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Comment by torqueTorrent | Hacker News Reader

It used to be that part of the unwritten contract of the 'Golden Rule' in our culture was a recognition that adults have access to things that are dangerous or that could deprive each other of life, liberty, property etc, and that therefore these implements must be handled with care such that bad outcomes do not occur for anyone.

The free market has seemingly granted a reprieve from such unwritten contracts and any form of conscience and now allow all implements to be systematically leveraged in the favor of investors seeking returns.

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>It used to be that part of the unwritten contract of the 'Golden Rule' in our culture was a recognition that adults have access to things that are dangerous or that could deprive each other of life, liberty, property etc, and that therefore these implements must be handled with care such that bad outcomes do not occur for anyone.

When was that part of the US culture?

Not in the wild west, snakeoil salesmen, days, not in the robber baron days, not when IBM and others helped Nazi Germany, not when powerful companies toppled governments in "banana republics" in the later half of the 20th century, not when guns were regularly sold with minimal regulation, so when?

Clearly it was for a not insignificant portion of the population given that mostly of what you described are and have been historically considered negative things. Prevailing morality of the time may have been X, but Y happening that is not X does not disprove the statement.

Furthermore, if anything, your examples demonstrates that in a society that is based on trust and good faith to moderate interpersonal activity, the Liar is King.

Until we start making life exceedingly difficult to the Liar in proportion to the damage they can cause, which I don't necessarily believe anyone has the civic/political appetite for, we'll be stuck in this never-ending cycle of problem creation/remediation ad nauseam to the exclusion of pretty much all else.

It's a very mentally taxing train of thought to process through unfortunately.

That's an extremely odd view on this; this isn't a libertarian question of e.g. whether people should be allowed to drive without seatbelts, it's a far more dangerous situation where a repressive state is applying control measures to a subject population, with consequent massive loss of liberty and life. It's more like the arms trade.

Back in the day there were campaigns to stop the sale of e.g. shock batons (torture devices) to South Africa. In the present day the questions are more focused on Saudi Arabia and China. If a Western country sells something to a non-free country that gets used to victimise innocent people, are they morally culpable?

The fact that this can be stated as a question is fundamentally connected with what the person you responded to has said. It was not a question before this (was their position) and now it also isn't a question (again, their position) because we've just stopped accepting any kind of responsibility because "I have to make money".

When was this golden era that you romanticise?

I don’t recall a time in history when some group of people somewhere weren’t deprive some other group of people life, liberty, property etc.

Perhaps the rate of occurance has changed over time, or reporting has changed over time.

There’s a strong case to be made that the recent past was less pleasant for, for example, women, blacks, same-sex attracted people, religious people from any number of denominations.

>There’s a strong case to be made that the recent past was less pleasant for, for example, women, blacks, same-sex attracted people, religious people from any number of denominations.

The recent past can still be "less pleasant" in some aspects and for some groups, and still be "more pleasant" in other aspects. It's not like to bring X element of, say, 1950s, you need to bring with it ALL elements.

If someone e.g. wants a more loyal company/employee culture, and pines for the 50s and 60s in that respect, that doesn't mean they also want all other characteristics of 50s and 60s. Or that they're in any way necessarily tied and somehow are an "all or nothing" proposition.

Even for "women, blacks, same-sex attracted people, religious people from any number of denominations", life was better in some previous era in some aspects and worse today in those same aspects, even if had it bad in many other ways then that they don't now.

We should be able to want to cherry pick stuff that was better before, and re-install it or have it inspire us today, without automatic accusations of "romanticizing".

I don’t understand why you are raising this here, but also arguing my same point in your other comment?

Edit: in your other comment it could be argued that all those things (robber barrons, snake oil, Nazi Germany) were good for some of the people some of the time.

>I don’t understand why you are raising this here, but also arguing my same point in your other comment?

It's not the same point. In the first comment I was responding to a direct and specific thing being an aspect of the culture before and not now (namely, corporate ethics).

I don't believe that specific thing was a part of the culture in the past any more than it is now.

(Other things, though, I do believe have been better back then and worse now, or present back then, and lacking now).

In my response to you, on the other hand, I responded to a more general thing. My objection was with the part of your comment that I quoted in my response ("There’s a strong case to be made that the recent past was less pleasant for, for example, women, blacks, same-sex attracted people, religious people from any number of denominations.")

That I see as orthogonal to the point the grandparent made, and wanted to address it as I think is a common fallacy people make when responding to comment's like the grandparent's.

The past could have (or not have) corporate ethics, regardless of the fact that women, blacks, etc had it worse in society.

So, to the grandparent I respond: "I don't think corporate ethics have ever been a strong part of US culture".

To you I respond: "I don't think whether some groups had it bad means that a previous era didn't also have aspects good for the whole of society that we might want to bring back. Pining for one such aspect (as the grandparent does, even if he is mistaken) is not the same as pining for every aspect of an era -- so whether some groups had it bad in other aspects then is not relevant to the specific aspect the grandparent pines for".

Still a little convoluted, but it makes better sense now, right?

Thanks for the swift and comprehensive response.

Sounds more like crony capitalism than failures of the free market (see comment by nilskidoo).

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