Comment by faidit | Hacker News Reader

Comment by faidit | Hacker News Reader

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Steam is also a child gambling company that sells loot boxes to kids but it could be a lot worse. From the perspective of someone getting ripped off it doesn't matter whether it was Gaben who scammed you, but he and his empire could still be a lot worse overall.

You're allowed to say what you just said in that post without getting taken away at night and your family never talking about you again. Or a drone taking you out while you sleep. Palantir logs all our comments and it would be trivially easy for them if there weren't still some lingering democratic handrails holding them back.

You're also typing on a computer on HN, so you're a "beneficiary of the empire" regardless of where you live. As someone who apparently reads leftist theory you should know to look at the big picture on world-historical questions rather than getting emotional, like the people who say USSR was just as evil as WW2 Germany because it also killed gormillions of people.

Democracy in the US is dying and may not last another generation. It was something that helped imperial workers and limited the power of the ruling elite, like unions. Unions, like democracy as a whole, are dying. Unions were also corrupt and complicit in imperialist war crimes during the Cold war. Unions in the West have always been connected to labor aristocracy and imperialism. That said, unions as a whole are still a good thing. We should still mourn the decline of labor unions and miss the days when they kept the elite in check and allowed so many working people to live a decent life.

Steam is also likely to become an ordinary ripoff company one day soon. I will miss this historical aberration among pure ripoff services. Just like I will miss being able to vote and dissent without drones zapping me.

> You're allowed to say what you just said in that post without getting taken away at night and your family never talking about you again. Or a drone taking you out while you sleep. Palantir logs all our comments and it would be trivially easy for them if there weren't still some lingering democratic handrails holding them back.

I don't live in the US. The US is not going to start a war with my country to kill some random internet commenter for criticising them, even if they could identify me. They certainly will arrest Americans for speaking out[1], but although the domestic situation is becoming even worse than it already was, it was never anything like your propaganda would have you believe. The American government slaughtered students for protesting the Vietnam War[2] and yet the brainwashed masses can't stop boasting about how free their country is, it would be funny if it weren't so pathetic.

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47342776 [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

> As someone who apparently reads leftist theory

You don't need to read leftist theory to be opposed to American imperialism, you simply need to not be American, or else be a non-nationalist American with a conscience (exceedingly rare, I am aware). I do understand that it is difficult for American commenters to conceive that they could be speaking to someone who is not American, given the usual belief that the US is the center of the universe.

> also typing on a computer on HN, so you're a "beneficiary of the empire" regardless of where you live

Speaking of which, "computers/the internet wouldn't have been invented if not for the US" is a classically arrogant American thing to say.

Now you're just straw manning, and misrepresenting history, Kent State led to a huge increase in protests and troop mutinies which forced the US to leave Vietnam. If the US was fascist it would have sent tanks into the streets and dropped nukes.

Also misquoting me at the end, my point is you must be connected to the global tech economy which is still dominated by US capital, but go on and larp if you want.

You assumed I'm American I can assume you are too. Your manufactured fatalist narrative seems to suggest people to larp instead of using democratic methods to resist the far right, that thinking has been been heavily pushed by the elites on social media in the US to discredit and disorganize the left.

I think we're also historically lucky that China is ruled by the CPC, whatever you dislike about them it could be much worse, a few historical accidents going differently and it could just as easily be a Han fascist government invading all its neighbors. Be grateful for what you have before it's gone. Steam is one of the last unshittified apps remaining in existence.

> Kent State led to a huge increase in protests and troop mutinies which forced the US to leave Vietnam.

This is not my understanding of the matter. Apparently only 11% of Americans were in support of the students, with the majority supporting the troops. Granted, my source for this is the Wikipedia article, which I am well aware of the deficiencies of. If you have recommended reading that suggests Kent State was significantly influential on the outcome of future protests and US withdrawal, I'm open to it.

> my point is you must be connected to the global tech economy which is still dominated by US capital

I work for a bootstrapped Turkish startup with no outside capital, American or otherwise, but try again :) or is America, center of the universe as it is, responsible for the existence of all tech economies everywhere?

> Your manufactured fatalist narrative seems to suggest people to larp instead of using democratic methods to resist the far right,

Uh, my what? What? I'm simply disputing the irritating claim that we're oh-so-lucky to have had benevolent American overlords and how it could've been much worse. I honestly don't know if it could've been much worse. At a certain threshold of outright evilness, you get the entire world uniting against you, as Germany saw. America manages to perfectly straddle the line such that it can be the most optimally amount of evil and still get away with it unchecked for centuries. Internally, it committed the degree of atrocities that inspired the Nazis -- Lebensraum is rebranded Manifest Destiny, and the Jim Crow laws were studied as the blueprint for by-the-books legalised discrimination against Jews, but externally, it managed diplomacy much better, conducting just the right frequency of invasions with just the right propaganda massaging not to find itself at war with everyone at once.

For whatever it's worth, I agree that we're lucky to have Valve/Steam for all its faults. It is a flawed company that could be much worse. I don't know why you felt the need to relate it to America.

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