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Comment by qsymmachus | Hacker News Reader

> We strongly support the rights of immigrants and immigration reform

But also

> Governments at all levels—federal, state, and local—should have access to the best technology

So, we support the rights of immigrants to not be abused, but we'd like to continue making a buck selling tech to agencies directly responsible for that abuse.

Similarly,

> Human-induced climate change is real, serious, and action is needed from the public and private sectors

But but but!

> The energy industry should have access to the same technologies as other industries

Amazon even openly brags about how awesome their tech is for extracting that sweet, sweet oil: https://aws.amazon.com/oil-and-gas/

Its hilarious (and sad) how this position piece outlines what Amazon claims to believe, and simultaneously explains why they're going to keep doing things that directly contradict those stated beliefs. It's an insult to your intelligence as a reader.

What a bunch of baloney

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I don't understand this utopianist view. Yes, I would like to see oil companies go away but we can't switch off our oil dependency like a light. Whether we like it or not, literally the entire world runs on oil in some capacity and we don't have the ability to wean ourselves off it in the immediate term.

So we should ensure that oil companies have the best technology available to maximize efficiency and minimize the chances of catastrophic environmental disasters (which are almost always the direct result of a technological deficiency) while simultaneously working on the technology and policy that will allow us to minimize our oil dependence in the long term.

The AWS Oil & Gas offering is explicitly about helping "energy companies" find and extract more oil, faster.

From their page: "Accelerate and optimize exploration, drilling, and production".

That's not just keeping the lights on, that's actually accelerating the rate of oil extraction at exactly the time when we need to be ramping down.

I think an argument could be made that they’re going to dig for that oil anyway and they might as well do it efficiently.

Not strongly. The less efficient they are at extracting it, the more attractive renewable sources of energy become, and the more effort will go into producing them.

> We strongly support the rights of immigrants and immigration reform
But also

> Governments at all levels—federal, state, and local—should have access to the best technology So, we support the rights of immigrants to not be abused, but we'd like to continue making a buck selling tech to agencies directly responsible for that abuse.

Perhaps Amazon should have clarified the sentence as "We strongly support the rights of legal immigrants and immigration reform." Then it wouldn't be incongruous.

You're right, I totally forgot that it's ok to abuse the illegal ones only, cause they're not really people

These aren't contradictions. "Government" is not opposed to immigration. And "the energy industry" includes the parties working towards lowering or eliminating our reliance on oil along with the parties who are happy to sell us every last drop of oil. Rest assured it's carefully worded like this for a reason.

Some things aren’t black or white. Lots of things are complicated and necessitate compromise. Leaving out a stance on unions as others mentioned, is... interesting.

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