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Comment by PorciiVorbesc | Hacker News Reader

>Are you implying that the demand for these evil services absolves the suppliers from any moral responsibility?

No, you are implying that. I'm saying that evil are (primarily) those who use it, not (just) those who make it. You can try to make whatever you want, if nobody will buy it to fund it, then you won't have money to make it, so your evil thign won't exist. Palantir only exists because governments are evil and willing to fund it to buy it and use it. If you want likes of Palantir to not exist then you need to hold your government accountable to not spend money on evil things.

Are gun makers evil and responsible whenever someone gets killed by a murderer, or are those who pull the trigger responsible for who they kill?

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> Are gun makers evil and responsible whenever someone gets killed by a murderer, or are those who pull the trigger responsible?

Yes. There's a reason Remington decided to settle for $73M dollars with the sandyhook parents even though they didn't "pull the trigger" [1]. That's not a number you pick because you think you'll win the case.

[1] https://abcnews.com/US/sandy-hook-families-settle-remington-...

>There's a reason Remington decided to settle for $73M dollars with the sandyhook parents

It's only because of how the legal system works in the US(for better and for worse), with profit-seeking ambulance chasing lawyers, and where cases are decided on the emotions and societal moral panics of the people in the jury and the negative image such cases can cause to a brand, not if someone or a company is objectively right or wrong in the eyes of the law.

Meaning it's cheaper to pay people off even if they're legally wrong, than try to prove you are right but then deal with the bad publicity of the emotionally charged mob with pitchforks and torches who blames you for their kids dying and looks bad in the media.

Keep in mind parents of that time also blamed violent videogames like Doom for it, so it's not like they were right about who was to blame, they were just looking for retribution from anyone they could, aided by unscrupulous ambulance chasing lawyers looking to cash in on the drama that was feeding on the public's emotions amplified by the media also cashing in.

So highly mediatized and politically divisive/charged legal cases, are not (always) great examples of objectivity and righteousness of the US legal system.

Jury trials definitely have their flaws, but what would you propose as a better approach?

I absolutely knew you’d bring up guns and gun making but it’s not a valid comparison. If the gun companies were also involved in the actual shooting of people part that would work.

Palantir were in no way obliged or coerced into making an evil thing, they just decided being evil for money was ok.

>I absolutely knew you’d bring up guns and gun making but it’s not a valid comparison. If the gun companies were also involved in the actual shooting of people part that would work.

Do you have an argument on this that isn't child Redditor armchair level?

>Palantir were in no way obliged or coerced into making an evil thing, they just decided being evil for money was ok.

You keep beating it around the bush and avoiding to address the fact that if Palantir wouldn't do that, then dozens of other companies would.

You can't expect for society and especially for-profit businesses to run on morality in order for evil apps to never be made, but you need the government to do that by rule of law and force behavior of companies so that no Palantir ever exists.

Personal insults only weaken your argument.

Palantir could decline to build this and so could everybody.

If somebody proposed to you that you could have a lucrative contract in exchange for an intrusive system that provides a bedrock for authoritarianism, you are arguing it’s perfectly ok because if not you, somebody else will and that makes it OK.

It doesn’t.

>Palantir could decline to build this and so could everybody.

The issue with this broken argument you keep repeating is that it only works in a fantasy setting where the world only runs on morality, where countries could also decide to not have nuclear weapons and never got to war with each other and share resources fairly, and end world hunger and all that, while my argument is based on how things work in the real world which isn't run on morality but on rule of law enforced by force of violence, and such power corrupts, so the world is run in a corrupt fashion by powerful and corrupt people, meaning the existence of various Palantirs is virtually inevitable unless the voting population heavily protests to force the governments' hands.

>you are arguing it’s perfectly ok because if not you, somebody else will and that makes it OK.

No, I never said that. You're good at pretending to misunderstand things I never claim to have things to build arguments upon.

There are several things that make Palantir uniquely objectionable, though:

1) They're private-sector and have low hiring standards, which can lead to Boeing-esque quality control issues

2) They have every incentive to fleece US taxpayers, becoming another over-fattened rice-bowl defense contractor

3) Exporting Palantir products could create diplomatic crises and conflicts of interest undermining American security (see: NSO Group)

We can't ever avoid spyware since Google, Microsoft and Apple already built the perfect surveillance state a decade ago. But we can prevent taxpayers from being scammed, and reject the enshittification of the federal government's defense budget.

Would you hold that same line for individuals that built weapons, planes, bombs, etc in past wars?

Companies that make bombs aren't forced to (usually), and they also know there's only really one use for a bomb.

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