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Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet Union

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Re: Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet Union

#181

Post by rdtsc »

21 wrote: post #7

> the United States as a whole is depicted as evil by default So true. The USA is viewed worse than China, Russia or Saudi Arabia. I also see a lot of it on HN.

There are multiple ways to criticize something.

I think a lot of people view it worse than the propaganda image it presents (we export democracy, we put human right first etc). Russia, China and SA don't go out of their way to publicize their human right record or freedom or exporting any such values to other parts of the world. At least not in any believable way.

Another way to criticize something is to compare a place based on its history. Things are better or worse than before during the era of . We were so much better then and now things are worse. Or vice versa.

And then there is comparative criticism, that is criticize like you mentioned, US vs Russia, China or SA. I have lived in Soviet Union and US, never lived in SA or China. But I would at least say US is much better place for me than the old Soviet Union was. But even then it is not black and white. For example at least hope of getting some subsidized housing, free medical care, university degrees etc was there.

Re: Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet Union

#182

Post by d0lph »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #21
21 wrote: post #7

> the United States as a whole is depicted as evil by default So true. The USA is viewed worse than China, Russia or Saudi Arabia. I also see a lot of it on HN.

I think the argument is that the USA is a democracy (at least more so than the others), and therefore it's fair to criticise the USA as a whole (i.e. the citizens of the USA) for the failures of the US Government. A friend of mine made the same comment recently in regards to condemning human rights abuses in Israel. You can condemn until your face is blue the human rights violations in Iran, but there's not a lot the…

Iranians can revolt, most huge social changes requires revolt. Government is a result of the people, if the majority were not ok with it I think it would not last long.

To me this implies on some level that the people of the country like their government.

Re: Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet Union

#183

Post by Mikho »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #16
projectramo wrote: post #11

"I am unprepared for people who don't understand jokes" -- Anton Troynikov I don't know who he is but I really like this quote. That's consistently my biggest surprise on the internet. The #1 question I get for my posts is "Is that sarcasm?" I never answer.

Sarcasm doesn't always carry clearly through text-based media. I wouldn't be so sure that the reader is always at fault.

That's why they invented emoji

Re: Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet Union

#184

Post by deadmetheny »

Kalium wrote: post #90
deadmetheny wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The taxation then goes into trivially solving the homelessness problem in SF Homelessness is not a trivial problem that can just be solved by throwing a lot of money at it. It's certainly a start in SV though, all things considered.

You're right. Homeless is not an easy problem that can be solved with big dollops of cold, hard, cash. Rather, tt's a trivial problem that can just be solved by throwing a lot of housing at it. Incidentally, housing is the one thing that everywhere between Ocean Beach and Diridon are allergic to...

Homelessness is not a trivial problem, full stop. There is no way around this. It can be lessened with extra housing for those who are only homeless because of cost of living, but that doesn't get to the root causes of what causes people to lack funds for housing and such.

Re: Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet Union

#185

Post by coryfklein »

Despite all the other meta comments in this thread it is an interesting commentary on public discourse in the U.S. that the messages like the OP are simultaneously interpreted as a satirical joke by some and as a straight literal comparison by others.

A U.S. hating defeatist will point to this list as proof that the U.S. is just as bad as Russia while giving no room for evidence to the contrary.

A loyalist can laugh all this off as hilarious while ignoring the reality of Trump's autocratic leanings.

In polls most voters are crying for moderate representatives and they just want people to reach across the aisle and get things done. But then come election day the polarizing extremist candidates end up getting the votes. As a population, the U.S. is in this self-torturous cycle where they cry for movement and change but in action they only perpetuate the gridlock and partisanship.

This climate really gives me respect for Sam Harris's approach: he really tries to interview others that have just enough of a different opinion so as to give rise to alternative viewpoints and interesting conversation while simultaneously striving to maintain an open, honest, and dispassionate discourse on emotional topics.

Re: Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet Union

#186

Post by imbokodo »

golergka wrote: post #169
imbokodo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Israel is a democracy, and therefore (at least in theory) the government represents the people. Netanyahu says the West Bank is Israel, and within Israel de facto and de jure it is. Yet Palestinians in the West Bank can not vote, and there is talk in the Knesset of disenfranchising Palestinians outside of the West Bank. Yet a Jew from Brooklyn can move to the West Bank, seize a Palestinian's land, and vote in elect…

> Netanyahu says the West Bank is Israel, and within Israel de facto and de jure it is It's funny, because I never saw huge red signs warning me "if you're israeli, don't come here, you're gonna get killed" around Petakh Tikva. > Yet Palestinians in the West Bank can not vote They can vote in PA elections - if they finally to end their political clusterfuck and do something, of course.

> They can vote in PA elections

I can vote in my local Elks Club elections as well.

People in the West Bank live in Israel but can not vote in Israeli elections.

Actually - Palestinians living in Israel in the West Bank can't vote. A haredi Jew from Brooklyn who arrived in the West Bank yesterday and stole land from a Palestinian family who has been there for centuries, he has a right to vote in the elections of the country he is living in.

Re: Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet Union

#187

Post by nerfhammer »

maxsilver wrote: post #162
jogjayr wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Job growth is a good thing only if it benefits the people who live in a place before said growth occurs Why so? Even if high-paid populations are being shifted around, it's better for the region as a whole to have more highly-paid people. They'll spend more and pay more in taxes (sales, property, income). The pre-existing population presumably owns property, whose value has increased now because it's close to high-…

It's not objectively good to have more highly-paid people, those benefits they bring all carry significant downsides to any regular people in the area. Yes, rich people will spend more. But this is bad for all the regular people, who can't spend that much, and will be outbid on housing+rent, schooling, childcare, entertainment, etc. Yes, rich people will pay more in taxes, but this is generally bad for all the regula…

How had growth ever been possible in the era before the last 20 years or so?

Re: Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet Union

#188

Post by gandhium »

neuland wrote: post #62
shadowtree wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good test is your view on the 2nd Iraq War. For background, as facts matter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War "After 9/11, the Bush Administration national security team actively debated an invasion of Iraq. On the day of the attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked his aides for: "best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit Saddam Hussein at same time. Not only Osama bin Laden."[72] President Bu…

I'm not really sure how the 2nd Iraq War is a testament to American evil. It sounds to me like you're saying the invasion was unjustified? But, is there really anyone who thought Saddam was a good guy? He was very obviously a brutal dictator. So, at the very least there's one fewer of those around. Sure, WMD turned out to be a total fabrication and the Iraq War ended up being a misguided attempt at democracy building…

_Active_ WMD program turned to be a total fabrication. WMDs were a-plenty in Iraq: "American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs" from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middlee...

Re: Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet Union

#189

Post by techbrofounder »

brighteyes wrote: post #59
woah wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a contractor for startups in SF for 6 years and now a founder for 1, I have found the opposite of what you have about business relationships. The homeless problem is not caused by the tech industry, it is caused by the homeowners who have been blocking apartment building construction in 90% of the city for 50 years.

The homeowners have much of the blame, you're right, but tech has made things worse by rapid job growth that contributed to rising rent costs.

Everything is fine

https://www.compass.com/listing/33-day-street-san-francisco-...

Re: Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet Union

#190

Post by digi_owl »

majewsky wrote: post #131
ryandrake wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve always found it ironic that the purest examples of communist style central economic planning are found within capitalist corporations. Raise your hand if your company’s budget, hiring, and other resource deployment is done democratically, through a vote.

Big corporations are basically communist empires in this regard. I think the reason why capitalism won over communism is that capitalism has a large number of centrally-planned enterprises where natural selection can take place internally and the failure of any single enterprise does not hurt (and even benefits) the others. In communism, however, there's only one big plan that's "too big to fail".

With the added irony that Marx envisioned the fall of capitalism to start with workers taking over control of the factories they worked in, not by some vanguard taking over government by force.
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