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Comment by xwdv | Hacker News Reader

Always telling people, if you’re looking for massive returns on an investment, you should be picking up Palantir stock. This company will be huge. Posting this now so I can link it later in a year.

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I’m not sure about that. There are plenty of other companies and funds that will return more that don’t come with the ethical and moral baggage. When you wake up 10 years from now, will it be a world you want to live in?

It is interesting to hear this argument in Silicon Valley’s double standards and modern “relative moralism” environment. What exactly are your moral concerns? It is “controversial” because people have so many diff. opinions on what is considered “ethical” these days.

Palantir has a bad rap in SV because liberal media likes to criticize it mainly due to its work with ICE.

There are articles online speculating on the validity of Karp’s claims about his philosophy background, or Palantir’s rumors on helping take down Osama Bin Laden as intentional propaganda. I suspect a lot of these comes as misinformation campaigns to discredit the firm.

I tried to investigate a report by Mijente and stopped early due to its data being mostly baseless personal accusations on Thiel (common tactic when pertinent proof is lacking), which seems primarily motivated by a political agenda

https://notechforice.com/palantir/

Help me if I am wrong, but to me it seems the media is being heavily biased against Palantir because the firm denounced Silicon Valley’s values...

Note: Another analogy of double standards is how Apple and Tesla get all the hype, masqueraded by “user privacy” and “saving the environment” PR, while online communities (HN, Reddit) brush away human right violations such as slave labor or work abuse allegations. The brainwashing is clearly working...

Palantir has a bad rap everywhere. It is a big surveillance stock. Do you know the story of Monsanto? The other companies you mention all have the redeeming qualities that you mentioned but Palantir doesn’t. Facebook isn’t all wonderful but they did give ReactJS and other really nice web technologies to the world. Palantir has given what?... nothing. Palantir’s performance from here can be more like Uber’s.. which is yawning compared to heavy hitters like PACB or SQ.

Look up their work against human trafficking, covid, terrorism. Their good works are as secretive as its "bad" works controversial.

Like who?

I don't know why people get caught up in the "ethical and moral baggage". You have no real power to determine what the world in 10 years will look like. You do however have the ability to control what your world looks like, when you are sitting on bags of money. Sail in the direction of the wind, not against it.

That’s like saying your vote doesn’t matter, so why vote?! I will still be a millionaire one day regardless of my ethical views because I know how to invest money well; the only question is when. Tesla and Nio are up in a large part because investors just want to see Tesla and Nio in their future. It’s a nudge towards green energy like all the green energy stocks. It’s not the little guys pulling the strings, it’s the big whales that have more money than they know what to do with and that brings a different kind of incentives. Look at SeaWorld Holdings. Not the best financials and doesn’t always make a profit but people love going to Busch Gardens because it’s a wonderful paradise and they want it to stay in their future. All 3 of these companies I mentioned are outperforming that surveillance and spying stock for good reasons.

You might not be convinced yet so here’s some further evidence. First look at the websites of Morningstar and see how much of the screen real estate is dedicated towards ethical and responsible investments. Years ago, this didn’t exist. Look at the returns of VOO vs. ESGV now. You’ll see that ESGV has outperformed VOO!

Do you know what sucks more than being on the bad side? Being on the bad and the loosing side. :)

Like literally any other company that can run spark jobs. The other comment about palantir having no secret sauce is pretty spot on, from what I know.

> I don't know why people get caught up in the "ethical and moral baggage"... You do however have the ability to control what your world looks like, when you are sitting on bags of money. Sail in the direction of the wind, not against it.

Make money, if people get hurt, it was a likely outcome, so why not benefit financially?

When the options are either wake up in a shitty world and have no money or wake up in a shitty world and have a lot of money I don’t know why people choose the former. Maybe some sort of “survivors guilt”.

If your options are either to have no money or bags of money, you’re in a casino. To play the stock market well, you need an investor’s mindset not a casino mindset. I say this with 12 years of investment experience and 20% CAGR. Odds are, your risk management and portfolio are not well risk/return adjusted. It’s important to many people that the world they retire in is the world they want to live in. Most millionaire investors say it was harder to get to $100k than it was to get from $100k to $1M anyways. Often, if you make it that far, you can make it the rest of the way through the same compound interest.

> When the options are either wake up in a shitty world and have no money or wake up in a shitty world and have a lot of money I don’t know why people choose the former.

I am not seeing how this is helpful to you or anyone really, but respect that we all have different experiences.

Can you support this claim?

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