I'm not disputing that. My point was that this article is just a poorly thought-out mishmash of "centrism" and more representation for constituencies who are already very well represented on a national level.
Is it unnecessary? Can you invent a tale of "star-crossed lovers" in a world that is "best" for the characters? I think their suffering is essential to the narrative. If so, perhaps their world is indeed "best" toward serving that purpose, at least for the audience.
How can you judge whether someone's suffering is unnecessary? Only the author of the story knows that, because only the author knows how the story ends and how the individual arcs tie together.
I basically do not take issue with your dissection of terms here.
However I have seen another bit of your logic elsewhere and strongly disagree with it: the idea that mislabelling (or even correctly labelling) something "does an injustice" or "is a disservice" or "would be offensive to" people who died in the past at the hands of someone/something. We only have an obligation to make the lives of current and future people better: people who have died because of hatred would surely appreciate us doing our best to combat hatred in the modern world.
I agree that making life better for people today and in the future is what matters most. And I think an important step in doing that is to heed the lessons of history, which includes having sympathy for the suffering of those who've gone before.
Sure, we're agreeing. I just take issue with the idea that it is possible to do an injustice against the dead over word choice. I probably jumped too quick, though, and maybe shouldn't have commented. Sorry if any of this came off as combative!
And there's also the possibility that the NYT et al have 1) done bad things in the past but 2) have also done good things For example, Noam Chomsky rightfully called the NYT "a bad paper" but he still read it every morning because it's one of the best sources of what's going on.
I would argue that, despite its obvious biases, the mainstream media still reports more fact more often than do alternative sources. Both the mainstream and alternative media can report fact, or can report lies, and both can be used as a means of control.
Yes, exactly! None of these things are mutually exclusive.
Decrying liberal/conservative media bias while being stuck within that same spectrum is an entirely impotent critique to me if you don't understand the structural incentives that make all media outlets opposed to reporting truth/facts to the public (cf. *Manufacturing Consent).
A question only intended as such: could you explain what you mean by the word "globalists"? Thanks!
e: I should clarify that I'm not being sarcastic or snarky and am genuinely interested in what "globalists" means -- I've never read it or used it, I am hesitant to look it up because I feel it might not get a fair shake in whatever I read, and was wondering how this user uses it.
I'll try to do both sides justice although I'm sure there are people representing either side that could correct me on many aspects...
I think of 'globalist' as being something of a perjorative/having at least a slight negative connotation. It describes a perspective where all humans are part of a global community/family. You could contrast it with 'nationalism' (which has it's own negative connotations--the two sides provide derision against each other) in which nations should be independent and sovereign.
Critics of globalism argue that it centralizes too much control, planning, finances and government, leaving locals with less autonomy. Nationalists are not fans of e.g., the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, etc.
Critics of nationalism argue that international cooperation brings many benefits and that nationalists are merely racist or xenophobic. It's harder to list organizations that globalists are not a fan of because most nations have at least one nationalist movement. Brexit would be a good example in the Anglosphere.
Another criticism of globalism is the global labor pool, which is a major problem in the US. People can't unionize when the jobs can be shipped to a country with a lower quality of life. It takes away workers' leverage and guts the middle class.
The shame is in the blaming of the 'foreign' workers for this problem. This is a problem fundamental to the idea of exchange value itself. The solution is not to isolate from international reality.
> The solution is not to isolate from international reality.
What do you mean by this? If you mean protectionism isn't the answer, then I have to disagree.
Global trade between countries with vastly different economies is simply not fair and continues the policies that keeps the poorer country poor. For example, Mexico has a minimum wage of $0.48/hr, and its citizens have a pretty poor quality of life. When a rich country ships its jobs to the poor country, it facilitates the policies that lead to a poor quality of life for the citizens of the poor country and leads to a race to the bottom to see which country can offer the cheapest labor, all while gutting the middle class of the richer country. Sure, more wealth is created in the process due to capital movement optimization, but what does it matter if that wealth is only given to the capital owners?
I agree that we shouldn't blame foreign workers. It's the fault of the politicians and economists who made global trade between vastly different countries the norm.
A globalist is someone, usually a politician or corporate executive, who thinks that national borders shouldn't matter, and that people, capital, and goods must flow freely over them. It's often used pejoratively (no one calls themselves globalist). For example, Euroskeptics call almost anyone in the EU government globalist.
A "Globalist" is someone or some entity that seeks to take advantage deregulation and the liberalization of financial activities. Essentially capital flow moves where the profit margins are maximized with no regard for the nation state
Re-fuckin-tweet. It's a good thing that the world is different from how it used to be -- the past was full of injustices and suffering. Nostalgia for nostalgia's sake is poison.
Your comment has me fondly remembering a backpacking trip in Wyoming. We'd go to sleep around 8 or 9 since it would get dark before then and wake up at about 7, and the sleep was indeed the best of my life, like coming out of a coma.
As far as I can tell, there's no new "technology" in whatever product Palantir offers (I have briefly used it before?). It seems to me that it's just a program for data visualization, which given that the government is one of their customers, is quite the grifting of the public.
The technology in the first iPhone ten years ago also existed for many years. Look how much society has changed thanks to Apple strategy of combining technology with design and good usability.
That's the real and in my opinion frightening innovation behind Palantir. It's selling mass surveillance that "just works".
They are selling data visualization, not mass surveillance. There is a key distinction here. If it had some out that MongoDB was being used as the underlying datastore for XKS or that Tableau was being used to visualize the data, would we be decrying those products too?
I interviewed for them a few months back and they have some things surrounding data tagging and linking that fall under "dynamic ontology" they'd probably consider unique. And they have some access control stuff that seems neat. I don't understand either concept fully - only got 3 rounds in.
I imagine it's less the tech and more that it's likely to be used for extreme political aims.
People feel other CEOs would have held back from using data collection for such drastic political means. Thiel wouldn't, and may have created the business to accomplish his political dreams.
We all try to influence society through government by voting with our feet, voice, and wallet. Thiel just happens to have a much bigger wallet, and his political agenda is pretty extreme compared to the laws that are followed today.
