Rephrasing the beginning of this comment: When you write this, questions come into my mind like: "does this person have a vested interest they're not disclosin

Rephrasing the beginning of this comment: When you write this, questions come into my mind like: "does this person have a vested interest they're not disclosing?", "How much is this person getting paid to defend Amazon?" and "Are others also able to see through the smoke and mirrors of this person's arguments?". I honestly do not have another explanation for your comment. I think the important part of the article that the OP missed is the critique of this powerful monopolistic corporate player, Amazon. - Honestly though @dang, I appreciate the moderation - but I worry that you and others in SV do not realise that these companies that I critique have a lot of power, and are rapidly reshaping society in harmful ways. I know a part of you likely does, but I do think Silicon Valley overal does seem to live in a bubble and in my opinion often lacks self-reflection in some very important areas. I do want to strive to be compassionate to others, but some days I am just really frustrated and I might miss the mark. But is it really okay with you to drown out some voices, or is it because you disagree with my politics? Anyways, to try to meet 'the Other', I've recently been inspired by the idea of 'Coalescism': "Coalescism A major problem with activism, and political and human relations in general, is schism. Countless organizations, subcultures, and microdemgraphics are constantly shearing-off and presenting themselves as wholes, but as distinct from every other whole, especially those most similar to them. [...] Activism especially has this problem—tell me, why haven't activists already solved all the problems? It's because their organizational structure is almost entirely based on a politics of schisms and infighting, and this tendency is constantly encouraged—and activist communities are constantly attacked—to maximize the number of schisms and factious sub-movements which defect from any unified front. This tendency has reached its nadir with the news coverage of the Occupy protests in 2011, which accused the protesters—who were, quite correctly, mad at a whole host of injustices—of being "unfocused" or vague in their articulation of issues. However, this is exactly what a functional activism movement might look like to outsiders—there are many injustices, many ways that people have been harmed, many things that must be corrected—and compared to this complexity, the singular Justice is quite simple, but unspeakable to those who disagree with justice as an end. In their good intentions, however, those committed to justice are aligned, and find it easy to communicate. It is only the mistaken assumption that an activist movement should have a clear, specific, tiny reason for its existence which makes people accuse Occupy of being vague. [Our project] is a procedure for relating with anyone, for any cause, and for knitting disparate intentions and groups into larger wholes. First, there is the assumption holographic or stigmergic cooperation: We assume that "the Others" are already out there and already working with us. Second, there is the assumption that any conflict, any disagreement or difference in political stances, is illusory, and due merely to an artifact of language. This is a very powerful assumption which grants benefit of doubt to the other—maybe this person seems aligned against my interests, maybe they speak in a way which seems hateful, but I must assume that they are a compassionate, intelligent being who is trying to say and do the best they can to help themselves and those they care about, and, if they are engaging in political discoures, presumably the entire world as well. This assumption—which can never be disproven—allows one to delay foreclosing on political discussion, in favor of exploding outward the political disagreements and misalignments which cause conflicts (schisming and infighting). These exploded, extended discussions can then explore systematically each point of difference, defering disagreements indefinitely as a difference in terms. The result of assuming that disagreement is an illusion is that conversations can continue until differences in terminology are dethreaded, collated, then rethreaded (like fixing a stuck zipper), revealing deep underlying agreement in values, which was merely obscured by superficial stances taken in significating terminology. This process undoes identity politics and builds deep bridges between conflicting ideologies. Coelescism is the practice and the idea that we are all already working together, and that the only way we can "save the world" is to recognize this fact. If, after we have formed a very large bloc of cooperaters, we find a few people who are genuinely antithetical to cooperation or ongoing communication, well, then we know who the hostile actors are. I have never known this form of communication to fail, because it does not ever end, but always proceeds through the extension of oneself through the development of additional compassions. Others may convince themselves that we are their enemy and leave the conversation, but if we are convinced that they are a friend, it is always possible to extend ourselves and find a new perspective from which to respect the other, and to delicately attempt to continue the conversation, dethreading disagreements as differences in terms as we go."