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Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America

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Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America

#51

Post by skybrian »

writepub wrote: post #29
skybrian wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are certainly many people who work for defense contractors and they are necessary. But, other people don't want to do that. If they join a company that's not a defense contractor, and it becomes a defense contractor, it feels like a bait-and-switch. That's not what they signed up for. And it does seem like, in a large industry with many different kinds of jobs that need to be done, it's clearly not necessary fo…

There's no bait and switch anywhere. Employment is primarily at-will, and anyone can walk out anytime. Also, companies have certain identities in certain time-windows. Apple was a computer company in the late 90s, by late 2000s it had already gone through 2 identities: a music player company, to primarily a phone company. Employers cannot guarantee what work and markets they will and won't chase. Being a cloud infras…

There are few guarantees in life, and if you got paid well for your work then you're doing pretty well.

It's something of a luxury, but nonetheless, many people do work for more than a paycheck. Sometimes they want to be part of something larger than themselves. They believe in the mission.

When they go to work for the government, we call that patriotism. But companies encourage people to be mission-oriented as well. Google, in particular, encouraged this, particularly in the early days. Sure, they pay taxes, but their mission was not and still isn't about supporting America's military.

If you attract a bunch of idealists by talking up your company's mission, is it a surprise they take it seriously?

Maybe we should all be cynics and work solely for a paycheck. I'm not sure most Silicon Valley employers want to get by just hiring cynics, though.

Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America

#52

Post by bassman9000 »

dmode wrote: post #28
nodesocket wrote: post #19

While it's not going to a be a popular oppinion, I do have first hand knowledge and experience and agree. As somebody who lived in SF for over five years, the last couple of years especially there is a palatable distain for Americanism and patriotism at bay area companies. I'd even go as far as some people are flat out anti-American. There is an anti-authority ideology that permeates everything and a persistent skept…

I feel nationalism and patriotism are dangerous concepts that need to be challenged. We should be looking to form an inclusive global community that can progress together instead of boxing ourselves into arbitrarily drawn man made lines which we are thrown into by luck of birth. Not that I don't believe in nation status. But I never understood why should I like a person who falls on one side of that line more than a…

We should be looking to form an inclusive global community that can progress together instead of boxing ourselves into arbitrarily drawn man made lines which we are thrown into by luck of birth.

How willing is the average russian citizen to do so, given its government stance? The chinese one? The iranian one?

It's nice to have those sentiments when you can afford to have them. How are SV companies going to force that to happen in the aforementioned, and other countries?

Until we're ready to speak as equals, si vis pacem, para bellum. Without actually getting into conflicts, the US should be ready to win them all. Thinking otherwise is naively dangerous. And the late position of some SV firms and their employees is borderline 5th columnist.

Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America

#53

Post by xiphias2 »

writepub wrote: post #50
xiphias2 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually no, I didn't work in America, I worked in Switzerland, and worked for Google Switzerland, not that it matters. I was thinking of moving to US before I knew how much less people are payed there generally compared to Zurich, and how hard life is there compared to Switzerland in reality (it's very different compared to what I saw in American movies, but maybe that was my naivity :) ). US ,,defense'' department…

How do you feel about Switzerland? Would you refer to Swiss patriotism as toxic? I wouldn't! Switzerland, the country that made it possible for Nazis to store their wealth in numbered accounts, and still holds the largest reserve of illegal wealth of other nation's dictators and despots, that actively chooses to enable money laundering and refuses to take political sides because of danger of losing illegally stored w…

Storing the Nazi gold was very bad, I agree. But many things that you are refering to as money laundering are just individual privacy rights strongly protected by the constitution that take priority over government needs (which I view as a great thing).

Tax heaven: as I see taxes as generally not that well used, I'm happy that Switzerland's goal is not just simply to maximize taxes that it take from other people.

Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America

#55

Post by writepub »

xiphias2 wrote: post #53
writepub wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you feel about Switzerland? Would you refer to Swiss patriotism as toxic? I wouldn't! Switzerland, the country that made it possible for Nazis to store their wealth in numbered accounts, and still holds the largest reserve of illegal wealth of other nation's dictators and despots, that actively chooses to enable money laundering and refuses to take political sides because of danger of losing illegally stored w…

Storing the Nazi gold was very bad, I agree. But many things that you are refering to as money laundering are just individual privacy rights strongly protected by the constitution that take priority over government needs (which I view as a great thing). Tax heaven: as I see taxes as generally not that well used, I'm happy that Switzerland's goal is not just simply to maximize taxes that it take from other people.

There's a trend here: you claim moral authority to defend unscrupulous aspects of your government/country, but don't extend the same privilege to, say the American defense agencies, or Google, who'd like to do business with them.

It's trivial to go on a diatribe here about Swiss numbered accounts being bathed in the blood of innocents, on whose heads murderers, despots, dictators accrued the said wealth, now being actively protected by the Swiss government under the guise of privacy. But that would be a simplistic, inaccurate, and narrative driven approach. Your demonetization of American foreign policy is similarly simplistic, and demanding that Google not serve American defense, similarly silly.

All that is being requested here is consistency, not simplistic and inaccurate reduction-ism. It's disingenuous to reduce Switzerland to a singular identity of "murder enablers", as it is with America, or it's foreign policy

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