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Comment by banads | Hacker News Reader

>Tech companies have a defined purpose, and they’re a vehicle for achieving that purpose. Google wants to organize the world’s information, and turning a gigantic profit while doing so is one of their operating constraints...

>But the U.S. government doesn’t have a defined purpose, just a long list of functions, and those functions aren’t regularly interrogated. It’s uncomfortable for modern Americans to ask what the ultimate goal of the government is.

Aside from the fact that this an "apples to oranges" comparison, I dont think the author is aware of the Preamble to the Constitution.

>"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

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That the Constitution defines it as such is simply a matter of documentation of a purpose. You have to actually internalize a purpose and values system for it to be useful and “real” in the sense that it drives what you do as an organization. This seems a more proper distinction that feels accurate to me in making the author’s point but that is itself a hard point to falsify.

The other way to think about how to steel man the idea would be to think about how the government measures its success which is most likely by whether or not those in power keep staying in power? The bureaucrats who are subordinate to the government have much less (any?) stake in that measure so again it would be tough to think about purpose there.

>The other way to think about how to steel man the idea would be to think about how the government measures its success which is most likely by whether or not those in power keep staying in power?

The same is true for Google or any corporation, their success is primarily measured by their stock price, not by how well they achieve their ideals

Except that Google’s stock price is both in the hands of its employees and directly benefits its employees. They have a clear stake in it. Besides, this idea is separate from the idea around purpose in terms of values/ideals. This is purpose in terms of defining success. The goal is to steel man the idea, in contrast to what I’d probably call a straw man of purpose as represented in a line in the Constitution.

>Except that Google’s stock price is both in the hands of its employees and directly benefits its employees. They have a clear stake in it.

Again, the same is true for democratic governments.

How so? What is the measure by which an employee of the government could point to in which improving it directly increases their livelihood? If I’m a Google employee and the way in which Google’s success is defined is Google’s stock price then I have a clear measure AND since my compensation is tied directly to it, if I improve that measure then I get more compensation. Hard for me to see any similar type of link in government.

> I dont think the author is aware of the Preamble to the Constitution.

When you read the Preamble to the Constitution, does it strike you as specific or generic?

I've read a ton of these kinds of libertarian pieces and I'm convinced after reading most that the authors are just not very well read.

I know it's daunting and difficult, but you have to read, digest, and have a dialogue with what has been written about government for hundreds (thousands really, but baby steps first...) of years, but I guess it's more fun to just write out fan fiction for Google running the world.

It's dangerous too. We've watched Silicon Valley completely strip industries like music, movies and gaming of a wide swath of its profitability. It's the birthplace of modern XaaS offerings.

It just doesn't sit right with me that someone would suggest a conglomerate like Google is more progressive than government. It reads like a love letter to the villain in every dystopic novel.

I'm curious if you have a source for the claims on movies or gaming. I couldn't find anything conclusive.

It is true that revenue in the music industry dropped substantially over time, although I am not sure about profitability. The music industry has moved to digital, so wouldn't that imply that the margins are better therefore potentially more profitable? Or is streaming more expensive than pressing physical cds?

On a personal note, I think Spotify is freaking incompetent as hell, as I constantly have issues with basic shit like their Shuffle feature. I'm close to unsubscribing with them.

The music and movie industry were a mafia of media executives who squeezed artists and fought technological progress even as distribution methods were changing the fundamentals of the business. I don't feel particularly bad for their loss.

Not only. Neoliberals have been busy striping government of its most basic functions, and lobbyists for said tech firms are the the ones that push for lowering taxes and deregulating. So yes, they won. Bigly. But not based on merit. Silicon Valley is not producing anything valuable.

Except trillions in value, millions of jobs via direct employment and indirect employment.

How are you posting to HN if not because of products created by BigTech.

And those jobs are running on $15 subscription MRR models. I'm not unappreciative, trust me. I just also don't appreciate that they have systematically obstructed competing services. And they've done all this using the same tactics we were tearing Microsoft apart for in the 90s over shipping Windows with Internet Explorer built into the OS.

Do a search through Google for a digital whiteboard, and once you scroll past several ads, one of the first links is for Google's Jamboard. How is this creating "trillions in value, and millions of jobs via direct and indirect employment"? It's funneling more utility into the Google service model, which is "free", because your data is not.

Big Tech is as much responsible for the dwindling payouts on music and movie royalties to artists, as it is responsible for the GDPR. It's as much responsible for us not owning the media we pay for, as it is now also responsible for the half-finished, nickel-and-dime microtransactions and advertisements that litter even paid services.

My take.

Facebook: I’ve got nothing. I use FB. I guess it’s been away to keep in contact with people and it employs thousands of people who all contribute to the economy. But I really don’t have a case for it being a value creating platform.

Apple: it ushered in the app economy but more importantly, it made the idea popular of having a computer in every pocket. Even services that would never have been popular without mobile made billions of dollars. Between its employees, suppliers, and third parties it’s also been a value creator.

Amazon (Disclaimer: I work for AWS): hundreds of thousands employees and the minimum wage is $15/hour for fulfillment center workers, not to mention its enabled third party sellers to reach millions, again a value creator.

Google: while Apple first popularized the modern smart phone era. Let’s be honest, Apple’s products are out of reach for most people in the world. Android democratized the idea of a computer in every pocket. Mobile payments have done wonders for 3rd world countries.

How is this creating "trillions in value, and millions of jobs via direct and indirect employment"? It's funneling more utility into the Google service model, which is "free", because your data is not.

If Google’s ads weren’t effective, would people be buying them? Are they more effective than the third world.

We don’t have to guess whether tech has created trillions in value. It’s reflected in their market cap. The five big tech companies are worth over five trillion together. Those stocks are in pension funds, 401Ks etc. The money people make directly and indirectly are the single handedly propping up the stock markets and those pensions.

http://www.iweblists.com/us/commerce/MarketCapitalization.ht...

Big Tech is as much responsible for the dwindling payouts on music and movie royalties to artists

Blame the people buying subscriptions not the tech industry. Before the rise of Spotify, by 2010. Apple and all of the rest of the industry was selling DRM free music you own. Apple still does through iTunes. People decided that they wanted subscription music.

You can still pay for music you own - DRM free through Apple.

Commercial movies have never been free of copy protection. Even during the analog days of VHS and Macrovision.

Even console games have always required third party manufacturers to license copy protection from the console makers. Well at least since the mid 80s.

The Constitution is meaningless without a culture that backs it up. For example, in spite of the 2nd Amendment you have more legal right to an abortion in this country than you do a firearm. That's not an argument or a judgement about the state of things, just an observation.

Right now there's a big debate about whether our government is structurally functioning for the purpose of literally murdering black people. To put it lightly, that's a very different function than to "promote the general welfare."

> The Constitution is meaningless without a culture that backs it up.

This is true for corporate charters as well, but it doesn't mean that either a corporation or a government "don't have purpose" without a culture that drives towards that purpose. You could also say that in spite of any corporate charter, the only true purpose of any public corporation is to provide value for shareholders, and the culture of many companies is often not aligned with that.

> you have more legal right to an abortion in this country than you do a firearm

This is blatantly false.

> This is blatantly false.

Is there anywhere in the US that an adult needs a permit to get an abortion? Can your right to an abortion be taken away upon conviction of a non-violent crime? Does the government reserve some categories of abortion for itself and deny them to you?

Not every true statement is politically expedient.

The US government has been doing a pretty good job of not killing black people. It's mainly state and local governments that are getting criticism for it.

Also, the constitution that founded the federal government is not the same document that founds local and state governments. There are some things in it that the federal government has forced local governments to do, but in general, state and local governments have purposes outlined in entirely different documents. My state government's founding document didn't task my government with "promoting the general welfare".

> For example, in spite of the 2nd Amendment you have more legal right to an abortion in this country than you do a firearm.

Still staying away from value judgements, I don't think this claim is obviously true (both are regulated), so it's maybe not the greatest example of your point.

For the sake of argument, I'm willing to accept the idea that gun rights and abortion rights are equally restricted/regulated. That would confirm my premise that the Constitution is powerless. Because only one of those things is explicitly guaranteed, but that explicit guarantee was not successful in warding off restrictions.

Court rulings on these issues are aligned with the culture at the time, not the letter or intent of the law.

> For example, in spite of the 2nd Amendment you have more legal right to an abortion in this country than you do a firearm

Unrestricted gun ownership seems to be at odds with the 2nd Amendment's "well-regulated militia".

This is very much going off topic of the original point, as I figured it would, but it is well established jurisprudence in the US that the 2nd amendment doesn't mean that gun ownership is unrestricted. Just in the same way that the 1st amendment doesn't grant people unlimited freedom to slander or libel.

The balance of firearm control to abortion control can still be viewed in accordance to whatever “promotes the general welfare” means. If I may extend compiler terminology to the legal code, there is a distinction here between the declarative preamble which defines the purpose of the USA and the procedural amendments which defines functions like freely available firearms for militias, banning private slavery and defining presidential lines of succession.

Please. The Supreme Court has 5 justices that are looking for a reason to outlaw abortion. The president and the Senate have put judges on the bench with lifetime appointments that are pro-2nd amendment and anti-choice. Even most democrats won’t go near any meaningful gun control.

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