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Palantir is extending its reach even further into government

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Re: Palantir is extending its reach even further into government

#71

Post by grafmax »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #18
giancarlostoro wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its really easy to read this and be scared without being given any context, not everyone in the room knows who you are referring to and if your reading of their remarks are accurate. You got a name and a raw source?

Peter Thiel. He says "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." The beginning of the essay > I remain committed to the faith of my teenage years: to authentic human freedom as a precondition for the highest good. I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual. For all these reasons, I still call myself “liberta…

I mean, he’s not wrong. Libertarianism is freedom - for the rich. And concentrated wealth is antithetical to democracy because it’s concentrated power. He’s just taking libertarianism to its logical extreme by repudiating democracy.

Is it any wonder that he has helped fund our decline into authoritarianism? We now have concentration camps, abrogation of the constitution, judicial capture, and the military turned increasingly against American citizens.

Re: Palantir is extending its reach even further into government

#73

Post by grafmax »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #30
untrust wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why 2027?

That's the meme. It's not going to happen IRL because it doesn't look like China is rising to the bait, because Russia is still advancing in Ukraine, because American industrial production capacity is by every estimation not equal to the task, and because the Middle East is as bad a mess as it has ever been and is sucking all of the oxygen out of the room. When your Navy literally can't defeat the Houthis, you know f…

Unfortunately there is a chance you are underestimating the hubris of our leaders.

Re: Palantir is extending its reach even further into government

#74

Post by nancyminusone »

estearum wrote: post #33
giancarlostoro wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its really easy to read this and be scared without being given any context, not everyone in the room knows who you are referring to and if your reading of their remarks are accurate. You got a name and a raw source?

That's on the tame end of Peter Thiel's rather demented belief system. Another tidbit: he believes Greta Thunberg is very possibly the actual antichrist. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ao_umPlSV6o

That sounds like something the real antichrist would say

Re: Palantir is extending its reach even further into government

#75

Post by adamc »

sofixa wrote: post #38
ants_everywhere wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe this is true. The idea that the US should be non-democratic is very fringe. It's frequently expressed online, but a lot of that is not from human Americans. If you know of a high quality poll showing a majority of people support turning the US into a non-Democratic form of government I'd be very interested to see it and I would be legitimately surprised. The polls I see have at least 70-80% endorsemen…

> The idea that the US should be non-democratic is very fringe The theoretical idea, maybe. In practice, one party dismantling democratic institutions and checks and balances, or stacking the courts, or accepting bribes in public, or drawing districts in a way to benefit them are normal , accepted practices that a lot of Americans (especially on one side of the two party system) accept and actively cheer on, because…

Yes, that party has gone over to the dark side. That doesn't mean the majority of their voters necessarily agree with that.

Re: Palantir is extending its reach even further into government

#76

Post by bpt3 »

js8 wrote: post #55
bpt3 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These sound like the exact reasons we don't have a direct democracy. “A democracy will continue to exist up until the time voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.” - not Peter Thiel

It's a nice soundbite, but in reality people (maybe not Peter Thiel though) understand the value of the common goods quite well. (If you happen to be an uneducated American, who doesn't, you can come here to Europe and see.)

[flagged]

Re: Palantir is extending its reach even further into government

#77

Post by photochemsyn »

Molitor5901 wrote: post #10

I get the concern bout Palantir but this is not new: Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Google, AWS, have all been extending their reach into government for over a decade. Palantir is the boogey man right now, and it's under a lot of scrutiny because of its work and its political ties, but let's try turning some of the ire to all of the other tech companies empowering the government against people. The others shouldn't get a pa…

Whataboutism is designed to deflect attention from a particularly egregious example of malfeasance, corruption, incompetence etc. by claiming "everyone's doing it, why pick on my guys?"

Palantir really is much like the private mercenary firm Blackwater - they seem happy to sell their services to anyone with little consideration of the consequences, rather like IBM in the 1930s who saw the rising authoritarian regime in Germany as a good customer, with no concern for what their technology might be used for. This is remarkably similar to Palantir's eagerness to sell their tech to Israel, where it seems to have been used to aid in decimating the Palestinian population. This exposes Palantir to the same kinds of charges IBM faced, as long as we are making that comparison.

Re: Palantir is extending its reach even further into government

#78

Post by bpt3 »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #37
bpt3 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These sound like the exact reasons we don't have a direct democracy. “A democracy will continue to exist up until the time voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.” - not Peter Thiel

That's exactly how it works already, albeit through the middlemen representatives figuring out what block of voters is cheapest to buy. The only meaningful difference in a representative democracy is that the representatives can choose not to deliver on their promises (in other words: lie), thereby consolidating real power in a smaller group of people.

The idea is that smaller group of people actually have some integrity and sense of duty to the people they represent and the country at large, rather than just pulling the lever for the thing that benefits them the most in the immediate term.

That idea has always been tested, with the current times being the largest test in several decades at least.

Re: Palantir is extending its reach even further into government

#80

Post by rayiner »

sofixa wrote: post #38
ants_everywhere wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe this is true. The idea that the US should be non-democratic is very fringe. It's frequently expressed online, but a lot of that is not from human Americans. If you know of a high quality poll showing a majority of people support turning the US into a non-Democratic form of government I'd be very interested to see it and I would be legitimately surprised. The polls I see have at least 70-80% endorsemen…

> The idea that the US should be non-democratic is very fringe The theoretical idea, maybe. In practice, one party dismantling democratic institutions and checks and balances, or stacking the courts, or accepting bribes in public, or drawing districts in a way to benefit them are normal , accepted practices that a lot of Americans (especially on one side of the two party system) accept and actively cheer on, because…

Sorry, this is Orwellian doublespeak. I don't know exactly what "democratic institutions" you're referring to, but you seem to be referring to administrative agencies and adjuncts that are the exact opposite of "democratic institutions." They're anti-democratic checks that are permanently in the control of one party, regardless of who wins elections.

You mention "checks and balances" but which ones are you referring to? All three branches of government are controlled by the same party. Perhaps you can clarify if I'm mistaken, but you seem to be referring to anti-democratic putative "checks" within the executive branch. Those are nowhere in the constitution.

What's the big news right now? Republicans defunding NPR, which spent the last five years calling republicans and white people "racist." Sorry, that's democracy in action!

> In practice, one party dismantling democratic institutions and checks and balances, or stacking the courts, or accepting bribes in public, or drawing districts in a way to benefit them are normal,

California's "independent redistricting commission" drew a map where republicans have 17% of the seats despite getting 40% of the vote. That's worse than Maryland's quite deliberately gerrymandered map, where republicans got 16% of seats despite getting 35% of the vote. "Independent" redistricting commissions get taken over by democrats in practice, like every other putatively non-partisan political body.

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