Comment by JellyBeanThief | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JellyBeanThief | Hacker News Reader

Well its certainly entertaining writing, but I'm not so sure I understood it.

The author carefully did not identify Teams A and B, and that part worked for me. I just interpreted it as "T permute 2" for whatever Teams I cared to recognized and went on from there. But then they said

> In fact, there is no “Team A” or “Team B,” only Class A and Class B.

And I fell apart. Did they mean that I should reinterpret the teams I already recognized as classes? Or that classes A and B are separate, overlapping categories with the teams, such that a small minority of both Teams A and B are in Class A, and a vast majority of both Teams are in Class B?

The first route of reinterpreting seems more consistent with statements made throughout the piece. But then it doesn't make sense to me when I try to concretize A and B to the major political parties in my country--neither one is really dominating the other, they're in a pretty balanced arrangement and they're just being really shitty to everyone.

The second route of reclassifying maps neatly onto Marxism's bourgies and proles (sidenote: that'd be an amazing name for a folk dish). And I've tried a few different times, but I've never gotten my head around dialectical materialism and all that.

Team implies more or less equal/comparable competitors playing the same game. Class implies a class-based system like castes that assigns your worth, identity and role based on which class you're in. I think the switch to classes is quite apt and clever.

Overall, I finally felt I understood the article when I considered it in the context of US politics. It seems like a very pointed article addressing a very specific issue. It's trying to avoid being interpreted as a political message where people will automatically take sides based on their political affiliation, which is why the author is intentionally vague.

I liked the Team notation and I also started reading this as a class. This is more corporate though, class is structural, team is situational! TeamA might had someone promoted to a dominant position, or TeamA might have had a first movers advantage to a good fame from an era far gone, or the organization might prioritize not losing TeamA. Their power is implicit and temporal although more long term than TeamB can handle.

The way I read it is simply a broadly applicable notion that a certain type of people will demonstrate their power and (perceived) higher status over others by openly breaking the others' rules without consequence. EDIT for better wording

Based on the author's other writings (e.g. https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/no-the-revolution-isnt-ov...), he appears to identify with the culturally conservative, anti-woke wing of American politics. Presumably, his team is team B, while modern liberals are presumably his team A, which from a neutral observer's standpoint makes the article rather bizarre. (And which might be why the author was careful not to label B and A in this article.)

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