037
I personally am skeptical, but it's a pitch many people are open to. In my opinion protectionism isn't going to revive the American middle class and bring back millions of 1970s-type well-paying, unionized manufacturing jobs, because at this point it's difficult to create any kind of circumstances that will make that happen. Though I can believe a more historical version of the argument, that free-trade deals accelerated the decline of these jobs, which would've stuck around longer, rather than fleeing rapidly to Mexico and China, if we'd have had a more protectionist trade policy over the past few decades.
I can completely understand why people are willing to buy the argument though, in part because they're not being offered a particularly compelling alternative. Telling someone who used to have a good factory job and is now poor something like: "sorry buddy, these jobs are gone and not coming back, maybe go to university or sign up for welfare", isn't a big winner. But, I doubt this is what interests Thiel.
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Exactly, but Trump has made no proposal that would actually accomplish that kind of "great again." He (and Thiel) are actually examples of the ultra-rich who are taking extreme profits at the expense of workers, so why would putting him in charge of the country make it any better? Also see my sibling comment here [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12150037
Trump sort of has a gesture towards an answer, which is more or less: trade protectionism. The broad sketch of his argument is that free trade, or perhaps more specifically "bad trade deals", moved good blue-collar jobs overseas, and either ripping up the trade deals or renegotiating them will move the jobs back. I personally am skeptical, but it's a pitch many people are open to. In my opinion protectionism isn't go…
> Speaking privately, Thiel’s allies could only conjecture reasons for his unexpected partnership with Trump; many expressed frustration with how anyone could support a candidate so unpredictable. I could come up with a few pretty obvious reasons why a gay libertarian like Thiel would support trump. 1) Democrats support the resettling of millions of Muslims to the West that have been indoctrinated in an ideology that…
2. This isn't a democrat thing, every political ideology has some extremists that are intolerant of everyone that doesn't support their view. The only reason for saying this is to create an us vs them dichotomy. Saying this will never ever lead to positive political discussions.
3. Is he really? I see it like this: The reason manufacturing and unskilled labor jobs are disappearing is because the free market favors things being produced in China. When given the choice of buying Chinese made for cheaper vs paying more for local goods people chose the Chinese products.
The less government involvement, the better markets work, and the truth is the markets favor cheaper products made overseas, that's why this is happening. The only way that these jobs can be brought back to America is by government force, which means more government involvement in trade and business. In a world where anyone can do unskilled labor there's no reason for companies to take more expensive American unskilled labor over anyone else, and without government intervention that's always going to be the case.
I don't see any possible way that "better trade deals" are going to both help these workers and boost the economy. You can either choose free markets, which favor capital and a persons value to society and are the best for the overall economy. Or you can choose protected markets which involve more government and help some people to the detriment of others. There's no way you can have both less government and a more equal economic system.
Trump is promising a solution he almost certainly knows he can't deliver to take advantage of the economically illiterate. This is why the so many elites in the republican party hate him. He's running as a republican on a democratic economic platform (more equality) but still saying he's going to have less government, which they know is impossible to do. Unfortunately so many republicans are brainwashed into thinking the democrats are incompetent and only want to increase government because they can. While in truth the increased size of the government is the side effect of trying to make society more equal.
The saddest thing is if Trump gets in if he goes for free markets and less government (which as he is a business man I think he will, but we'll see) he's going to devastate these people (the unskilled blue collar workers, his biggest fan base) lives even more than they currently are and that's the real tragedy of the rise of Trump.
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Absolutely. I'm in NYC for HOPE this weekend. Coming from Silicon Valley where 1% of the workers are black, I was so happy to see such a huge diverse crowd at the conference, all there for the shared love of exploring technology and hacker culture. SV has some incredibly smart people but, in my experience, all they care about is making money. Feels like the hacker spirit has absolutely vanished
As a NY (and India) guy who occasionally visits the west coast, seriously? NY loves tech but the valley only wants to make money? Consider the blockchain. Out west they try and rebuild the world with it - consider the (thiel funded) urbit. Back east we just replace banking clearinghouses with bank built blockchain. What makes you feel differently? Also curious what the ancestry of the people doing tech has to do with…
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Pretty much. "Racist!", "Hate!". They are just buzzwords that serve to shut down debate.
Conversely, if you recognize this, do not let "liberal(ism)" become a thought-terminating cliche for you.
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Point awarded. Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_will_bury_you "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!"
"History on our side" is a pretty common phrase, used by people of varying political stripes. A quick Google Books search turns up British MPs using it in the 1940s and George H.W. Bush using it in the 1990s, among others.
A related article that does a good job of explaining why Thiel supports Trump: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/21/peter-thi... EDIT: (to explain why) No other analysis I've seen anywhere of Thiel at the RNC takes into account this very, very important attempt at explaining Thiel's reasons: """ Now, in 2016, Thiel has finally found a politician capable of seizing that opportunity: a disruptor-in-chief…
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Neoreactionary_movement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment
Until just recently, I dismissed this crowd as libertarian fruitopians. To be treated no different than the flat earthers.
Then I learned about the rantings of Mencius Moldbug [1]. These jokers actually mean it.
The world's a big place. I guess there's room enough for every form of crazy.
[1] Using his pseudonym, so that this isn't entirely ad homenin.
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As a NY (and India) guy who occasionally visits the west coast, seriously? NY loves tech but the valley only wants to make money? Consider the blockchain. Out west they try and rebuild the world with it - consider the (thiel funded) urbit. Back east we just replace banking clearinghouses with bank built blockchain. What makes you feel differently? Also curious what the ancestry of the people doing tech has to do with…
To be honest? I'll take 5% more efficient banks. The boring stuff is usually worth a lot more to Society. Just doesn't catch us tweens less easily Also, if you've followed the urbit guys from the start, then you know how cultlike they are. No thanks Source:am tween