Comment by VikingCoder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by VikingCoder | Hacker News Reader

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"wah wah wah monarchy is bad, empire is bad"

The British government is directly responsible for the possibility that this discussion of "taxation without representation" is happening; colonization, trade, etc.

Sometimes when you stand on the shoulders of giants, you realize that the old ways were lousy. America as it is today wouldn't exist without slavery and Native American genocide.

I'm not comparing Capitalism to Genocide, but I am saying the form of argument you used is ridiculous, because I can use the same argument to defend awful things.

If you stop and listen for one minute, people like me are saying, "Maybe the current system is TOO excessive, and should be reigned in, in some ways." We think laws should help fight the excesses of unchecked capitalism.

We're not proposing the "share everything" that Kasparov ridicules, and posing our argument that way is an absurd straw man.

That said, I don't represent a united front of people who believe identically to me, but your argument is so absurd that I think it might practically be targeted at only a tiny minority of people currently saying anything negative about corporations and our current means of economic growth.

"but I am saying the form of argument you used is ridiculous, because I can use the same argument to defend awful things."

Except you just used a straw man. Of course it's ridiculous then.

"America as it is today wouldn't exist without slavery and Native American genocide."

Of course not. But those things went away, and the USA is still there.

But you can't have the internet without equipment, without servers built by guess who? Corporations. Take that away: no internet.

> But you can't have the internet without equipment, without servers built by guess who? Corporations. Take that away: no internet.

Now you're the one strawmanning by painting it as corporations existing or not existing.

It's not a binary issue. A corporation is just an organization of people with a specific legal status. There will always be organizations of people.

However, I don't think we need to confer the rights of personhood to a corporation even though they don't have the same responsibilities or vulnerabilities. Similarly, it doesn't need to be the case that corporations should be able to extract value from the commons at the expense of the poor so that the privileged upper-middle class can have the cheapest possible gadgets.

It is definitely possible to draw a better line between individual freedom and the wholesale rape of the environment. For starters, those things aren't represented in GDP, and so it's of no real concern to those in power. What gets measured gets improved.

"However, I don't think we need to confer the rights of personhood to a corporation even though they don't have the same responsibilities or vulnerabilities. Similarly, it doesn't need to be the case that corporations should be able to extract value from the commons at the expense of the poor so that the privileged upper-middle class can have the cheapest possible gadgets."

Good, I agree with that.

But the issue with cheap gadgets goes both ways. Chinese factories allow people in India and other 3rd world countries to have a cheap (read: affordable) mobile phone.

Yes, they could pay more and give better conditions, the profit gains coming from economies of scale would still be there.

>>But you can't have the internet without equipment, without servers built by guess who? Corporations. Take that away: no internet.<<

Partially correct - we need equipment, but mesh networking is becoming a reality. No corporate involvement beyond the hardware.

have a look:

http://www.dailydot.com/politics/greek-off-the-grid-internet...

> But the issue with cheap gadgets goes both ways. Chinese factories allow people in India and other 3rd world countries to have a cheap (read: affordable) mobile phone.

And why people in 3rd world countries cannot afford expensive mobile phones? Because corporations have robbed them the value of their labour, or the environment where they live... You just seem to be confortable with the status quo, and making excuses.

Of course not. But those things went away, and the USA is still there.

Those things have absolutely not gone away. There are between 57,000 and 63,000 slaves in the USA right now according to the Walk Free foundation: http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/findings/#studies

This is a 91% decrease from the first census of 1790, in which there were 694,280 slaves. However, we are no longer a young isolated nation with limited imports. We now have access to the work of almost all the world's 29.8 million slaves. We have outsourced slavery. That's nearly a 4300% increase in available slave labor since the first census.

Native American genocide is ongoing. Communities are cut off from access to resources like water that is pumped directly through their land. They are forced into extreme poverty and unhealthy conditions that cause rampant diabetes and substance abuse. The Native American suicide rate is nearly 400% the national average, and we are cutting mental health services.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs is so corrupt they had their entire Internet access revoked. They were destroying generations of records of ownership in an ongoing campaign to rob native people of their wealth. See Cobell v. Norton.

Under existing treaties, Native Americans should own an enormous amount of the country. Instead, their land is leased or sold on their behalf to government and corporations for little to nothing at the expense of native people. Government funding for native services is continually cut, particularly health care.

According to Eloise Norton, the government owes Native Americans $176 billion. They did reach the largest settlement in US history for $3.4 billion, but that doesn't nearly make up for the ongoing native extermination campaign carried out by the US government.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2005/09/accounting-coup-...

Take corporations away?

Did you even bother to read a single word I wrote?

I'll repeat myself: Maybe the current system is TOO excessive, and should be reigned in, in some ways

People like you, who paint reformists like myself as Communists who are anti-capitalism really, really piss me off.

I think capitalism is great, but the edges are rough and could use some attention.

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