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Comment by neonstatic | Hacker News Reader

I hope you are writing this from a really poor place, like a Brazilian favela. People there must be really good. Why would you not live with them? I am certain you are not some hypocrite, who lives in an affluent, evil place. That would really disappoint me, because I really want to believe you are not full of BS.

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Nothing in his statement talked about the poor being better, just that every rich person becomes so by taking from others.

By that logic, every poor person becomes so by giving to others. Neither statement is true. They equated being rich with being evil, which is plain stupid and I don't understand why you are defending it.

I agree with you, but I think it's also easy to see where people like the person you're responding to are coming from. Corporations have become pretty nasty in modern times. It's no longer really about offering the best product for the best price, but instead coercing and exploiting people so much as possible to squeeze every single penny out of them, offering as little as possible in return, and then somehow turning everything into rent.

Age is often a factor here. If you're older then you've known a different world of capitalism than what's being put on display in contemporary times. By contrast for younger people, this sketchiness is all they've ever known.

Really, people have a specific "hate heuristic" and whatever triggers that they will hate.

It can't really be reasoned with because it's a subconscious reflex.

Heuristics overwrite reasoning for most people because they don't consume much resources in the brain, the cheaper path is selected by default.

He sold his company to another company. How is that taking from others?

Some of worst evilest motherfuckers I knew were dirty poor, and some of them were filthy rich.

Evil Motherfuckerness seems to be uniformly distributed across the social strata.

I agree. I think it has nothing to do with how much a person has and everything with who they choose to be.

Unfortunately, stupid communist ideas are very popular on this website. Say "eat the rich" and they will clap.

A single amoral poor person doesn't matter because they can't do anything to you short of physical violence. A single amoral ultra-wealthy person can and will make sure everyone plays by their rules, they are unstoppable forces in society. Not every evil person ends up being rich, but the incentives in our society basically ensure that past a certain point of extreme wealth we're selecting for the most ruthless and self-centered people who know how to play the game. Even an initially good person that managed to climb the ranks on merit or real innovation eventually has to make the choice between ethics and getting more money, and we know which way they tend to go.

HN is/was a bastion of venture capital and big tech. This is literally Y Combinator. Maybe reflect on why the tides may be slightly shifting away from idealist absolutism even in a place like this. You'll probably find genuine grievances and criticism instead of Red Scare cardboard cutouts that you'd look so good taking down.

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