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Comment by niceice | Hacker News Reader

I'm legitimately curious about this as someone observing from the outside.

Were they on edge when Zuckerberg had a leftward shift in prior years?

And where is the center?

Whatever else you may think, it would be jarring to work at a company where the corporate values seemingly did a 180 overnight.

I think it's relative.

In the future, if Musk has a leftward shift, I think it would be newsworthy as well.

In that interview between Musk and Trump, Musk was telling him that CO2 levels in the atmosphere are increasing and that that's bad. That wasn't a part of the interview that got a lot of news media coverage.

It's frustrating that "CO2 levels in the atmosphere are increasing and that that's bad" is what passes for "leftist" or partisan at all. I find the "don't look up" attitude so aggravating. The unwillingness for humans to take any responsibility for our actions is so frustrating, especially while wielding the phrase "personal responsibility" like a cudgel.

You have to understand the nature of politics.

The left-wing position is, climate change is a significant problem and we should impose taxes on fossil fuels and low-MPG cars, subsidize renewables, etc.

The right-wing position is, the claimed consequences can be mitigated with sea walls etc., the economic costs of the proposed taxes and subsidies are significant and will cause greater hardship than the original problem, in the cases where that isn't true the market will adopt the alternatives anyway because they're cheaper, the US would fail to solve the problem and only be put at a competitive disadvantage if the result is to export the emissions (along with the industry) to China et al, etc.

But politics is a tug of war, so both sides stake out a more extreme version of their position with the hope of negotiations ending somewhere that moves the midpoint in the direction of their preference. So then you have Republicans denying that it's even happening and Democrats proposing to ban all cars and discourage people from having children etc.

Which in turn makes admitting that it's even happening a left-wing position.

>The right-wing position is, the claimed consequences can be mitigated with sea walls etc

They'll make governments compensate corporations for their losses to climate change while those same corps fund skepticism.

Why would you expect them to be the same corporations? The ones funding skepticism are the fossil fuel industries. The ones lobbying for mitigations would be the likes of coastal real estate owners.

Also, what does this have to do with the nature of partisan posturing? The corporations lobbying for mitigations may or may not even be supporting the same party as the ones funding skepticism.

> The ones funding skepticism are the fossil fuel industries. The ones lobbying for mitigations would be the likes of coastal real estate owners.

As if billionaire oligarchs don't own both. ... It's not the companies f'ing around with the world as much as it's the oligarchs that own them. They don't give a damn who you voted for. If they can manipulate you to their ends, they will. Oh, and in case it wasn't obvious, the oligarchs are the ones with the money, not the <insert scapegoat culture or heritage here>.

Ignoring the obvious goalpost move from "the same corporations doing both" to "there are some oligarchs with widely diversified investments", you would then have the problem that your claim isn't true. It is actually the corporations rather than the shareholders doing this. The executives of Exxon don't want a carbon tax and perform machinations to prevent it. Some oligarch who has 4% of their holdings in energy companies is just going to have their fund manager get the inside story on whether the bill is going to pass and then shift around their holdings accordingly.

That’s leftist? It’s a very basic statement of fact, on the level of “Earth is round” and “vaccines prevent diseases.”

But I suppose quite a few people consider those leftist positions nowadays too…

Musk has a pretty large financial investment in battery tech and electric vehicles and other "replace CO2" businesses, so I would be careful taking his words at face value to reflect his actual beliefs

If your theory is that it isn't his sincere belief then you'd have to explain why he's investing in that stuff.

Global warming isn’t a leftist issue anymore. There is no denying climate change now given our annual “once in a lifetime” weather events

Zuckerberg never had leftward shift

What exact leftwards shift are you talking about? Why do people always have to make up left boogieman out of nothing? Whenever there is something bad going on with the right, someone comes in and makes imaginary stuff up just so they can pretend there are two equal sides.

Around 2016 Zuck ordered the installation of cameras in front of some blackboards in an effort to identify those who attempted to erase the words "Black Lives Matter"

https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/02/26/46...

How is it a "leftward shift"?

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