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Comment by OrigamiPastrami | Hacker News Reader

> Being jaded and cynical will not help in the long run.

This sounds like it's better to work within the system rather than try to overthrow it. You need more than a little angst to completely reset cultural norms. Maybe you're optimizing for a local maxima instead of realizing the true potential of saying "fuck everything" and replacing it.

I'm mostly playing devil's advocate, not saying the correct response to all adversity is to plot a revolution. But my point is sincere - sometimes it is the best thing to burn it to the ground and start over. Private healthcare seems like a pretty good example of a system that should be abolished rather than massaged (assuming your goal is better healthcare at a more affordable price) and we have decades of data from our own country and others to corroborate that.

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I think what you are saying is orthogonal to what they are saying.

You can be positive and optimistic about big scale societal changes that throw out all the established notions. Likewise, you can also be cynical and jaded about small scale changes that just aim to incrementally improve things.

Aiming for big changes doesn't necessarily imply you have to be cynical. In fact I think you're more likely to be able to achieve big changes if you're optimistic about them.

If you're willing to accept small changes as a win in a fundamentally broken system (in the sense the incentives aren't aligned and there is no real accountability feedback mechanism) then the problem is you aren't cynical enough to attempt something drastic. I'd actually go even further and argue it's a form of being brainwashed, usually as a byproduct of effective propaganda. Going back to the example of private healthcare - I don't fucking care about small incremental changes when the system itself is still structurally broken. We need more cynicism about the status quo so people say "fuck this" and replace it with something better. And it's not even a complicated or abstract idea - literally every other 1st world country has solved this problem and laugh about how broken healthcare is in the USA.

Most third world countries too.

I think people tend to think too much in terms of black and white. Jaded cynicism is sometimes a good response, and sometimes less so, and other times won't make too much of a difference or can go either way. The trick is to know how to balance it all.

Same story with "tear it all down" vs. "work within the system".

The point is: what are you going to do if single-payer healthcare does not materialize in the US? You have many options; plotting a revolution, working for reform inside the system or impotently complaining on social media. What is actually workable for you?

The same goes for the article's author. Sounds like they're shocked—SHOCKED—that private companies are just out to make money, and don't actually have our best interests at heart. The real issue is that they bought into the fantasy in the first place. But now that the veil is lifted, how will it change your actual behavior in the real world? If it will have no effect, why let it get you worked up at all? If it will have an effect, go out and do it.

> But now that the veil is lifted, how will it change your actual behavior in the real world?

As the author said:

> Stop giving them your money, time and data as much as possible for you. They won't bring us closer to these ideals they promise.

It's not changing the world, but I just do what I can to not contribute to it. And if any alternatives do pop up I do try to support them, sometimes financially.

The internet's outskirts are emptier than ever with this centralization, but I have made the active choice to de-activate pretty much all the mainstream stuff and use extensions to minimize their ability to track me. So knowing this did change my behavior on how I interact with the internet.

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