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Comment by joe_mamba | Hacker News Reader

Man, I sure wonder if those engineers building Palantir's, Flock's, and other surveillance SW right now (hello if you're reading this), will have this 20/20 hindsight "oh shit" epiphany moment, when the product they helped build is gonna be used against them or their kids in the future. Kind of like when Dr. Frankenstein finds his end at the hands of his creation.

Those SW devs probably think that doing a deal with the devil in exchange for a higher than average income now, will allow them to build an upper class lifestyle where they'll be safe from the government's jackboots, but news flash, NO you won't, unless you're part of the insider-trading presidential Epstein Island elite pedo-class, you're also on the menu.

Zuckerberg, Gates, Karp, Thiel, all have self sustaining doomsday bunkers on private islands, to escape the societal fallout of their actions. Do you?

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I guess these individuals think like "if I don't do this someone else will, and we'll end up in the same situation - except I'll have fewer millions - so I might as well choose the lesser of two evils".

Some people may have refused to do these things - you just aren't aware of them. It's unrealistic though to think that in a globalized world, individuals would share the same ethics and/or intelligence.

>"if I don't do this someone else will, and we'll end up in the same situation - except I'll have fewer millions - so I might as well choose the lesser of two evils".

Bingo. Tale as old as time. The elites have always stayed in power by paying half the poor people to oppress the other half for them. And if you're thinking about the French revolution as a counter example, then I need to remind you that the wealthy elites didn't lose their heads there, the monarchy did, the rich people got away just fine.

Today the elites got the peasantry to be arguing whether something is "woke" or DEI, and to riot and burn down cities whenever a repeat felon gets killed by police, while the Epstein criminals get away with it while laughing all the way to the bank and nobody rioting.

> It's unrealistic though to think that in a globalized world, individuals would share the same ethics

Nothing to do with globalism here. It's still exclusively up to US citizens to implement their destruction. US national security and surveillance tech isn't outsourced to India for them to worry about labor competition from abroad.

Mostly, the motivation of people making these products are doing so because they believe that if they don't do it, then the "bad guys" will keep winning: terrorists, burglars and whatever boogieman is the current "Public Enemy Number One".

> ... unless you're part of the insider-trading presidential Epstein Island elite pedo-class, you're also not safe from government overreach

But how did that turn out for Ghislaine Maxwell though? We aren't seeing her much in the posh NYC parties anymore are we?

And something also has to be said about public shame when sentences like: "Bill Gates got even more STDs than Windows got viruses and that lead to his wife quitting him".

I'd rather be a small millionaire than a billionaire having to suffer headlines like that.

Ghislaine Maxwell is a woman. A fitting proxy for this whole situation, when you realize that she's the only person (so far) to have been put in jail over this whole "powerful men abusing women" situation.

>Ghislaine Maxwell is a woman.

OK, and so what if she's a woman? You think women can't be evil to commit heinous crimes or what? Evil doesn't do gender discrimination.

>she's the only person to have been put in jail over this whole "powerful men abusing women" situation.

Well she's was the one responsible for finding and pimping out underage girls to those "powerful men" meaning she's the one to get caught red handed and receive sentencing. Most of those "powerful men" on that island weren't caught red handed, they were just mentioned in the files in ambiguous terms, which isn't enough of strong evidence "beyond reasonable doubt" to slam dunk jail them on the spot like Maxwell.

>> Ghislaine Maxwell is a woman.

> OK, and so what if she's a woman? You think women can't be evil to commit heinous crimes or what? Evil doesn't do gender discrimination.

I struggle to imagine how you could have missed my point more.

I have no problem with her being in jail, I have a problem with only her being in jail.

Bear in mind your examples are only those few who were stupid/unlucky enough to get exposed and caught, ending up as patsies to parrade to the public as fake "proof" that the system they pay taxes and answer to, somehow isn't corrupt to the core and working against them.

Meanwhile other Epstein Island clients like Howard Lutnick are sitting next to the president right now(himself a client), and former client Bill Clinton used to be president, and their families amassed generational wealth, security and political influence that no mere mortal will ever be able to have no matter how hard they work. There's no justice here.

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