Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Peter Thiel Gave Money to Attorney General Going After Google

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 112 posts

Re: Peter Thiel Gave Money to Attorney General Going After Google

#91

Post by jrs95 »

imustbeevil wrote: post #90
jrs95 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a heavy handed social weapon that has sometimes been used wrongly You mean like those pro-Northam ads in VA with the Gillespie voter in a pickup truck running over minority children?

Why can't they both be bad? People who are racist are assholes. People who wield victimhood as a weapon are assholes. Neither of those groups are most people in their respective demographic. Is this really such a difficult position to hold?

It doesn't really matter if it's a minority of people when I have to listen to a group of my own coworkers going on about how much they loved that ad.

Just to clarify, I totally agree with what you're saying, I'm just saying I can't not be pissed about this sort of thing just because racism exists. That's the standard response I seem to encounter both online and IRL. It's basically "well, racists exist, therefore all of this bad behavior is to be excused".

Re: Peter Thiel Gave Money to Attorney General Going After Google

#92

Post by [deleted] »

jrs95 wrote: post #91
imustbeevil wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't they both be bad? People who are racist are assholes. People who wield victimhood as a weapon are assholes. Neither of those groups are most people in their respective demographic. Is this really such a difficult position to hold?

It doesn't really matter if it's a minority of people when I have to listen to a group of my own coworkers going on about how much they loved that ad. Just to clarify, I totally agree with what you're saying, I'm just saying I can't not be pissed about this sort of thing just because racism exists. That's the standard response I seem to encounter both online and IRL. It's basically "well, racists exist, therefore all…

[deleted]

Re: Peter Thiel Gave Money to Attorney General Going After Google

#93

Post by rrhd »

3pt14159 wrote: post #55
rdtsc wrote: post #5

Yes those who have money buy political favors in US. https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/07/amid-antitrust-talk... Google has 25 lobbying firms on retainer and spends at least $15M / year on lobbying. That is more than Verizon, Monsanto and Goldman for example, just to pick a few traditional big and scary companies off the top of my head. Also speaking of Google, it has a pretty wide revolving door: "22 former Whit…

Monsanto is evil for tricking farmers or for unfair business practices, not for lobbying. This is a false equivalency. Google advocates for things that are generally in the public interest and does not abuse those position as many companies of their size do.

> Google advocates for things that are generally in the public interest

No, they advocate 100% for things in Google's interest. If those happen to be good for the public that's a nice bonus.

It's also a pretty awful bar that they don't bother with anti-trust unless the consumer harm is blatant. Thankfully that ship seems to be turning.

Re: Peter Thiel Gave Money to Attorney General Going After Google

#94

Post by rrhd »

smhost wrote: post #36
downandout wrote: post #23

While this headline is factual, this is like saying " Man With Pre-Existing Health Conditions Donated to the Obama Campaign, and Now We Have Obamacare ". People shop for candidates that will serve their interests and then try to help get them elected. That is how our system of government works, and there is nothing wrong with that. The article strives to imply that Thiel paid this guy off to bring the action, but pro…

> That is how our system of government works, and there is nothing wrong with that. The system you described naturally consolidates power, and most of society finds it acceptable only if it coexists with a mechanism to redistribute some of that power to the underprivileged class. So there are some things wrong with it. > a man hated by liberals for his support of Donald Trump Liberals hate him for his conservative vi…

Also,

> The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.

Re: Peter Thiel Gave Money to Attorney General Going After Google

#95

Post by VeejayRampay »

rdtsc wrote: post #68
VeejayRampay wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazing comment, you somehow manage to give Thiel excuses ("it's the way it is") and shift the topic to Google's lobbying at the same time.

> Amazing comment Thanks! > you somehow manage to give Thiel excuses And what is he guilty of again? > and shift the topic to Google's lobbying The article is about Google and lobbying, so pointing out what Google is doing is interesting. Besides your complement and meta-comment what do you think about the article?

No one is saying Peter Thiel is guilty of anything, but the article is about the fact that he gave money to officials probing Google's activities, which seems, if not illegal (not familiar enough with American law to judge on that), at least highly immoral. My comment was simply underlining the fact that this is never mentioned once in your comment, which ends up sounding a lot like basic whatboutism and, as such, like some form of blame-shifting.

I understand that Google's behavior is no better, they are investing a lot of money to steer legislation towards their financial sweet spot, but then any discussion about anything is moot, because someone else is doing it. When Bloomberg writes an article about Google's shady business, then by all means, let's discuss that at length.

As for the article, I found it was a tad light, I would've liked more details about the reason why Peter Thiel would care so much about Google and hurting Google specifically that he would do that. Some analysis about the sordid influence of money on politics as a whole would have been nice as well, it does seem from my remote French perspective that the relationship between money and elected office in the US has taken a turn for the worst in the past 5 to 10 years.

Re: Peter Thiel Gave Money to Attorney General Going After Google

#96

Post by throttledagain »

briholt wrote: post #56
downandout wrote: post #23

While this headline is factual, this is like saying " Man With Pre-Existing Health Conditions Donated to the Obama Campaign, and Now We Have Obamacare ". People shop for candidates that will serve their interests and then try to help get them elected. That is how our system of government works, and there is nothing wrong with that. The article strives to imply that Thiel paid this guy off to bring the action, but pro…

Theil is becoming the liberal media's George Soros - the enigmatic billionaire pulling the strings of his evil conservative conspiracy.

Not really. Liberals aren't really talking about grand conspiracies and the deep state and all that trash.

Re: Peter Thiel Gave Money to Attorney General Going After Google

#97

Post by throttledagain »

downandout wrote: post #69
CPLX wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think a Republican politician and billionaire financier is one of the most liberal people on earth you have a truly profound misunderstanding of what that word means.

He was a Republican 17 years ago when it was politically convenient, then he renounced his party membership. He was a big Hillary supporter in the last election. He's also too liberal even for mainstream Democrats today, which is why he was considering a presidential run as an independent (and ultimately didn't, because he would have simply split the Democratic vote and taken exactly 0 votes from Trump). You should e…

Thiel?

Re: Peter Thiel Gave Money to Attorney General Going After Google

#98

Post by throttledagain »

tomohawk wrote: post #29

Soros is way scarier the way he is buying up district attorneys. http://freebeacon.com/politics/george-soros-continues-quietl...

Please don't spread your conspiracy bullshit here. Go back to talking about the deep state on reddit or wherever.

Re: Peter Thiel Gave Money to Attorney General Going After Google

#99

Post by rayiner »

maxxxxx wrote: post #87
rayiner wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one inference, but is it plausible? It's not exactly like courts and prosecutors are cracking down on lobbying right now. Also, the National Association of Realtors is spending about double what Google and AT&T are spending now. There is headroom to spend more without ending up at the top of the list. Also, have you ever even seen these lobbying figures cited in any news media? What mechanism is creating this…

Politicians can't favor one group too blatantly without backlash,. There also need to be PR campaigns that sway public opinion. I bet a lot of money goes there.

> Politicians can't favor one group too blatantly without backlash.

Let's say politicians can exercise a level of favoritism, F, without incurring public backlash, and the value of that favoritism to the party it is exercised for the benefit of is $V. It costs $P to get the politician to exercise that level of favoritism. The hypothesis is that P >> V. But why should that be the case? Shouldn't companies be bidding up P until it approaches V?

Now, you could also hypothesize that the public doesn't just care about L, it cares about P in and of itself. But I don't think the public really knows about P, and in fact would be surprised to find that companies worth hundreds of billions of dollars like Google and AT&T spend "only" $10-15 million/year in lobbying. (That is, after all, exactly the sentiment OP expressed upthread.)

Re: Peter Thiel Gave Money to Attorney General Going After Google

#100

Post by InitialLastName »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #77
briholt wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a highly politicized and subjective use of the word "democracy." It would be more forthright to just say, "I like Soros's politics."

Are you suggesting Soros doesn't promote democracy, or that Theil hasn't bemoaned democracy and suggested its incompatible with capitalism. Or both? I mean, just to avoid doubt, I do like democracy so to the degree that someone enables democracy then I do like their politics.

I think it would be possible for two people to reasonably disagree over whether any given move "enables democracy" though. I don't have a good internalized list of the positions that Soros' critics take issue with, but looking at [0], I could see my way to arguing that lots of the issues either do or do not enable democracy, based on different initial assumptions.

[0] http://www.conservapedia.com/George_Soros#Socialist_Agenda_F...

Post reply on HN