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Comment by dreambuffer | Hacker News Reader

There likely isn't a Canadian Alex Karp. Karp is a unique byproduct of American culture. The specific brand of arrogance, hunger for war, and callous disregard for human life, all in service of a right wing ideological project, is simply not as present in Canada because Canada is a middle power with more liberal values who prefer diplomacy over war.

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He fills a niche, particularly successfully ,but the required substrate exists in every society. In societies that superficially reward other qualities, these people mold themselves to fill other niches that provide power: politics, tech, press. When the niche appears in Canada, or Germany, or the UK, these people will come out of the woodworks wearing whatever face they need to at the time.

Granted, America's been leading on encouraging the worse angels of our nature for the last, what, 70 years? But these personalities exist everywhere.

I think you can't really measure a country's approach to war unless that country is already quite powerful. This is the reason that it's said that power corrupts. It's easy to have good values when it's difficult to have bad values, or there is minimal benefit to such. But give a man (or country) tremendous power, and suddenly having bad values can be immensely rewarding on short to medium time scales.

I appreciate that you think so highly of Canada, but no. There are still plenty of people that fit that description born in Canada.

I think the main thing is they all move to California or New York as soon as they can, because they can't achieve their sociopath ambitions as easily here.

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