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Does Larry really lack enough self awareness to not realize these kind of statements make him sound like an orwellian super villain, or perhaps he does and simp

Does Larry really lack enough self awareness to not realize these kind of statements make him sound like an orwellian super villain, or perhaps he does and simply does not care? The latter is surely more frightening.

ozim 2y ago
Don’t make a mistake of anthropomorphising Larry Ellison.
- blipvert 2y ago
  He hates that.
  - speed_spread 2y ago
    A lawnmower doesn't hate the grass.
archagon 2y ago
The oligarchs have now realized that nothing is going to stop them, so the masks are coming off. How long until corporations start organizing their own private militias, I wonder?
- jaggederest 2y ago
  Negative sixty eight years[1]. Oh, you didn't mean the private military contractors, of which there were about 250k involved in the iraq and afghanistan war, slightly more in total than deployed troops at any given time. Many ultra-high-net-worth individuals hire them. It's no secret, they've been doing it since the 60s when kidnap and ransom insurance started being a serious thing, and it's only intensified over time. There was an interesting "bolt hole" real estate listing that claimed years supply of food, water, housing etc. for a "company sized group of security contractors" as an amenity. [1] G4S, the largest PMC company, founded in 1957
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > they've been doing it since the 60s when kidnap and ransom insurance started being a serious thing Private security has been a thing for millenia!
- scyzoryk_xyz 2y ago
  Perhaps they already do, we just don’t know about it yet =)
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  Check out the history of the Pinkerton Security agency.
Frost1x 2y ago
The trend has been more openness in this sort of behavior. After all, the public hasn’t seemed to respond to it with much negativity other than people occasionally complaining about these sorts of behaviors online. The highest level complaint seems to be public protest, which don’t seem to garner enough momentum to push change. If there’s no repercussions, why not be transparent? Scary indeed, as it’s quite telling of the direction we’re headed in, IMHO.
- pinkmuffinere 2y ago
  Honestly I think I prefer openness, although I'll admit it's hard to be precise about what's ok and what isn't. In the spirit of free speech, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." At the same time, defending somebody's right to speech does _not_ mean that individuals can't embargo / "cancel" that person -- I think this behavior is itself speech of a sort. What would you change about the present situation? I feel that public protest is roughly all that can be allowed in response to speech (ie, speech in response to speech). Surely he shouldn't be jailed/fined/doxxed for this speech? What more should be allowed? Or is it just that the public protest isn't as strong as you'd want?
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    Speech and thought are interlinked. Encouraging our society's most powerful to pander to social media in what they say undoubtedly affects how they think.
    - pinkmuffinere 2y ago
      Sure but what’s the alternative? Are you going to decide what people can say? This is all very 1984, if you haven’t read it you might find it interesting
  - danielheath 2y ago
    The thing that makes any given arrangement of society work (or not work) is how quickly/cheaply it removes decision-making power from people who demonstrate poor judgement. This is a difficult task, because people with decision-making power tend use that power to alter the system to solidify their position. Capitalism, at its finest, does this by letting people make bad decisions with their money until they haven't got any. This was an improvement on, say, holding wars until enough people decision-makers get killed off. However, a variety of long-term policy shifts have meant this no longer appears to happen - merely possessing capital is so profitable that even astonishingly poor decisions cannot reduce your wealth enough to matter. IMO, through this statement Larry Ellison has demonstrated the kind of poor judgement which a functional society cannot tolerate in a decision-maker, and lacking an effective way to remove this from the decision-maker pool is the primary cause of societal trouble today.
scyzoryk_xyz 2y ago
For one, he’s one of the OG’s who’s had vast wealth and power for longer than many others have been alive. And two, he’s at an age where people lose any sense of self-awareness, shame, filters - all that shit. Anyways I don’t think he cares that it makes him sound Orwellian. I suspect he’s fine with being Orwellian outright. Not having what he has is as unimaginable as for all of us having a fraction of what he has. It’s too much of a stretch for someone like that to extent so much to imagine. And yeah it’s frightening, it’s why we did away with autocratic Sun King calibre aristocracy/royalty and all that. We can expect all the other zillionaires to follow this path reliably over the next few decades.
- yapyap 2y ago
  I doubt it’s the age of him, it moreso feels like the age of society. With Musk swinging his arm to in the air to hail his führer it really feels like the defining moment of new age rich people, don’t get me wrong the build up was there but this is just the moment that best encapsulates it all. The best person to personify the old age I’d say is Bill Gates, awful person behind the curtains I’m sure, real buddy buddy with Epstein but he did the whole “caring for humanity” shtick, he donated bits of his money, y’know he at least took some effort to make it seem like he cared.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > With Musk swinging his arm to in the air to hail his führer it really feels like the defining moment of new age rich people We're five days into the Presidency. And Musk has stumbled across power the sorts he hasn't really had to wrangle with before. I'd be shocked if he comes out in 2028 better off, materially, than he is now.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
      It's probably not a good idea to piss off people with corporeal power. Xi makes a lot less than Jack Ma, but I think that he showed him who's In Charge.
tw04 2y ago
Larry doesn't care about anything other than Larry. For Larry, the biggest issue facing him beyond how he can live forever, is how he can ensure nobody ever commits a crime against him. The best way to ensure nobody ever commits a crime against him is to monitor every living human on the planet. Any crime he commits can be figured out in courts with his high-priced lawyers so the idea that AI constantly watching you would be repressive seems misplaced to Larry. For people that think I'm joking, at one point his primary philanthropic contributions were almost exclusively to life-extending efforts: >Take the massive amount of money he once gave to life-extension research, which was the core focus of his philanthropic efforts. >And so over the course of 15 years at the beginning of the 21st century he would donate over half of a billion dollars for anti-aging medical research, at a time when the field was seen as fringe science. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/8/24/21369773/larry-ellison-foundation-oracle-philanthropy https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/8/24/21369773/larry-ellison-...
- colordrops 2y ago
  The point isn't about preventing people from commiting crimes against him. It is surely that oracle database would back the data centers run by the surveillance state.
  - threecheese 2y ago
    With the announcements lately, I would be unsurprised to see an edict stating “federal funding requires the use of Oracle rdbms”. Thousands of open source projects would support Oracle in short order.
    - NewJazz 2y ago
      I'd be surprised if Oracle's cloud infrastructure even relied on Oracle DBs.
- NewJazz 2y ago
  Hmm, but has Larry considered that a scurry of squirrels may commit organized crime against his empire? Maybe he should invest in some deterrence there.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
timewizard 2y ago
Once CIA, always CIA. Larry is just explaining from first hand knowledge what the deep state wants.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> Does Larry really lack enough self awareness to not realize these kind of statements make him sound like an orwellian super villain He's joining the attention economy. Saying something stupid but provocative yields earned social media. Larry Ellison saying something sensible wouldn't make HN's front page.
- bryanrasmussen 2y ago
  But it's so rare! Surely we would be driven to comment on it.
wesselbindt 2y ago
He is not stupid, and operates within the same broad cultural framework as we do. It's the latter.
horrible-hilde 2y ago
Its the latter, Larry is not your friend
trillic 2y ago
Larry is an 80 year old man worth 200 billion US dollars I don’t think he gives a shit what he sounds like.
kdmtctl 2y ago
The biggest problem is every creator of ceasing privileges from others genuinely believes that he is excluded. First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. —Martin Niemöller

ozim 2y ago

Don’t make a mistake of anthropomorphising Larry Ellison.

blipvert 2y ago
He hates that.
- speed_spread 2y ago
  A lawnmower doesn't hate the grass.

archagon 2y ago

The oligarchs have now realized that nothing is going to stop them, so the masks are coming off. How long until corporations start organizing their own private militias, I wonder?

jaggederest 2y ago
Negative sixty eight years[1]. Oh, you didn't mean the private military contractors, of which there were about 250k involved in the iraq and afghanistan war, slightly more in total than deployed troops at any given time. Many ultra-high-net-worth individuals hire them. It's no secret, they've been doing it since the 60s when kidnap and ransom insurance started being a serious thing, and it's only intensified over time. There was an interesting "bolt hole" real estate listing that claimed years supply of food, water, housing etc. for a "company sized group of security contractors" as an amenity. [1] G4S, the largest PMC company, founded in 1957
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > they've been doing it since the 60s when kidnap and ransom insurance started being a serious thing Private security has been a thing for millenia!
scyzoryk_xyz 2y ago
Perhaps they already do, we just don’t know about it yet =)
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
Check out the history of the Pinkerton Security agency.

Frost1x 2y ago

The trend has been more openness in this sort of behavior. After all, the public hasn’t seemed to respond to it with much negativity other than people occasionally complaining about these sorts of behaviors online. The highest level complaint seems to be public protest, which don’t seem to garner enough momentum to push change. If there’s no repercussions, why not be transparent? Scary indeed, as it’s quite telling of the direction we’re headed in, IMHO.

pinkmuffinere 2y ago
Honestly I think I prefer openness, although I'll admit it's hard to be precise about what's ok and what isn't. In the spirit of free speech, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." At the same time, defending somebody's right to speech does _not_ mean that individuals can't embargo / "cancel" that person -- I think this behavior is itself speech of a sort. What would you change about the present situation? I feel that public protest is roughly all that can be allowed in response to speech (ie, speech in response to speech). Surely he shouldn't be jailed/fined/doxxed for this speech? What more should be allowed? Or is it just that the public protest isn't as strong as you'd want?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  Speech and thought are interlinked. Encouraging our society's most powerful to pander to social media in what they say undoubtedly affects how they think.
  - pinkmuffinere 2y ago
    Sure but what’s the alternative? Are you going to decide what people can say? This is all very 1984, if you haven’t read it you might find it interesting
- danielheath 2y ago
  The thing that makes any given arrangement of society work (or not work) is how quickly/cheaply it removes decision-making power from people who demonstrate poor judgement. This is a difficult task, because people with decision-making power tend use that power to alter the system to solidify their position. Capitalism, at its finest, does this by letting people make bad decisions with their money until they haven't got any. This was an improvement on, say, holding wars until enough people decision-makers get killed off. However, a variety of long-term policy shifts have meant this no longer appears to happen - merely possessing capital is so profitable that even astonishingly poor decisions cannot reduce your wealth enough to matter. IMO, through this statement Larry Ellison has demonstrated the kind of poor judgement which a functional society cannot tolerate in a decision-maker, and lacking an effective way to remove this from the decision-maker pool is the primary cause of societal trouble today.

scyzoryk_xyz 2y ago

For one, he’s one of the OG’s who’s had vast wealth and power for longer than many others have been alive. And two, he’s at an age where people lose any sense of self-awareness, shame, filters - all that shit. Anyways I don’t think he cares that it makes him sound Orwellian. I suspect he’s fine with being Orwellian outright. Not having what he has is as unimaginable as for all of us having a fraction of what he has. It’s too much of a stretch for someone like that to extent so much to imagine. And yeah it’s frightening, it’s why we did away with autocratic Sun King calibre aristocracy/royalty and all that. We can expect all the other zillionaires to follow this path reliably over the next few decades.

yapyap 2y ago
I doubt it’s the age of him, it moreso feels like the age of society. With Musk swinging his arm to in the air to hail his führer it really feels like the defining moment of new age rich people, don’t get me wrong the build up was there but this is just the moment that best encapsulates it all. The best person to personify the old age I’d say is Bill Gates, awful person behind the curtains I’m sure, real buddy buddy with Epstein but he did the whole “caring for humanity” shtick, he donated bits of his money, y’know he at least took some effort to make it seem like he cared.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > With Musk swinging his arm to in the air to hail his führer it really feels like the defining moment of new age rich people We're five days into the Presidency. And Musk has stumbled across power the sorts he hasn't really had to wrangle with before. I'd be shocked if he comes out in 2028 better off, materially, than he is now.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    It's probably not a good idea to piss off people with corporeal power. Xi makes a lot less than Jack Ma, but I think that he showed him who's In Charge.

tw04 2y ago

Larry doesn't care about anything other than Larry. For Larry, the biggest issue facing him beyond how he can live forever, is how he can ensure nobody ever commits a crime against him. The best way to ensure nobody ever commits a crime against him is to monitor every living human on the planet. Any crime he commits can be figured out in courts with his high-priced lawyers so the idea that AI constantly watching you would be repressive seems misplaced to Larry. For people that think I'm joking, at one point his primary philanthropic contributions were almost exclusively to life-extending efforts: >Take the massive amount of money he once gave to life-extension research, which was the core focus of his philanthropic efforts. >And so over the course of 15 years at the beginning of the 21st century he would donate over half of a billion dollars for anti-aging medical research, at a time when the field was seen as fringe science. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/8/24/21369773/larry-ellison-foundation-oracle-philanthropy https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/8/24/21369773/larry-ellison-...

colordrops 2y ago
The point isn't about preventing people from commiting crimes against him. It is surely that oracle database would back the data centers run by the surveillance state.
- threecheese 2y ago
  With the announcements lately, I would be unsurprised to see an edict stating “federal funding requires the use of Oracle rdbms”. Thousands of open source projects would support Oracle in short order.
  - NewJazz 2y ago
    I'd be surprised if Oracle's cloud infrastructure even relied on Oracle DBs.
NewJazz 2y ago
Hmm, but has Larry considered that a scurry of squirrels may commit organized crime against his empire? Maybe he should invest in some deterrence there.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

timewizard 2y ago

Once CIA, always CIA. Larry is just explaining from first hand knowledge what the deep state wants.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> Does Larry really lack enough self awareness to not realize these kind of statements make him sound like an orwellian super villain He's joining the attention economy. Saying something stupid but provocative yields earned social media. Larry Ellison saying something sensible wouldn't make HN's front page.

bryanrasmussen 2y ago
But it's so rare! Surely we would be driven to comment on it.

wesselbindt 2y ago

He is not stupid, and operates within the same broad cultural framework as we do. It's the latter.

horrible-hilde 2y ago

Its the latter, Larry is not your friend

trillic 2y ago

Larry is an 80 year old man worth 200 billion US dollars I don’t think he gives a shit what he sounds like.

kdmtctl 2y ago

The biggest problem is every creator of ceasing privileges from others genuinely believes that he is excluded. First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. —Martin Niemöller