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Comment by oap_bram | Hacker News Reader

I mean capitalism goes together with authoritarianism pretty good. Just look at the companies that still exist today that helped the Third Reich. Perhaps it's time to want a different underlying system that wouldn't have a bottomline for profit maximization? idk

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Please don't take HN threads into generic ideological arguments. It just leads to tedious, lame, and nasty flamewar—always the same—and those are off topic here.

It's quite incredible how bad the internet is at discussing this stuff thoughtfully. It's clearly not the medium for it. It bonds with all its failure modes (e.g. snark, screaming, and paranoia) into one hell of a compound. We're trying for something different on HN, and for that to work we need users to be aware of this and not go there.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Doesn't this thread already pose an ideological argument (e.g. country x and y are authoritarian/bad, while country z isn't)?

I personally find it really hard to refrain from commenting when there is a very once sided view presented on a front-page topic.

The issue I have is that some topics feel like they are either flamewar or a one-sided view where people feel like they can't comment because going against that view might start a flamewar. Neither promote curiosity

edit: My comment isn't necessarily connected to that of parent, but more to your reply

This, this whole thread is both generic and ideological.

I wouldn't say that about the OP. It obviously has political overlap, but it's not generic-ideological. That would be more like "all corporations always do what authoritarian governments say"—yet even such an article could conceivably be on topic here if it were substantive, went deeply into specific evidence, and wasn't primarily flamebait. What we don't want as an initial condition for a thread here is the unsubstantive sort of ideological article that hurls flameballs of snarky rhetoric.

After that, it's the commenters' duty not to take thread further into flamewar, such as with generic ideological rhetoric. I know it's not easy but it's not as if the principle is hard to understand.

No one is asked to refrain from commenting, but everyone is asked to comment within HN's guidelines, which call for respectful, curious conversation, avoiding flamebait, political/ideological/national battle, name-calling, fulmination, snark, and other internet failure modes: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. It's that simple—in theory. In practice it is not so easy.

People sometimes imagine that the rules say that political threads are off topic, but that's not so at all. Stories with political overlap are inevitable here, and not a bad thing (as long as they don't get too dominant in the overall mix). They only become a bad thing when people descend into name-calling, flamewar, and the rest of the above list.

Does that make sense? If not, there are many past explanations here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... Some good threads to start with might be https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490. If you or anyone still has a question that hasn't been answered there, I'd like to know what it is, and if you know a better way for HN to relate to political topics while fulfilling its mandate of curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...), I'd really like to know what it is. Just please familiarize yourself with the past material first, because if it's something simple like "just ban politics" or "just allow everything", I've answered many times already why it won't work.

> Just look at the companies that still exist today that helped the Third Reich.

How dare they!

Here's a fun bit from an attempt to hold to account IG Farben, manufacturers of Zkylon B.

> All defendants who were sentenced to prison received early release. Most were quickly restored to their directorships and other positions in post-war companies, and some were awarded the Federal Cross of Merit.

You think it's funny or something that these companies were allowed to go unchecked?

Not sure why you've been downvoted, the list of complicit orgs is long.

IBM, takes pride of place for their tabulation machines. Ford, and GM, for converting their German subsidiary factories to wartime usages, while declining to do the same in the USA. Nevermind Henry Ford's proclivity for funding anti-semitism. Then of course, all the German manufacturers of note. Krupp, Daimler, IG Farben, Hugo Boss...

Actually, probably just quicker to link to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_...

Lol, so does communism, monarchy, or when religion and politics merge (iran, ottoman empire etc).

I'm keen on your examples from Iran. Was it the time that the British asked the CIA to depose the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, and reinstall the Shah, for the benefit of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now a subsidiary of BP)?

No, I think it was the time a civil unrest threw the Shah and put the ayatollahs in power with the help of the Soviet Union (which is suspiciously absent from your remarks) and now their women face jail for not wearing the veil or their homosexuals are hung by a crane

Both examples fit (one is monarchy—a stage managed abortive coup to justify an autocoup (the CIA directing both) by which a constitutional monarchy became a dictatorial one—the other a politics/religion merger.)

If you are describing the problem the way it has upthread but only pointing to one or the other of the Iranian examples, it's pretty obviously being selective for dishonest purposes.

Well, yep, the Ayatollahs and Soviets were "suspiciously" absent from my remarks because I was referring to the British-American coup of 1953, not the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

Not sure why you find it suspicious that I wouldn't label actors who didn't really come on stage for 26 years, and who came to prominence because of the unpopularity of the Padishah installed at the behest of American and British corporate interests.

In fact, they were entirely irrelevant. Why did you feel the need to invoke them?

I didn't imply a solution, but I assume we can come up with one that satisfies your worries and mine

> when religion and politics merge (iran, ottoman empire etc).

...the GOP, etc.

IMO the best example is Chiquita -- they conspired with the CIA to overthrow the democratically elected government of Guatemala to secure their banana fields against the "godless communists." Naturally, they left Guatemala with a right-wing dictatorship. This kicked off a 46 year long civil war and the fallout has directly contributed to the migrant crisis at the border. They called it Operation PBSuccess. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZtAKHnqkf4

The phrase "Banana Republic" is entirely due to Chiquita/United Fruit Company.

God bless America?

(Also, wtf, Banana Republic is now an American fashion brand? Jesus Christ, way to have zero insight)

Once again, really unsure why you're being downvoted for mentioning facts.

Are you perhaps hurting some "invisible hand" idealists feelings? Who knows.

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