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Comment by slowmovintarget | Hacker News Reader

Things are awful because someone wrote an opinion piece in the newspaper?

I heartily disagree that anyone should "detect a consensus" from leftists preaching expropriation. That's just an ordinary activity for them. Nick Srnicek may be shouting a bit louder than most from his pulpit in The Guardian, but that has as little to do with truth as his article has to do with reason.

Google, Facebook, and Amazon are just fashionable targets for his emotional appeals for a more powerful state. He doesn't write about Monsanto in this article, even though they have an ever tightening control over the food we eat, because they aren't as well understood by the masses.

Bread and circuses. This is the circus part.

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> I heartily disagree that anyone should "detect a consensus" from leftists preaching expropriation. That's just an ordinary activity for them.

Have you missed the conservatives who both argue against net neutrality while claiming that Google (and others) are censoring content because they're too big to be just considered one actor (of many)?

Nationalizing a company would definitely be a left-wing endeavor, but to claim that "leftists" are the ones preaching about Googles unchallenged dominance is just misleading.

That's not what bread and circuses means.

That expression is a cynical look at the relationship of the individual to the State: so long as my belly is full and I am entertained I'm all right Jack.

“… Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses”

So, no, this is not the circus part.

> That expression is a cynical look at the relationship of the individual to the State: so long as my belly is full and I am entertained I'm all right Jack.

Wow. You just describe Sweden O.o I'm mighty impressed how this saying fits perfectly into the context of the modern Swedish culture!

Would you please clarify what you mean?

The article is an argument over who ought to own and run the circus. The article is also a distraction, on its own, and thus part of a circus.

Granted, I'd completely accept a quote from The Dude as a legitimate response: "Yeah, well you know... that's just, like, your opinion, man."

It is.

He did briefly touch on how Monsanto was using similar practices in the agriculture business. I think most readers can make the implied connection there.

>>Bread and circuses. This is the circus part.

I think perhaps you should look up what "bread and circus" actually means, because it's not what you think it is.

or does he...

Perhaps like in the matrix where Neo was in his own little mind trap where he was the "One" while the machines still had control.

or inception where your in a dream inside of a dream...

...maybe arguing about this BS is the circus deju to keep people from really getting involved and actually effecting change in the world.

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