Live data from Hacker News

Thomas Piketty: Clamping down with law and order will not be enough

piketty.blog.lemonde.fr

81–90 of 183 posts

Re: Thomas Piketty: Clamping down with law and order will not be enough

#81
I'm going to have to go with Mohammed on this one, look him up, he's the picture of ISIS, child rapist, murderer, enslaver, and all around shitty guy.

Most Muslims realize he's not someone to be emulated, ever.

Also, it takes a lot of citizens producing surpluses in support of these ideals to field an effective army of any size, so not all Muslims can be members of the ISIS Army most have to settle for paying taxes, etc, in support of the ideals they agree with, like executing people for apostasy, homosexuality, etc.

Re: Thomas Piketty: Clamping down with law and order will not be enough

#82
post #8
post #2

Wow. Talk about "when all you have is a hammer."

You didn't address his argument at all. Just an ad hominem. Is that because you can't address it? Because his thesis seems quite reasonable to me. And historically, we certainly know that societies with extreme income inequality are less stable than those with more equality.

Reasonable? The Roma people are probably poorer than the average European muslim. I don't see them taking Yazidi sex slaves and beheading kids.

I'm sorry I can't buy this, and I can't genuinely handle this properly so I'll probably stop here before it gets darker.

Re: Thomas Piketty: Clamping down with law and order will not be enough

#83
post #44

I don't understand why we shouldn't believe what's coming straight out of ISIS' mouth. ISIS has said they're killing us because of their interpretation of a book written in the first millennia. They say this every time they attack us. Yet (mostly on the left) we keep coming up with reasons why this isn't the case. "No, actually, you're not attacking us for that reason, really it's our fault because we gave the oil to…

> Why don't we say that gunmen attack Planned Parenthoods because of income inequality in the United States? I do. I think the Planned Parenthood shooting is due to a combination of mental illness and lack of education. I don't think it really matters which crazy ideology you pick, you can use it to justify your actions. And if the crazy, uneducated, people weren't shooting up a Planned Parenthood, they would be shoo…

"Ah, gee, I really hate Planned Parenthood, and it's a good thing they exist, because if they didn't I'd have just as much reason to shoot up a theater instead."

Maybe crazy, uneducated people are shooting up places, but the places they shoot up are disproportionately the target of religious shaming, an activity with little rational basis or utility other than the spawning insular communities who willfully shun education and moderation.

Re: Thomas Piketty: Clamping down with law and order will not be enough

#84
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah. People are in poverty and to get out of poverty they blow themselves up in a public place such that they can murder a bunch of innocent civilians in the process. Got it. Good to know.

If your country was destroyed, there was no jobs, you had no money, no food, your home was crumbling, your siblings starving, your parents helpless... and you were 17 and powerless, and someone offered you $10,000 to do it... would you? Would you do something terrible to ensure that your family got a huge payday that would put food on their table for potentially years?

No. No I would not murder dozens of innocent people. There's a lot of poverty in the world and the vast majority of the impoverished do not commit such atrocities.

Re: Thomas Piketty: Clamping down with law and order will not be enough

#85
It could contribute to it but seems to miss... idk.. the whole history of the Middle East post Western involvement. The patterns we see today in the Middle East go back to around 1900 or so with attempts of imperialists to hit them, divide them, turn them into indentured servants, and take their resources. Combine that with religious, ethnic, power-related, and financial aspects over decades to get a huge mess. So, I'd be looking at money, power, religion, and typical politics as a start.

Looking at that, I see the same trends that relate to violent regime change and terrorism over there that I always see. It usually involves a Western power (esp U.S.) covertly screwing with a country to cause a regime change or battles between them + eastern country (esp Russia) for influence/resources. The radical ideology and funding put in by Saudi Arabia comes into play. The damage and power vacuums from an invasion in Iraq and Afghanistan fuels it, literally with fuel & weapons. ;) Arab Spring and aftermath of that may have been the final straw setting things in motion.

All in all, looks more like Western imperialism, local dictatorships, and religious sect (esp Saudi-promoted) combining to create a disaster that leads to many innocents being beaten, raped, tortured, and murdered over there with a few in the West, too. Same stuff, same area, different country and year.

And, unlike international media, most of the Western media is consistently avoiding the U.S. imperialism and Saudi Arabia angles. Just like they did for Iraq. Just like for 9/11. The problem isn't income inequality: it's countries sabotaging other countries with corrupt ideology, covert actions, and overt war. The result is what CIA types call "blowback." We call it tragedy but they won't let dots be easily connected.

Re: Thomas Piketty: Clamping down with law and order will not be enough

#86

I don't understand why we shouldn't believe what's coming straight out of ISIS' mouth. ISIS has said they're killing us because of their interpretation of a book written in the first millennia. They say this every time they attack us. Yet (mostly on the left) we keep coming up with reasons why this isn't the case. "No, actually, you're not attacking us for that reason, really it's our fault because we gave the oil to…

There is no reason why both Piketty's and ISIS' rationale can't both be true. ISIS's eschatological religious propaganda wouldn't have nearly the resonance and recruiting power it does if it weren't for the current state of political and economic inequality in the middle east.

Also, while the Planned Parenthood shootings are tragic, they are not widespread and frequent enough to be attributed to an aggregate measure such as income inequality.

Edit: removed my comment about how we'd have to have Christian armies rising in the US to have a situation comparable to ISIS. Apparently that rubbed some the wrong way.

Re: Thomas Piketty: Clamping down with law and order will not be enough

#87
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I don't understand why we shouldn't believe what's coming straight out of ISIS' mouth." Because they're proven masters at propaganda and messaging. To take prop at face value is the definition of naive. "ISIS has said they're killing us because of their interpretation of a book written in the first millennia." That's their justification for their actions, not the reason. Come on. Recruiting for ISIS pays $5000 - $10…

Ah. People are in poverty and to get out of poverty they blow themselves up in a public place such that they can murder a bunch of innocent civilians in the process. Got it. Good to know.

First, it's extremely complicated. Second, yeah, it's probably a mixed bag, some probably sincerely believe in their ideology and think that blowing themselves up is a good deed, others are in it for money or other reasons. What has been proven (pretty strongly at this point) is that it's the M.O. of many terrorist organizations to recruit men from poor households... and they tell them after they're dead from the suicide bombings, they'll sustain their families monetarily. To the would-be suicide bombers, this seems like a good rational choice within the reality of their situation: struggling families, living in desolate conditions with not much hope in sight.

The matter of the fact is, a lot of these poor families that are approached by recruits would tell the recruiters to fuck off if they were not in such hopeless conditions.

Re: Thomas Piketty: Clamping down with law and order will not be enough

#88

I don't understand why we shouldn't believe what's coming straight out of ISIS' mouth. ISIS has said they're killing us because of their interpretation of a book written in the first millennia. They say this every time they attack us. Yet (mostly on the left) we keep coming up with reasons why this isn't the case. "No, actually, you're not attacking us for that reason, really it's our fault because we gave the oil to…

Maybe because the Planned Parenthood shooter specifically mentioned "no more baby parts"? And Planned Parenthood has been HEAVILY featured in the media this last year, falsely painted by the christian right as a baby-killing organization?

Re: Thomas Piketty: Clamping down with law and order will not be enough

#89
post #62

I don't understand why we shouldn't believe what's coming straight out of ISIS' mouth. ISIS has said they're killing us because of their interpretation of a book written in the first millennia. They say this every time they attack us. Yet (mostly on the left) we keep coming up with reasons why this isn't the case. "No, actually, you're not attacking us for that reason, really it's our fault because we gave the oil to…

Things don't have a single cause. "ISIS grew out of staggeringly unequal distribution of Mideast oil wealth" and "ISIS is motivated by extreme interpretations of Islam" are able to coexist perfectly well. Do you have any examples of "the same people" being inconsistent here? Because usually when people complain about inconsistency like this, it's actually different people being mentally categorized together, not actu…

Last sentence is an excellent point. This is a group of groups of groups. Acting like ISIS is one entity with one set of attributes is like claiming the same for the workforce of a city. They're one thing in one way with similar goals, direction, and activities but substantially different in other ways.

Re: Thomas Piketty: Clamping down with law and order will not be enough

#90
post #63

On the surface this explanation doesn't make sense. Is there a correlation between extremists and countries with high income inequality? If so, provide some evidence apart from cherry picking countries which happen to have high inequality and other problems. Why aren't free democratic regimes which also have high inequality equally plagued by these problems? Also, energy prices have fallen dramatically, affecting the…

He is not positing a general theory of income inequality and extremism merely offering a hypothesis for recent extremism in the middle east. Saying "I think X is the cause of Y in country Z" is not the same thing as saying X is always the cause of Y in all countries all the time.
Post reply on HN