Hacker News Reader

Comment by neom | Hacker News Reader

I've been thinking recently about how business has been a pretty decent wrapper around wars and killings, arenas, lands, whatever, just: competing for human death. However, I've also been thinking that in late stage capitalism, genuine entrepreneurship is probably increasingly difficult to get into, leading to less genuine opportunity, leading to less business, leading to idle hands, leading to the devils workshop.

View on HN

You know, I sit on a few Christian discords and all they do on it is fight between each other (denomination vs denomination). They sit around and combatively go after each other and there is also interfaith beef that happens constantly on those Discords (Muslims vs Christians is a big one). It's almost like ... yeah, I have to agree with you. It's almost like if the human doesn't have a true and good outlet for energy, then bad energy comes spilling out. I don't know what these cats in Kashmir sit around and do all day, but if it's anything like the venues I'm describing, then yes, they are sitting around riling themselves up against the "other".

This was one of the videos of the terror attack that sparked this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-TyztPaQfA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwKKcwk8Cc8

26 dead, and about 17 injured in the terror attack. There were 5 jets shot down in the retaliation. I don't know how reciprocal the retaliation was. This is tricky.

I lived in Manhattan for 20 years and during the Obama years I was traveling across the country a lot, was very obvious to me Trump was coming but people thought I was nuts. I'd head back to the city and sip a cosmo thinking "people really love to hate 'other'".

I tend to take Marxist view: elites always exploit the common man, and when the common man becomes unhappy, it is the best strategy to channel hate towards the Other so that regular folk dont start asking inconvenient questions.

Like every time there is small blip in economy in the Us, it is always illegals and immigrants in general and poor people are blamed. Always.

Never have I ever seen a PE billionaire getting blamed for acquiring companies by borrowing at 0% rates and firing people to and outsource jobs

People in Bay Area feel it is okay to pay 50% in marginal taxes on payroll, while billionaire class either doesnt pay at all, or pays 10% capital gain at best

That is not true, plenty blame the rich, just look at the murder of the United CEO.

Generally though blaming the elite has become selective and polarizing, only blame the opposite side for being rich not yours (Hasan piker on the left or Elon musk on the right).

You overestimate rich folk's ability to woo masses while staying completely hidden, with some ultra nefarious agendas. There are some ways to achieve some stuff but there are many conflicting interests even up there.

The simple, but way more sad fact of life is - people, when we create large enough population, are pretty stupid. We are well capable to fuck ourselves up without anybody behind the wheel driving it. And its not just 'them', its all of us.

Humans are not that great, individuals can achieve greatness in some narrow meaning (and since its pretty rare its so celebrated, confirming what I write), sure but overall we are pretty dumb highly emotional beasts, trivial to manipulate like a baby doll. 99% of that is via emotions, the aspect of our existence we have almost no control of.

5 jets shot down is fake news. There is no evidence of that. It’s a claim by Pakistani govt to appease the domestic population.

I’m sure this Reuters report with photos of wreckage is fake news: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/three-fighter-jet...

Those are fuel tanks, not jets. And their source is "four local government sources". In a conflict fueled with massive disinformation I would rely on something more concrete.

It’s your country, I’m just a neutral on the outside. If you want to take the stance of “fake news”, “no evidence of that” unless India publicly admits it, by all means. I don’t count on that happening though because there’s obviously “appease the domestic population” going on.

I am more than happy to believe that 100 Indian jets were shot as long as there's credible evidence. It's war and casualties are expected.

Ask your government to uncensor the Internet and you’ll probably get plenty of credible evidence in addition to the partial confirmation by the French side and anonymous local officials. According to CNN both sides are smart enough to not cross the border so that an undeniable parade of wreckage like the one in 2019 can’t happen this time round.

I live out of India, so that doesn't really impact me.

When all the potential hard evidence is in India and tightly controlled, of course it impacts your (and everyone else’s) ability to get evidence. According to CNN people had to delete video evidence of jet crashes, and journalists weren’t allowed to get anywhere close.

I am not exactly going to worry about things that I can't control. The best I can do is check sources from other side(which are equally bad if not worse) and amplify voices of reason.

Truth be told, we have all tools to feed all humans and have a moderate life quality, but some people want to have more than others, just for the sake of it.

Yes, the ones that finance, develop and operate those tools to feed all humans, should absolutely be entitled to have more than the ones that do nothing and benefit from them.

Otherwise, soon, those tools will not exist anymore.

I don't think we are speaking of the same thing.

Imagine ancient mesopotamia where the priests supposedly controlled food distribution because food was accumulated in temples. The priest himself is not working the fields or builds tools, but he demands respect. He will put feathers in his hair, talk elaborately and call it a day after he takes a good chunk of food for himself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com