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Comment by jmtame | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why so many ideas that are critical of something get immediately shot down in hacker news. I opened this thread hoping to see discussion that was going to have some depth and substance, and yet again just as I saw with the Obama thread that was critical of the United States' broadband penetration, I see very simple statements being made and entirely dismissing the person who wrote the article.

Is this being voted up because people just want to see this get ridiculed/discussed, or is this being voted up because people actually enjoyed it? I'm really curious.

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There is approximately zero advantage to being abstractly critical of something. Compare two options and pick the better one is logical, but abstractly saying X sucks has little meaning. "M$ is z SUXORS" might build credibility with some people, but saying BSD Unix is a better foundation for web services due to security issues might be useful information if true.

Now I did not up vote it, but I thought the article was funny at the basic LOL cats type humor. It's somewhat crude satire of the US owned auto industry and the US educational system. Personally I say let them fail, but due to their debt load they can't survive at 20% market share which is going to be a big shock to some groups when they fail. Long term getting rid of large poorly run systems makes an economy stronger, but few people are willing to take their medicine when times are good and they get sympathy when times are bad.

It's not that the article is critical that bugs me. It's that Greenspun has bitched for about 40 (100?) consecutive blog posts about how lazy, wasteful, and doomed the American economy is. It's the same thing over and over again, and most of them have been on the front page of HN.

Having said that, I thought his Economy Recovery Plan (http://philip.greenspun.com/politics/economic-recovery) was excellent reading even though I didn't agree with parts of it. I'd vote up something thoughtful and productive like that any day.

I thought the flippancy of the article was funny and being able to laugh a little at sad things makes them bearable. I've wondered quite often over the last few years if laughing at our problems is a good thing or not. Most of the people I know enjoy things like the Daily Show and the Colbert Report. On the occasions when I watch them, I find them funny. I think to myself that even if I can't change it, I can laugh about it and I have too much to do already. Maybe I would find it intolerable and do something about it if I couldn't joke about buyouts or our decaying education system, but I don't have to deal with it yet because I can still laugh at it.

I often vote up because I want to see other folk's opinions on the linked article. And because Phil is an old but well-known hacker, I think it was relevant.

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