Hacker News Reader

Comment by carbine | Hacker News Reader

Still not a reason to completely dehumanize people.

Spending $250K to go sightseeing while there are starving people in your community is an act of dehumanization in your own right.

Starving? Homeless? Too bad. We have so much money that we gotta blow it to go look at this thing over here instead.

Do you know how much money they donate? I don't, it might be nothing, but I also wouldn't jump to conclusions. It's not like we don't have very wealthy people like Bill Gates put significant time and money into making the world a better.

I don't care how much money they donate, because the tax systems of the world are designed to minimize their losses versus the people who work for them. That's still money they clearly didn't need and certainly didn't earn.

Bill Gates has hubris because Bill Gates has a fuckton of wealth that he did nothing to directly earn. Merely having capital yields capital results.

I'm not dehumanizing anyone, that's just silly. It's about as dehumanizing as when I don't care when teenagers doing Tik Tok pranks suffer consequences of their ignorant, braggardly actions.

So much hand wringing and I've seen about two whole comments talking about the boat that sank carrying 100x as many people while this saga was unfolding.

How is it dehumanizing for me to not care about one, when virtually no one gave a single shit about the hundreds of non-wealthy people dying?

I'm just trying to understand your philosophical position: I don't have to care about certain people, as revenge for others not caring about a different group of people?

For me all human life is precious and equally worthy of effort to save, as well as sympathy and grief for their loss. I suppose that's not your position, but I don't quite understand what it is.

I guess I'm saying it's a spectrum. Other than the teenager, my empathy extends as far as "at least they didn't suffer as a consequence of doing something that they knew damn well was likely to kill them".

"Equally worthy of effort" - ironic because the amount of money spent trying to save these 5 people could save hundreds or thousands of times as many people. But I don't see people clamoring for equality in helping the disenfranchised.

Same, we regularly see lots of language used in the media and parliaments of Europe to do anything not to refer to these refugees as refugees or even people ("migrant ships") and I've never seen this called out on HN or in similar circles.

The hypocrisy is staggering.

Respectfully, I’m not allocating those funds myself. I share your frustration about the unequal devotion of resources to helping people. But that doesn’t mean that these people aren’t worth saving, or grieving.

You realize this thread is about the sub that was lost, not the thread about the ship that sunk. It shouldn't come as much surprise that people aren't talking about migrant ship that sunk.

Here it's off-topic to talk about the sunk ship and the migrants that died. Here it's on topic to talk about the people on the sub that died. People should have empathy with both situations, but are much less likely to express it when they're frustrated by someone complaining about something off-topic.

Yes but the issue is that there is no thread about this ship and the many hundreds who are routinely dying are never brought up. The only time I see it mentioned in the media or in parliament is when we're discussing how we can keep them further away and shed our responsibility to them.

At the same time we're being asked to support tax money going to search for these 5 risk tourists and being accused of ignoring their humanity when we simply point out the utter stupidity and greediness of their escapade.

Why not? Rich have no qualms about dehumanizing the poor. And many more of them at that. Because rich are few and poor are many.

"the Rich" aren't some kind of homogenous block that all act and speak in unison. Putting people in groups like that really worries me.

It's curious that you didn't oppose "the poor" group, only "the Rich", with capital R.

Because it's much worse when you put people in a group and then attack that group than when you just group. "We need to help the poor", not very problematic. "The poor are lazy and deserve to suffer", very problematic.

You raised your shield to defend the people who have all of the resorces to defend themselves. Are you sure this is the best way to spend your time?

Yes, I don't want some communist revolution or othering or dehumanization which frequently is a precursor to violence. Are you sure criticizing how other people spend their time is the best use of yours?

Poor behavior by one party does not excuse bad behavior by another.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com